Did You Hear the One about the Vs. System Player?

A lawyer—we’ll call him Shane—walked into a bar. Behind Shane followed a rather large, smelly, disgusting pig on a leash. Upon seeing the two, the bartender yelled, “Hey! You can’t bring that filthy animal in here!” Shane responded, “Don’t talk that way about my pig!” The bartender said, “I was talking to the pig.”

Um . . . not funny, eh? Well, give me another shot:

A rather diminutive young man—we’ll call him Tim—sat down in a posh urban restaurant and ordered a rather sizable meal. Despite Tim’s minute size, he managed to finish every bite of his dinner. After the vast repast, the waiter brought Tim the bill. Upon seeing the price, a look of chagrin passed over Tim’s face. “Is there a problem, sir?” asked the waiter. Tim replied, “I may not have the money to pay the bill . . . I think I’m a little short.”

Hmm . . . that doesn’t work either. Okay . . . let me have one last chance:

Three guys—we’ll call them Anthony, Heath, and Jason—were sitting down to eat lunch. Before opening their lunchboxes, Anthony says, “I hate tuna salad! If I got tuna salad for lunch again, I’m going to jump off a cliff.” Heath then stated, “I hate pastrami! If I got pastrami for lunch, I’ll jump off a cliff.” Jason then said, “I hate peanut butter! If there’s a peanut butter sandwich in my lunchbox, I’m jumping off that cliff.” Sure enough, the hated foods were present in all three lunchboxes. And, sure enough, all three jumped off the cliff.

At the funeral for the three young men, their mothers said a few words to the congregation. Anthony’s mother said, “If only I hadn’t made tuna salad for Anthony’s lunch!” Heath’s mom followed with, “Why did I make pastrami for Heath’s lunch?” Jason’s mother concluded with, “I never should have let Jason make his own lunch!”

Yeah, so, I failed miserably at my attempts at humor here. You see, I was merely trying to develop a new cosmic joke for Vs. System, since the reigning cosmic joke ended its time in power with the release of the Heralds of Galactus set.

I am, of course, referring to the Skrulls.

The Changing Face of Vs. System . . . Literally!

You all know the drill. Before every Pro Circuit or Constructed $10K, someone invariably asks which team(s) everyone thinks will dominate the tournament. In every case, there is always someone who jokes that Skrulls will win the whole thing. Heck, I even remember joking at many drafts that I would be forcing Skrulls . . . and I wasn’t even drafting Marvel Origins!

The Skrull team has been the butt of everyone’s jokes for a very long time! Given the fact that the entire team consisted of three characters, only one of which was even remotely playable in a competitive deck, there was little chance that this “cosmic joke” would ever go away.

Ironically, it was the new cosmic set, Heralds of Galactus, that gave the Skrulls the potential to rise. While the team did not receive nearly as much support as the four major teams in the set (Heralds of Galactus, Kree, Inhumans, and Doom), the cards that they did receive were quite good. Unlike other minor teams, such as the Fearsome Five and Secret Six, the Skrulls were actually designed with Team-Ups in mind. In fact, they actually thrive from teaming-up!

I am constantly amazed at how UDE R&D captures comic flavor so well in the cards that they make. In the case of the Skrulls, the notion to make them a team-up-centered deck was brilliant! After all, the Skrulls are a race of shapeshifters, and they use this talent to infiltrate and become a part of other races and groups. While there is little doubt that the Skrull spies in the comics are not nearly as interested in being part of a team as they are in undermining one, the notion of Skrull characters being part of many teams in Vs. System captures their adaptive capabilities rather nicely.

“I’m the Best there is at Teaming-Up . . .”

Just for fun, I thought it might be interesting to take the “New Age” Skrulls for a spin. There are some interesting possibilities for creating massive numbers of teams for these Skrulls. Perhaps the first idea that leapt to mind was the combination of the Marvel Knights with the Skrulls. The Marvel Knights have a reputation for being an expediter for Team-Ups. Look at some of the successful decks from about a year and a half ago: Rigged Elections (the Tim Batow variety from $10K Chicago), Brotherhood of Mephisto (which Jose Maria Aramburu piloted to victory at $10K Madrid), and New School (the brainchild of the Hong Kong Cavaliers and the deck that Karl Horn piloted to victory at Pro Circuit Los Angeles 2005). Each of these decks thrived off the Marvel Knights’ amazing ability to team-up with any team without even needing that team to be present.

Since then, Vs. System has become a lot friendlier to Team-Up decks. Search cards like The Ring Has Chosen and Enemy of My Enemy allowed for search options for several different teams as opposed to a singular one. Team-Up cards like Faces of Evil and Checkmate Safe House not only combined the forces of two teams, but also provided additional continuous benefits to players who used them. And many, many cards were released that could expedite Team-Up searches, like Teamwork and X-Corp: Amsterdam.

The Marvel Knights have retained a lot of potential, so they deserve inclusion in a Team-Up frenzy deck. But while planning out this deck, another combo came to mind. I remember speaking with Dean Sohnle about his crazy Multiple Man ◊ Jamie Madrox deck at PC: Indy. I won’t go into the details of the deck, as I doubt that Dean wants me handing out his tech,* but one combo stuck out that was just too good not to use. Dean showed me how Mutopia could be used in unison with Multiple Man ◊ Jamie Madrox to team-up everyone. Since Multiple Man ◊ Jamie Madrox gets the team affiliations of every team you control and is a Mutant, you can play Mutopia to team-up everyone!

Now, before you get too excited, let me just say that we do not have Multiple Man ◊ Jamie Madrox in this deck. Actually, we have someone better: Wolverine, Skrunucklehead! Just like Multiple Man ◊ Jamie Madrox, Wolverine is a Mutant. However, where Multiple Man ◊ Jamie Madrox stops at taking the team affiliations of characters you control, Wolverine gets the team affiliations of every character in play! The possibilities for teaming-up in this situation become truly staggering, as it is quite conceivable to have upward of ten teams in play.

Wolverine, Skrunucklehead may say that he isn’t the best, but he is certainly the best choice for our deck today. We’re going to use the team-absorbing ability of the Skrull Wolvie-doppelganger to make for some intense team-ups!

Considering the strength of the standard Marvel Knights framework, we are going to start with the basic combination of cards and characters that comprise most Marvel Knights Team-Up builds. This means four copies of the following cards: Dagger, Child of Light; Micro-Chip; Midnight Sons; and Wild Ride. Micro-Chip is not quite as versatile in this deck as he is in other builds because we won’t be playing many 1-cost plot twists. Still, he is a Marvel Knights 1-drop and he can recycle Wild Ride. Those factors merit his inclusion in the deck.

Also at 1, we’re going to play a couple copies of Mikado and Mosha. These ladies are renowned for their ability to suppress wayward 1-drops. And since we’re already in Marvel Knights as a team, we might as well have a couple of copies of the Angels of Destruction handy. In addition, we’re going to enable recursion of our 1-drop-hating ladies with four copies of Fiddler. This might seem to be an odd choice, but Fiddler’s free recruit combined with his recursion effect make him valuable in virtually any deck. Besides, we will find later that we certainly want Secret Six to be one of the teams in our conglomeration.

Finally, we’re going to try out a copy of Chameleon at 1. This Sinister Syndicate spy has fallen somewhat out of favor since the release of Detective Chimp, Bobo T. Chimpanzee. However, we’re going to give him a shot in this deck because he has the advantage of not having a loyalty—reveal restriction. Of course, we will need another Sinister Syndicate character to get his effect online, but once we have Wolverine, Skrunucklehead in play this requirement will be no issue whatsoever.

Speaking of Wolverine, he is our representative at 3. If at all possible, we want to have him and a copy of Mutopia out on turn 3 or 4 so that we can do an impressive amount of teaming-up.

Following Wolverine at 4 is Ethan Edwards. This character is a prime example of the kind of power we can anticipate from controlling multiple teams. Let’s assume that, prior to recruiting Ethan Edwards, our opponent controls characters from two different teams. In addition, we control a minimal four teams (Marvel Knights, Secret Six, X-Men, and Skrull). When we recruit Ethan Edwards, we add a fifth team (Spider-Friends). At this point, if we flip Mutopia, we can team-up seven different teams thanks to Wolverine. This means that Ethan Edwards leaps to an insane 14 ATK on turn 4. And that is assuming that we don’t add any other teams to the mix with Midnight Sons or Chameleon. It would be well within the realm of possibility for Ethan Edwards to be at 17 or 18 ATK. Of course, when he loses his cosmic counter, he reverts to a vanilla 7 ATK / 7 DEF. But, as we will see, we have a trick for that, too.

As good as Ethan Edwards is, he might not be effective against off-curve decks. So, we’ll splash a copy of Fatality, Flawless Victory. She doesn’t have the power that our Skrull 4-drop boasts, but she does have an effect that will help keep rush decks at bay.

Our 5-drops act primarily as support for the power plays that we made on turns 3 and 4. The inclusion of Paibok in the deck should be relatively apparent. Unless we face the mirror (not very likely!), our characters will always have more team affiliations than our opponent’s will. Thus, the decision to include Paibok is pretty straightforward, as a global +2 ATK to all of our characters is certainly not a bad thing!

Our other 5-drop is really in the deck to see play as a boosted 6-drop. If we can keep all of our characters around until turn 6, Paibok’s effect should make them considerably large even if they don’t have cosmic counters. But what if we could give cosmic counters to our characters? This is the reason for including Cir-El ◊ Supergirl. While her stats appear to be a bit suspect, her boost effect is unbelievable for a deck that relies on cosmic counters (as ours does). That single resource point for her boost can nearly double the combined ATK power of our characters in play. Including Paibok’s boost, Wolverine jumps to a whopping 12 ATK with his cosmic counter, and Ethan Edwards leaps to the range of 20 ATK. When you have a 3-drop that can stun 6-drops and a 4-drop that can stun almost anything, you are in pretty good shape to win the game!

Ironically, just as one of our 5-drops was only in the deck to act as a 6-drop, one of our 6-drops isn’t even in the deck to be recruited. Scandal has decent stats at 13 ATK / 11 DEF, but the reason for her addition is to provide an expedient way to search out Mutopia. We could reasonably have added a Team-Up searcher like X-Corp: Amsterdam to perform this task, but there are some other ongoing plot twists that we will want to include as tech for other decks as well. It only makes sense to play four copies of the best ongoing plot twist search card in Vs. System.

Our multi-team engine gives us the ability to play any character in Vs. System, so we’re going to include a single copy of one of my all-time favorite weenie hate characters, Blackheart. His 10 DEF may not be all that impressive, but when you consider that many popular decks in the current Vs. System metagame don’t play any characters costing more than 5, he becomes an off-curve control powerhouse. An off-curve opponent’s only hope at taking us out when Blackheart is in play is to send their 5-drop into him frantically to get him out of the way. Even then, it may still be hard for those low-cost characters to find a way through the Son of Mephisto.

If all goes well, our characters should be sufficiently huge on turn 6 for us to win at that time. If, however, we are forced into a later turn, then we have the ultimate Skrullian stopper in the form of Titannus. As amazing as Ethan Edwards is for us on turn 4, Titannus is doubly amazing, as he gets a stat boost for ATK and DEF. At the Heralds of Galactus Sneak Preview, I was easily able to get Titannus up to 19 ATK / 19 DEF in every game that I played him. In this deck, Titannus should, at a bare minimum, be 25 ATK / 25 DEF (or 27 ATK thanks to Paibok). When you have a 7-drop in play that’s pushing 30 ATK / 30 DEF, that’s when you know you have the game well in hand.

We have already discussed several of the plot twists that we will be utilizing in our deck. Our Team-Ups consist of four copies each of Midnight Sons and Mutopia. If you didn’t catch the rationale for playing these cards, scroll back up and reread the characters discussion.

Additionally, we have already mentioned Wild Ride. Certainly, Wild Ride is one of the best character search cards in the game. With a copy of Midnight Sons in the resource row and a Marvel Knights character in play, Wild Ride can find any character in our deck. Granted, it does cost a bit of endurance to use Wild Ride, so we’d rather draw into our preferred curve. Just in case we happen to miss a critical component, though, we have Wild Ride available to search out our drop for the turn.

Now, considering that we’re planning to play characters that will dole out some serious beats on our opponents, we should consider some effective ATK pumps for our build. One of the first and obvious choices for us is Interstellar Offensive. At +2 ATK, this plot twist is not at all impressive, but Interstellar Offensive also provides an additional bonus of +3 ATK to an attacker with the Skrull affiliation and more team affiliations than the defender. Considering the nature of our build, Interstellar Offensive should be good for +5 ATK every time we play it. Bonus: Interstellar Offensive has a threshold cost of 1, so it can be recycled via Micro-Chip’s effect.

Our second plot twist is very simply an answer to problematic hidden characters. No Man Escapes the Manhunters is not the strongest pump in Vs. System, but it is certainly one of the most beneficial. At the very least, it is effectively a +3 ATK pump, but the real reason for playing No Man Escapes the Manhunters is to have a way to deal with hidden characters that we would otherwise not be able to attack. Not only does No Man Escapes the Manhunters give us a route to attack these characters, but it also keeps these characters in the visible area for further abuse. It is certainly one of the better toolbox cards in any Constructed format.

Our final pump merits only one copy, but it can be an absolute game-breaker against many decks. After seeing the power of TDC’s X-Faces deck in the last Marvel Modern Age, many Vs. System players became very respectful of how powerful a card like Mob Mentality can be. At its base, it’s another +3 ATK for one of our attacking characters during the turn that it’s played. It also provides additional protection to our Physical Mutants. The only Physical Mutant in our deck is Wolverine, but given that he is a major catalyst for the deck, it is worthwhile to protect him. Characters like Terra and June Moon ◊ Enchantress, Good Witch could put a heavy hurt on our 3-drop, so we are well served by having a dual-purpose pump that also protects our Skrunucklehead. But probably the most important item of note regarding Mob Mentality is that it is an ongoing plot twist. This has many implications for our deck, not the least of which is that Scandal can search for it. Should we find ourselves in a time of crisis where we just need a little boost to stun an opposing defender, we have the means to search out the lone Mob Mentality in our deck. It is exceedingly versatile and useful in our deck, especially considering that it only occupies one spot!

Now we need to look at a different variety of combat tricks. One thing that we would certainly like to accomplish is to maintain our board for the kill on turn 6. Unless our opponent plays really small characters or misses a lot of his or her drops, this will be easier said than done. Wolverine’s X-Men team affiliation opens up interesting possibilities for accomplishing this with Children of the Atom. When Marvel Origins was first released, this card was dubbed the best recovery card in the game; in the two-and-a-half-year life of Vs. System, not much has changed. Children of the Atom offers a degree of recovery flexibility not available to most teams. Even the most popular recovery cards in the game, such as Lanterns in Love and JLI Embassy, have costs and restrictions that make the recovery effects unusable at times. Not so with Children of the Atom. With a single discard, we will be able to recover any X-Men character. No muss, no fuss.

Our final card remains one of my favorite tech cards in Vs. System. With powerhouses in the metagame like Big Brotherhood and Good Guys, Unmasked is quite literally a game-breaker. Power-ups are a basic mechanic of Vs. System, and some of the best decks in the game quite literally make a trade on powering-up. With this one card, we can shut those power-up decks down completely. In the past, most decks could not reliably run a single copy of Unmasked without playing a plot twist tutor like Alfred Pennyworth or Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom. But Scandal takes plot twist searching to a new level, giving every deck the potential to play tech cards strategically for certain matchups. I love this lady!

Alrighty then! Our joke has been written. It’s time to publish this gem:

Cosmic Joke (60 cards)

Characters (35)

1 Chameleon, Dmitri Smerdyakov

4 Dagger, Child of Light

4 Fiddler, Isaac Bowin

4 Micro-Chip, Linus Lieberman

2 Mikado and Mosha, Angels of Destruction

4 Wolverine, Skrunucklehead

4 Ethan Edwards, Visitor from Another World

1 Fatality, Flawless Victory

3 Paibok, The Power Skrull

2 Cir-El ◊ Supergirl, Daughter of Tomorrow

4 Scandal, Savage Spawn

1 Blackheart, Son of Mephisto

1 Titannus, Alien Conqueror

Plot Twists (25)

4 Children of the Atom

4 Interstellar Offensive

4 Midnight Sons

1 Mob Mentality

4 Mutopia, Team-Up

3 No Man Escapes the Manhunters

1 Unmasked

4 Wild Ride

I seem to have an affinity for decks that prefer the even initiatives. The case for this deck is no different, as evens give you the best chance for victory. You should have little problem getting control of the board with Wolverine and Ethan Edwards on turn 4. This leaves you vulnerable to a double stun on turn 5, but Children of the Atom should allow you to keep your board intact for turn 6. This sets up the boost with Cir-El to replenish counters on all four characters. Since your smallest character at this point will likely be Paibok (with a “lowly” 11 ATK), you should have little problem dealing enough damage to finish the game on turn 6.

The standard mulligan for decks within the Marvel Knights framework is usually for Wild Ride. This allows you to get early copies of Midnight Sons online with solid search potential. But don’t be afraid to keep any hand that has a Marvel Knights character and Midnight Sons or Dagger. With the deck’s strong character curve, you should have little trouble hitting your curve from turn 3 onward.

That’s it for this week. I hope that you enjoyed my rendition of the “cosmic joke.” Be sure to come back next week for even more possibilities with Golden Age decks following the release of Heralds of Galactus.

* Of course, Dean is a pretty nice guy. So if you give him a call or send him an email, he may very well tell you all about the deck. Trust me . . . it is really cool!

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 legitimately funny jokes that you might have for Michael can be sent to him at BigSpooky1@hotmail.com.