Web of Spider-Man is often dismissed as a second rate set or a failed experiment . . . until you’re face to face with a Curve Sentinels deck, or until you get bushwhacked by that Spider-Friends deck you had laughed at as “not even tier 2” before it slaughtered you.
However, love it or hate it, Web of Spider-Man is about to take a leap forward as Marvel Modern Age steps into the limelight. For Marvel Modern Age, only Marvel Knights and Web of Spider-Man will be legal in your decks, and that means that 99 percent of the staple cards you’ve relied on to fill nearly every one of your decks are now useless pieces of cardboard. They will remain so until PC New York rolls around and the status quo comes into legality again.
Since Web of Spider-Man now contains one half of the card pool available to us for PC Amsterdam and the following PCQ season, I thought I’d spend a little time focusing on the top cards that Web of Spider-Man has to offer just about any deck in Marvel Modern Age—that is to say, the splash cards that have no team stamp and fit into any deck, regardless of your teams or team-ups. This article will focus on ten cards you’ll want to pay attention to for Marvel Modern Age.
Crushing Blow and Sucker Punch
Crushing Blow is a vastly underused and unappreciated gem in the Vs. world. Anyone who has faced a Fantastic Four beatdown deck knows exactly how vicious It’s Clobberin’ Time! is, and how game breaking it can be. Well, Crushing Blow is no exception, and it’s equally dangerous if used correctly.
Crushing Blow has one weakness—it can only be used against exhausted characters. That is why it’s such a yummy card in this format. These two sets are chock-full of exhaustion cards, and certain decks (namely Marvel Knights, Spider-Friends, or a hybrid of both) are perfect fits for this card. Imagine, if you will, a Spider-Man deck. A Marvel Knights/Spider-Friends deck where just about every drop is Spider-Man, Daredevil, or Scarlet Spider. Now picture a turn 6 Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man exhausting your opponent’s side, and the rest of your team swooping in with Crushing Blows and attacking up the curve without fear of being attacked back. Then turn 7 rolls around, and your Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man hits the board and exhausts your opponent’s side, and you swoop in with Crushing Blow to attack up the curve. All the while, your opponent still can’t attack you!
Many of those characters also have built in anti-stun defenses (such as Daredevil, The Man Without Fear or Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man), but you can make your attackers stun-proof with the well placed addition of a Sucker Punch or two. Even if your opponent somehow avoids getting stomped, at least you won’t be stunned back. Also, both Sucker Punch and Crushing Blow in the resource row combo nicely with Daily Bugle, with a stun up the curve followed by the opportunity to turn one of those cards face down again.
Sinister Syndicate can also take advantage of Crushing Blow and Sucker Punch, using Otto Octavius or Shocker. Marvel Knights exhausts characters with Cloak, Child of Darkness and the aforementioned Spectacular Spider-Man. X-Statix has Battering Ram and Vivisector, Lunatic Lycanthrope, and Crime Lords have Masked Marauder. There are ample opportunities to use exhaustion to your advantage.
And those are just the characters that directly exhaust an opponent. The other use for Crushing Blow and Sucker Punch is in a deck highlighted by concealed characters. If you have a few characters lurking in the hidden area, and your opponent puts his or her heavyweight in front thinking that your smaller concealed drop can’t take it down, a couple of Crushing Blows will TKO up the curve, and a Sucker Punch will save your character. This can be a particularly nasty combo with Yelena Belova, who can attack up the curve, potentially save herself from being stunned, and KO the exhausted defender at the same time that she uses the Crushing Blow to take them down. Combine Yelena with Crushing Blow and Spider-Man and you have a very nasty, and rather lethal, combination. Elektra, Assassin is another concealed character who can attack up the curve with her ability to gain the ATK of the defender’s DEF, and Sucker Punch is just the ticket to maintain board presence on your opponent’s initiative.
Silver Surfer and Terrax
Eight is a tricky drop in Marvel Modern Age, because there really aren’t many of them. In Golden Age, any team that doesn’t use its own 8-drop tends to revert to Apocalypse or Etrigan, depending on what their game plan is. In Modern Age, that option is out, and there simply aren’t many 8-drops to go around. Spider-Friends has a solid drop with Cosmic Spider-Man, but that’s as far as it goes. Marvel Knights has Ghost Rider, Danny Ketch, who has no flight, low DEF, and an ability that doesn’t do much against decks that follow curve. X-Statix has a potentially vicious drop . . . if you can handle him being loyal, concealed, and having a ridiculously low DEF (one Out of the Shadows and it’s prayer time). Underworld has the toughest 8-drop to use in Vs. with Mephisto, Father of Lies, a character that is unstoppable in the one deck in a million that you can actually get him to work in (if only he didn’t take himself out, or if he only KO’d Underworld characters, it would be an entirely different story). Crime Lords and Sinister Syndicate don’t even have 8-drops!
So, what are the other options? There are three, depending on your strategy. If you intend to reach turn 9 (which may not be a great strategy), then you’ll probably want Professor X, Mental Master. He has a built-in discard machine that hurts your opponent’s options, and his boost allows you to steal your opponent’s 8-drop. Great moves, if you live long enough to play them.
Now, I’m not knocking him—he’s a good drop, but there are two options that get the game finished a lot more quickly. Those options are Silver Surfer and Terrax. They’re power 8s with juicy stats (19 ATK and 19 DEF), flight and range, and no form of loyalty. As well, each of their abilities is easily playable in any deck.
Terrax is the harder one to make full use of. The advantage of using him goes to decks without locations. If your deck is location-heavy, he’s not a good choice. If you don’t use ’em, however, his first trick is to take out all of your opponent’s locations, which is never a bad thing. The second half of his ability is the less useful part. He KO’s all of your opponent’s characters with a cost equal to or less than the number of locations he just torched. While this would be hella fun against a Teen Titans deck, it doesn’t do much against most Marvel Modern Age decks. You won’t see many decks with more than a couple of locations, and in those decks, you won’t see many 1-, 2-, and 3-drops around by turn 8. Still, the advantage of torching locations and dropping a 19 ATK/19 DEF flying, ranged attacker is enough to consider playing it. Unless you play team-ups, that is.
If you play with team-ups, then you’re going to want Silver Surfer. Tailor made for Marvel Knights decks, any deck with those kinds of search and team-up abilities is a major boon to this drop. Silver Surfer needs a Fantastic Four character in hand, and he can swipe the initiative and dominate the game. Marvel Knights has Midnight Sons to team up with Fantastic Four, Dagger to search for the team-up, and Wild Ride to search for Surfer. Plus, with cards like Gravesite and Brother Voodoo to thin out your deck, you can prepare for the later turns very early on in the game. As well, a Marvel Knights Surfer deck is one of the few where you might actually get good use out of Blind Justice. Imagine a turn 9 with Surfer on the table where you Wild Ride for Professor X, the endurance loss drops you behind your opponent, you play Blind Justice, steal your opponent’s 8-drop, and steal the initiative! Granted, that’s a one-in-a-million combo, but it would be a fun one to pull off.
Surfer fits nicely into most decks, and even in a mono-deck, he’s worth playing a team-up or two for his ability. Just remember that Clone Saga and Sinister Six will not work on Surfer, as he becomes that affiliation but still needs a Fantastic Four character for discard. Forced Allegiance, however, would work, though it’s a potential handicap to your other characters. In that case, Marvel Team-Up or one of the team stamped team-ups in Marvel Knights would be a better bet.
Crowd Control and Latverian Embassy
There aren’t many cards in Web of Spider-Man that require a discard and fewer still that aren’t team-stamped. But each set seems to have a couple of strong, generic cards that require discards. Cards like Not So Fast!, Have a Blast!, Fast Getaway, and Flame Trap all have their place in certain decks, some of which are more prevalent than others are. Each of these cards is incredibly useful in the right deck, as they would have to be, given a potentially heavy cost to pay. In Web of Spider-Man, Crowd Control and Latverian Embassy are the cards that should be looked at—each of them has the potential to win games if played in the right deck.
Fast Getaway hasn’t yet been used to its potential, but it’s a great card to play in solitaire or non-affiliated decks, because it prevents breakthrough without the need for reinforcement. A card like Blind Sided, for example, can’t stop it. Modern Age doesn’t have Blind Sided to worry about, however, so reinforcement is a valuable commodity that is nearly impossible to prevent.
In a swarm deck, you need all the tools you can find to take down your opponent quickly, maximizing the damage you put out and minimizing the damage you receive in return. Crowd Control is a great card for swarm, especially swarm with lots of range, as you can just pile your weenies into the support row, have one or two picked off with minimal damage, and use the others to smash into your opponent.
While some swarm, like Sinister Syndicate, will have trouble finding use for Crowd Control (they have enough discard as it is), other swarm decks, like Wild Pack, Underworld swarm, or Crime Lords Carbone, will have plenty of room for Crowd Control. It can really skew your opponent’s plans, especially because it lasts the entire turn. Even Spider-Friends evasion, if you keep your little guys around for a long time, can make a huge difference in endurance totals. All you need is a Crowd Control on your opponent’s initiative during the big turns, and the tide can turn far in your favor.
Latverian Embassy is a much less specialized card than Crowd Control that can fit into a wider variety of decks. The Embassy is definitely worth a one-card sacrifice, as it can dramatically hinder an opponent’s strategy. It essentially freezes any plot twist played from the resource row—you can no longer play that card, either from the hand or from the resource row, as long as the Embassy is in play. Cards like Crime and Punishment, Wild Ride, Spider Senses, Sadistic Choice, Grandstanding, Fight to the Finish, Advance Recon, Black Magic, or the aforementioned Crushing Blow, Sucker Punch, and Crowd Control, can only be played once if they’re first played from the resource row. Since most decks will be plot twist heavy, this could be devastating. It may force some major cracks into the brickwork of an opponent’s strategy, depending on the cards he or she draws and when you flip the Embassy.
All of these are cards you don’t see very often in Golden Age, and when you do see them, they’re in very specific builds. When building a Modern Age deck, look beyond what you see in the current metagame and break out those cards that don’t see as much play. It’s often the least expected or most under-utilized card that wins out, especially in such a fresh format.
Also known by his screen name Kergillian, Ben Kalman has been involved in the Vs. community since day one. He started the first major player in the online community, the Vs. Listserv, through Yahoo! Groups, and it now boasts well over 1,300 members! For more on the Yahoo! group, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Marvel_DC_TCG.