There’s New School, and then there’s Even Newer New School. This deck, originally discussed by Adam Prosak, is a variation of the highly regarded New School deck that debuted at Pro Circuit: New York. While the high number of teams and bizarre selection of one-of’s might seem confusing at first, every card in the deck has a very specific function or matchup in mind. I got an opportunity to discuss the deck with Josh Wiitanen, Adam’s teammate, after a victory over Curve Sentinels. Here’s the list—and yes, that’s really what they called the deck:

Happy 40th B-Day, Scott Elliot!

 

Characters

4 Dagger, Child of Light

4 Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom

4 Alfred Pennyworth

3 Micro-Chip

3 Robot Sentry

1 Barbara Gordon ◊ Oracle, Bird of Prey

4 Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius

1 Garth ◊ Tempest

1 Glorious Godfrey

2 Dr. Light, Arthur Light

1 Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man

1 Brimstone

1 Psimon

1 Silver Surfer

1 Lacuna

1 Shimmer

4 Bat-Signal

4 Reign of Terror

2 Mystical Paralysis

4 Midnight Sons

3 Marvel Team-Up

1 Have a Blast!

2 Fizzle

1 Press the Attack

While this deck is similar to Jason Hager’s PC build in a lot of ways, the addition of entire teams for cards like Garth (who has loyalty) and Silver Surfer (who requires a team-up to be of any use) mark a pretty sharp deviation from the original list. I asked Josh about a couple of the more interesting cards in his deck, and here’s what he had to say.

Garth ◊ Tempest: “He gives you a gigantic boost in any control matchup. Just the ability to recur Press the Attack an additional time a turn is worth it. The loyalty isn’t an issue (even though he can only be recruited via Midnight Sons on Teen Titans) because the deck is just so good at getting its team-ups. Furthermore, your resource row is often pressed for room because of all of your team-ups, so being able to recur Paralysis is pretty important. You often don’t have the luxury of putting a Paralysis down into your resource row and turning it down with Dr. Doom.”

Brimstone: “Brimstone basically ensures that you can’t lose the mirror. On your sixth turn, you generally want to play Spider-Man if you have the initiative or Dr. Light if you don’t. Then, on turn 7, you can play Brimstone and use him. This puts your opponent a turn behind, which means that on turn 8, you can play Silver Surfer, which can’t be answered by a 7-drop, and then on turn nine you can boost Dr. Light and use him to stun an opposing Surfer if they even have it. Also, it can keep your opponent off of Apocalypse until turn 9, by which point you can boost Dr. Light and Apocalypse shouldn’t matter that much anyway. In short, Brimstone is a great weapon in any matchup where the opponent intends on going to turn 8 or 9.”

I also asked Josh about what cards or matchups he fears the most, and he didn’t hesitate with his answer: “Foiled. I’ve lost to Foiled or to Batman, World’s Greatest Detective more than anything else, since they mess up your team-ups and can stunt your development. The most common mistake I see people make with this deck is flipping up their team-ups too early. If you’re playing against a deck that could have Foiled, you have to wait until turn 4 at the earliest (because Dr. Doom can blunt a bad turn to some degree), because if you get hit by Foiled on turn 3 or earlier, you basically can’t win. Just to try something out, I stacked my deck to get the perfect draw, then tried playing that draw with the intent of getting Foiled on turn 3, just to see if I could beat it with the perfect hand. I didn’t win. So yeah, basically, avoid getting Foiled.

“As far as bad matchups go, Brotherhood is probably the hardest, since it’s very aggressive and has Foiled. We actually considered adding a Tower of Babel to the deck to shut off Savage Land and The New Brotherhood. If you could recur it with Garth every turn, your opponent would be very hard-pressed to beat you without combat pumps. Surprisingly, the problem isn’t the extra team—there just isn’t room for it in the deck. We tried very hard to find something to cut, but there isn’t anything in there less important than a Tower of Babel would be.”

After five rounds, Josh is sitting in eighteenth place. Will this version of New School replace the older version, or will the more conventional build prove to be the way to go? Stay tuned to the coverage to find out this and more, here at Metagame.com!