This is it—the Breaking Ground that you’ve all been waiting for. Since this will be my last article of 2005, I thought I’d finish on a high note. So, I’ll dispense with the lengthy introduction and get right to the topic at hand . . .
It’s Emperor Joker time!
A Brief History of the Vs. System
The basic strategy of the Vs. System is to deplete your opponent’s endurance to less than 0 before your own endurance drops below 0. Several decks have found success in this endeavor through a variety of methods. The New Brotherhood and Squadron Supreme rush decks utilize powerful, low cost cards in an attempt to dominate the early game. Common Enemy and Curve Sentinels, on the other hand, rely on more control elements in the early turns to help them take the game to the later turns where their big characters can dominate. X-Stall and New School use powerful activated abilities to stall the game until the very late turns, relying on cards like Onslaught and Dr. Light, Arthur Light to take control of the board. Fantastic Fun takes a different route by using equipment and character effects to “burn” opponents out of the game. Finally, decks like Teen Titans and Avengers Reservist use a combination of those tactics to win games.
Decks that attempt to drop an opponent’s endurance to 0 are pretty much the standard. However, there are a few cards out there that offer alternate win conditions. The Prophecy Fulfilled is a sort of “scorched earth” card that essentially turns the exercise of dropping below 0 endurance into a losing deal for your opponent, since he or she will lose the game regardless of what your endurance is. Mephisto, Father of Lies takes this same principle to a further extreme, as you cannot even lose the game while he is on the board. And Sinestro, Enemy of the Corps can actually end a game before your opponent drops below 0, provided that you have the required amount of willpower on the board.
However, there are really only three cards in Vs. System that enable a player to achieve victory independent of endurance considerations.* The first of these cards to find prominence was featured in a deck built by one of the powerhouse teams of all trading card games, Your Move Games. The card was Rigged Elections. The deck itself was a brilliant synergy of Gotham Knights search effects and Fantastic Four readying and defensive tricks. Once these teams combined with the Arkham Inmates, it was only a matter of time before the ballot counters fell into place. In a metagame mostly void of disruption, this was a brilliant and powerful deck.
The second alternate win condition card to find success was built by a slightly less prominent group from Oklahoma. Before they found success, they had no real team name. After PC NY, though, they started going by “The Dream Team” in honor of their namesake card, Xavier’s Dream. This deck found a niche in the Curve Sentinels–dominated metagame by bypassing the devastating effects of Micro-Sentinels (a card that absolutely destroyed most off-curve decks). With Total Anarchy keeping stunned characters off of the board and a few defensive tricks, Xavier’s Dream usually lost only to decks that could win before turn 6 or stun their own characters (neither of which was a strong suit of Curve Sentinels).
The final alternate win condition card has not found any notable tournament success . . . yet. It is, of course, this week’s topic of discussion. I give you The Joker, Emperor Joker.
“Finally, the world will have a sense of humor.”
Emperor Joker explores a play strategy that is not very popular—deck destruction. In other card games, deck destruction is a viable theme because the number of cards in an average deck is usually significantly less and there are several cards that supplement this strategy. In Vs. System, however, deck destruction is rather difficult because there’s a 60-card minimum in every Constructed deck and only a few notable cards that contribute to the strategy (such as Overpowered and The Fall of Oa). Moreover, deck destruction techniques do almost nothing to enhance a player’s hand or board position, so they are largely ineffective in Vs. System.
There are a couple of significant strategic differences between Emperor Joker and other alternate win condition cards. First and foremost is the fact that the earliest that Emperor Joker’s win condition can trigger is turn 8. Granted, you could accelerate this with a card effect like Takion ◊ Highfather, but in most cases, you won’t even be able to consider winning with Emperor Joker until you’ve hit turn 8. This is a stark contrast to Rigged Elections, which usually wins on turn 5, and Xavier’s Dream, which tries to end the game on turn 6. Those few extra turns of required survival may not seem like they should matter much, but given the facts that the character power curve accelerates rapidly on turns 6 and 7 and that most decks are designed to win on or before turn 7, playing for a turn 8 victory is a difficult proposition.
Another difficulty with Emperor Joker is that the card is not well aligned to achieve its win condition. This notion is a bit confusing, so I’ll explain in greater detail. The YMG Rigged Elections build had a nice, integrated synergy with the use of the Fantastic Four; A Child Named Valeria protected the deck’s low cost characters, then Cosmic Radiation continuously readied the characters to place ballot counters on Rigged Elections. With Alfred Pennyworth thrown into the mix, the deck had a way to ready the butler several times in a turn to search out the requisite number of Cosmic Radiations.
Xavier’s Dream was enabled via Total Anarchy keeping the board clear of stunned, low cost characters and via Beast, Dr. Henry McCoy allowing the activation of Xavier’s Dream to happen a full turn early. Theoretically, you could win with only a single copy of each of the aforementioned cards if you had a way to return Beast to your hand from the KO’d pile (such as Avalon Space Station or Reconstruction Program).
Emperor Joker, unfortunately, doesn’t have the same capable support cards. In order to reach turn 8, defensive cards are certainly necessary. However, Mr. J’s win condition is predicated upon deck destruction, so playing cards that thin out your opponent’s deck is also necessary. The problem is that those two necessities don’t go well with one another. Overpowered may be a very useful tool for achieving Emperor Joker’s win condition, but it is a pointless card if you can’t reach turn 8 to recruit The Joker for the win.
I discussed this dilemma with a few individuals who have had some experience with Emperor Joker builds in the past. Julian “IceReaper93” Martin, my good friend and gaming cohort at JJK Cards in Richardson, has consistently toyed around with a deck disruption build that incorporates several Manhunter elements. Between The Fall of Oa and Manhunter Giant, he can usually eliminate an opponent’s deck without too much difficulty. While his is one of the more consistent builds I’ve seen, it often suffers from the same defensive issues that I mentioned earlier.
Steve “Kamiza” Garrett has a similar tilt on his deck variant with the Manhunter team. However, he also includes two Fearsome Five characters (Shimmer and Dr. Light, Arthur Light) to effect some extra stall elements. The deck sacrifices some deck destruction in the process, but it is more capable than a traditional build of reaching the later turns.
What we should really consider is integrating Emperor Joker into a deck that could utilize deck destruction cards as a means of defense. Does such a build exist? Well, that is the challenge we’ll explore this week.
The Build
After many lengthy discussions on the topic, my teammate John “scarletspider” Hall and I decided that we should consider some of the teams from the JLA set. One obvious choice is the Secret Society. While the primary effect of many of their cards is to move cards from your deck to your KO’d pile, several of those cards can be used on either player. Moreover, several Secret Society characters carry the Arkham Inmates as a second team stamp. This versatility certainly warrants consideration in our build.**
However, the Secret Society doesn’t really offer the stall or defensive elements that we need to make our idea work. For this, we need to think a little more outside the box. We usually think of deck destruction as sending cards from an opponent’s deck directly to the KO’d pile. But our plan could also work if we’re able to increase the number of cards our opponent draws. This strategy sounds like a perfect fit for the Injustice Gang. Giving our opponent more cards is usually a bad idea, but the Injustice Gang has several disruptive and defensive elements that thrive on an opponent having several cards in hand.
Since our deck is centered on the use of Emperor Joker as a win condition, we’ll include a couple of copies. Of course, we need to consider the cards that we’ll use to make it to turn 8, where Emperor Joker can win the game for us.
For starters, we’ll be playing three teams in our deck—Arkham Inmates, Secret Society, and Injustice Gang. So, we’ll need plenty of Team-Ups to support our deck. The primary Team-Up that leaps to mind is Funky’s Big Rat Code. In addition to filling the Team-Up role, it also acts as a pseudo-Overpowered. With dual-functionality, we’ll definitely want four copies in our deck. Of course, we might want some backup. So, we’ll also throw in a couple of copies of Gang-Up. It doesn’t assist in our deck destruction theme as well as Funky’s Big Rat Code does, but it’s still not a bad play in our deck.
We should consider the aspect of draw acceleration that the Injustice Gang gives us. While we want to fill our opponent’s hand, accelerating our own draw is certainly helpful. Just like Gang-Up, Criminal Mastermind will serve a dual purpose by filling both players’ hands. Unfortunately, accelerating our drawing probably won’t be enough to ensure that we hit our curve, so we’ll need to consider a character tutor. Fortunately, the Injustice Gang has one of the best in Secret Files. Granted, it also allows your opponent to search out a character card, but that’s not such a drawback in a deck that wants to get rid of all cards in an opponent’s deck.
Now let’s consider our defensive cards. With the extra cards we’ll be drawing, discarding won’t be much of an issue. So, we’re going to put in four copies of Entangle. It’s not as effective as a card like Mystical Paralysis for exhausting characters, but it will definitely restrict the number of attacks our opponent can make. On turns when we have the initiative, we would like to avoid any reciprocal attacks, so we’re also going to include four copies of Pleasant Distraction. Having cards to control the turns during which we control the initiative means that we really only need to worry about off-initiative turns.
Our final defensive choice is one of the Injustice Gang specialties. One of my earlier articles discussed how amazing All Too Easy is on attack. Its defensive counterpart, Power Siphon, is equally amazing on defense. For the simple cost of an exhausted character, Power Siphon virtually ensures that the targeted character won’t be stunned on that attack, provided that we manage to achieve our goal of filling our opponent’s hand.
Of course, there are several drawbacks with putting cards in an opponent’s hand. A major threat is the possibility that our opponent will use extra character cards to power-up his or her characters on the board. While doing so won’t actually detract from depleting our opponent’s deck, giving our opponent an avenue to empty his or her hand is probably a bad idea. As such, we’re going to include two copies of Unmasked in our deck. Not only will Unmasked stop those wayward power-ups, but it will give our build a much better chance against decks that rely on powering-up to win games.
Finally, we need to consider a bit of board control for our deck to deal with characters, such as Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius, that could disrupt our plans. Injustice Gang Satellite seems like a great choice for our build. In a deck that tries to win the game in earlier turns, Injustice Gang Satellite is largely ineffective because of its 4 threshold cost. However, since we are trying to stall until turn 8, Injustice Gang Satellite has several turns to be effective against an opponent’s board.
And now let’s move on to the characters. We probably don’t need any characters at 1, but Manhunter Clone is too good to pass up. With his evasion, he can pretty much ensure that our opponent loses at least one card every turn. Moreover, if we need to under-drop in later turns, his non-uniqueness will enable us to put multiple copies into play.
At 2, we’ll include a couple copies of James Jesse ◊ Trickster. He’s another character that helps us to “mill” our opponent’s deck more quickly. And if we are lucky enough to get him into play alongside Manhunter Clone, we can force three cards out of our opponent’s deck each turn. In addition to Trickster, we’ll put four copies of Captain Boomerang, George Harkness into the build. Captain Boomerang doesn’t assist with deck destruction, but he can be invaluable for board control because he can potentially stun a 1-drop and then send a 2-drop back to our opponent’s hand.
At 3, we absolutely must without a doubt have Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist. He contributes immensely to our strategy by increasing our opponent’s card drawing and providing a very potent disruption effect. Of course, the greatness of Lex Luthor is well documented; our backup 3-drop is a little less renowned. Captain Cold has an above-average ATK and DEF with his counter. And his counter can be even more helpful in later turns when we have the initiative by giving us a free exhaustion of an opposing character.
Turn 4 doesn’t present us with an abundance of options from the deck destruction perspective, but we can still include some characters that will assist us from a defensive perspective. The Joker, Headline Stealer has a pseudo-Doom disruption effect that can assist Lex Luthor in shutting down plot twists. We’ve featured quite a few Injustice Gang characters in the early turns, so let’s include four copies of one of the Secret Society’s best and brightest, Poison Ivy, Kiss Of Death. Her built-in Finishing Move effect is undoubtedly a valuable addition. In combination with Injustice Gang Satellite, we can very nearly ensure that our opponent will have no characters to work with. And since both characters have the Arkham Inmates team stamp, we can hit a second Team-Up on turn 4 if we have it.
Our choice of 5-drops will be a bit goofy, but that’s okay considering that we’re building a very goofy deck! First, we’re going to include a copy of Abra Kadabra as a Bastion precaution. In addition, we’re going to include a single copy of Sinestro, Corrupted by the Ring. Sinestro not only has the potential to be fairly big, but he also makes a great off-curve play in later turns (assuming that your opponent has 6 or more resources). Having the ability to play a sizable 5-drop and a useful 3-drop on turn 6 can help tremendously if we somehow lose board control.
Our final 5-drop is not a character that we’ll usually want to play on turn 5. Rather, Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist is more valuable with his boost because it will force our opponent to draw three extra cards. But, why would we want to play a character with a burn effect when we aren’t concerned about our opponent’s endurance? Well, if we can keep Scarecrow on the board long enough to see turn 8, he could work really well in unison with Emperor Joker. First, pay 1 endurance for Emperor Joker’s effect. Second, pay 3 endurance for Scarecrow’s effect. Finally, watch your opponent’s deck disappear!
Our final character choice is fairly apparent. If we can get the odd initiatives, Two-Face, Split Personality can almost single-handedly ensure that we reach turn 8. He provides a large board presence and an exhaustion effect that is almost unmatched. And if we are unable to hit a Team-Up for Arkham in our earlier turns, having Two-Face on the board will allow us to meet Emperor Joker’s loyalty requirement.
Close the book—we’re done building here. Let’s take a long look at our grand creation:
The Amazing Disappearing Deck (60 cards)
Characters (30)
4 Manhunter Clone, Clone of Paul Kirk
4 Captain Boomerang, George Harkness
2 James Jesse ◊ Trickster, Giovanni Giuseppe
2 Captain Cold, Leonard Snart
4 Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist
4 Poison Ivy, Kiss Of Death
1 The Joker, Headline Stealer
1 Abra Kadabra, Citizen Abra
3 Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist
1 Sinestro, Corrupted by the Ring
2 Two-Face, Split Personality
2 The Joker, Emperor Joker
Plot Twists (28)
4 Criminal Mastermind
4 Entangle
4 Funky’s Big Rat Code, Team-Up
2 Gang-Up, Team-Up
4 Pleasant Distraction
4 Power Siphon
4 Secret Files
2 Unmasked
Locations (2)
2 Injustice Gang Satellite
We obviously want to take odd initiatives if at all possible. If we can swing odds, then we should only have to worry about posting a strong defense on turns 4 and 6. Lex Luthor is one of our key cards for maintaining control of the game, so he should almost always be our recovery choice. And if he somehow gets KO’d prematurely, we seriously need to consider recruiting him again.
One card that didn’t make the cut in our build was World War III. It may not fit our strategy, but if we can gain early board control, then we could conceivably KO our smaller characters to keep our opponent’s board clear.
Okay, that’s all for a while. I’ll be back in a few weeks to bring you some new jank builds that will hopefully let us shake up the standard in this great game of ours. In the meantime, feel free to correspond by sending your thoughts my way at BigSpooky1@hotmail.com. Here’s hoping that I clear my email backlog over the holidays!
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or enjoy whatever traditional December holiday you celebrate. I’ll see you in ’06!
*Okay, so technically there are four cards if you count Mageddon. However, having a 10-drop with an alternate win condition basically makes the effect a “win more” condition, since you’ll probably win the game anyway after getting a monstrous 10-drop on the board!
**It is, however, a shame that we’re not building a deck that utilizes the Secret Society’s forte. I’ve been dying to find a deck in which I could feature Tim Batow ◊ Aqualad . . . er . . . Garth ◊ Aqualad.