Easier Said

4 Beautiful Dreamer
4 Serifan
4 Vykin
4 Big Bear
4 Mark Moonrider
3 Izaya, Highfather
4 Devilance
1 Big Barda
1 Orion, True Son of Darkseid
4 Infinity Man
4 Acrobatic Dodge
2 Astro Force
4 Forever People
3 The Exchange
4 New Genesis
4 Pleasant Distraction
2 The Prophecy Fulfilled
4 Rise From the Grave 

As you can imagine, the key to the Infinity Man deck is to get Forever People into play as fast as possible and then keep them as healthy as possible. Fortunately, there are plenty of 2-drops in the deck, so the odds that you’ll start Forever Populating on turn 2 (if you take the mulligan into consideration) are around 100 percent. Any of the 2-drop F-Peeps will do fine on turn 2, though you might find it advantageous to recruit Vykin. It’s unlikely that any of your 2-drops will survive an attack or a defense here, but with 3 DEF, he has the best chance. Also, he doesn’t have a cosmic counter to lose.

Big Bear is a compelling argument for choosing odd initiative. While the goal of the deck is not to crack skulls, keeping his cosmic counter is a whole lot easier when you get to choose the battle. Pleasant Distraction is great on this turn, as it gives Big Bear a chance to attack down the curve while leaving your opponent’s 3-drop high and dry. If Big Bear keeps it through turn 4, things are going well for you.

Turn 4 is your setup turn. Recruit the other two 2-drop Forever People if things are going according to plan, or Izaya Highfather if things aren’t. This is the turn where your Forever People plot twist, with its threshold cost of 4, comes online (which is the real reason you want the odd initiative). If you’ve used New Genesis or powered anyone up, you’ll have characters in your KO’d pile by now. When one of your Forever People is attacked, exhaust it and bring a Forever People in (stunned) from your KO’d pile. If he or she can Acrobatic Dodge to avoid getting stunned by the attack, so much the better. Also, don’t worry about the uniqueness rule. You’re not recruiting the characters you bring back from the dead, so they can all live like the happy, hippy family they are.  

Turn 4 is when you want to go for broke to keep as many of the Taaru squad as healthy as possible. Go ahead and pay 7 endurance to recover one of the 2-drops. Discard two cards to New Genesis to recover Beautiful Dreamer. Since she gets her cosmic counter back, having her get stunned again is no big deal—you’ll have a character or two to recover with her triggered power. Or, recover Izaya during your opponent’s last attack of the turn. Then, at the start of the recovery phase, his power will recover another character you control. There are many ways to make sure that you end up with four Forever People in play on turn 5, and it’s easy to get to the characters you need with The Exchange. In fact, that’s yet another way to get some Forever People characters into your KO’d pile.

Turn 5 is the prize. If your opponent somehow hasn’t been KO’ing your guys, and your draws have been at least decent, you might be able to pull off the turn 5 Infinity Man. There is a dilemma—you would rather that your opponent has the initiative on turn 5 when you get this monster out. Why? Because your opponent will have to team attack him or spend multiple plot twists to take him down. If you Acrobatic Dodge to save him, you’ll dominate the rest of the game. Heck, with four copies of him in the deck, even a power-up could spell the difference. Then again, you really don’t mind if your opponent chose the odd initiative, since you’ll have little trouble recruiting Drax on turn 6.

Some people might think that returning four characters to your hand to bring out a huge beater on turn 5 is a waste. However, with four cards back in your hand, New Genesis suddenly becomes easy to use again. Expect to see the characters you have in play stick around for a while. Even if your opponent does stun Infinity Man, if Infinity is protecting Izaya, go ahead and use New Genesis before their next attack if they don’t have a flier to get over him. If your opponent thought it was tough taking Drax down once, twice just ain’t gonna happen.

Devilance is a backup plan and part of my sick sense of humor. You see, the idea of Infinity Man and Devilance in the same deck is kinda funny. Ol’ Devvy didn’t get the version name “The Pursuer” for nothin’. He pursued the heck out of Drax, finally finding and engaging him in a real clash of the titans. Devilance musta paid his boost for that one. The battle was so fierce, the island on which they were fighting blowed up real good and killed the both of them. The other reason I like Devilance in this deck is that he can boost up to 7 (with the dandy stats of 15 ATK/14 DEF) to follow up your sure-thing turn 6 Infinity Man.

If you didn’t manage the prize of a turn 5 Infinity Man, a turn 6 Drax is basically a given for this deck. If you don’t have at least two Forever People in play by now, you might as well pack it in . . . or, because you’re clearly losing so badly, try to ride out that loser wave. Recruit Big Barda and spend endurance like it’s going out of style. Just be sure you have The Prophecy Fulfilled face up when you go all crazy. Barda and a reckless attitude on turn 6 are just as hard to take down as a turn 5 Drax. Go nuts, but get your opponent to 0 endurance or less at all costs.

If things are going well, recruit Orion, True Son of Darkseid and see to it that your opponent doesn’t manage any cosmic trickiness. Turn 6 and up is also when Astro Force starts to get nice and deadly. It’s a big help when you need to keep a character unstunned for the Prophecy check at the start of the recovery phase. Whoever Astro’d will no doubt still be among the living. You do, however, want to maximize your breakthrough if you’ve got the Prophecy online, even if it’s at the expense of your own characters.

Good luck!

Questions and comments may be sent to mhyra@metagame.com.