I know I did a Revenge Squad deck just last week, but I go where my moods take me. This deck is really a two-team deck, starring the Darkseid’s Elite and the Revenge Squad. It’s mainly a Lex Luthor weenie deck. Rush decks need to draw a lot of cards, and the President is certainly capable of doing not just that, but also getting you to the cards you need. Whenever an opponent turns around, coughs, or even gives his cards a sidelong glance, he or she is going to be losing some endurance.
Ongoing Suffering
4 Gole
8 Hunger Dogs
4 Ratcatcher
4 Atomic Skull
4 Mole Man
4 Mr. Mxyzptlk
4 Lex Luthor, President Luthor
4 Topkick
4 Anti-Life Equation
4 Gone But Not Forgotten
2 Hordes of Apokolips
3 Marvel Team-up
2 Revenge Pact
2 Ride of the Black Racer
4 Toy Soldiers
3 World’s Finest
Yes, the characters top out at the start of some other decks’ curves, with Lex and Toppy at the 3-drop slot. By now, though, you see that the point of the deck is not to compete with opposing bruisers. Instead, you let your troops get slaughtered and then take your revenge. The deck’s 1-drops all cause a small amount of suffering, but it’ll add up over time—especially because your chance of recruiting one on turn 1 is around 100% with the mulligan. Over the long haul, Ratcatcher will do the most for your cause, and he works well in the later turns as a secondary recruit.
Turn 2 is Mole Man time. He’s likely to be your biggest character on the board, no matter what turn it is. He can be a burden on defense, however, as you can’t reinforce him. I originally included Granny Goodness to help him out a bit, but I soon found that Toy Soldiers and Mr. Mxyzptlk were better, and they don’t work so well with Granny around. Mr. Mxyzptlk is not the character you want to recruit on turn 2. Save him for when you’ve got a team-up going and can get him for free. His stats are low, but he’s really just around to help frustrate your opponent when it comes time to solve the Anti-Life Equation. You see, since he can’t be stunned, you can choose him as your Equation victim if you “lose” the bid and he won’t become stunned. Atomic Skull is a great choice if you have the initiative. He keeps getting better and better as you rack up the ongoing plot twists. It’s best to wait until you have the initiative to recruit him, since his low stats mean he won’t do you much good without it.
On turn 3, you want to get your drawing engine going, so put Lex into play at all costs. He doesn’t affect things on his first turn out, so hide him somewhere until his power goes online at the start of the following turn. Topkick is not your turn 3 backup plan. If you don’t have Lex, recruit two or three characters instead. Topkick is your turn 4 play, assuming you’ve already sent some Hunger Dogs where they belong. The main purpose of the Hunger Dogs is to fuel Ride of the Black Racer and then jump back to hand on turn 4 with a boosted Topkick. At a two character discard, the Ride is expensive, so getting the Dogs back in hand is crucial for ensuring that there are always cards to ship to the bottom of your deck once you’ve drawn a new hand with the Prez.
The Ride can be crucial around turn 4 or 5, when you still have a good chance of stunning your opponent’s biggest character. Stun it, then kill it and keep his or her team at a manageable power level. Your chances to stun their larger characters improve greatly with Hordes of Apokolips. Team attack with three 1-drops and the Hordes, and you should have no trouble taking down characters up to a cost of 5.
The rest of the dedicated resource cards are all ongoing plot twists. It’s crucial to draw an ongoing plot twist every turn to keep Lex, Mole Man, and Atomic Skull happy. Six team-ups take up several of those ongoing slots. With The Source out there, it’s smart to use a good variety of team-up cards so you don’t lose all of your team-up options in one fell swoop. Enough about team-ups, though . . . let’s jump right to the good stuff.
The combo of Anti-Life Equation and Gone But Not Forgotten is a powerful engine that should give fits to anyone who attempts to decipher the math of an average game. It’s like you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. When this deck “loses” the bid and has to stun a character . . . oh, darn. There goes 1 endurance (or more, if Ratcatcher is around). So, you can bid quite aggressively when the Equation is up for grabs. When there are multiple Equations going at once, you might even have a shot at winning the game! If you’re lucky enough to also have a Gone But Not Forgotten or two in your resource row, you’ll be sitting pretty no matter how bad your board presence seems. Of course, be careful when your endurance gets too low. If you’re at 0 or less by the time the wrap-up starts, your Forgotten’s won’t help you—the game will already have ended.
Let’s assume, however, that everything is going well. Why shouldn’t it? You can find the characters you want with Revenge Pact. Sometimes, if you have Toy Soldiers out, your characters will be bigger than your opponent’s characters. It’s a lower priority resource row play than Anti-Life Equation or Gone But Not Forgotten, though. When you play this deck, you have to understand that you aren’t there to have a fair fight. You’re there to get creamed, and in doing so, cause your opponent a lot of suffering.
On turn 5, it can be fun to play five 1-drops to trigger Topkick five times, which deals a quick 5 endurance loss. By this turn, you should have duplicates of either ALE or GBNF, so you can ride out the punishment they’re going to serve up. Also, there’s very little chance that your opponent will ever find his or her whole board stunned, so the Equation will always be in your favor, no matter the outcome.
Questions or comments may be sent to mhyra@metagame.com.