Synergy is all over the place; you just have to know where to look for it!

The creation process has many different twists and turns. Often, I will look at an individual card or set of cards and see how they interact with other teams and archetypes within the Vs. System. This is the best route to take, as it generally creates the strongest interactions between cards.

However, I occasionally drift away from this pattern to look at different approaches to deckbuilding. One approach that I occasionally use is to look at individual cards and see how their effects might benefit other teams. This is usually not a preferable method, as it focuses on a single interaction within a deck as opposed to how the deck operates as a whole. Still, it is a viable method for deckbuilding, as new synergies can be discovered between cards and teams that no one has ever before considered.

The Forecast for Today Calls for Precipitous Drops in Endurance . . .*

Let’s take a look at Shadowpact. The Shadowpact team has an overarching theme of operating at low endurance totals to enable very powerful character effects. To facilitate this theme, Shadowpact has several strong plot twists and locations that deplete the Shadowpact player’s endurance. While this theme can be difficult to keep intact against highly aggressive early game decks (e.g., “Mexican Hardware Store”), it is still a very solid foundation for a deck concept.

It intrigued me that the only reasonably successful Shadowpact decks that I had seen were mono-team. This makes some sense, as there really hasn’t been another team in the Vs. System that had a focus on low endurance operation prior to Shadowpact. So I started looking at some of the older cards in the Vs. System to see if there were any cards or teams that could fit into the deck theme.

Marvel Knights is the first obvious choice. They are already a great choice for teaming-up given their powerhouse team-up card, Midnight Sons. The Marvel Knights have a lot more to offer the Shadowpact team, with several cards that drain endurance for beneficial effects. Punisher’s Armory is a reusable ATK pump that can provide as much pump as you will ever need if you are willing to sacrifice the endurance points. In our match at Pro Circuit New York, Alex Shvartsman showed me how Bring the Pain does exactly that to both the controller and his opponent. We can’t forget one of the strongest character searchers in the game, Wild Ride, which allows a player to sacrifice his own endurance for a character card from his or her deck.

Another possibility for team Shadowpact is Ghost Rider, New Fantastic Four. Since the goal endurance threshold for Shadowpact is 25, Ghost Rider will generally have his +4 ATK bonus when he hits play. Having a 5-drop that can naturally stun almost every 6-drop in the game is certainly worth consideration.

The Other “Man of Steel”

One of my personal favorites, however, is the potential interaction of Shadowpact with Colossus, Steadfast Protector. For anyone not in the know, this version of Colossus comes from the recent X-Men starter deck. As a 5-drop, he sports a very impressive 10 ATK / 10 DEF frame. Considering that he’s part of the X-Men, a team that has a reputation in the Vs. System for weaker 5-drops, he’s certainly worth a second look.

Apart from the fact that Colossus has long been one of my favorite comic book characters, his effect intrigues me. When the player controlling Colossus is below 25 endurance, Colossus has reinforcement. Given Colossus’s size, this may not be a consideration early on. However, as the game progresses, this can be a huge asset. When the game advances to later turns, you can rest assured that even if you leave no other reinforcement options for the giant metal Russian, you will usually only take stun damage whenever he becomes stunned.

While my consideration of this interaction was fun, I didn’t consider it all that promising. Even though Colossus worked well with the Shadowpact theme, I couldn’t see any other X-Men cards that fit into the strategy.

Then I took a closer look at the Shadowpact and X-Men teams together. Obviously, if you play a team-up deck, you need to have a way to team-up your characters. The X-Men team has one of the best team-up searchers in the game with X-Corp: Amsterdam. Also, Shadowpact has a bit of a sub-theme with the inclusion of the Fate Artifacts in many builds. Obviously, then, a way to search out equipment cards would be nice to have, and the X-Men have a very good equipment searcher in the form of Beast, Feline Geneticist. If we can keep Beast from stunning for one or two turns, then he can easily fetch any Fate Artifacts that we may need.

Of course, the primary theme of Shadowpact is endurance management. In order for the deck to function properly, the Shadowpact player needs to lose endurance early. However, once a player gets below 25 endurance, he or she would like to stay in that area if at all possible. Shadowpact has some good cards for maintaining endurance, like Witchfire and The Oblivion Bar, but I think that the X-Men may have better cards for maintaining endurance, like Rogue, Anna Marie and the awesome Eye of the Storm.

It looks like we may have the makings of a collaboration beyond that of the simple Colossus/Shadowpact synergy. Let’s mix the mutants and magicians together and see what kind of chaos we can create!

The Build

As is often the case, we’re going to start off with four copies of our theme card, Colossus, Steadfast Protector. He’s the inspiration for the deck, so we’re going to try to make sure that we see him on turn 5 in every game we play.

Our 1-drops are fairly apparent. As I have said before, I like 1-drops to have utility beyond simply being playable on the first turn to attack. In order to be strong candidates, they either need to be useful in some capacity in the hand or deck, like Dagger, Child of Light and Mikado and Mosha, or have the capability to search your deck for useful cards, like Alfred Pennyworth and Ape X.

Our first 1-drop falls into the former category. Jaime Reyes ◊ Blue Beetle is the Silver Age’s answer to Tech Upgrade. While he could be a respectable beater on the first turn with 2 ATK, he is probably more useful in later turns to search out the aforementioned Fate Artifacts.

Our other choices at 1 fall into the latter category. Representing Shadowpact, we have Madame Xanadu. Given that our deck will probably hold a good number of Magic plot twists, we can use this mistress of tarot to search up some plot twists to advance our strategy. If we are lucky enough to get her in play on the first turn, we can use her effect before the second turn to search out a Magic plot twist and then recruit her again on the second turn. For the X-Men, we have Archangel, Angel. Mr. Worthington is quite adept at searching out X-Corp locations. In this case, we’ll need him to find a copy of X-Corp: Amsterdam for us so that we can ensure a timely team-up. It would be great if we could draw into a team-up without his help, but Archangel gives us a little insurance that we’ll have our teams working together when the time comes.

We’re going to pass on 2-drops. Like I said earlier, we will probably be recruiting Madame Xanadu again on turn 2 (hopefully to be joined by Archangel). In addition, we will later find that extra 2-drops that stay in play could be detrimental to our strategy, so we’re going to leave them alone.

At 3, we have a few selections. Our primary player is Beast, Feline Geneticist. Not only is he an equipment searcher of the highest order, but his 5 ATK/5 DEF is quite impressive. He will often be able to weather the attacks of opposing 3-drops, leaving us free to get a Fate Artifact in the recovery phase. One of our backup 3-drops is Detective Chimp, Shoeless Gumshoe. While Detective Chimp has decent stats, the real reason for his inclusion in the deck is to fill the role of character searcher in later turns. As we have mentioned numerous times, we will be trying to maintain our endurance at right around 25, so Detective Chimp should be able to search out the help we need in our later turns.

Our final 3-drop also leads us into our backup 4-drop. Rose Psychic and Dr. Occult make quite the tandem. While Rose Psychic can be helpful to our deck for gaining endurance, she is not overly formidable otherwise. Conversely, Dr. Occult has the potential to be very formidable in later turns, growing to the size of a 5-drop and bigger when our endurance totals are down. While either character is a decent drop for us on their respective turns, they truly shine as a pair of underdrops on turn 6. Each one has a boost that can bring the other into play for a combined total of six resource points. Regardless of how bad your math may be, seven resource points worth of characters for six points is quite a deal.

Our primary play on turn 4 is going to be June Moon ◊ Enchantress, Good Witch. I probably don’t need to go into too much detail here. Suffice it to say that effects that can stun characters outside of combat are some of the most powerful in the game. June Moon has one of the best, with no other costs and the only true restriction being that we have less than 25 endurance, lest we lose her to our opponent. Given the nature of the deck, however, this restriction shouldn’t be too problematic.

On turn 5, we have Colossus. Also as a 5-drop, we have Nightmaster, Demon Slayer. Nightmaster is in our deck for one purpose and one alone—to make our opponent pay if they aren’t aggressive in the early turns. Against an aggressive deck like Mexican Hardware Store or Fate Squadron, we will need all of the endurance that we can find. Against slower decks, however, we will probably have plenty of endurance going into the later turns. Nightmaster can turn that extra endurance into a stronger board presence for us, potentially giving us two 5-drops on turn 5 and hopefully putting our endurance into our target range of 25.

Turn 6 will help us make the most of our Fate Artifacts. Dr. Fate, Hector Hall is an average 12 ATK/12 DEF 6-drop. However, his effect turns the Fate Artifacts into a global source of pump for our characters. With all three Artifacts equipped to Dr. Fate, all of our other characters in play gain an additional 3 ATK. With a gigantic 16 ATK/16 DEF Dr. Fate in play as well, we have basically made all of our characters one drop bigger. Beast becomes an 8 ATK/5 DEF; June Moon grows to a 10 ATK/7 DEF; and Colossus becomes a massive 13 ATK/10 DEF. Those numbers should be enough to take almost any game.

Our final characters are a pair of 7-drops that serve different purposes for our deck. If we are in a close game, or even perhaps playing against another Shadowpact deck, then Rogue, Anna Marie is our choice on turn 7. She is a good-sized 7-drop with flight. More importantly, she possesses a pseudo-invulnerability that will keep our endurance from dropping too quickly. In a close match, that can make all the difference. However, if we get into a situation where the game is out of reach for us, and we’re facing a huge deficit in endurance, then Shazam is our man. While the restriction of not being able to play plot twists may be a small issue, the potential to cripple our opponent’s endurance is no small effect. Besides, we should hopefully have all of the pump we need from Dr. Fate and his Artifacts.

Turning to plot twists, let’s first run down the list of Magic plot twists that we want to play. An obvious inclusion is four copies of Abjuration. Man-o-man, this card is good! The +3 DEF is already good to begin with. While the cost of 5 endurance may seem steep, it actually aids our deck. In many cases, we will get that 5 endurance back at opportune moments in the late game, thanks to Abjuration’s second effect. In some instances, we will get more endurance back than we originally paid.

Another Magic plot twist that we need for the deck is The Conclave. Fizzle was a very powerful card for decks featuring the Gotham Knights. So it follows that The Conclave would be just as effective for the Shadowpact. Speaking of effective reprints, Spectral Slaughter is the Shadowpact take on Flame Trap. While it is restricted to the Shadowpact player’s attack step, it is no less devastating than the standard for all weenie hate. Rounding out our Origins reprints, we have the Press the Attack clone, Fate Has Spoken. While these two cards admittedly have a different set of conditions under which they can be played, they are still both powerful plot twists that can ready a character for an additional attack. Considering that the character we will usually ready with Fate Has Spoken will have all of the Fate Artifacts equipped, the second attack will undoubtedly be quite massive.

Some of you may be wondering why Conjuration was not included in the build. While I will readily admit that getting out characters a full turn ahead of their intended drop is powerful, Conjuration may be too hefty a price for us to pay. We already have many cards in the deck that will take a toll on our endurance. In addition, if we find that we need to drop our endurance by a significant amount, we can play Nightmaster on turn 5. Finally, our characters are all pretty sizable for their cost, so we should rarely find the need to try to advance our recruitment of them. All in all, Conjuration is a fine card, but not all that useful in this build.

Of course, we’ve already mentioned the amazing Eye of the Storm as a natural inclusion in the deck. Any card that helps us regulate our endurance deserves a look at inclusion in our build, and Eye of the Storm is one of the best out there. While it does impose the restriction that we play it when we have no stunned characters, it will almost always net us an extra 4 endurance.

Our Team-Up of choice in this deck will be the always impressive X-Men United. This card of course serves the purpose of teaming-up our two clans so that they can more effectively share the field of battle. However, X-Men United also has a secondary replacement effect that can help us out in situations where reinforcement is not readily available. A Team-Up that can double as Burn Rubber is certainly going to be handy to have around.

Our final plot twist . . . it’s really not important. It’s a character searcher of no particular consequence, so we’ll just pass it and move along, okay? What? You really want to know what it is? Well . . . it’s . . . Enemy of My Enemy. So, moving on . . .

I had to put Enemy of My Enemy in this deck as it really is the best choice for the role of character searcher. I’ve given you all a few weeks off of my “Enemy kick,” but I couldn’t come up with a good replacement this time. If you like, you can play spare copies of Secret Origins in its place and see what happens. The simple truth is that Enemy of My Enemy is a great card, and it makes this deck a lot more consistent. ’Nuff said!

We have a couple of locations to consider for our build. Our first is the previously mentioned X-Corp: Amsterdam. Since we have a way of searching this card out and we will rarely need more than one Team-Up, we only need one copy of X-Corp: Amsterdam. Our other location is fairly obvious, given the numerous mentions of the Fate Artifacts. Dr. Fate’s Tower not only allows us to search out an Artifact of our choice, but it allows us to transfer the Artifacts from character to character. This can be invaluable in later turns, as we want to have the Fate Artifacts on Dr. Fate on turn 6 if at all possible.

Finally, the Fate Artifacts themselves take up the remaining six spots in the deck. We will play two copies each of the Amulet of Nabu, Cloak of Nabu, and Helm of Nabu. Quite a bit of Vs. System press has been devoted to these cards already, so I won’t waste your time going into significant detail about how these cards operate. They do represent a large amount of the offensive strength of the deck. While it is certainly possible to win without them, it is much easier to win with them!

Strike up the band, the work is over. Let’s take a look at our chaotic creation:

Magical Mutants (60 cards)

Characters (30)

4 Archangel, Angel

2 Jaime Reyes ◊ Blue Beetle, High-Tech Hero

4 Madame Xanadu, Cartomancer

4 Beast, Feline Geneticist

2 Detective Chimp, Shoeless Gumshoe

1 Rose Psychic, Ghost Detective

1 Dr. Occult, Richard Occult

4 June Moon ◊ Enchantress, Good Witch

4 Colossus, Steadfast Protector

1 Nightmaster, Demon Slayer

1 Dr. Fate, Hector Hall

1 Rogue, Anna Marie

1 Shazam, The Sorcerer

Plot Twists (19)

4 Abjuration, Magic

4 Enemy of My Enemy

4 Eye of the Storm

1 Fate Has Spoken, Magic

1 Spectral Slaughter, Magic

1 The Conclave, Magic

4 X-Men United, Team-Up

Locations (5)

4 Dr. Fate's Tower

1 X-Corp: Amsterdam, X-Corp

Equipment (6)

2 Amulet Of Nabu, Fate Artifact

2 Cloak Of Nabu, Fate Artifact

2 Helm Of Nabu, Fate Artifact

Preferred initiative for the deck is usually odds, though that can change based upon the deck our opponent plays. While it is certainly possible to win games earlier than turn 7, this is generally the turn the deck strives to win on or before.

The mulligan will generally be for Madame Xanadu. Given the power of the Magic plot twists, she is a formidable engine for searching out cards that we will use in our later turns. With 4 copies of Enemy of My Enemy and multiple redundant drops from turns 3 through 5, we should have little trouble hitting our curve.

Alas, I must take my leave for this week. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Fear thee not; I shall return in half a fortnight hence (i.e., one week) to speak to one and all of tales of heroes and villains and how we can break ’em! In the interim, if you would like to shoot me a message, you can do so at BigSpooky1@hotmail.com.

* . . . and few to no footnotes, except for the customary “Tim Batow is short” joke.