Kenneth Choi shocked me in round 7. I was watching what I thought was a Curve Sentinels mirror matchup, when Choi dropped Daredevil, The Man Without Fear to try and cover his missed 6-drop. That seemed odd.

Things got increasingly mind-bending as Choi recruited Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man on turn 7. His opponent tried to keep a look of “What the heck?” off of his face as he recruited Magneto, Master of Magnetism. It was an interesting match, and when Choi flipped World’s Finest it kinda clicked in my mind. “Wow, it’s a Curve Sentinels/Spider-Friends teamup deck!”

After I recovered from my own blinding flash of the obvious, I decided to take a look at Choi’s deck. Here’s what took him to table 1.

Characters
4 Boliver Trask
5 Sentinel Mark III
5 Sentinel Mark II
6 Sentinel Mark V
4 Nimrod
1 Daredevil, The Man Without Fear
4 Bastion
1 Scarlet Spider
4 Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man
2 Spider-Man, Cosmic Spider-Man

Plot Twists
4 Savage Beatdown
4 Reconstruction Program
3 Overload
4 Cover Fire
3 Nasty Surprise
1 Royal Decree
1 World’s Finest
1 Marvel Team-Up

Locations
2 Avalon Space Station
1 Metropolis

The deck is completely conventional from turns 1 through 4. It functions exactly like a Curve Sentinels deck and what it does it does well. As far as plot twists go, it follows the Curve Sentinels model as well, right down to the Overload and Nasty Surprise combo. It rotates out a few cards to fit in its team-ups, but really, the main differences that make this deck unique lie in the characters.

Daredevil, The Man Without Fear is a great turn-5 play, or even as turn 6 filler against Curve Sentinels. It’s been a big card for the entire event, but this is one of the decks that really seems to use it to its utmost potential, despite the fact that it’s only running one copy.

The single copy of Scarlet Spider can do a sort of poor job of filling a drop on turn 6, but it’s in the deck to set up turns 7 and 8. Once Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man hits on turn 7, the deck gets some nice synergy. Cosmic Spider-Man can be funneled through Amazing Spider-Man to exhaust basically anything, and then Reconstruction Program can be used to bring it back for recruitment next turn. Alternatively, Reconstruction Program can be used to bring back discarded Mark Vs on a wholesale basis so they can be shot through Amazing Spider-Man. Exhaustion on that level tears apart The Brave and The Bold and Teen Titans. It’s a type of synergy that no one’s ever really played with before.

Turn 8 with Cosmic Spider-Man dominates Curve Sentinels and . . . well, just about everything else. Not many decks are running 8-drops at this point, so the inclusion of a pair in this deck can be game-breaking. The usual reason to avoid playing 8-drops is, of course, their lack of utility. In most cases, they’re useless except for dead resources until turn 8. The beauty of this deck is the fact that it can use those would-be-dead cards on turn 7 as exhaustion fodder. It’s a nice little end-game package that did extremely well for Choi.

With players tweaking Curve Sentinels and Titans with as much tech as they can devise to try and outdo the competition, this deck really stands out. Despite retaining the early and mid-game of Curve Sentinels, it’s a very different deck when taken in a complete perspective. The build itself is very strong, but the concept might be even stronger. It’s possible that the near future of Vs. System might not lie in new ideas, but the enhancing of old ideas by changing entire portions of strategy on a turn-segmented basis.