By the time you read this, I will be at PC Indianapolis, possibly looking rather like Clark Kent as I go about my reporting duties, probably hyper on the large amounts of caffeine it takes me to beat jet lag, and definitely using whatever superhuman powers my in-flight meal gave me to bring you the latest stories from the Pro Circuit.

Regardless, it is too late for me to offer you any tech for the weekend unless you have some sort of time travel device with which to make the most of it. If you do have a time travel device, I would recommend sports betting over tech hunting. It worked for Marty McFly.

No, for this week’s column I will try to apply some of the lessons of the past to the future. Last year, Dean Sohnle (everyone’s favorite wandering Ronin card player*) won his first $10K event with Fantastic Fun, and the world pretty much ignored it. It wasn’t until he won a second event at PC Amsterdam that the deck broke out worldwide, even though it had received plenty of coverage at $10K London.

While $10K events in the US have returned to being dominated by Titans and Sentinels, $10K Munich featured a slightly more interesting Top 8 and was won by a deck type that has received little love in Golden Age. In the interest of bringing the world closer together, it is time that these decks receive the respect they deserve and earn their place in playtest gauntlets the world over.

The Best Offense . . .

Karl-Heinz Bergt

4 Mikado and Mosha

3 Hannibal King

4 Iron Fist, Danny Rand

3 Death-Stalker

4 Elektra, Elektra Natchios

3 Yelena Belova ◊ Black Widow

4 Luke Cage, Street Enforcer

4 Daredevil, Matt Murdock

1 Micro-Chip

1 Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man

4 Savage Beatdown

4 Crime and Punishment

4 Crushing Blow

4 Flying Kick

4 Quick Kill

3 Swan Dive

4 Wild Ride

2 Punisher’s Armory

Aggressive much? This deck does not ever concern itself with defense, intending instead to race an opponent’s ability to do damage and effectively negate late game threats like Bastion and Dr. Light, Arthur Light by simply winning the game before they can become active. So far, so The New Brotherhood. If anything, though, this deck takes the philosophy of playing with little mutants and big pump effects and pushes it as far as it will go. With nothing but concealed characters, it is able to get dangerous attacks in on every single turn of the game, and there is little that an unprepared opponent can do about it. With KO effects from Quick Kill and Black Widow and direct stuns from Swan Dive and Mikado and Mosha, this deck is dangerous in terms of both power and consistency. Wild Ride finds its drops when needed, and with a critical mass of pump effects, it will always have the tools to make a fair fight anything but.

With the number of concealed characters rising with the last couple of sets, there seems to be a lot of potential for all-concealed decks to put a whole new top speed on Golden Age. They cannot be disrupted as easily by the traditional weenie hate that is often good enough against decks like The New Brotherhood.

. . . Is a Good Defense

Here are the Lega dei Assassins

3 Assassin Initiate

3 Talia, Beloved Daughter

1 Hassim

4 Ubu, Ra’s Al Ghul’s Bodyguard

1 Hook, Hired Killer

1 Ra’s Al Ghul, Immortal Villain

3 Ra’s Al Ghul, Eternal Nemesis

1 Merlyn, Deadly Archer

4 Bane, Ubu

1 Sensei, Martial Arts Master

4 Sinestro, Green Lantern of Korugar

1 Lady Shiva, Master Assassin

2 Two-Face, Split Personality

2 Ra’s Al Ghul, The Demon’s Head

Plot Twists

2 Acrobatic Dodge

4 Tower of Babel

4 The Demon’s Head

4 Savage Beatdown

Locations

4 Lazarus Pit

4 Mountain Stronghold

2 Flying Fortress

2 Coast City

1 Avalon Space Station

1 Pit of Madness

The team from Padua, Italy had fair success with the deck at the $10K, with Edoardo Della Via putting up a Top 4 finish and eventually losing to Bergt in the semifinals. While I would certainly recommend looking at Alex Brown’s excellent series on the League of Assassins for some insightful thoughts on how best to run them, there are a few little splashes of genius in this deck that turn it from being simply a good one to a genuine threat in the metagame.

The Italian Assassins have a two-pronged attack on opponents, from which they select the best method based on the level of aggression they are facing and how their draws work out. With the introduction of the new starter decks, there is a powerful new tool in the League arsenal in the well rounded form of Ra’s Al Ghul, Eternal Nemesis. Backed up by Hook and Bane, Ubu, they form a suite of characters with KO effects that can effortlessly disrupt a curve deck’s game enough to put it well on its back foot before reaching the long game.

What is more interesting for me, though, is the defensive late game that the League can employ if it finds itself in times of trouble. The Italian League has recruited possibly the most powerful defensive 6-drop in the game in the form of that big redhead, Sinestro, Green Lantern of Korugar. With Sinestro and Coast City or Ubu, it’s easy to set up a defensive position that is just horrible to attack into, and even if the opponent does, there is every potential that Lazarus Pit can keep the game locked up by recovering Sinestro’s protector. In the late game, the League is often just holding out for its hero, Ra’s Al Ghul, The Demon’s Head. Against many decks, Big Ra’s just ends the game entirely, turning off payment powers to shut down opposing strategies. With all the search effects available to the League from Mountain Stronghold and The Demon’s Head, this tower of cards is easy to build up and surprisingly hard to knock down.

It will be interesting to see how this deck evolves with Avengers and beyond. The traditionally small amount of flight and range on the team could be helped out by Quinjet, making Ra’s Al Ghul, Eternal Nemesis and his cadre of early game KO buddies that much more daring as they swoop in from above. They may be one of the better placed teams to make the most of System Failure, as the League’s defensive strategy is less stun focused and more concerned with buying time to drop its bombs.

One way or another, talk of the Golden Age is far from being a simple hearkening back to the heady days of the Origins sets, and both of these decks seem to bode well for the future. The ever-increasing options that come with new sets are sure to produce even more innovative choices with which the deck designers can win both recognition and a nice little chunk of change in their back pockets.

For now, let me just wish everyone that is at Indy a great time and the best of luck, and wish everyone reading at home a comfy chair and some cool drinks. If you have any wishes, hopes, dreams, comments, or questions about the coverage or about Vs. in general, feel free to drop me a line.

All the best,

Tim “Clark Kent with an Accent” Willoughby

timwilloughby@hotmail.com

* Dean is, for as long as his card playing career will support it, traveling around the world with just his Fantastic Fun deck and some card lists at his disposal, ready to show up at the most unexpected of venues to dominate whatever $10K or PC happens to be there.