A couple of months ago, I did a column highlighting The Science Spire where I discussed my fascination with Homestarrunner.com. I won’t go too much into the website again—you can go visit the site if you want to know more—but I would like to share my particular affinity for one of the characters from the site: Stinkoman.

My fascination with Stinkoman has nothing to do with personal hygiene habits (despite what my teammates may imply . . .). Actually, my interest in this character has more to do with his fighting spirit. You see, Stinkoman is essentially the anime version of Strong Bad. Accordingly, he has a lot of the stereotypical traits of animated Japanese fighter characters. This aspect of his personality is typified by his catch phrase, “Are you asking for a challenge?”

Of course, I am always looking for a challenge. I guess that’s why I like Stinkoman so much!

Throwing Down the Gauntlet . . . Literally!

My competitive fire was recently stoked by the challenge of Todd McFadyen. Todd is the proprietor of All In Games in Broken Arrow, OK and a big advocate of Vs. System in the Tulsa area. Whenever I visit Oklahoma, I always stop by Todd’s shop to get in some playtime against the locals. And considering that the locals include my teammates Tim Batow and Shane Wiggans, it’s usually quite a challenge!

Oh yeah . . . getting back to challenges. Todd sent me an email a few days ago regarding a pet project of his. Here’s what his message said:

I want to play something that you’d have to be nuts to play. I want to play a deck featuring The Infinity Gauntlet. I understand it may not be tier 1.  

I was hoping I could get your help. I read your article on Moondragon, and I think that a lot of the same concepts would apply to The Infinity Gauntlet deck. If you are willing to assist, here are my rules:

1. The deck must be Silver Age legal.

2. I would like the deck to be a Heralds of Galactus / Infinity Watch team-up.

3. Rares are not a concern. I already have most of the rares I think I would need, including four copies of Creation of a Herald.

Are you up to my challenge? I sure hope so.

The Build

Despite the fact that it’s our feature card, we should only need a single copy of The Infinity Gauntlet. We probably won’t be able to find any decks that could support multiple recruits of The Infinity Gauntlet, so we are going to limit our recruit of the Gauntlet to one per game. Of course, we will need at least one copy of each of the Infinity Gems. The question now becomes which of the Infinity Gems we would like to play in multiples. Let’s take a look at each of them.

Mind Gem: If you’ve had a chance to play this card in Sealed Pack, you should be well aware of its cycling power. More importantly, this is one Gem that actually has a potent synergy with its protector, Moondragon. Given how important card drawing and cycling will be in our deck, it only makes sense that we’d want to play a couple copies of this card. At the very least, this will prevent equipment KO effects like Meltdown from completely ruining our strategy if we decide to put a copy of Mind Gem into play.

Power Gem: Much like Mind Gem, Power Gem is awesome in Sealed Pack formats—a reusable +3 ATK pump is never a bad thing. Unfortunately, Power Gem is probably not nearly as effective in Constructed. The main reason for this is that any Heralds of Galactus–based deck will be playing more for the late game. ATK pumps are not usually necessary for this strategy, though we might find occasional need of the +3 ATK. In general, we should be fine with one copy of Power Gem.

Reality Gem: If you recall from the deck specifications, Todd said that this deck would be designed for play in Silver Age. While the Heralds of Galactus set may change the face of Silver Age with its release, we can generally derive what decks we can expect to see. Two of the more potent decks currently in Silver Age are X-Statix / Villains United and Checkmate toolbox. These two powerful decks have one very important feature in common: they both rely heavily on strong support locations and ongoing plot twists. It then stands to reason that if we cripple the support cards for these decks, the decks themselves will falter. One copy of Reality Gem could be enough to cause some pandemonium for our opponents. However, if we run afoul of any equipment hate, we could lose our chance to recruit The Infinity Gauntlet. Since Reality Gem will probably be quite useful for us, we will go ahead and play two copies.

Soul Gem: This card can actually be quite useful in deterring attacks up the curve. Many curve matchups attempt to make an advantageous trade by attacking up the curve with one character, then following that with a presumably safe attack down the curve, forcing an opponent to lose a smaller character. Soul Gem stymies this type of trade by forcing a character attacking up the curve to bounce back to its controller’s hand. In essence, a player gains nothing on the trade. Still, this effect is really only occasionally useful, so we will keep the count for Soul Gem at one.

Space Gem: Having an equipment card that emulates the effect of Swift Escape could certainly have its merits. Space Gem helps with card advantage by allowing us to bounce characters back to our hand that we probably would otherwise have lost to the KO’d pile. Hand advantage will be a vital part of our strategy, but not so much that we need a way to bounce characters that we control. One copy.

Time Gem: Now we come to a card that possesses an extraordinary amount of potential for good, but an equal amount of potential for disaster. Time Gem will negate the next plot twist played, but it doesn’t specify a player. So, Time Gem will negate the very next non-ongoing plot twist . . . even if it’s ours! In a deck based more on locations or equipment, Time Gem could be amazing. But since we have several plot twists upon which we will be depending, we probably won’t want to play Time Gem too often. So, we’ll keep Time Gem to one copy in our deck.

Now that we have the equipment sorted out, let’s consider our character cards. Our 1-drops are really going to be more like plot twists in function. Still, they serve very important purposes. One copy of Mikado and Mosha is necessary to keep annoying opposing 1-drops like Joystick under control. We probably won’t need the Angels of Destruction against curve decks, but one copy can be a lifesaver in off- and short-curve matchups, especially if we have a way to recur Mikado and Mosha (which we do!). Our other 1-drop is Jaime Reyes ◊ Blue Beetle. Since our deck is heavily dependent on equipment cards, we would probably benefit from having an equipment searcher. Jaime Reyes is one of the best in Silver Age, requiring only a simple exhaustion of one of our characters to find an equipment card.

Turn 2 is where we will probably start with our curve. Our primary 2-drop is going to be Pip the Troll. While Pip may not be as potent as Ape X or Ted Kord ◊ Blue Beetle at searching for equipment cards, his effect is respectable nonetheless. More importantly, though, Pip sports a pretty nice 3 ATK / 3 DEF frame. It will certainly be nice to have a large character to protect our endurance in the early turns. Our other 2-drop, Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways, isn’t as big as Pip, but he excels at setting up our hand for later turns. With a simple activation, we can prepare our late curve, find a copy of Elemental Converters to improve our draw, or even fetch The Infinity Gauntlet. After his involvement with the original The Infinity Gauntlet storyline, I suppose it’s only fitting that Silver Surfer would be able to find the vaunted glove for us.

At 3, we will start setting up our stall elements. We’ll have our standard backup character in the form of Gamora. She isn’t bad by any means, with the potential to hit 6 ATK / 6 DEF while she has her cosmic counter,

but we really want more of a stall-based character. Air-Walker, Gabriel Lan is more suited for this task. Not only does he sport a very nice 6 DEF (which is generally enough to fend off the attacks by other 3-drops), but he also has a very relevant ability. Anyone who’s ever faced down a Gamma Doom or X-Stall deck can tell you how powerful Puppet Master is in a stall strategy. Air-Walker is very similar in function, but sports respectable stats as well. Having a Puppet Master that’s difficult to stun is a dream come true for us.

At 4, we have some stall and draw acceleration choices. Human Torch, The Invisible Man is obviously amazing. Not only does he give reinforcement to all of our characters (when teamed-up of course), but he also actually has an effect that can facilitate our late-game theme. We probably won’t ever try to do massive amounts of breakthrough on our attacks, but even a few points here and there can be enough to move us one or two turns past where we might have otherwise finished. Still, our primary concern early on is not hitting the later turns, but getting enough cards in hand to get The Infinity Gauntlet out. So, we’re going to make Moondragon our primary 4-drop. If you read my article featuring Moondragon, then you already know why I love this lady. Considering that our ultimate goal is to discard six cards at once to enable us to play a seventh card, we will need to have enough cards to meet this need. Moondragon certainly aids the cause with the ability to draw an extra card each phase. With our normal draw, Mind Gem, and various other draw effects, we should have more than enough cards to support our eventual goal.

Speaking of drawing cards, our 5-drop is Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Harbinger of Death. Frankie Raye doesn’t so much accelerate our draw as recover our hand. You see, we are going to set a soft goal to recruit The Infinity Gauntlet on turn 5 or 6. Even with our draw aided by Moondragon, we will probably have very few cards left in hand after we recruit The Infinity Gauntlet. To that end, Frankie Raye helps us get back the cards that we had to pitch. This prevents the onerous discard for The Infinity Gauntlet from becoming a burden for us in later turns.

Our 6-drop is going to be our lone source of cosmic counter replenishment. The Fallen One may have become an enemy of the Heralds of Galactus in the comics, but in our deck, he is a valuable ally. Not only can he strategically restore cosmic counters, but he can also bounce problematic opposing characters back to hand. With the amount of draw power that our deck sports, his cosmic effect will usually come into play. Few decks will be able to match the draw power of ours, even with us discarding for The Infinity Gauntlet!

Our deck wouldn’t be much of a Heralds of Galactus deck if we didn’t include a copy of Galactus, The Maker. He is definitely a strong play at 7, but the real allure of Galactus is that he enables so many effects for powerful cards. More on that in a moment. Our other 7-drop is our answer to off-curve decks. Sure, we will be pressed to survive to later turns against aggressive decks. If we do get to the seventh turn, however, Adam Warlock pretty much ensures that opposing weenies won’t be a factor any longer. Maybe our opponents won’t take any damage from Adam Warlock’s effect, but they also won’t have any characters costing 3 or less to attack with. Against off-curve decks, this pretty much seals victory for the home team.

We’ll conclude our characters with single 8- and 9-drops. Tyrant is an absolute monster at 8, with massive stats and an effect that forces an opponent to lose a character. Given that The Fallen One and The Infinity Gauntlet will already be giving opposing characters fits, our opponents probably won’t have many characters left to KO. Finally, at 9 we have Galactus, Devourer of Worlds. Just like his 7-drop version, Galactus aids many effects for our deck, but the main thing to remember about Galactus, Devourer of Worlds is that he wins games . . . period!

As far as locations go, we have two that will be important to the consistency of our deck. We’ve already discussed in depth how Elemental Converters can work well in unison with Silver Surfer and Moondragon. While this location is very nice to have in play, it is not a requirement for victory. Thus, we only need a single copy. Even limiting ourselves to a lone copy of Elemental Converters, we should find it in play quite often due to the number of ways we will have available to search for it.

Our other location is a more subtle form of card advantage. I have long lauded the power of Avalon Space Station and Slaughter Swamp. In our deck, Soul World provides the same effect, albeit using endurance as the cost rather than a discard. The endurance payment for Soul World shouldn’t be overly problematic for us, however, because we will have several Infinity Watch characters around to defer a portion of the cost. Besides, imagine the joy of reusing the same copy of Galactus multiple times for various effects!

The framework for our deck has set up a fairly straightforward framework for our plot twist selections. The most obvious starting point for our plot twists is our Team-Up selection. While we might be well served to play a Team-Up like Millennium that allows us to draw a card, we are actually going to move in the opposite direction and play a Team-Up that facilitates discards. The Herald Ordeal might seem to fly in the face of the theme that we are trying to establish, but the key thing to remember here is that we will usually want to use Soul World to retrieve specific character cards (i.e. Galactus). This means that the remainder of our character cards in hand could go for naught, especially if we draw copies of our low drops in later turns. The Herald Ordeal gives us an outlet to offset endurance loss by discarding character cards that are no longer needed. We won’t want to use The Herald Ordeal too often in the preliminary turns, but just like Human Torch, the slight endurance gain from The Herald Ordeal can greatly aid us in later turns.

Now let’s consider our search options. Obviously, we want cards that can search out equipment as well as characters. Any searchers that can find other cards will be icing on the cake. We already have Jaime Reyes and Pip the Troll for our equipment search. These two will not be enough by themselves, though, so we’ll play four copies of Cannibal Tech. While we might not always have a character available to exhaust for Jaime Reyes’s effect, we should always have a card in hand to discard for Cannibal Tech. This particular plot twist is a stellar addition to our deck, since we will undoubtedly need a lot of help finding those Infinity Gems.

Speaking of Infinity Gems, Gathering the Watch seems like a perfect choice as a character searcher for our deck. From an efficiency standpoint, Gathering the Watch is probably the best character searcher in Vs. System. Most other character searchers have a discard or endurance payment effect associated with them; Gathering the Watch requires nothing but revealing an Infinity Gem. The drawback to this, of course, is that most decks won’t play any of the Infinity Gems or Infinity Watch characters. Since our deck plays a bunch of both, Gathering the Watch is the perfect searcher for our needs.

One last search card that we will undoubtedly want to play is Creation of a Herald. In a deck with several Heralds of Galactus characters, Creation of a Herald is unequivocally better than any other character search card in the game. At the basest level, Creation of a Herald can search for any character card (even unaffiliated) as long as the character card discarded is higher in cost. Considering that the Heralds of Galactus team favors high cost characters, this is usually not an issue. If Creation of a Herald stopped there, it would still be a great card, but the fact that you can discard a character card named Galactus to search your deck for any card puts Creation of a Herald way over the top! Now we have another way to find Elemental Converters, or a needed Team-Up in The Herald Ordeal, or even that wayward Infinity Gem—Creation of a Herald is awesome!

Our final plot twist choice may seem a bit anticlimactic. Still, Meltdown is a very strong tech card for dealing with equipment-based decks. If we are going to recruit The Infinity Gauntlet, we want to make sure that a random copy of Cloak of Nabu won’t get in the way. This in itself is reason enough for Meltdown’s inclusion, but equipment hate can also serve us well against aggressive decks like Good Guys and Fate Squadron that rely heavily on bonuses from equipment cards. A well-timed copy of Meltdown can turn potentially devastating attacks into one-sided stuns against opposing characters.

We’ve gathered the Watch and brought the Heralds together for our challenge. Now let’s see how the two cosmic crews come together in the end:

Are You Asking For a Challenge?” (60 cards)

Characters (29)

2 Jaime Reyes ◊ Blue Beetle, High-Tech Hero

1 Mikado and Mosha, Angels of Destruction

4 Pip the Troll, Protector of the Space Gem

3 Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways

4 Air-Walker, Gabriel Lan

1 Gamora, Protector of the Time Gem

1 Human Torch, The Invisible Man

4 Moondragon, Protector of the Mind Gem

3 Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Harbinger of Death

2 The Fallen One, The Forgotten

1 Adam Warlock, Protector of the Soul Gem

1 Galactus, The Maker

1 Tyrant, The Original Herald

1 Galactus, Devourer of Worlds

Plot Twists (18)

4 Cannibal Tech

4 Creation of a Herald

4 Gathering the Watch

2 Meltdown

4 The Herald Ordeal

Locations (4)

1 Elemental Converters

3 Soul World

Equipment (9)

2 Mind Gem, Infinity Gem

1 Power Gem, Infinity Gem

2 Reality Gem, Infinity Gem

1 Soul Gem, Infinity Gem

1 Space Gem, Infinity Gem

1 Time Gem, Infinity Gem

1 The Infinity Gauntlet

The mulligan is exceedingly simple for the deck: get a 2-drop! Not only does this help stave off attacks from aggressive early game decks, but it also gives you one of two cards that improve your card drawing and cycling. If you get Pip the Troll, then you can find Mind Gem to help cycle your deck. If you get Silver Surfer, then you can fetch Elemental Converters to speed up your draw. Both cards become twice as effective once Moondragon hits play. After turn 2, the search cards in the deck should allow you to hit the remainder of your optimal curve.

As stated earlier, the optimal play for the deck is to recruit The Infinity Gauntlet on turn 5 or 6. If you can consistently get it out on turn 5, then you probably want to take the even initiatives, as recruiting The Infinity Gauntlet is likely a superior off-initiative play to anything your opponent can play. If you aren’t getting The Infinity Gauntlet out until turn 6, then odds is a preferable play for the same reason. Moondragon is probably the best target for recruiting The Infinity Gauntlet, as she won’t be doing a large amount of attacking with only 6 ATK. Still, her 8 DEF means that she will usually be big enough to protect against attacks from smaller characters.

And so ends the challenge for this week. I’d like to thank Todd McFadyen for the idea for this week’s deck. Hopefully, we’ve made some progress on a Silver Age deck featuring The Infinity Gauntlet that will stand up to the competition. I’ll be back again next week for more challenges in Vs. System deckbuilding.

Michael Barnes (a.k.a. BigSpooky) is an avid Vs. System player who is a founding member of Team Alternate Win Condition (TAWC). When he isn’t concocting crazy deck ideas that no sane person would think of, he occupies his spare time working as an accountant in Dallas, TX. Any questions, comments, suggestions, or challenges that you might have for Michael can be sent to him at BigSpooky1@hotmail.com.