If you’re like me, you came into the weekend believing that Teen Titans is simply the latest beatdown deck to hit the scene, except this time it’s DC-based instead of the usual Brotherhood or Sentinel decks that we’re used to seeing from Marvel-based decks. If this is the case, allow GenCon $10K winner Tim Willoughby and mad English deckbuilding genius John Ormerod to enlighten you.

We sat down with these two players to discuss the intricacies of the new deck on the block, which does usually play the beatdown role but can offer you so much more—if you know what’s going on. They’ve broken down most of the tricks that the deck has to offer below in a card-by-card fashion, in order to educate players on the hidden synergies of the deck that you may not notice unless you’ve playtested for countless hours. Not only did Teen Titans win the $10K, but one of Willoughby’s teammates also piloted the beast to an excellent 6-1 record on Day 1 of the Pro Circuit, proving the deck is powerful enough to win no matter what the quality of the opposition.

What follows should be read with an English accent, since it’s directly from John and Tim.


Heroic Sacrifice/Home Surgery

Heroic Sacrifice is the best defensive plot twist ever. The obvious benefit is that when faced with a monster attacker on the other side of the board, you play Heroic Sacrifice and your big guy doesn’t get stunned, while your little guy gets stunned instead, and you take no breakthrough endurance loss. This lets you live much longer in the late game, letting you eke out points of damage against control decks that would otherwise kill you at that point. However, there are synergies in this deck that aren’t obviously apparent, especially when Home Surgery is involved.

Example: Someone attacks Garth with a bigger attacker, and you have any weenie in play, like say Pantha, perhaps the most common Titan you would use for this purpose. You would Heroic Sacrifice, paying the cost of stunning Pantha, and then respond with Home Surgery, whose cost is to exhaust Garth, recovering Pantha. You would take 1 total endurance loss from that attack and keep both characters.

Example 2: In a square formation, you have Dawn Granger ◊ Dove in front and Garth behind. Your opponent stuns Dawn and then sends a big guy who hasn’t got flight to attack Garth. They declare intent to attack, and then you Home Surgery back Dawn (preferably exhausting someone other than Garth) who now conveniently sits in front of Garth, making the attack illegal.

There are also lots of tricks with Home Surgery and Kid Flash, sometimes allowing you to actually recover Bart Allen after he’s been stunned in a turn and counterattack back with the help of another Titan to ready him.

Tim: “My favorite play with the whole deck involves this. There are Gotham Knights and Gotham Knights/Teen Titans decks that run Dynamic Duo, a card which doesn’t allow characters to be stunned when team attacking. Sometimes the deck makes a very clever play to team attack with all the little guys and then play Flame Trap, which means that all your little guys get stunned, and all their guys not only don’t stun, but they also ready and get to attack again because the defenders are no longer in play when the attack resolves.

If they try to do that when you have Heroic Sacrifice, you can respond to their Flame Trap by playing Heroic Sacrifice, removing all of their team attackers from the attack because Heroic Sacrifice makes the attack illegal, at which point they are no longer team attackers, and then all their attackers stun to Flame Trap.”


Tamaran

In the mirror match, if your opponent has both Hawk and Dove in play, you can use Tamaran to power up your opponent’s Hank Hall and Overload him.


Red Star

Red Star is the key guy in the deck. A lot of times you won’t recruit as much as you might in order to use Red Star each turn. Your opponent will often have a hard time killing you in the later game because you get to reinforce all your guys and have Heroic Sacrifice and Home Surgery, so you grind out the win. If you get a second Red Star, you can use the first one, then recruit the second one and use it again so that you do 10 to your opponent in one turn without even needing to attack.

Perhaps the best power of Red Star is that, when you power him up, you can attack with him and he can’t be stunned for the whole turn. It also works with Tamaran, so you don’t need a second copy of Red Star to do it. The deck has numerous ways to ready Red Star, including Press the Attack and Teen Titans Go!, meaning you can get in lots of attacks with him, and he’s unstunnable for the whole turn.

Red Star becomes even better when you introduce him to his little friend Tim Drake ◊ Robin, Young Detecti