While there were definitely a wide variety of decks for players coming into the tournament to choose from, very few of those players went outside of charted territory when the time came to make the final decision. Wild Vomit, New Brotherhood, Curve Sentinels, and even Ben Seck’s Cosmic Cops deck from the Australian $10K all made an appearance today, but there seemed to be little in the way of major deck innovation.
Matthew Meyers came here as a member of Bam Bam Bigelow’s Gigolos, and regardless of what the rest of his team chose to play, he never had any doubts about what he’d be running this weekend. “I am a gigantic Superman fan. When Man of Steel was announced, I decided that I was just going to play Superman. I bought four boxes of Man of Steel and traded away every card from the other affiliations to get four of each card I needed.”
Phantom Phone Booth
played by Matthew Meyers
4 Gangbuster
4 Superman, Red
2 Linda Danvers ◊ Supergirl
4 Superman, Clark Kent
2 Alpha Centurion
3 Cir-El Supergirl
2 Superman: Blue
3 Kara Zor-El ◊ Supergirl
1 Superman, Kal-El
2 Eradicator, Soul of Krypton
1 Superman, False Son
2 Superman, Man of Steel
4 Acrobatic Dodge
4 Cover Fire
4 Man of Tomorrow
3 Overload
4 Savage Beatdown
4 Super Speed
4 Cadmus Labs
4 Phantom Zone
The deck has 61 cards, which is apparently a trademark among the 3BG crowd. The deck had three copies each of Super Speed and Overload, and the crew knew that the fourth copy of one of those two cards would be the “essential” 61st card.
“Super Speed is really good against Curve Sentinels, and I thought that would be the dominant deck, so I went with four copies of that.”
One of the reasons Matthew likes his version of the deck so much is because it has a variety of cards that overpower the top decks.
“Phantom Zone is disgusting,” Matthew said, offering his highest form of praise for a card. “It shuts down anything that revolves around returning stuff from the KO'd pile. Garth, Avalon Space Station, South American Sentinel Base, Reconstruction Program . . . plus, there is the Jean Grey factor. Once I see Jean Grey, I start working on their KO'd pile. And they can’t KO Phantom Zone with Ka-Boom! because you can activate it again and replace it with the second ability.”
Phantom Zone saved Matt from a bad formation in the previous round, when a Cir-El ◊ Supergirl got caught with her pants down in the support row after his opponent played Koriand’r ◊ Starfire. Matthew was able to flip up his Phantom Zone and eat a character to negate Koriand’r’s ability.
Gangbuster also merits the “disgusting” label from Meyer because of how easily it dominates the Curve Sentinels matchup. In round 5, he utterly dismantled an opponent playing Curve Sentinels by team-attacking his Gangbuster into a Mark V and taking down two robots with one blow.
Superman, Blue has been great for him all day, taking down a variety of 4-drops ranging from Doom to Terra. Despite the cosmic counter–intensive abilities of many of his cards, he didn’t include Professor Emil Hamilton. Although Emil is a starting point for many players, Matthew felt that it took too much time to get the ability going and he was reluctant to discard cards.
After the early versions of the deck were having some trouble, 3BG quickly remedied the issues by adding four copies each of Cover Fire and Acrobatic Dodge. “The best offense is a good defense.” After adding the Savage Beatdowns and its partner in crime the Overload, the deck was ready for its debut weekend.
After eight rounds of play, Matthew had taken the deck to a 6-2 record with losses in the first and seventh rounds.
Round 1 vs. Teen Titans - Loss
Round 2 vs. FF Burn - Win
Round 3 vs. The New Brotherhood - Win, despite his opponent getting two copies of The New Brotherhood and a Savage Land in the first few turns
Round 4 vs. Curve Sentinels - Win
Round 5 vs. Curve Sentinels - Win
Round 6 vs. Teen Titans - Win
Round 7 vs. Curve Sentinels - Loss
Round 8 vs. Curve Sentinels - Win
Three guesses as to what the most popular deck was today.
One card from Matt’s deck that has been the subject of some criticism was Kara Zor-El ◊ Supergirl over Kal-El, although he does have one copy of Kal-El in the deck. “Kal-El is good,” explained Matt. “But I want the world to know this—Kara Zor-El is better. She is superior because she works on offense and defense. Plus, when you combine her with Superman, Man of Steel on turn 8, your opponent’s first two attacks do absolutely 0 endurance loss.”
Both of Matthew’s teams were faring well today. Matt was off to a 6-2 start with Team Superman, and his 3BG teammate John Rich (playing Pimp my Bot) was also at 6-2. The Tampa-based team, which also includes Joseph Corey, Jeremy Blair, John Viola, Josh Wiitanen, and Dave DeMichele, are looking for a big win to put their team up into the same rarified air as their rivals on Team Realmworx. Phantom Phone Booth just might be the ticket.