Pro Circuit Atlanta has come and gone, and a fun time was had by all. It had its ups and downs, decisive victories and major upsets, and competitive efforts that should be the talk of Vs. System fans for a long time to come.

Many of you may not be aware of this, but there is actually another big sporting event that occurs in the month of March. Up until this year, it was this event (not Vs. System) that consumed my life for nearly three weeks. It too had its ups and downs, decisive victories and major upsets, and notable competitive efforts. What is this other event of which I speak?

IT’S MARCH MADNESS, BABY!!!

The Final Fantastic Four

While I am not a major sports nut, I love the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Before I had a steady job and worked an insane number of hours, I made it a point to do nothing for the first weekend of the tournament except watch basketball. There’s just something about the tournament that is so compelling. Maybe it was filling out your tournament brackets, then cheering like mad for teams that you had never heard of before to upset the favorites so that you could win the office pool. Whatever the case may be, it’s hard to beat March Madness and the race to the Final Four.

Speaking of the Final Four, I recall a misstatement from a few years ago where one of the commentators referred to the Final Four as the “Fantastic Four.” Being of a whimsical and goofy nature, I got to wondering who would win a basketball tournament between the members of the Fantastic Four. I’m no basketball guru, but I know someone who is . . . so, to break down the brackets of the Final Fantastic Four is none other than the man himself, Dick Vitale.*

Michael Barnes: So, Mr. Vitale, in the match between Mr. Fantastic and Thing, who would be the victor?

Dick Vitale: It’s the rubber man versus the rock man, baby! Thing can dominate the inside like no other big man, and he has a defense that’s hard to beat, since he’s made out of stone. But he’s just not fast or flexible enough to stop the guy who bounces around even more than the basketball. When you’ve got a player who can slam dunk from half-court without his feet ever leaving the ground, you can’t bet against him. Thing may be the one covered in rocks, but it’s Mr. Fantastic in a landslide, baby!

MB: Fair enough. Who do you see taking the game between Invisible Woman and the Human Torch?

DV: It’s sibling rivalry to the max! The Invisible Woman has the fanciest footwork in the game. You can’t ever tell which way she’ll move, since you can’t see her. But the way that the Human Torch literally flies across the court, I’ve got to think that he’ll be the one controlling the tempo of this matchup. Sue Storm may have the stealthy moves, but they won’t help her guard against Johnny Storm draining buckets from fifteen feet in the air. Torch takes the “W”!

MB: So, it’s Mr. Fantastic against Human Torch in the finals. Who do you see becoming the champion?

DV: It’s hard to beat Mr. Fantastic. He’s got the moves. He’s got the range. He’s got the technical know-how to make it all come together. But it just isn’t enough to stop a guy who can burn through your defenses . . . literally! Unless Reed Richards has an asbestos body suit, the Human Torch takes home the trophy. It’s Torch Madness, baby!!!

MB: You sure do like saying “baby” a lot.

DV: I sure do! I call everything “baby” except for an actual baby!

Raging Hot Flames and Stone Cold Stunners

I realize that Human Torch, Friendly Rival is the only version that isn’t part of the Fantastic Four team. However, pretty much all of the Fantastic Four versions are already well-regarded as tier 1 deck mainstays. Besides, Human Torch, Friendly Rival provides an interesting solution that I recently found with my Morlocks deck.

You see, one major issue I have with Morlocks evasion-based decks is that they lack any real early turn attack boosts. Cards like Bum’s Rush and Marrow are amazing, but only if you have enough stunned characters to support them. At the start of your attack step, choosing which characters to attack with becomes difficult since your main attack pumps are either fairly weak (like Retribution) or completely useless in the early game (like Shrapnel Blast).

Of course, a Morlock team-up with Spider-Friends seems like a natural fit, since both decks have characters that live and die off of the evasion mechanic. Adding the Human Torch to the mix makes for an even sweeter deal. While he doesn’t have evasion, he is tailor-made for attacking first since his effect gives him a bonus based on how many non-stunned Spider-Friends characters you control. With the Human Torch to clear out our opponent’s largest character first, and the remaining characters to clear the way in the later part of our attack step, we may have achieved a perfect balance for the anticipated Spider-Friends/Morlocks team-up.

The Build

Our obligatory four copies of Human Torch, Friendly Rival will be accompanied by four copies of Marrow. The key play for the deck will be dropping Human Torch on turn 6 (hopefully with us controlling the even initiatives) and having him do the dirty work, then having Marrow come in for the kill at the end of the turn. With two characters attacking for as much as 15 ATK apiece before adding any attack pumps, we should be able to easily dispatch our opponents on that critical turn.

The question now is how we want to set up our characters in the early turns to prepare for our sixth turn aggression. Obviously, our goal should be to keep as many characters on the board as possible while keeping our endurance intact until the sixth turn. One good way to save on endurance is to have cheap, reusable reinforcement. The Spider-Friends have a great 1-drop in this department in the form of Rocket Racer. By sending him to assist any of our front row characters, we can get effective reinforcement at the low cost of 1 endurance. We just need to make sure that we don’t overdo it with the endurance payments.

Another good way to cut down on endurance loss is to drop the ATK values of our opponent’s characters, so we’ll need a couple of copies of Artie. Although Artie will probably be evading a lot, he will make up for it by effectively reducing endurance loss by dropping an opposing character’s ATK. Finally, we can make up for missing out on early game drops by having characters that can be recruited for free in later turns. To this end, three copies of Tommy will also be welcome in the deck. Not only can she make up for a missed 1- or 2-drop fairly effectively, but she can also be a source of character advantage in the early turns.

On turn 2, we’re going to continue with the theme of potent defense characters. Of course, having a character that gives all of our characters an extra point of DEF would be pretty nice. That’s why we’ll be including two copies of Dusk, which is a strong drop on turn 2 and can even be a backup drop on turn 5 if things don’t go as planned (though we hope that they do, of course). Another great character at 2 is Leech, whose greatness I have already praised in my article on Last Stand. While we should have enough defense in this deck to shut down most potent attackers, we don’t have as effective an answer for burn decks. Leech can take away some of that sting by effectively rendering characters like Golden Archer and Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist useless. Of course, sometimes you just want a big character on the board. Tar Baby is certainly no slouch when it comes to stats, since both his ATK and DEF are above average. In addition, he has an effect that can certainly be useful in later turns against decks with any kind of recursion theme.

Turn 3 presents a tough choice for us, because we have two exceptional characters. Healer is wonderful in any evasion-based deck due to his endurance-gaining ability. That alone merits at least one copy, since he can mean the difference between winning and losing in matchups against aggressive rush decks. However, we should also be concerned with keeping opposing plot twist and payment effects from waylaying our characters. After all, trying to maintain a decent board can be difficult if cards like Reign of Terror or Roy Harper, Speedy start picking off our smaller characters. This is the primary reason that we want four copies of Ricochet in our build. Where Leech can shut down a single payment power, Ricochet can nullify a wide array of opposing effects that might cause problems for us.

Speaking of maintaining our board, we need to consider the ramifications of KO effects. While The Alley is great, it’s only effective during the combat phase. Moreover, cards like Mutant Massacre can bypass its effects since they don’t actually KO the character. What we’d really like is a global effect that prevents our stunned characters from being targeted. This is why we have Spider-Man, Peter Parker at 4. With Ricochet protecting our non-stunned characters and Spider-Man protecting the stunned ones, we should have very little problem keeping our characters in play no matter what our opponents may throw at us. In addition, Spider-Man’s ongoing effect, which provides boosts to characters with evasion, is also nice, since all of our characters (with the exception of Human Torch) have evasion.

Moving to the subject of plot twists, we have some easy choices and some not-so-easy choices. As far as the easy ones go, we need team-up cards desperately, since most of our important effects hinge on having a specific team affiliation. This makes our choice to include four copies of The Forsaken somewhat obvious. Not only will this card provide the needed team-up for our deck, but it also is useful as a marginal DEF boost if we draw multiples. The only problem is that four copies of a card probably aren’t enough to ensure that we hit it consistently, so we’ll also throw in two copies of Teamwork. Not only does this card sport art to make lonely TCG’ers around the world drool, but it also acts as both a searcher and protector for our team-up cards. Thank you, Upper Deck. Thank you.

Now let’s talk about search cards. We need to avoid missing any drops if at all possible. Of course, with only seven characters at 1, we will inevitably miss drops there (though the inclusion of Tommy can easily make up for that). However, we want to hit every drop from 2 onward if at all possible, so four copies of Bloodhound are a good call. This search card is wonderful for our deck because it doesn’t just limit us to searching for Morlocks characters (though it does require the discard of a Morlocks character to play). Since we are playing sixteen Morlocks characters, finding one to discard shouldn’t be difficult. Of course, Bloodhound can’t search out our theme card since he doesn’t have evasion. Thus, we should probably consider an alternate search card for backup. I know that you’re probably thinking to yourself, “He’s going to say Enemy of My Enemy.” Well . . . you are right. We’ll include two copies of “the most overused card on Breaking Ground.”

So what about attack and defensive tricks? Well, I personally love Spider Senses, but I just don’t think it works well in this build. Given the leanings of the current metagame decks to play a wide array of attack pumps, Spider Senses would probably be more of a speed bump than anything. Instead, we’ll just shut down attacks completely. With a decent early curve filled with characters possessing evasion, that won’t be hard thanks to Backs Against the Wall. Three copies should ensure that we can negate at least one big attack every game simply by evading a couple of small characters. As far as pumps go, the more versatile they are, the better. The Morlocks have two great pumps that are effective on either attack or defense. Retribution isn’t much for stopping attacks, but it is phenomenal for stunning up the curve whether a character is attacking or defending. Of course, as good as Retribution is, Shrapnel Blast is even better! With a gigantic boost of +4 ATK / +4 DEF on either attack or defense, it could single-handedly make the Morlocks team tier 1. The only requirement for Shrapnel Blast to be effective is that we have three stunned characters. With the amount of evasion this deck possesses, that won’t be difficult at all.

Finally, let’s consider a couple of other combat tricks for the deck. While Ricochet is certainly adept at keeping our characters out of harm’s way, even he can’t stop a wayward System Failure or Mind Control against Human Torch. Since we can’t always rely on the character effects to get the job done, we’ll need a few copies of Nice Try! for backup. The eternal nemesis of Roy Harper, Arsenal, Nice Try! is a potent negation card that aids in our endeavor of protecting our characters from ill effects. Finally, we should consider the potential for damage on our “kill turn” (presumably turn 6). With his flight and range, we’d like to see Human Torch break up formations to allow our remaining characters to attack for a good deal of damage. However, it would be nice if we could create a decent amount of breakthrough endurance loss with Human Torch as well. This is why we’ll want three copies of Morlock Justice, though to be fair, we are really just interested in it for the effect of removing reinforcement. However, if we manage to draw multiple copies of it, then it is also a nice tool for dropping some extra direct endurance loss on our opponent at the end of the turn.

That’s it! Halftime is over, and the visiting team is heading back to the court. Let’s see what they’ll be facing in the second half:

“Torch Madness, Baby!”  (60 cards)**

Characters (32)

2 Artie, Arthur Maddicks

2 Rocket Racer, Robert Farrell

3 Tommy, Runaway

2 Dusk, Cassie St. Commons

3 Leech, Inhibitor

3 Tar Baby, Adhesive Ally

1 Healer, Life Giver

4 Ricochet, Johnny Gallo

4 Spider-Man, Peter Parker

4 Human Torch, Friendly Rival

4 Marrow, Gene Nation

Plot Twists (28)

3 Backs Against the Wall

4 Bloodhound

2 Enemy of My Enemy

3 Morlock Justice

2 Nice Try!

4 Retribution

4 Shrapnel Blast

2 Teamwork

4 The Forsaken, Team-Up

As stated earlier in the article, this deck prefers even initiatives. The goal is to absorb as much damage as possible in the early turns while maintaining your board. On turn 5, drop Marrow to hold off the onslaught of opposing attacks, then drop Human Torch and a 1-drop on turn 6 to go for the kill. If we have to lose a character or two in the first four turns to prevent direct attacks, so be it. However, we will probably need at least five to six characters on the board on turn 6 to effectively end the game.

If you have any thoughts, insights, questions, or picks for the NCAA tournament championship that you’d like to share with me, please send them to BigSpooky1@hotmail.com. I apologize that I have been remiss in answering emails over the past few months. However, I have received some great emails from several of you out there. I always read every email sent to me, and I appreciate everything that you have to say.

Barring any unforeseen work disasters, I should be in Austin this weekend for the Vs. System $10K. If you are attending, please feel free to stop by and chat with me for a moment. I’ll be the big guy wearing the squirrel hat and harassing Tim Batow.

Take care, and I’ll see you next week. Until then, keep in mind the immortal words of our good friend, Dick Vitale:

The Vs. System . . . IT’S AWESOME, BABY!!!

*Okay . . . so it’s not REALLY Dick Vitale. But I’d like to think that if I ever got a chance to ask Dickie V. these questions, this is how he would answer.

**With a few notable exceptions, I will be making a genuine effort to build decks that are playable in the Silver Age. Hopefully that will inspire some jank creativity that will encourage a few of you to play something other than AGL Rush/Squadron Rush/Faces of Evil Rush.