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The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017

While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
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Draft Profile: Tim Batow

Jeremy Blair

June 03, 2006

The morning sun is burning the shroud of fog off the Golden Gate Bridge, and Tim Batow takes his seat at the top table for Day 2 X-Men Draft action. Tim broke away from the pack on Day 1 with his team’s innovative Checkmate/Villains United curve build, scoring 8 wins in 10 rounds of play. As the diminutive but fierce leader of Team Alternate Win Condition (TAWC), Tim has established himself as a dominant force in both Constructed and Sealed/Draft play. However, he had his work cut out for him as he stared down many proficient drafters, including Kim Caton, Gabe Walls, Scott Hunstad, and Vidi Wijaya.

Prior to the draft, Tim discussed his preference for archetypal deck builds. He reported prior success with the “Blackbird Blue” deck, the “Morlock evasion” deck, and drafting with the strong characters and plot twists available exclusively to the Hellfire Club. His first pack and pick choices would offer him a great deal of tension between his draft favorites . . .

As he sorted through the offerings of his first pack, he identified strong potential choices in Retribution, Join the Club, and some low-drop Morlock characters with evasion. Tim selected Retribution and indicated an early preference for the Morlock evasion strategy. His second pick was Shinobi Shaw, White King followed by Bum’s Rush, Hump, Servant of Masque, and Neutralized. Things were seemingly falling into place for the Morlock build. The essential blue cards for the deck were piling up, but there was a curious absence of Morlock characters.

Tim shifted slightly with his sixth pick, selecting Beast, Feline Geneticist. This was a good call for a number of reasons. Beast has a big body with 5 ATK / 5 DEF, and his ability to search a location for free can be superior in Sealed/Draft play. He is a bastion in the Blackbird Blue low rush strategy and thus provided Tim with a potential window into another of his favorite Draft builds. Picks 7-14 would provide the potential structure for an X-Men rush strategy.

Pack One Pick Order

Pick 1: Retribution

Pick 2: Shinobi Shaw, White King

Pick 3: Bum’s Rush

Pick 4: Hump, Servant of Masque

Pick 5: Neutralized

Pick 6: Beast, Feline Geneticist

Pick 7: X-Men United, Team-Up

Pick 8: Longshot, Hero of Mojoworld

Pick 9: Brave New World, Team-Up

Pick 10: Drain Essence

Pick 11: Xorn, Shen Xorn

Pick 12: Nightcrawler, Swashbuckler

Pick 13: X-Corp: Amsterdam

Pick 14: X-Corp: Hong Kong

After getting several X-Men-related cards on the wheel, Tim had a wide range of options for his draft deck design. He appeared to be invested in both the Morlocks and X-Men teams, but he still needed key cards for either faction. His deck seemed ripe for a high pick Blackbird Blue, Shrapnel Blast, or low-drop evasion Morlock character. Tim cracked his second pack and took a first pick Marrow, Gene Nation. He passed up a second-pick Turnabout for a highly valued Archangel, Angel to achieve synergy with the X-Corp location cards secured in the final picks of his first pack. The next few picks netted Tim a Scaleface, Dragon Lady, then Cannonball, Blast Field followed by Artie, Arthur Maddicks. While he drafted some of the characters necessary to make a strong curve, pack two left Tim with a bit of a hollow feeling. He later reported, “By pack two, [I] realized that if I had taken Join the Club as a first pick in pack one, that my Hellfire deck could have been the nuts.” Several top quality Hellfire Club characters, locations, and plot twists were lapping the table unselected.

Pack Two Pick Order

Pick 1: Marrow, Gene Nation

Pick 2: Archangel, Angel

Pick 3: Scaleface, Dragon Lady

Pick 4: Cannonball, Blast Field

Pick 5: Artie, Arthur Maddicks

Pick 6: Doctor Druid, Anthony Druid

Pick 7: Shadowcat, Katya

Pick 8: Xorn, Shen Xorn

Pick 9: Exodus, Acolyte

Pick 10: Sub-Mariner, Namor

Pick 11: Join the Club

Pick 12: Blob, Freedom Force

Pick 13: Wundagore Citadel

Pick 14: Morlock Justice

The final pack always makes or breaks a Draft deck, and Tim’s deck was certainly no exception. Tim was counting on some key character and twist acquisition to shore up his decklist. In our post-draft interview, Tim noted that he was short on 4-drops and wanted to make the deck better than “some random curve deck.”

He landed a bomb with his first pick Mech Bay. Attack modifiers are key in Draft, and a location that grants +2 ATK to a character on a repetitive basis warrants respect. Pick two from his third pack provided Caliban, Mutant Bloodhound; this was followed by Viper, White Warrior Princess and SNIKT!. Tim acquired three 4-drop characters to save his curve and finished the pack by hate drafting some key Hellfire Club twists that were lapping the table.

Pack Three Pick Order

Pick 1: Mech Bay

Pick 2: Caliban, Mutant Bloodhound

Pick 3: Viper, White Warrior Princess

Pick 4: SNIKT!

Pick 5: Sub-Mariner, Namor

Pick 6: Bishop, XSE Commando

Pick 7: Havok, Critical Mass

Pick 8: Roberto Da Costa, Heir to the Throne

Pick 9: Cyclops, Blue Leader

Pick 10: Rogue, Anna Marie

Pick 11: Army of One

Pick 12: Tarot, Hellion

Pick 13: The Alley

Pick 14: The Hill

Tim’s final decklist combined the X-men and Morlocks with a splash of the strong reservist Avenger characters, tied together by an Energy Mutant trait undercurrent. He felt uneasy about the deck and predicted a 1-2 finish. “I really feel like picking Hellfire Club early in pack one would have given me an amazing deck,” he said. Instead, he assembled what he felt was a very “common curve build” with great plot twists that depend on characters that did not make it to the party. This draft brought to light the skill intensity required to draft the X-Men set. So much depends on strong archetypal cards like Blackbird Blue, Shaw Industries, Shrapnel Blast, and others, and a drafter must negotiate pick orders, teams, and now traits.