Last week, I warned you that I was going to gush with irrepressible optimism and excitement about the direction Vs. System is taking. I am afraid that this week’s journey will follow a similar path. Each day I spend exploring the online communities, I find more exciting developments and encouraging news. There seem to be a lot of people out there who are willing to grab the game by the scruff of the neck, take charge, and build on the widespread local-level momentum. Take, for example, Erick Reyes. Erick is online at all the sites where people talk about Vs. System. Always sparking debate and interest, he uses the online community to gauge exactly what people want and then attempts to provide that at his store, Edgeworld, in Costa Mesa, CA. Erick is constantly coming up with new, interesting ways to play the game, and he creates tournaments based off of these ideas for the local players to enjoy. Erick’s store was recently a City Championship location, and was visited by Scott Gaeta and Andrew Yip for a spot of mini-coverage last week, right here on Metagame.com.

City Championships are proving to be a monumental success, with events showing strong attendance and players delving into the depths of Silver Age’s creative pool. One of the players who took a particularly refreshing dip in said pool was Metagame.com’s very own Billy Zonos. Mr. Z took top honors at the aforementioned Edgeworld City Championship with his Checkmate / Inhumans amalgamation, “In-Mates.”

Billy Zonos, Costa Mesa City Champion

“In-Mates”

Characters

4 Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend
3 Sarge Steel
4 San
4 Ahmed Samsarra
1 Christopher Smith ◊ Peacemaker
4 Alan Scott, White King
1 Karnak
1 Annihilation Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot
1 Alaris
1 Maximus the Mad
1 Quicksilver, Terrigenesis Rebirth
1 Sasha Bordeaux, Autonomous Prototype

Plot Twists
4 It’s Slobberin’ Time!
4 Enemy of My Enemy
3 Threat Neutralized
4 Knightmare Scenario
1 The Royal Guard
1 Transmutation

Locations

4 Brother I Satellite
2 Brother Eye
4 Checkmate Safe House
1 Dr. Fate’s Tower
1 Slaughter Swamp
1 Blue Area of the Moon
1 Himalayan Enclave
1 Attilan
1 Fifth Dimension

Equipment

1 Cloak of Nabu

 
The deck is simple and straight to the point. It’s an aggressive deck that usually wins on turn 6 through sheer brute force. Not only does it have the muscle, but it also has a very high consistency value. The use of a variety of characters with search effects on the early turns really sets you up for good times when the fists are flying. Billy was kind enough to share his winning decklist with the online community over at VsRealms.com (which is itself a testament to the fun, open, environment that Vs. System is currently enjoying). Here are a few of Billy’s notes on the deck:

·         Always take the even initiatives.

·         Try to keep your 1- or 2-drop character around to use with Quicksilver.

·         If your opponent has Spider-Man, The Sensational Spider-Man in play, recruit Maximus the Mad instead of Quicksilver.

·         If you’re facing a Spider-Friends stall deck, the Cloak is imperative.

·         Play concealed characters against a stall deck.

·         Play visible characters against a QuickFate deck.

·         Do not be afraid to attack with Ahmed. In fact, you want to be clearing your opponent’s board more often than you want to be fixing your resource row.

·         Attilan is a must by the turn 5 draw phase.

·         Alaris/Alan Scott is money. Paying 2 endurance to switch them up and gain the Safe House bonuses is money.

I was particularly pleased to see Billy pilot the deck to success, as this is something I’d been working on myself. The Master Challenge (Manchester, UK) is going to land on us over the weekend of June 23-24 (for more info, contact enquiries@upperdeck.nl), and as the format is Silver Age, I’ve been looking at all sorts of decks. A couple of months ago, Billy was kind enough to share the original version of the decklist with me. This is what it looked like.

Proto-Inmates

Characters

4 Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend
4 Sarge Steel
4 San
4 Ahmed Samsarra

4 Alan Scott, White King
1 Karnak
1 Annihilation Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot
1 Alaris
1 Maximus the Mad
1 Quicksilver, Terrigenesis Rebirth

Plot Twists
4 It’s Slobberin’ Time!
4 Enemy of My Enemy
4 Threat Neutralized
4 Knightmare Scenario
3 The Royal Guard

Locations

4 Brother I Satellite
2 Brother Eye
4 Checkmate Safe House
1 Dr. Fate’s Tower

1 Slaughter Swamp
1 Blue Area of the Moon
1 Attilan

Equipment

1 Cloak of Nabu

By comparing this original list with the City Championship-winning deck, we can see subtle evolutions. Some raw aggression was tempered in favor of a little more tactical flexibility. Dropping a couple copies of The Royal Guard made room for little touches like Transmutation, which allowed the deck to deal with threats like the Rock (of Eternity) decks. There were a couple of minor character changes, as well; the addition of a 7-drop was (I’m guessing) motivated by the emerging stall decks (Spider-Friends, Heralds, and so forth). All in all, Billy’s refined list presents a very strong candidate for your consideration. As I said, I’d been tweaking the original list to see if it was something I could use at the Manchester MC, and while I’ve made changes, they are also minor but effective:

“UK In-mates” (a.k.a. “All Banged Up”)

Characters

4 Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend
4 Sarge Steel
3 San
4 Ahmed Samsarra
1 Christopher Smith ◊ Peacemaker

4 Alan Scott, White King
1 Karnak
1 Annihilation Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot
1 Alaris
2 Quicksilver, Terrigenesis Rebirth

Plot Twists
4 It’s Slobberin’ Time!
4 Enemy of My Enemy
4 Threat Neutralized
4 Knightmare Scenario

Locations

4 Brother I Satellite
2 Brother Eye
4 Checkmate Safe House
1 Dr. Fate’s Tower
1 Slaughter Swamp
1 Blue Area of the Moon
1 Attilan

1 Sewer System

1 The Great Refuge

1 Fifth Dimension

Equipment

1 Cloak of Nabu

1 Reality Gem

As you can see, the changes I made were minor, but I’ve found them to be very effective. One card I particularly like is Sewer System. The characters are not overly blessed with flight, so this location helps to reach the opponent’s awkward protected character. We can also step into the shadows and hit those hidden characters. We really want to be clearing our opponent’s field on our initiative, so we don’t want to leave any stone unturned. I had been running with Reality Gem, but in hindsight, I think Mr. Zonos’s choice of Transmutation is possibly a better pick. I chose the Gem because of its built-in recursion and the fact that it can hit Team-Ups as well, but the discard can sometimes be a pain and we don’t actually get the recursion if the deck is working well (our guys don’t get stunned too much).

The thing I like about this deck is its consistency and reliability. You’ll hardly ever miss a drop, and I think I was unable to meet Ahmed’s loyalty only once. Silver Age is continuing to turn up a relative goldmine of deck ideas, be they for a City Championship or the Master Challenge. This is an exciting time for creative Vs. players everywhere, and I’m enjoying every second of it.

Deckbuilder Challenge Cup #10: One Set Highlander

This week’s challenge is another revival of a very popular challenge from the past. The idea behind this experiment is to see if you can come up with a thirty-card Highlander deck using cards from just one set. For the uninitiated, in a Highlander format, just as in the movie, there can be only one. You may only use one copy of any given card in your deck. You may use multiple versions of a card, but only one copy. For example, your deck may include one Spider-Man, The Sensational Spider-Man; one Spider-Man, Parasitic Host; and one Spider-Man, Spider-Hulk because they are all separate cards from the same expansion (Marvel Team-Up). You may not build a deck using one Spider-Man, Peter Parker; one Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man; and one Spider-Man, New Fantastic Four because these are all from different expansions

DBCC#10 – The Rules

·         Minimum thirty-card deck.

·         Only one copy of any card in your deck.

·         All cards in your deck must be from the same expansion (all MOR, for example).

·         The only banned card is Overload.

·         Your deck must have a name.

·         Include one paragraph describing your deck.

·         Each card must be listed in full with its proper version (no abbreviations).

Now, because I’m feeling a little bit clever, I’ve created a webpage specifically dedicated to the Deckbuilder Challenge Cup. You can find it at http://vs.the-kamiza.com/dbcc.html.

From that page, you can vote on current challenges, submit decks, view the leaderboard, and peruse previous challenges. Alternatively, you can email me directly with your decklist at kamiza@the-kamiza.com.

Well, that’s it for another week. One thing’s for sure: between now and next week, there will probably be half a dozen new deck types emerging from the depths of Silver Age. Anyone else have goose bumps?

Steve

Steve “Kamiza” Garrett has been an active member of the vast Vs. System online community since day one. Steve is an ardent supporter of casual Vs. play and the European game on the whole. If you are interested in supporting UDE games within Europe or have any comments regarding this article, please pop along to his website at www.the-kamiza.com.