Fantastic Fun

When new cards are released, you can expect to see them all over the place at the first $10K event in which they’re legal. Players are always eager to try out new strategies, if not for the fun of watching your opponent read all your cards, then to see if a new set contains a solution to the current metagame.

$10K Los Angeles, the first major event in which Marvel Knights was legal, ended up yielding an extraordinarily low number of new decks. Whether the lack of innovation was because players hadn’t explored the set thoroughly or because there simply wasn’t anything in it that could handle the top decks had yet to be determined. Curve Sentinels and Teen Titans were obviously the most played decks, but the third most popular deck was a surprise. The New Brotherhood was making another comeback in the hands of many seasoned players because of its ability to get explosive draws and kill Sentinels before they could get going. While TNB on a solid draw could easily take down Sentinels before the heavy hitters like Bastion hit the table, it still had some trouble with Terra and Heroic Sacrifice in the Titans matchup. Also, the deck suffered from a great amount of inconsistency due to a lack of search effects. Some draws would yield ridiculous hands with a full compliment of characters, while others wouldn’t show a single copy of TNB or Sabretooth, Feral Rage. It didn’t seem like TNB was the solution to the increasingly serious metagame problem; this was proven when Sentinels took home the trophy and Titans followed in second place.

The subsequent $10K London saw Child Lock launched back onto the scene again, this time in the hands of Dean Sohnle. But Sohnle’s deck wasn’t an ordinary Child Lock build. Through a combination of equipment cards and Antarctic Research Base, Sohnle turned Child Lock, a generally passive and defensive strategy, into an offensive and aggressive one. As you’ve already seen, the only Child Lock deck at this point that could win before turn 8 was Rigged Elections. Every other version relied on playing huge characters in the later turns of the game and couldn’t win until turn 8 or 9. Sohnle’s new Fantastic Fun deck defied this logic and functioned similarly to modern day High Voltage, combining burn effects with aggressive attack steps to win the game through combat by turn 5 or 6. Fantastic Fun is a straight Fantastic Four deck that utilizes equipment cards and (the now banned) Antarctic Research Base to replenish your hand. For each equipment card you recruit, you get to draw an extra card, and with other effects like Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards and Baxter Building, you could draw so many cards that you didn’t have to rely on search effects. Instead of using Alfred Pennyworth to search for A Child Named Valeria every turn, you could just cycle through your deck with Antarctic Research Base. Eventually, you would draw everything you needed and then some, reducing the need for plot twist and character search effects.

Fantastic Fun does most of its damage through Flamethrower and Advanced Hardware. After you have a board of low-cost Fantastic Four characters, you can play A Child Named Valeria and prevent your opponent from being able to whittle down your character count. Cosmic Radiation adds to the fun by allowing you to ready your characters and burn your opponent even more, and Thinking Outside the Box lets you stack your deck from the bottom when combined with Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards. Normally, Child Lock decks refrain from attacking even if they have the initiative, but Fantastic Fun seizes the opportunity and beats its opponent into the ground. A Child Named Valeria is also a great offensive option, because it essentially gives you a Bamf! effect that allows you to keep your board intact while damaging your opponent’s. Your characters should also have elevated ATK power, because Flamethrower and Hardware give your equipped characters +5 ATK and +3 ATK, respectively. So essentially, Fantastic Fun plays like a beatdown deck that can protect its characters through A Child Named Valeria and burn for extra damage when it can’t attack. Here is Dean Sohnle’s winning list from $10K London:

Dean Sohnle

$10K London

Fantastic Fun

Characters:

1 Human Torch, Hotshot

2 Ant Man

4 Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards

4 Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl

1 Invisible Woman, Sue Storm

2 Mr. Fantastic, Stretch

2 She-Thing, Sharon Ventura

1 Franklin Richards, Child Prodigy

2 Thing, Ben Grimm

1 Frankie Raye, Herald of Galactus

1 Wyatt Wingfoot

Plot Twists:

1 Salvage

4 A Child Named Valeria

3 Signal Flare

4 Cosmic Radiation

1 Foiled

2 Thinking Outside the Box

Locations:

4 Antarctic Research Base

1 Pier 4

1 Baxter Building

Equipment:

2 Personal Force Field

4 Advanced Hardware

4 Flamethrower

4 Unstable Molecules

1 War Wagon

2 The Pogo Plane

1 Fantasticar

With Titans beginning to fade and Sentinels becoming the most popular deck in the field, the concern among players was shifting from being able to handle both decks to being able to beat just Sentinels. Fantastic Fun could destroy Sentinels as long as it could chain A Child Named Valeria to Flame Trap and keep its board around going into turn 5, because as usual, Sentinels had few ways to get around a Child lock. However, the deck was said to be very difficult to play, and many players who tried it out after $10K London were frustrated when they didn’t get good results in testing. Also, there’s an ongoing rule in Vs. System that says that search is always better than draw—occasionally, the drawing engine of Antarctic Research Base wouldn’t give you the exact cards that you needed for the turn. Still, a solution to the robot problem had been presented, and anyone willing to put in the effort to learn how to play Fantastic Fun correctly could play something other than Titans and Sentinels and find success on the competitive scene.

$10K Madrid seemed like it would be more of the same, with Sentinels and Titans still at the top of the boards. Surprisingly, though, some older decks like TNB and Common Enemy ended up making Top 8. But it was Jose Maria Aramburu’s unique Brotherhood of Mephisto deck that won the tournament, proving that the new Marvel Knights cards were able to handle Curve Sentinels. Aramburu’s deck relied on the new powerhouse Team-Up Midnight Sons, which gave him access to any team affiliation in the game as long as he controlled a single Marvel Knights character. The combination of Centurious and Lost City allowed Aramburu to turn his useless early game characters into +3 ATK / +3 DEF pumps without controlling a single Brotherhood character, thanks to Midnight Sons. Finally, on turn 5, Brotherhood of Mephisto would recruit its namesake, Mephisto, Soulstealer, and remove all characters in both KO’d piles to give Mephisto an enormous ATK boost for the turn. Dean Sohnle’s victory from the previous $10K had a small effect on the Madrid metagame, where only a handful of Fantastic Four burn decks were played, but none of them managed to crack the Top 8. Two successful, innovative decks had just come out of the European metagame, and American players were forced to take notice.

The Midnight Sons Engine and More Fantastic Fun

Although many players were concentrating on the new Marvel Modern Age format for Pro Circuit Amsterdam, some dedicated souls made it out to $10K Chicago the weekend before the big dance. Many players defaulted to Curve Sentinels because they were too busy working on Marvel Modern Age to come up with something new for Golden Age. The influence of Fantastic Fun was being felt, and the number of players piloting the deck was slowly increasing.

Perhaps the most diverse Top 8 in a long time, $10K Chicago saw the return of Rigged Elections with a twist in the hands of Tim Batow. Finally, someone had taken the initiative to explore what Marvel Knights had to offer for the classic combo deck, and it paid off. Tim Batow’s new build of Rigged Elections utilized the ridiculous Midnight Sons engine to team-up with teams that he didn’t actually have in play. Some may say otherwise, but Midnight Sons seems to be the best Team-Up ever printed in Vs. System. The ability to team-up with teams you don’t even play in your deck opens up dozens of possibilities, of which Batow’s Rigged build and Aramburu’s Brotherhood of Mephisto deck are evidence. Although Batow’s build played Arkham Inmates characters, they were no longer necessary. You could just team-up Marvel Knights with Arkham Inmates via Midnight Sons; theoretically, the only teams the deck had to run anymore were Fantastic Four, Marvel Knights, and Gotham Knights. As with Fantastic Fun, Sentinels had a hard time disrupting your lock if you played around Flame Trap, although cards like Total Anarchy and Search and Destroy could really hurt if played at the right time. With the steady decline of Titans and the increase in robot numbers, any form of Child Lock seemed like a viable response to the masses of Sentinel decks that weren’t packing off-curve hate. Here’s Tim Batow’s list from $10K Chicago:

Tim Batow

$10K Chicago

Rigged Elections

Characters:

4 Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl

4 Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards

4 Mikado and Mosha

4 Dagger, Child of Light

4 Alfred Pennyworth

2 Micro-Chip

1 Query and Echo

1 Ratcatcher

1 Harley Quinn

1 Ventriloquist ◊ Scarface

5 GCPD Officer

Plot Twists:

4 A Child Named Valeria

4 Cosmic Radiation

4 Rigged Elections

4 Wild Ride

4 Midnight Sons

4 Bat-Signal

3 World’s Finest

2 Marvel Team-Up

The next weekend, Vs. System’s third Pro Circuit event was taking place in Amsterdam. The first non-US Pro Circuit was also the first non–Golden Age one, using the brand new Marvel Modern Age format that at the time consisted of the Web of Spider-Man and Marvel Knights sets. While the main focus was on the new format and the PC, people didn’t forget about the $10K. As usual, Curve Sentinels were at the top of the metagame breakdown, but Common Enemy pushed Teen Titans out of the number two spot for the first time in months. The appeal of Common Enemy was its ability to toolbox silver bullet cards such as Unmasked, Global Domination, and Betrayal, which no other deck could do with such ease. Most Curve Sentinel decks were splashing Magneto, Master of Magnetism at the 7-drop slot, so multiple Betrayals on turn 7 could wreck the robots pretty hard. Not only did Common Enemy have access to Betrayal via Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom, but the deck could also replay Betrayal using Dr. Doom, Diabolical Genius or Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria to flip it face down.

The Top 8 yielded the usual plethora of Sentinel decks with a splash of Titans and Common Enemy. But the biggest surprise of this Top 8 was that two Fantastic Fun decks made the cut in the hands of Richard Edbury and creator Dean Sohnle. Both competitors plowed through the robots, Titans, and Reign of Terrors in the Top 8 to face each other in the finals. In the end, Dean Sohnle emerged victorious, making him the third player to win two $10K events—consecutively and with the same deck, no less.

The glory of Fantastic Fun couldn’t last forever, though. Although the deck was still popular at $10K Seattle, Sentinels players were beginning to tech in anything necessary to prevent getting Child locked. If they weren’t already playing them, Sentinels builds started packing Flame Trap and Search and Destroy to stun characters outside of combat. Then, if the Sentinels player had Total Anarchy in play, a Child lock could easily be disrupted with a direct stun on Mr. Fantastic, who would then be immediately KO’d by Anarchy. The intense amount of hate against Fantastic Fun didn’t stop two players from making the cut with it, although neither of them made it to the finals. The classic matchup of Titans and Sentinels was the final result of the weekend, with Sentinels once again winning it all.

Continuing on through $10K Paris, Sentinels held on to their number one position. The Top 8 included two Fantastic Fun decks and one Rigged Elections deck, while the rest was Sentinels and Titans. The most interesting match of the tournament was Julien Dez vs. Guillaume Matignon in the quarterfinals, where the decks being played were Rigged and Fantastic Fun, respectively. In a matchup where both players are running A Child Named Valeria, it’s almost a given that combat isn’t going to happen. This matchup became a race to see whether twenty-five counters on Rigged Elections or 50 endurance loss through burn effects could happen quicker. Due to bad draws on Dez’s part, Matignon was able to beat him down before the Rigged Elections combo went off.

This matchup proved that Fantastic Fun was a much better choice than Rigged Elections as far as Child Lock decks go, since Fantastic Fun has the option of playing aggressively while Rigged is limited to a defensive strategy. However, the biggest story of the tournament was the finals; Dean Sohnle was in contention for his third $10K win, while Kristian Kockott’s Sentinels deck brought some interesting new tech to the table in the form of Micro-Sentinels. Throughout the finals, Kockott didn’t have to worry about stunning Sohnle’s characters, because after a few turns with Micro-Sentinels in play, they would automatically be KO’d. Micro-Sentinels single-handedly won the match for Kockott because A Child Named Valeria couldn’t do anything to stop the steady stream of micro-counters that were plaguing Sohnle’s characters. Micro-Sentinels posed a deadly threat to any deck that played low-cost characters, especially in multiples. Sentinels not only continued to be the undisputed best deck in the format, but also Child Lock decks no longer posed a threat as long as Micro-Sentinels came online by turn 3 or 4.

$10K Mexico was more diverse than recent events but still included its fair share of Sentinels. But for the first time in a while, Sentinels wasn’t present in the finals, which was an all–Evil Medical School matchup. EMS had been floating around the tournament scene ever since Jason Hager took it to a second place finish at $10K Columbus, but it never really made it onto the “decks to beat” list. That changed with the conclusion of $10K Mexico, as the EMS mirror proved that the power of Doom and the Fearsome Five was not to be underestimated. Just like Fantastic Fun, though, EMS required a good pilot to get anything done. Even though solutions to the Sentinels problem were available, most players didn’t want to put in the time to learn how to play them correctly and enjoyed the auto-pilot appeal of Curve.

Pro Circuit New York

$10K Brisbane and $10K Detroit, the final major events before Pro Circuit New York, showed more of the same. Sentinels was played in higher numbers than ever before, with only a small splash of Titans and EMS making an appearance. Both tournaments were won by the robots, and players feared that PC: NY would be extremely stale due to the overwhelming power and number of Sentinels decks in the field. Nothing could compete with the likes of Bastion in combat, and any sort of off-curve attempts made by decks like Fantastic Fun or Teen Titans were thwarted by the likes of Flame Trap, Micro-Sentinels, and even Overload. I haven’t elaborated on it much, but the combination of Nasty Surprise / Savage Beatdown and Overload had gotten somewhat out of control at this point; many players were calling for an errata or a ban to fix the problem. The general Vs. player base wasn’t looking forward to PC: NY, as the only options available were to play Sentinels and win coin flips all day or lose. The Golden Age format was at one of the lowest points it has ever seen.

When the weekend began, 42.30% of the field was Curve Sentinels. Table after table consisted of the mirror match, and players were groaning at the thought of playing twelve rounds of nothing but purple toasters. Many had already lost hope, but by the end of the day, Sentinels were in fact not on top. Instead, Michael Barnes’s Xavier’s Dream deck was at the top of charts, and it was one of the best examples of metagaming I’ve ever seen. In a field saturated with Sentinels, Barnes had the right idea—play an alternate win condition that simply required him to survive until turn 6 without having any stunned characters in play. To beat Dream, Sentinels had to deal 50 points of damage by the end of turn 5, which was nearly impossible even if your opponent didn’t recruit any characters. Sentinels was too busy teching for EMS and the mirror to be able to run resource hate, so Barnes stormed through the competition without the threat of Have a Blast! ruining his plans.

Another major success on Day 1 of PC: NY was the West Virginia player group’s creation, New School. New School was an upgrade on the Evil Medical School deck that the West Virginians had also created, but with the power of Midnight Sons in the mix. New School can be described as the ultimate control deck, running so many search and exhaustion effects that any deck based on combat will rarely get to make any meaningful attacks during the game.

After the Draft portion of the PC had concluded, Sentinels made up 75% of the Top 8, but there was still hope. Both the Dream deck piloted by Michael Barnes and New School in the hands of Jason Hager made the cut, and both players had very favorable matchups against Sentinels. However, both Barnes and Hager fell to eventual PC: NY champion Adam Bernstein, which broke the hearts of hundreds of players hoping to see Sentinels fall once and for all. Child Lock decks made a small showing at this event, but with the number of Sentinel decks running Micro-Sentinels, they didn’t see much success.

Would Green Lantern Corps bring a new weapon that could stop the Sentinels menace? Would Child Lock evolve again and develop an alternate strategy that would make it even more powerful than before? Would Vs. System see its very first card banned as a result of PC: NY? Stay tuned for Part 4, which will bring us into modern times and a much more diverse metagame than the one seen during the Sentinels era!

Graham Van Leeuwen is a fourteen-year-old high school student who lives in Chapel Hill, NC. He has seen a small amount of tournament success, including 5th place at $10K Charlotte 2006 and 50th place at Pro Circuit Atlanta, but has yet to land a big money finish. Graham is a member of Team No Quarter Given, a team based throughout North Carolina and Virginia. He can be contacted with questions, comments, complaints, or requests at gvl@nc.rr.com.