There seem to be infinite variations on the Marvel Knights theme this weekend, with Marvel Knights teaming up with just about every affiliation in the Modern Age format for a variety of effects. If you want to find a deck that is really covering all its affiliation bases, you need to look no further than Alex Shvartsman and his KGB crew (Kings Games Brooklyn). Alex and the boys from Brooklyn are all running a Marvel Knights hidden deck that features characters from four different affiliations.
The Marvel Knights get to team up with Crime Lords a la Deathstalker and Spider-Friends for the Wild Pack–hating Firestar. More than either of those two affiliations, the deck revolves around what Alex refers to as the Hounds engine. His deck features Hounds of Ahab in the 2-slot where most other hidden builds rely on the 2-drop Iron Fist.
“In testing, we called the deck MK Hounds,” explained Shvartsman. “Obviously Hounds of Ahab is not the only off-team card in the deck, but it really distinguishes it from most other MK decks that I saw from other teams. The Hounds engine refers to your ability to KO your opponent’s characters.”
The deck plays almost entirely hidden characters, with only Daredevil, Dagger, and Firestar visible to opponents. Alex laughed about his penchant for sticking Daredevil in the hidden area at the first whiff of violence. “Daredevil definitely has fear. He gets there, they propose an attack, and he says, “No, no, no . . . I’ll see you when it’s my turn to attack.”
Alex is perfectly content to play out his hidden characters and—in most cases—let his opponent attack him directly. “In return, what we get is all of our characters unstunned when it is our turn to attack every single turn, regardless of whose initiative it is. We get to choose how to attack. We can go down-curve with pumps or up-curve with No Fear. We have four Crushing Blows. Their characters are going to be exhausted, because its not like they are not going to attack, so on the attack back we get Crushing Blow, which is probably the best combat effect in the format assuming you can exploit it—which this deck does.”
One of the keys to playing the Hound engine successfully is getting the board to point where you are either even or ahead on characters. “You have four Quick Kills, so you can come in and stun a character, remove it with Quick Kill that turn, and leave them behind you on the character curve. Next turn, on your attack, your two biggest guys will fight their two biggest guys, and the Hounds will come in and mop up their biggest guy. Once you have them in that lock it is very difficult to get out.”
Even without the lock, Alex still finds the Hounds of Ahab to be priced right in range for what he expects on turn 2. “The best you can do for a concealed 2-drop is a 3ATK/2DEF, so you are not really giving up much to play the Hound engine. Because you’re playing seven Hounds, you can pitch them to each other for power-ups. It’s really just a very solid 2-drop by itself even when you don’t get to go off with the engine.”
The Army characteristic rarely comes in to play, as the deck just wants to exploit the redundancy of the Hounds in order to ensure they hit play on time. After turn 2, the deck is really hoping to stay on curve with Elektra and Luke Cage on turns 3 and 4. “There are situations where you don’t hit a 3-drop, so you play another Hound, but you are not planning to do that. You want one Hound, and you want to have it KO their biggest guy every turn—and draw a card with Luke Cage if you do it past turn 4.”
All four of the KGB players had secured Day 2 berths with the deck, and although Day 2 at a major tournament is old hat to a seasoned TCG veteran such as Shvartsman, it is quite the big deal for the rest of his quartet. “We have four people playing the deck: myself, Dustin Pidgeon, Dan Chulsky, and Rick Correador. Those three guys don’t have a lot of accomplishments yet. Even though they don’t have an extensive resume from other TCGs, they have been working really hard and playing this game a lot. Hopefully it will pay off for them this weekend.”
Dan Chulsky had the original idea for the deck and presented it to Shvartsman for consideration. He and Alex did about 90% of the design work with the rest of the gang pitching in to tweak and test. The deck has remained very close to the original design since almost the beginning. “The deck is actually not very different at all—it is within eight cards of the original. We have been playing with the numbers, like how many Psychovilles to play. At the very beginning of testing, we thought that everyone was going to play this deck because it just seemed so much better than every other deck we had. We were loading the deck with mirror match hate. Even to this day, we have two Psychovilles in the deck. That card has been very, very good by the way,” added Alex.
Seemingly as with every other deck in the Modern Age format, there are a couple of lousy matchups. “The really bad match-up is X-Statix. It’s very hard to win . . . I would say it is like a 30/70 match-up. The other bad matchup—I’m not sure how bad it is, but it is probably pretty bad—is the Honor Among Thieves. With Hammerhead, they really take advantage of us having hidden characters by attacking us directly and taking huge bites out of our endurance. It’s very difficult for us to outrace that.”
They claim their very best matchup is against the seemingly non-existent Witching Hour decks. “I have faced a lot of Midnight Sons decks in various forms and a fair amount of Underworld. Those are the deck I am seeing a lot of. I saw a fair amount of X-Statix early on but not any more—and I’m not expecting to see much of them, either. I am pretty scared of the Syndicate/Crime Lords deck. I am hoping to skillfully dodge it for a few more rounds—that is the plan.”
Alex claimed that the oft-overlooked Crushing Blow was the most potent card for him so far this weekend. As for any changes he would make, they all stemmed from a false sense of hysteria regarding Witching Hour decks coming into the tournament. “I would probably take out Firestar. There are very few off-curve decks. I would probably ditch her in favor of a third Deathstalker just to go up to seven 3-drops. Right now we are at six, and I have been feeling the pinch a little bit.”
All the decklists from Day 1 are going to be available at the end of today’s action if you want to see Alex’s precise numbers and line-up. For those you looking to go beyond the numbers Alex promised, “I am going to do a very extensive article on the deck for Metagame. If I am not exhausted, I will try to write it on the flight home.”