It’s an undeniable fact that Arkham Inmates gets no love. As the game’s most maligned team and with no Top 8 showing in possibly anything ever, they’re an incredibly difficult team to play with. Arkham Inmates presents many difficult decisions and stats that rarely beat the curve.
That said, they can be played successfully, and I share Tim Willoughby’s opinion that everyone should play them for at least a while. You learn so much about intricacies of formation, specifically that weak characters need to be carefully managed in order to survive, let alone dominate.
It takes a brave man (or a moron) to dedicate a great deal of time and effort to winning with Arkham Inmates. Because I’ve spent ages trying to pull at least a tier 1.5 deck out of the team, I’m going to chalk up the efforts of Arkham players to bravery. By that standard, Florian Beierstedt was the bravest competitor of all in Hannover.
Florian Beierstedt’s Arkham Inmates Deck, or . . .
“You’d Have To Be Crazy, And We Are.”
Characters
2 Ventriloquist ◊ Scarface
2 Firefly
4 Puppet Master
1 Professor Hugo Strange
3 Mad Hatter
4 The Penguin
4 Charaxes
3 Man-Bat
4 Killer Croc
2 Mr. Freeze
2 Bane
1 Apocalypse
Plot Twists
3 Entangle
3 Sucker Punch
4 Savage Beatdown
4 Crushing Blow
4 Kidnapping
4 Acrobatic Dodge
Locations
4 No Man’s Land
2 Arkham Asylum
Arkham is an interesting team because it can be played in so many different ways. Rigged Elections, Beatdown Control, Hand Destruction, and Exhaustion decks are all possible with a bit of skill and insight. This is one of the latter.
Ventriloquist is good on turn 1, and gets better as the game goes on and you find yourself attacking with more characters. His effect stacks really well with Fear and Confusion (although it isn’t present in this build) and works extremely well with team attacks, which this deck favors. His range makes him a tricky character to get a handle on. When he’s in the back row it can be easy to write him off as useless due to his 0 ATK, but a Savage Beatdown or Sucker Punch can change his offensive potential from “nil” to “kill” in a heartbeat.
The deck foregoes Harley Quinn, which is an odd decision but it just doesn’t seem to have room for it. It’s a risky deck to play with Puppet Master having no reinforcement (the deck doesn’t have Burn Rubber), so it needs to go off and work. If it stalls, the game is over before it began. That said, it can replace its drops with smaller characters up until turn 3, so even if it doesn’t hit Charaxes the deck isn’t without hope. In fact, it’s essentially a swarm deck with some late-game power. Both of Arkham’s two awesome 4-drops (Poison Ivy and Man-Bat) have been left out of the deck, and filling their shoes are the more synergistic Professor Hugo Strange, The Penguin, and Mad Hatter. Professor Strange techs Brotherhood and Fantastic Four, The Penguin gives you something to do with your extra resources, and Mad Hatter fills turn 3 and can ensure Puppet Master exhausts a worthwhile character.
The deck’s plot twists exist primarily to take advantage of exhausted characters. Sucker Punch and Crushing Blow beef up smaller characters to stun up the curve, while Entangle actually helps you with those exhaustions. Entangle is a rare card to see play, but it’s definitely worthwhile here. Acrobatic Dodge keeps things from dying and cushions the blows you can’t avoid, while Kidnapping plays a starring role as it does in virtually every Arkham deck. It’s basically the reason to play Inmates.
Arkham Asylum and No Man’s Land round out the deck’s lineup of exhaustion and exploitation of that theme. The Penguin can juice these for a lot of use, either readying one for extra ATK power or an extra exhaustion, or eating extra copies to make himself larger. Oswald is underplayed in Arkham decks—if he was splashable, he’d probably be seen in a lot of other strategies.
Beierstedt’s Arkham build is a great example of Arkham Exhaust. If you’ve been interested in playing the Inmates for the experience, this might be a good choice.