This week, we take a look at a Sealed Pool from Adam Prosak. I’m sure that Adam needs no introduction to most of you, but to everyone else, it’s probably worth stating that you’re unlikely to find anyone on the entire planet who loves this game as much as Adam. As both a seasoned pro and the creator of the Big Deck format, Adam spans the entire Vs. System gamut. So, for our final look at Sealed Pack in this format, lets look at Adam’s pool!
Inhumans:
Luna Maximoff, Only Human
2 San, The Alienated One
2 Tonaja, The Responsible One
Thing, Rockhead
Dinu, Face of Terror
Maximus the Mad, Mental Manipulator
Invisible Woman, Flame On!
2 Extended Family, Team-Up
The Outside World
Whenever I see Extended Family nowadays, I tend to get a bit weak at the knees. Not only are you guaranteed a vital Team-Up, but also a cosmic counter (and putting a cosmic counter on a cosmic—surge character in the same turn you recruited it is one of the pure joys of playing Vs. System). We do seem to have a few acceptable targets already; both Thing and Tonaja are big-time when they can get their counters early. Two copies each of San and Tonaja is a good start. The 6-drops are a little weak for Sealed play, but our 1-drop Luna has a lot of synergy with Tonaja and could help us get to the vital seven Inhumans characters that we need to enable our Team-Ups. Overall, this is a decent, if not overwhelming, start to the pool.
Kree:
Talla Ron, Lunatic Legion
Lieutenant Kona Lor, Lunatic Legion
2 Mar-Vell ◊ Captain Marvel, Soldier of the Empire
2 Ronan the Accuser, Starforce
Lunatic Legionnaires, Army
Kree Public Accusers, Army
2 Mar-Vell ◊ Captain Marvel, Enemy of the Empire
Remnant Fleet
Genetic Destiny
2 Penal Colony
The Kree team looks almost good enough, but it comes up a little short for Sealed Pack. The plot twist support is quite archetypal in its application, and isn’t likely to be very good outside of a heavy press setup. Personally, I don’t think we have enough gas to make that happen, but we do come pretty close. Although we have two decent press 3-drops, the best 2-drop in the format (quote me!), and Talla Ron, I would only really feel comfortable pushing for this team with another 2-drop. All the bounce in the non-character slots makes me think we would be relying on Kona Lor too much. Still, doubles of the 4-drop Ronan can be quite tempting, so we might have to come back to this team if the other two major teams are a disappointment.
Heralds of Galactus:
Morg, Slayer
Destroyer, Soulless Juggernaut
2 Silver Surfer, Righteous Protector
Red Shift, Rift Walker
2 Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Harbinger of Death
Firelord, Harbinger of Havoc
Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation
Morg, Harbinger of Extinction
Kindred Spirits
Relentless Onslaught
Cosmic Necessity
As with Extended Family, I am always exceptionally happy to see a Kindred Spirits in my card pool. I am, in general, extremely paranoid about securing the curve I want in any given game, and no card has calmed that anxiety in Sealed Pack play more than this one. Unfortunately, the team itself is a bit of a mess, with two decent 2-drops, no 3- or 4-drops at all, two 5-drops, two 6-drops, and a 7-drop. Relentless Onslaught is okay, but it isn’t good enough by itself to force us into playing the team. Cosmic Necessity isn’t a very good card at all. With those Ronans holding down the 4-drop slot, we might still have a decent Heralds/Inhumans deck based on Extended Family, but we will have to see what Doom has first.
Doom:
2 Invisible Woman, Baroness Von Doom
Sub-Mariner, Illuminati
Magneto, Acts of Vengeance
Doom-Bot ◊ Dr. Doom, Cosmic Thief
Astral Suppression
Doomstadt, Castle Doom
Arsenal of Doom
Bleh. The other teams look very good in comparison now. I really don’t like Invisible Woman at the 4-drop slot. For me, 6 ATK / 8 DEF characters that cost 4 resource points have got to do something that almost certainly wins you the game. The double Extended Family above makes Thing palatable, but it doesn’t help out old Sue here. Sub-Mariner is okay but isn’t much on his own, and I find Magneto incredibly overrated right now. Doom-Bot is interesting, but with loyalty—reveal, he isn’t going to get much help here. The non-character cards are nowhere near powerful enough to offset such a weak character selection.
Other Characters:
Warskrull, Skrull Infiltrator
Captain America, Skrull Impostor
Wolverine, Skrunucklehead
Katrina Luisa Van Horne ◊ Amazon
Mephisto, Lord of Hell
Taskmaster, Mnemonic Assassin
The Skrull cohort, with the powerfully cosmic Wolverine and Captain America, is actually quite strong and gives us another reason to play Luna and the Inhumans so that we can access Extended Family. In fact, all of these non-major team characters are playable in some form or another, so we can at least rest assured that we will hit our curve in a pool with so many Team-Ups .
Locations:
Negative Zone, Shadow Dimension
With two Sans in the pool, this card goes up tremendously in value. It’s normally fairly mediocre, but when you have two shots at drawing this card it gets a lot better. At this point, our pool looks middling enough for us to want to play this location as insurance against a deck with powerful concealed options.
Equipment:
The Infinity Gauntlet
2 Universal Weapon
Time Gem, Infinity Gem
Soul Gem, Infinity Gem
2 Mind Gem, Infinity Gem
Power Gem, Infinity Gem
Wow. I have never seen anyone come as close to getting the whole Infinity Gauntlet as Adam has with this pool! Personally, I think that Mind Gem and Power Gem are automatic inclusions in most Sealed Decks, and that Universal Weapon and The Infinity Gauntlet are pretty easy cuts. Soul Gem doesn’t really do that much, at least not enough to be worth a slot. Time Gem is a really cool card, but the discard (and the fact that it can hit your plot twists, too) demands that you really know what you are doing with this card when you play it. Having two other equipment cards at this stage is probably enough reason to forego it.
2 Alien Insurrection
Intergalactic Summit
Pressed into Service, Team-Up
Assault and Battery
The Devil We Know
The generic non-character cards could be worse. We at least have a stable number of Team-Ups and ATK on defense pumps. Overall it is nothing special, but it is serviceable nonetheless.
Although it seems a bit predictable if you have been following this series, it looks like I am headed for another Extended Family list. Over at VsParadise.com, someone mentioned that the Doom and Kree cards were sometimes a little pool dependent in this format. While I can appreciate the sentiment and the fact that both of those teams have some very narrow, powerful themes (press and Army, respectively), I haven’t really experienced this personally. Simply put, in a curve-on-curve environment such as Sealed Pack, the ability to turn cosmic—surge into cosmic is the most powerful common trick in the format. With the card that provides the counter bringing a built-in Team-Up, opening a couple will make your life a lot easier.
In fact, I would argue that given infinite time, there is every opportunity to build some very tight Doom- and Kree-influenced decks when the pool doesn’t look as if it could support them at first glance. The Inhumans and Heralds teams, however, due to their tendency to provide strong on-curve characters, are more obvious in their application. A card like Extended Family can be extraordinarily forgiving of play or build errors. Often, getting the most out of press or an esoteric card like the 4-drop Mr. Fantastic can seem too difficult. So, while I would look to build decks focused on Extended Family as often as I am given the opportunity to do so, remember that my commentary is not the end-all and be-all. Being critical of advice is not disrespectful; it is one of the few ways to become an independently excellent player.
So, starting with Extended Family as our base, let’s build from there. In recent weeks, I have experimented with different ways of building Sealed decks. There are no hard and fast rules for it; what’s important is that you find the method that suits you the best. This should give you the skills to make the most thorough appraisal of your pool, and then hopefully you can build the best deck.
Obviously, to make the most of Extended Family, we need not just cosmic and cosmic—surge characters (something this pool has in abundance), but also Inhumans characters (something we have fewer of). Typically, I like to play seven characters of a particular team as a minimum if I am really going to need their affiliation for team-stamped effects. When the whole deck is based around one team specifically, then not only will you need seven characters minimum, but you will also need those characters to be early drops so that you can get your Team-Up as soon as possible.
Looking over the Inhumans roster, we are clearly going to play both copies of San, both copies of Tonaja, and Thing. This only gives us five characters, though, so we need to add a few of the less-optimal Inhumans characters. For this reason, I would tentatively add a 6-drop to the list, but which one? Dinu is a pretty straightforward character with 13 ATK and a decent ability, but Maximus the Mad can be a game-breaker in a narrower deck. At least one of them should make the cut, but we might have to wait and see what happens with the rest of the deck first.
We still need at least one more Inhumans character, and the choice is between Luna and Invisible Woman. At this stage, Luna just does way more for us. She allows us to team-up earlier, and there are numerous cosmic—surge 3-drops that we would like to play (the Tonajas and Wolverine). I quite like Invisible Woman, and if I wanted to play a 7-drop she would be pretty high on my list. Luna Maximoff does a lot for us at this point, though, and omitting her would be a mistake.
So right now, this is the core of the deck:
Luna Maximoff, Only Human
2 San, The Alienated One
2 Tonaja, The Responsible One
Thing, Rockhead
Dinu, Face of Terror or Maximus the Mad, Mental Manipulator
2 Extended Family, Team-Up
Heralds is definitely the team to pair with Inhumans here, but as we noted earlier, the Heralds curve is quite clunky. At this stage, we don’t know if we really want to be playing a 7-drop (or two) or not, and our 6-drop situation is now a little clogged up, too. We have two pretty good 2-drops already, and the Heralds characters round out that drop slot nicely, leaving us with four decent characters there. No 3- and 4-drops is rough, but at least we get five (!) playable 5-drops. At this stage, I don’t really like taking the risk on Frankie Raye’s loyalty—reveal, so I will stick with the other three 5-drops.
What to do about the 6-drops? At this stage, I think it’s a good idea to put three into the deck and not play any 7-drops at all. Most of the time, another 6-drop on a turn 7 initiative is good enough, and if you had the initiative on turn 6 and couldn’t win (or create an unassailable advantage), then you were probably in trouble anyway.
I think Dinu thus becomes the default Inhumans 6-drop. This would put the deck at:
Luna Maximoff, Only Human
2 San, The Alienated One
Morg, Slayer
Destroyer, Soulless Juggernaut
2 Tonaja, The Responsible One
Thing, Rockhead
2 Silver Surfer, Righteous Protector
Red Shift, Rift Walker
Firelord, Harbinger of Havoc
Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation
Dinu, Face of Terror
2 Extended Family, Team-Up
Kindred Spirits
Relentless Onslaught
Right now, we have big holes at the 3-drop and 4-drop slots. Everything else seems decent enough. Fortunately, we have ready-made answers to our problems—copies of Wolverine and Captain America at the 3-drop slot and twin copies of Ronan the Accuser at the 4-drop slot. Not only are these cards a perfect fit for any Extended Family shenanigans, but they also add another dimension to the deck’s capabilities; each of these cards can win games on its own. Now the deck looks like this:
Luna Maximoff, Only Human
2 San, The Alienated One
Morg, Slayer
Destroyer, Soulless Juggernaut
2 Tonaja, The Responsible One
Captain America, Skrull Impostor
Wolverine, Skrunucklehead
2 Ronan the Accuser, Starforce
Thing, Rockhead
2 Silver Surfer, Righteous Protector
Red Shift, Rift Walker
Firelord, Harbinger of Havoc
Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation
Dinu, Face of Terror
2 Extended Family, Team-Up
Kindred Spirits
Relentless Onslaught
I’m pretty happy with the character base at the moment. I might want to come back and have another look at our turn 7 options, but we should get into the automatic non-character inclusions first. As far as I am concerned, they are:
Mind Gem, Infinity Gem
Power Gem, Infinity Gem
Negative Zone, Shadow Dimension
I don’t like playing more than two equipment cards, as it can interfere with having an optimal resource row. Time Gem is interesting, but I can’t pass up Mind Gem and Power Gem. One is the feather and one is the hammer, but both are incredible cards even if they couldn’t be more different in application. Negative Zone might seem controversial, but I think it is an easy pick. Sure, the card isn’t that efficient, but you really need to have options for attacking concealed characters in this format. Even if that weren’t a good enough reason to run it, having two copies of San makes it an easy choice for me. That San won’t be finding anything else makes me want to ensure that I can get some use out of his text, even if it only makes an average card a bit more playable.
After this, we really only have one other option for our non-character cards, and that is to max out on the Nasty Surprise–style effects. Having a few playable Skrulls in our deck means that we can potentially tap into the additional boost from Alien Insurrection. I am going to include the third Team-Up anyway, as we do have several different teams in this deck already and I want to use the Extended Family as more of a trick than a Team-Up. This would put the deck at:
Luna Maximoff, Only Human
2 San, The Alienated One
Morg, Slayer
Destroyer, Soulless Juggernaut
2 Tonaja, The Responsible One
Captain America, Skrull Impostor
Wolverine, Skrunucklehead
2 Ronan the Accuser, Starforce
Thing, Rockhead
2 Silver Surfer, Righteous Protector
Red Shift, Rift Walker
Firelord, Harbinger of Havoc
Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation
Dinu, Face of Terror
Mind Gem, Infinity Gem
Power Gem, Infinity Gem
Negative Zone, Shadow Dimension
2 Extended Family, Team-Up
Kindred Spirits
Relentless Onslaught
2 Alien Insurrection
Pressed into Service, Team-Up
The Devil We Know
So, that comes to twenty-nine cards. There are a few candidates for the final slot. We could add another 7-drop (probably Invisible Woman), but I would want to take one out of the 6-drops to do that. With Firelord serving as a good enough 7-drop and a lot of ATK power while defending, I don’t think it’s that big a deal not to run any 7-drops at all. Alternatively, we could play another 4-drop, but all of our options are mediocre and I have fully committed myself to playing the fewest number of mediocre characters I can.
I would simply add the Intergalactic Summit to the deck. The fact that it draws a card can be extremely important to our plan of finding Extended Family. This deck is really going to need Team-Ups, even temporary ones. This leaves the final deck as:
Characters:
Luna Maximoff, Only Human
2 San, The Alienated One
Morg, Slayer
Destroyer, Soulless Juggernaut
2 Tonaja, The Responsible One
Captain America, Skrull Impostor
Wolverine, Skrunucklehead
2 Ronan the Accuser, Starforce
Thing, Rockhead
2 Silver Surfer, Righteous Protector
Red Shift, Rift Walker
Firelord, Harbinger of Havoc
Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation
Dinu, Face of Terror
Plot twists:
2 Extended Family, Team-Up
Kindred Spirits
Relentless Onslaught
2 Alien Insurrection
Pressed into Service, Team-Up
The Devil We Know
Intergalactic Summit
Locations:
Negative Zone, Shadow Dimension
Equipment:
Mind Gem, Infinity Gem
Power Gem, Infinity Gem
For the record, this is what Adam built from his pool:
Talla Ron, Starforce
Lieutenant Kona Lor, Starforce
Morg, Slayer
Destroyer, Soulless Juggernaut
2 Mar-Vell ◊ Captain Marvel, Soldier of the Empire
2 Tonaja, The Responsible One
Wolverine, Skrunucklehead
Thing, Rockhead
2 Ronan the Accuser, Starforce
Sub-Mariner, Illuminati
2 Silver Surfer, Righteous Protector
Red Shift, Rift Walker
Firelord, Harbinger of Havoc
Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation
Morg, Harbinger of Extinction
2 Extended Family, Team-Up
Pressed into Service, Team-Up
Intergalactic Summit
2 Alien Insurrection
Relentless Onslaught
Kindred Spirits
2 Mind Gem, Infinity Gem
Power Gem, Infinity Gem
Adam also added his own commentary:
“Even though I managed to 4-0, my deck is built horrendously. For some reason, we only had twenty minutes to build our decks, which was quite absurd given that nobody had any clue what any of the cards did. Basically, I just looked for affiliations in which I had a lot of characters and built from that. Somehow, I didn’t notice that I was playing four Team-Ups. Let’s just say that I never had a problem with team affiliations.
“At a Sneak Preview tournament, I try out new cards. I only wanted so many equipment cards, and I was pretty sure that Time Gem was bonkers (fizzle much?), so I wanted to play the Mind Gem to try it out.
“Given a reasonable amount of time and four rounds of experience, here’s how I would build the deck now.
Luna Maximoff, Only Human
2 San, The Alienated One
Destroyer, Soulless Juggernaut
Morg, Slayer
2 Tonaja, The Responsible One
Wolverine, Skrunucklehead
Captain America, Skrull Imposter
Thing, Rockhead
Sub-Mariner, Illuminati
2 Ronan the Accuser
2 Silver Surfer, Righteous Protector
Red Shift, Rift Walker
Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation
Firelord, Harbinger of Havoc
Morg, Harbinger of Extinction
Time Gem, Infinity Gem
2 Mind Gem, Infinity Gem
Power Gem, Infinity Gem
2 Alien Insurrection
Kindred Spirits
Relentless Onslaught
2 Extended Family, Team-Up
Intergalactic Summit
“Having no playable locations to fetch with San is rough (somehow, I don’t think the Arsenal of Doom is worth it), as is the lack of on-team 4-drops (other than Thing). Perhaps I could’ve cheated on 4-drops (by only playing 3) and played the Arsenal to aid my other card filtering effects to hit my drops.”
There you go! That’s it for Sealed Pack for the time being. Next week, I’ll be back with a Draft walkthrough.