When a new TCG player sits down and opens up some booster packs for the first time, he or she looks at the pretty artwork and gets excited when a favorite character is found. When an experienced TCG player opens a pack, he or she looks for broken cards and combos that will provide resource advantages during the build step and combat advantages at all other times. However, there are rules in the rulebook that provide just as much room for exploitation. Don’t stop in your quest to “break the game” at just the cards!
If you haven’t already seen the card FAQ at the UDE site, find it here. You’ve got to know how the cards really work in order to find ways to exploit them in the rules.
Today I’m presenting a Sentinels deck that has a few opportunities to make the rules work for you. It might not look much different from the average Sentinels deck, but the way you play it might be.
Senator Kelly has a great activated power that can cost a player a lot of endurance if he or she can’t keep the Sentinels in check. Activating him once is all fine and dandy. Sure, you could team the Sentinels up with the X-Men and get a second use out of him via Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Press the Attack and Cosmic Radiation would work, but we’re looking for something in the rules that might let us use him multiple times in one turn. Enter the uniqueness rules. If you recruit Senator Kelly while you already control a copy of Senator Kelly, the one currently in play goes away. The new one comes in ready and raring to go.
But why stop at two? Collect a quorum of Senators in your hand and wait for turn 5. This deck has everything you need to keep your Sentinels alive, so you should have a boatload of them. Ok, hopefully you have at least six Wild Sentinels in play—that’s not quite enough to really shine, but hopefully the rest of the deck has been coming together nicely as well . . .
If your draws have been kind to you, there should be a couple of Underground Sentinel Bases and Sentinel Mark IV’s in your resource row. At the start of your recruit step, proudly announce that you have 5 resource points to spend this turn. It’s important that your opponent understands that you get the points at the start of the step, as your resource row is getting wrecked this turn.
It gets tricky from here on out, so if you don’t already see what’s coming, take another look at the above cards and then get back to me. Ready? OK.
1. Flip and activate the first Underground Sentinel Base.
2. Then flip the second Sentinel Base. This sends the first Sentinel Base to your KO’d pile, but its effect stays on the chain.
3. Now activate the second Sentinel Base, adding its effect to the chain.
4. The second Base’s effect resolves first, and a Sentinel Mark IV is removed from your resource row and placed into your front or support row.
5. The first Base’s effect now resolves (even though the Base is in your KO’d pile) and takes another Mark IV from your resource row and puts into your front or support row.
It’s very important to chain these two events together. Why? Because the Underground Sentinel Base has a threshold cost of 5, and it’s a unique location. If you wait for the first one’s activated power to resolve, then you won’t control 5 resources anymore (because you’ll have put a Sentinel from your resource row into play) and won’t be able to flip the second one. You can’t just flip them both and control 5 resources either, as the first one you flipped will go to your KO’d pile immediately. The two Sentinel Mark IV’s you get should be fairly well boosted by the number of Wild Sentinels you control, but, more importantly, they give you control of two more Sentinels.
Once you’re done with all that, recruit Senator Kelly. Yes, you’re still in your recruit step, and you will be for another few minutes. Activate his power. Once the chain is clear again, recruit another. The Senator you currently control is put into your KO’d pile. Activate the new one. Repeat. Once your hand runs out of Senators, use Swift Escape on the one currently in play and re-recruit him. Or use Reconstruction Program to bring one of them back from your KO’d pile, and re-recruit him, too.
Of course, the Reconstruction Program and Swift Escapes are great for this deck even without the Senator trick. Wild Sentinels are not too strong in the defense department, but with a Swift Escape at the ready, opponents will pay dearly for trying to take advantage of your weak defense. Let’s say Sabretooth, Feral Rage attacks a Wild Sentinel left out on the vine with no chance of reinforcement—a prime opportunity to cause some severe endurance loss, to be sure. If the Brotherhood player gets greedy and activates Savage Land to really put the hurt on, Swift Escape the defending Wild Sentinel once the Brotherhood player (who has priority) is done playing effects.
This returns the Wild Sentinel to your hand and readies Sabretooth. But guess what? All those effects that only last “for this attack” are gone. Wasted. Sorry, but all those nasty effects were for naught. Of course, if your opponent doesn’t pump Sabretooth up, using Swift Escape isn’t doing you much good, as he’ll just ready and cream another guy, but hopefully his next victim can be reinforced. This isn’t quite as effective as Burn Rubber, but it is getting multiple functions out of a card just by knowing the rules.
I don’t recommend that you take this deck to your next tournament. Instead, take it with you when you go for your judge test and impress the staff with your knowledge of the rules and timing.
The Busy Senator
20 Wild Sentinels
8 Sentinel Mark IV
4 Senator Kelly
4 Combat Protocols
3 Finishing Move
2 Last Stand
4 Medical Attention
4 Search and Destroy
4 Swift Escape
3 Reconstruction Program
4 Underground Sentinel Base
If you think you’ve found a great new trick just from reading the rules or card FAQ, I’d like to hear about it. You can write me at mhyra@metagame.com.