Metagame.com - Take Your Game to the Next Level

Team Revolution is a group of 10-15 people from Fresno, California with all different degrees of experience. They have a few $10K Top 8s and multiple money finishes on the Pro Circuit. Their motto is perfect, taken from a master of pop music:

And now, right here on Risk Vs. Reward, Team Revolution is going to start a new trend. Walt “Doc Squid” DeNatale has developed an equipment deck for the ages, and he is bumpin’ the spinners on the streets. Open up your toy chest and get ready to ride—Vs. System is getting tricked out like never before.

Sixteen equipment cards. Multiple little tinker-toy characters. Answers to most of the metagame. Johnny Quick for the win. Those are some glittering gadgets, and they are truly a blast to play. I will step aside for a minute and let the deck’s designer give you its instructions. Take it away, Walt . . .

I love equipment in Vs. System. High Voltage, requiring little deep thought to play, is going to be something to contend with for the upcoming Pro Circuit. Taking equipment abuse in a different direction is Team Revolution's “Pimp My Beetle.” The deck basically uses equipment as static pumps to run people over and provide walls for the off-initiative turns. The ability to consistently get all of the Fate Artifacts out on turn 2 piles on problems for your opponent. Personally, I mulligan for Salvage, and a hand with Ted Kord ◊ Blue Beetle and Salvage is a definite keeper. You want to play Ape X and/or Blue Beetle on turns 1 and/or 2. It is okay to replay either character on the second turn to get the Artifacts out quicker. You may want to hold back from recruiting the Helm of Nabu immediately on 2, just to stabilize your hand. The ideal 3 is Dr. Light. By recruiting the Helm multiple times and playing Salvage, you should have a nice character selection in your KO'd pile. There will be a slew of 2 drops to put into play at that point. My choice is usually Tom Thumb or Deadshot. Turn 4 wants to see Franklin Richards, Trapped in Time. By activating Dr. Fate’s Tower to move the Artifacts to him, and by using Dr. Light to get several equipped characters into play, he is usually around 15 ATK / 15 DEF. I have seen him get to a static 18 ATK / 18 DEF on more than one occasion. The deck wants odd initiatives so that Franklin is not only a wall but also a huge attacker on the back-swing if the opponent forgoes attacking him and chooses the equipped babies instead. The killer 5-drop is Johnny Quick. Move the Artifacts to him, put a Jetpack on Franklin to punch holes, then Mega-Blast Johnny for the double swing. Good game. You have to fight your hand size sometimes and make scary decisions with the pitch cost of Helm, but the challenge will make you a better player.

Here are some thoughts on the character choices:

Beetle, Armorsmith can fetch Haywire, who can then be equipped to fuel Franklin. I also like equipping Catcher's Mitt on Dr. Light, then using the Tower to move the Mitt to Haywire, forcing really unfavorable attacks for your opponent.

Blue Beetle and Ape X run the deck engine.

Fixer somewhat stops Flame Trap, which is nice.

Speedy is great to recur with Dr. Light in the High Voltage matchup.

Mr. Mxyzptlk? Three words: “cards in hand.”

Recycling Deadshot with Dr. Light on turn 3 really hurts Good Guys, High Voltage, Teen Titans, and nearly every matchup in existence—except Doom, which we will cover in a bit.

Songbird is a sweet beater to put into play with Dr. Light. Swing with her to punch a hole for Johnny, or bash with her early in the game and don’t keep her.

Tom Thumb’s compatibility with the deck is insane . . . plus he looks like Moses and Dr. Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog had a baby.

Beetle, Armorsmith is a great Dr. Light target—maybe the best ever. I usually get Mr. Mxyzptlk or Haywire with him.

Poison Ivy is the call when you need the Tower. She also allows you to get two Tower activations per turn for fuel.

Dr. Light? The man, the myth, the best character in the game.

Alistair Smythe is the secret weapon against Doom. I love playing as Doom, but I hate playing against it. Recruiting Smythe on turn 3 naming Dr. Doom basically gives you the game in this matchup. If the opponent is playing Crisis of Doom, he super-loses. If you take nothing else from this article, take a Smythe with you to PC: LA. You can thank me there.

Franklin Richards is a brick house. He can get to 19 ATK / 19 DEF on turn 4 with this build.

Johnny Quick is the win condition. Try to save at least one Mega-Blast for him.

Dr. Fate is there in case you get evens. Play him, move the artifacts to him, then run the opponent over with your super-fueled babies.

And there we have it: a pimped-out equipment deck that can bring the big beats with its blinding bundles of bling. Best of all, it rode up just in time for Pro Circuit Los Angeles 2006. It provides some fascinating answers for quite a few of the favorites in the anticipated Golden Age metagame. I especially enjoy the idea of Alistair Smythe performing a Spider-Slayer shutdown of Dr. Doom and his plans for PC domination. Watch out for the man in the iron mask in a month—he will be everywhere.

Toying through sixteen equipment cards is fun enough, but finishing with Johnny Quick is the wicked trick that makes my brainpan click. Let’s customize this article with some flashy mythos and join the crew from the Crime Syndicate.

Johnny Quick; Power Ring; Superwoman; Ultraman; and Owlman form the Crime Syndicate in DC Comics, and their gangster wheels first rolled down the streets of our collective consciousness in 1964. They were created as a set of obvious evil opposites, fabricated to foil the five fan favorites of the Justice League of America. They spent their early mythological careers deviously duplicating their doppelganger doubles. Then they got upgraded with some killer customization. Johnny Quick’s recent activity has been frighteningly flashy.

When Grant Morrison tricked out the Crime Syndicate for the comic community in the year 2000, he fashioned his antiheroes with vicious flair. His Johnny Quick was actually the third incarnation of the villainous archetype. This one had murdered the previous character, but not before he drained all the living blood from his body. Then he converted the super speed cells into an addictive substance that gave him all the powers of the Speed Force. He wobbled through a series of the sickest, most psychotic adventures in Crime Syndicate history. Johnny Quick was a desperate addict, fiending for super-power. This made for a freaky and fascinating chapter in the speedster’s saga, but it was quickly outdone by a new effects kit and a louder paint job.

One thing that’s constant in the car show of comic book myth is this: Stories get twisted. Sometimes a character or a location is written in such a way that it eventually needs to be Removed from Continuity. Personally, I love to watch writers and editors striving to backtrack and fit all the loose legendary ends back into the fabric of official canon. In the winter of 2004, Kurt Busiek chromed out Johnny Quick and the Crime Syndicate in the coolest way possible—they became aware of the artists who were customizing their history.

The story originally began in Justice League of America #109, and it has been collected in a trade paperback entitled JLA: Syndicate Rules. The denizens of the Anti-Matter Universe, including the Qwardians and the Crime Syndicate, suddenly found themselves revised and retrofitted to mesh with the recent slips in continuity that they suffered as a result of the Avengers/JLA crossover series of 2003. The chops and channels that they were given in the DC Comics body shop were now understood—by the characters themselves! This would be like a show car beginning to learn all about the alterations it has received. Busiek takes Johnny Quick and the crew to a meta-cognitive machine shop and forces the reader to ponder the profound potential in the relationship between individual human creativity and the mythic reality that it leaves behind. It is a brilliant exploration of the limits of its own medium, and it sparkles like a disco ball in the rearview mirror of the mind.

Whether or not Johnny Quick is shiny enough to take home some prize money from Pro Circuit Los Angeles 2006, it is great to see him back in a viable deck. His chrome dome has gotten the Windex treatment, and he is ready to roll out a truckload of toys. The time will fly in the last few weeks before the PC; keep your eyes peeled for that pimped-out beetle.

Rian Fike is also known as stubarnes, and he is ridin’ white fourteens on his Mini Cooper. If you have a tricked-out Impala or a twisted deck idea, share it with the rest of us at: rianfike@hattch.com