Yes, I know that you’ve all been holding your breath in eager anticipation of yet another exciting week of Breaking Ground. Well, you can all finally exhale; it’s time for another bout of deckbuilding fun!

This week’s deck theme comes from a suggestion I’ve received from a number of readers. Following the last Pro Circuit at Gen Con Indy, a lot of people started to take notice of the amazing power of +1 ATK / +1 DEF counters. When a tiny little 2-drop like Blackbriar Thorn can reach the size of an 8-drop within a few short turns, players are bound to sit up and take notice. Following the PC, I received more than a few emails requesting a deck that could accumulate +1 ATK / +1 DEF counters the way that The Donkey Club’s Modern Age Shadowpact deck could.

Unfortunately for me, Tim Capes already beat me to the punch.

From Shadowpact . . . to Secret Society

If you followed Anand Khare’s excellent coverage of $10K Columbus, then you should already be somewhat familiar with the deck to which I am referring. Tim Capes created an extraordinary concoction known affectionately as “Lost in Space.” The deck uses multiple copies of Sinister Citadel to KO free-recruit characters like Haywire, Suicidal Lover and grant +1 ATK / +1 DEF counters to powerful Secret Society leader characters like Lex Luthor, Criminal Genius and Gorilla Grodd. This combo, simple in concept, becomes quite difficult for opposing players to deal with because Sinister Citadel can transfer counters around to deal with threats against characters in play.

Of course, Tim’s deck was more than simply a counter-generating machine. Tim had many other clever tricks built in. Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose fit the character-KO theme well, providing additional utility by finding much-needed locations. This is particularly useful when the deck has several methods of bringing characters into play for free. Deadshot, Floyd Lawton is a great card for dealing with decks that place heavy emphasis on lower-cost characters. As long as the opponents don’t have a way to nullify Deadshot’s effect (like Cloak of Nabu), then none of their 1-, 2-, or 3-drops will be safe from harm.

But my favorite splash in the deck is Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Optimistic Youth. Obviously, Frankie Raye is useful as a free-recruit character, but her usefulness is magnified by the fact that she can accelerate your draw. As I have said countless times, I love drawing extra cards! By discarding a card with a cost of 4 or greater, Frankie Raye nets you an additional two cards. When paired with character cards that are easily recurred, like Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster and The Phantom Stranger, Wandering Hero, Frankie Raye actually becomes a source of hand advantage. Let’s see . . . A free character . . . that can be used to fetch a location or give me a +1 ATK / +1 DEF counter . . . and provides me with extra cards. Is there any downside to this?

Given our flair for the unique and innovative, my teammates and I were all very impressed with Mr. Capes’s creation. A good part of our idle chitchat over the weekend involved the possibilities for the deck concept. Obviously, free-recruit characters have always been good, and they have become even better in recent sets. Not only do these free characters represent improved board position, but also many of them now have additional beneficial effects. When we have an engine like the one in Lost in Space that can provide multiple levels of utility for these characters, we can garner benefits beyond those of standard decks. The question, then, is whether there is a more efficient framework for this strategy.

This is how we arrived at Devil’s Due.

. . . To Doom

Unless you’re brand-spanking-new to Vs. System (or you’ve been in a catatonic state for the past year and a half), you should be familiar with Devil’s Due. This innocuous little card was a lynchpin for the now defunct Light Show combo that completely dominated the metagame following PC: New York 2005. To be fair, it is certainly understandable why Devil’s Due was underestimated at first glance. KO your own characters? Who wants to do that? Of course, this mindset only applies if you are referring to a standard deck strategy that wants to keep all of its recruited characters in play. Consider how the situation changes if we apply the strategy of Lost in Space. Now we have multiple characters that come into play each turn for free. While they can provide some incidental effect like drawing cards or exhausting to return The Phantom Stranger, Wandering Hero, their purpose in large part is to provide fodder for Devil’s Due to give counters to our characters.

But wait, there’s more: Devil’s Due is team-stamped to the Doom team. Why is this relevant? Because that means we get to play Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius! While Shadowpact and Secret Society may be potent control teams in DC Modern Age and Silver Age respectively, we have the ultimate control force in Vs. System in Dr. Doom. Not only will we get access to Dr. Doom’s plot twist–control effect and the board-control power of Reign of Terror, but we’ll also get to make our central character a behemoth. If you thought the customary 7 ATK / 6 DEF Dr. Doom was a force to be reckoned with, just wait until we drop five or ten +1 ATK / +1 DEF counters on the good doctor.

TDC Shadowpact made Blackbriar Thorn a counter-brandishing beast in DC Modern Age. Tim Capes KO’d a slew of small characters to enlarge his leaders in Silver Age. Now we’re going to use Dr. Doom, Devil’s Due, and Frankie Raye to go counter crazy in Golden Age.

The Build

In the featured role this week, we have Frankie Raye appearing no less than four times. Joining her at the 1-drop spot are Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom; Mikado and Mosha; and Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster. Obviously, Boris is the plot twist searcher extraordinaire for team Doom, and we could certainly use his help finding plot twists when the need arises. Mikado and Mosha is one of our control cards of choice, given the ability of these angels to stop opposing 1-drops from being thorns in our side. Finally, Mr. Mxyzptlk is one of those cards that will undoubtedly help us maintain the hand advantage we’re so eager for. I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that we’re going to be playing a copy of Haywire, Suicidal Lover in our deck. I know that he isn’t a 1-drop, but this was probably the best place to categorize him. Since we’re all about free-recruit characters, having a character card that is truly free is an added benefit to us.

Our primary 2-drop is the first piece of what my local players have affectionately dubbed “the engine.” Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose is already well renowned for her ability to trade characters for locations. Undoubtedly, there will be a few locations that we would like to get into play. Since we have a location searcher in Poison Ivy and several free-recruit characters that we can KO to her effect, we should be set to find our green cards easily. Our other 2-drop is our tech for dealing with equipment-heavy decks such as High Voltage and Fate Squad (I hear that they’re popular nowadays). Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon won’t have any Gotham Knights Army characters to bestow his attack boost on, but we really want the commish around to get rid of troublesome equipment cards. When we have to face off against a deck toting the Fate Artifacts or multiple copies of Advanced Hardware, 3 endurance will seem like a small price to pay to get rid of those problematic equipment cards.

The second component of the engine is none other than Dr. Light, Master of Holograms. Obviously, our build thrives off of bringing free-recruit characters into play. But Dr. Light gives us the added benefit of bringing characters into play even if they are not free. With Dr. Light in our build, we no longer have to fret if we miss Poison Ivy on turn 2, because the Master of Holograms can put her on the board in later turns. In addition, Dr. Light makes it possible for us to bring Boris or Commissioner Gordon into play without us having to miss our curve.

Turn 4 is where we bring out the big dog: Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius. I would assume that most of you know just how powerful the 4-drop Doom is. His ability to reuse a plot twist and block opposing plot twists makes him a force to be reckoned with, despite the fact that he is a relatively small 4-drop. Of course, Doom’s size shouldn’t be a problem in our deck, as we plan to start dropping counters on him once he hits play. 7 ATK / 6 DEF? Pshaw! 17 ATK / 16 DEF is more like it!

Turn 5 shows us that it’s not just the low drops that can give Dr. Doom counters. One of the nice things about having accelerated card drawing with Frankie Raye is that we should have plenty of cards in our KO’d pile. This is the perfect environment for fueling the effect of Ultron ◊ Ultron 11. Having a 5-drop that your opponent won’t have much chance to get rid of is tremendous. In our build, Ultron is even better than usual because he becomes a continuous source of counters. As long as we have cards in the KO’d pile that we are willing to part with, we can KO Ultron to Devil’s Due. After the pittance that we must pay for his effect, Ultron returns to play, ready to do battle once more after his brief trip to the KO’d pile.

Turn 6 gives us an indication of how cards with seemingly negative effects can actually be turned into positives. Normally, we wouldn’t want to play cards that force us to send our characters in play back to our hand, but returning a card like Frankie Raye can actually be beneficial for us because it allows us to recruit her again and dig through our deck a bit more. Thus, Supremor is an excellent play for us on turn 6. Not only does this Kree giant come with a very formidable 14 ATK / 14 DEF frame, but he also provides a one-time beneficial effect for us by bouncing a character of our choice back to our hand. For anyone else, this could be a sharp penalty. But for us, we’ll gladly take the character back, especially since we’ll be getting a 7-drop for the price of a 6-drop!

Two copies of The Phantom Stranger, Wandering Hero comprise our play at the 7-slot. The Phantom Stranger, with his decent stats, flight, and range, isn’t a bad play for us; however, our primary reason for including the Wandering Hero is to supplement our hand advantage. We could easily KO our characters to Devil’s Due right after they come into play, but it would be far more efficient for us to put our characters to use before that happens by exhausting them to some beneficial effect. Not only does The Phantom Stranger make our free recruits more effective, but he is also a logical discard for Frankie Raye’s effect. This gives us a true hand benefit from her draw effect, because the tradeoff for her effect is lessened by a card. Combined with “free” cards like Mr. Mxyzptlk, The Phantom Stranger will invariably tilt hand advantage in our favor.

Our final character is Professor X, Mental Master at 8. To be fair, I’m not entirely sure that this is the correct 8-drop. Originally, I had Apocalypse filling the role, but I found that Apocalypse’s effect really wasn’t relevant in most of the games that I played. In addition, his lack of team affiliation became a bit of an issue (more on that in a moment). Professor X, on the other hand, is an affiliated character that can fill the role of both an 8- and a 9-drop. With that kind of utility, as well as a very powerful effect, he seemed like a solid choice for the role of 8-drop in this build.

We have quite a smorgasbord of goodies in our plot twist selections. Obviously, the deck needs the maximum four copies of Devil’s Due, as it is one of the core components of the engine. With the assistance of Frankie Raye, we will usually draw into one of the four copies by turn 4. If we somehow miss, though, we can use Boris to get a copy into play for us. With Haywire being a reservist, we can simply recruit Boris (or use Dr. Light to bring him into play). After activating Doom’s servant to find Devil’s Due, we can recruit our 0-drop and put Devil’s Due in the resource row to replace it.

Lately, I have tried to stay away from building decks with exclusive rares that some players may not have access to. But because this deck is a fairly focused combo deck, I decided to build with all of the cards that I would use if I were going to take this to a competitive event. So, the searchers for the deck are a couple of money rares: Straight to the Grave and Enemy of My Enemy. Yes, both of these cards are high-end searchers, and for good reason. Straight to the Grave has amazing synergy with Mr. Mxyzptlk, The Phantom Stranger, and Dr. Light. And, assuming that we have any recursion effects (which we do), it can act as a straight search card for any character in our deck. As far as Enemy of My Enemy goes, I think that we have characters representing thirteen different teams in our deck. Do I really need to explain why Enemy of My Enemy is such a powerful card in this build? I thought not.

Despite the massive number of teams in the deck, the fact of the matter is that this is still a Doom-based deck. As such, we can certainly find a way to fit team-stamped Doom cards into the build. Our first choice is Reign of Terror. This is yet another reason for our opponents to fear the man that is Doom, as he has the power to send their low drops scampering back to their hands. Still, our opponents know that Dr. Doom is the lynchpin character of the deck, and they may try to keep him in check by utilizing cards like Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal, Sharpshooter or No Man Escapes the Manhunters. So, we’ll play a couple copies of Expendable Ally to keep our opponents’ tricks at bay. What’s better than negating a targeted effect on our Dr. Doom? Negating an effect and getting +5 ATK in the process. As if Dr. Doom wasn’t big enough already! Finally, we’ll throw in two copies of Master of Puppets. This card was suggested by local area player Julian Martin, and it seems like a very strong inclusion. Obviously, we would benefit more from having multiple copies in play, so why only two copies? Well, first is the fact that we will have a lot of competition for space in the resource row. While Master of Puppets is a potent burn card, there are other cards (like Devil’s Due) that take priority over it in the resource row. Secondly, our crazy KO tactics won’t really start to happen until turn 4, so we’ll probably want to avoid playing too many cards that will be effectively dead up until that point. Still, one copy of Master of Puppets in our resource row will usually burn our opponents for at least 5 endurance on each turn after turn 5. If we play through turn 7, that’s a net effect of 15 endurance. That extra damage can end the game one or two turns earlier.

Moving on, we have the deck’s lone ATK pump. Originally, I had included Savage Beatdown because it was a guaranteed +5 ATK and could be discarded for Frankie Raye’s effect, but I found that I rarely wanted to discard my pump cards for Frankie Raye. Also, I found that I was recruiting at least three characters every turn, usually closer to five or six. In this situation, Surrounded seems like a better play. In our build, Surrounded will generally be just as big an ATK pump as Savage Beatdown, and the additional DEF boost can be helpful for characters like Ultron. Because our adamantium robot won’t generally get the benefit of counters from Devil’s Due, the extra DEF can allow him to attack 5- and 6-drops without having to worry about stunning back.

Our final plot twists are our tech cards. First, we have our answer to off-curve decks in Flame Trap. While Reign of Terror can dominate an opponent’s board on turn 4, we may find our opponents underdropping in later turns. If we have spent the time and effort to put counters on a copy of Doom in play, then we probably won’t want to recruit a new copy just to play Reign of Terror again. Flame Trap is therefore the obvious answer. Of course, if we find that we are facing a deck for which we don’t need Flame Trap, then it is an easy discard for Frankie Raye’s effect. Now that we’ve answered the off-curve matchups, let’s answer the matchup against power-up decks. How potent will Lost City or Nth Metal be if our opponents can’t power-up? The answer is “Not at all.” A single copy of Unmasked will generally be enough to foil the plans of Big Brotherhood and Good Guys. Without the ability to power-up and make their characters larger, these decks won’t have the ammunition to take down our counter-enhanced giants.

At the end, we have the critical locations. Obviously, if we want to play our free recruits again after KO’ing them, then we will need effective recursion. Two copies each of Avalon Space Station and Slaughter Swamp are certainly a good start. With Poison Ivy, it is relatively simple to get both of these locations into play at the same time. This gives us quite a few more options; we can get extra copies of Frankie Raye to recruit, or fetch any later drops that we might have sent to the KO’d pile. Another recursion card we’ll play is Secret Sanctuary. Go ahead . . . I’ll wait while you click on the hyperlink to see what this card that you’ve never even heard of does. Hmmm hmmm hmmm . . . You’re back? Good. Of course your question is, “Why are we playing a JLA team-stamped card when there are no JLA characters in the deck?” Let’s put it this way: If we activate Secret Sanctuary, we will be able to exhaust zero JLA characters with a combined willpower of 0. Thus, we will be able to return a character card from our KO’d pile with a cost of 0 or less. Do we have anyone in our deck that this applies to? Haywire, you say? You are correct! Secret Sanctuary can fetch back our 0-drop for free. This brainchild of my little aquatic buddy Tim Batow is yet another way for us to gain hand advantage.

Our final two locations set up another nifty combo in the deck. Remember when I said that the fact that Professor X is affiliated is relevant? Now, you’ll find our why. One problem with playing a deck that has characters from thirteen different teams is that we can run into problems like not being able to reinforce or getting demolished by Betrayal. Fortunately, Infinite Crisis gave us an answer to these problems in the locations Rann and Thanagar. While these locations cannot be in play at the same time together, they both have the benefit of giving our affiliated characters a common team affiliation.* So we have an answer to our team differences in a single location? Brilliant. For our deck, we’ll go with Rann. Since our heavy hitters will be rather large, our opponents generally won’t attack them unless they are reasonably sure of a stun. Thus, the extra DEF is rarely going to make a difference. The extra ATK, on the other hand, will almost always be useful.

But that’s not all! Now that we have all of our characters sharing one team affiliation, it seems to me that if we have other team affiliations in play, we can use a Team-Up to give them a few other team affiliations as well (for example, Doom). This is the reason why we will need a few copies of UN Building. Once we have Dr. Doom in play and Rann face up in our resource row, we can flip UN Building to team-up Doom, Rann, and another team affiliation (depending on what other characters are in play). Since every affiliated character has the Rann team affiliation, and Rann is teamed-up with Doom, every affiliated character that we control has the Doom team affiliation! Now, the goodness that is Devil’s Due is no longer limited to Dr. Doom and Ultron. If you thought that Supremor was big before, just wait until he gets a few counters on him to make him the size of an 8-drop. The Phantom Stranger’s 17 DEF is respectable, but just four counters make him big enough that most 8-drops can’t stun him. And Professor X takes a quantum leap from being a small 8-drop to crushing anything that gets in his way. Now Dr. Doom won’t need Forced Allegiance to make everyone do his bidding!

We now have the technology to make Dr. Doom bigger, faster, and stronger. Let’s examine the build that’s going to give Victor Von Doom his bionic boost:

The Six Million Dollar Doom (60 cards)

Characters (26)

1 Haywire, Suicidal Lover

1 Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom

4 Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Optimistic Youth

1 Mikado and Mosha, Angels of Destruction

1 Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster

1 Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon

4 Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose

4 Dr. Light, Master of Holograms

4 Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius

1 Ultron ◊ Ultron 11, Army

1 Supremor, Starforce

2 The Phantom Stranger, Wandering Hero

1 Professor X, Mental Master

Plot Twists (24)

4 Devil’s Due

4 Enemy of My Enemy

2 Expendable Ally

1 Flame Trap

2 Master of Puppets

4 Reign of Terror

2 Surrounded

4 Straight to the Grave

1 Unmasked

Locations (9)

2 Avalon Space Station

1 Secret Sanctuary

2 Slaughter Swamp

2 Rann

2 UN Building, Team-Up

With any Doom-based deck, I usually prefer to work with the even initiatives; this allows you the first crack at the action with Reign of Terror when you recruit Doom on turn 4. Having the freedom to send an opposing Dr. Light back to your opponent’s hand before he can activate can be an enormous blessing. Of course, against aggressive decks that don’t have any control or disruption, the odd initiatives can be preferable. This will allow you the freedom to use Reign of Terror to take control of the board on turn 4, and then use your attacks (and your hopefully ginormous Dr. Doom) on turn 5 to keep your opponent at bay.

I’ve been pretty consistently holding onto any hand that has Frankie Raye and a card that costs more than 4. Getting that early draw boost can greatly aid you in hitting all of your early combo pieces. Once you have most of your combo in place, the accelerated draw provided by multiple recruits of Frankie Raye and the search capacity of Enemy of My Enemy and Straight to the Grave should help you find the cards you need to finish the game. If you happen to falter in the early turns and fail to get your combo set up by turn 4, don’t be afraid to underdrop on turn 5 or 6 so that you can get all the necessary pieces in place.

We’re done here. This wraps up another week of reader suggestions for combo decks. We’ll have a very inspired combo next week from the Ghostbuster himself, J-M Erlendson, one that will show you a way to make the most of your resources. In the meantime, if you have an idea for a Vs. System card combo that you’d like to see explored, send me an email detailing your weird and wacky idea. Who knows? It may be the latest and greatest thing to grace the pages of Breaking Ground!

* Yes, we could have played Battleworld and given all of our characters (even unaffiliated) a common team affiliation. But this would also give our opponent’s characters a common team affiliation. All things considered, it is usually not in your best interests to provide aid to your opponents.

Michael Barnes (a.k.a. BigSpooky) is an avid Vs. System player who is a founding member of Team Alternate Win Condition (TAWC). When he isn’t concocting crazy deck ideas that no sane person would think of, he occupies his spare time working as an accountant in Dallas, TX. Any questions, comments, suggestions, or Golden Age goofiness that you might have for Michael can be sent to him at BigSpooky1@hotmail.com.