Round 2 got off to a swift start and a swift finish for player Ian Vincent. Vincent holds multiple World Championship and UK titles for the Young Jedi and Star Trek TCGs, and his performance didn’t disappoint in the 2004 Vs. System Minehead $10K tournament. For anyone looking for something new and dominant in Europe’s first premier event, Vincent’s deck could be right up your alley.

Most of us are familiar with the concept of abusing Team Tactics—the theory is that you attack with a character and use Team Tactics to boost the attacker, getting around the drawback of exhaustion. Anyone who’s tried to see how much damage they can do in a single turn (such as, I don’t know, Mr. Barnes) is likely very familiar with the strategy, and it also combines with Cosmic Radiation to allow the boosted character to attack multiple times in a single turn.

The combo was attempted, to some minor success, in some of the earlier PCQ events as well as the Origins 2004 $10K event. Unfortunately, with no way to search for Cosmic Radiation and Team Tactics, players who sought to exploit the combo usually came up empty-handed. Ian Vincent has changed that.

Here’s the deck Vincent played.

Characters
1 Dick Grayson ◊ Nightwing, High-Flying Acrobat
1 Tim Drake ◊ Robin, The Boy Wonder
8 GCPD Officer
2 Thing, Heavy Hitter
2 Ghost Rider
4 Wolverine, New Fantastic Four
4 Crystal
4 Alfred Pennyworth

Plot Twists
1 Foiled
1 Ka-Boom!
4 Bat-Signal
4 Mega-Blast
4 Flying Kick
4 Savage Beatdown
2 Blind Sided
1 World’s Finest
1 Marvel Team-Up
4 Team Tactics
4 Cosmic Radiation
4 Fizzle

What makes the deck viable now, as opposed to its previous incarnations, is Alfred. Alfred allows you to search for the key combo cards as early as turn 2, and when you use a GCPD Officer on turn 1 to provide the requisite Gotham Knights character for using Alfred’s effect, you can easily leave yourself with good defensive board positioning, even if those two cards are your only drops on turns 1 through 3. Vincent’s second round ended on turn four with a fifty-attack Wolverine, New Fantastic Four smashing serious face for the victory, so the proof is there—Alfred makes the deck not only viable, but also deadly fast.

Some of the deck’s other choices are very commendable. The four copies of Crystal give another Fantastic Four turn 4 drop to hit and then perform the combo with, but most importantly you get Crystal’s ability to snag small characters out of the support row into the front row, where they can then be mauled by things like 50 ATK Wolverines.

Robin holds combo opportunities together, allowing you to improve your chances of pulling off massive amounts of damage when your opponent holds initiative. Bat-Signal lets you search for him as needed without cluttering the deck.

Ghost Rider makes a nice 5-drop with rising late-game utility, and a splash of two of him makes room for a turn 5 Crystal or Thing, Heavy Hitter, both of which make great turn 5 plays but lose utility as the game progresses.

The plot twist choices are pretty easy to see. Flying Kick and Mega-Blast add attack and provide more tactical opportunities, since they give flight and range, respectively. Savage Beatdown adds more damage, and Blind Sided makes it stick. Fizzle protects you from harmful plot twists, like Overload and Burn Rubber, as well as from other Fizzles targeting your Team Tactics and Cosmic Radiations. It’s pretty basic stuff, but very effective and high-impact. A Foiled and a