Last week, I regaled you with tales of my dining experiences in the great city of Dallas. This week, I would like to go a little more in-depth into one of those experiences and lead to how it inspired this week’s featured card.
If you’ll recall from my last article, I had the “pleasure” of dining at the Nobu restaurant for lunch on December 16, 2005. Nobu is an extremely upscale Japanese restaurant in the heart of one of the more affluent areas of downtown Dallas. Needless to say, it is not a typical venue for lunch at my accounting firm. However, one of the partners in charge of the engagement I was on had promised one of my fellow associates that he would take the group out to lunch wherever she chose if she passed the Certified Public Accounting (CPA) examination.* And, as you can probably guess, she passed the exam and chose to go to lunch at Nobu.
“Allez Cuisine!”
While I like to consider myself a fairly cultured individual, I must confess that I haven’t had much opportunity to sample Japanese cuisine (coming from Oklahoma and all, where it is state law that all restaurants must serve a side of gravy with every dish). So, I was simultaneously repulsed and intrigued at the notion of sushi. On the one hand, I have always been a big fan of seafood, and getting the opportunity to sample different variations on my favorite foods could be a real treat. On the other hand, it’s friggin’ raw fish!
On the trip to the restaurant, I confessed my lack of experience with Japanese food to my colleagues. One of my fellow associates informed me that I should enjoy everything as long as I didn’t overdo it on the wasabi. I had heard about wasabi from watching various shows on the Food Network, so I confidently replied that he needn’t worry, because I was well-equipped to handle spicy dishes. After all, my father is quite the Tex-Mex gourmet. His only real downfall is that he tends to be a little heavy-handed on the spices occasionally. As such, I have built up quite the tolerance for spicy food.
My fellow associate, however, informed me that the spiciness of wasabi was “a different kind of heat.” Now, to my knowledge, there were really only two kinds of heat that food could generate—either spiciness or a literal “burn the roof of your mouth” heat. So, in my blissful ignorance, I shook my head and ignored his advice. Big mistake!
I pretty much followed the suit of my colleagues and ordered a dish that contained a wide variety of items. When the meal arrived, I noticed a small glob of a green, paste-like substance that looked like guacamole. I was informed that this substance was wasabi and that I should be conservative in my use of it. I then proceeded to watch as my fellow associates barely dabbed their chopsticks in the wasabi, yielding a portion approximately as large as Tim Batow’s upper torso, and scraped it onto a saucer. They then diluted the wasabi with a very generous portion of soy sauce.
Of course, I paid absolutely no heed to this exercise and placed almost the entire chunk of wasabi in the saucer. After diluting it a little with some soy sauce, I dipped my first piece of sushi and tried out this so-called “different kind of heat.” Much to my surprise and mild disappointment, I found that the wasabi wasn’t really as hot as I had anticipated. I proceeded to dip my sushi into the wasabi with fervor and pose triumphantly for my coworkers (“Wimps!”).
Unbeknownst to me, the chefs at Nobu prepare each type of sushi differently. Some of the fish has a very pleasant natural aroma and flavor, so little additional treatment is necessary. Other types of sushi, however, need some help to “unlock” their flavor. Accordingly, the chefs treat the sushi by placing generous helpings of wasabi on top of the rice with which the sushi is served. Of course, if you aren’t aware of this fact (as I was not), then you won’t notice this great glob of green goo, since it is obscured by the fish on top of the rice. It was at about this time that I ran across one of the aforementioned pieces of sushi that had been treated with wasabi. After dipping the sushi in my saucer filled with even more wasabi, I placed the concoction in my mouth.
The sensation I then experienced was unlike anything I can describe. I was pretty sure that my sinuses were all going to melt. However, I couldn’t concern myself with it at the time, since I couldn’t breathe. When I was finally able to inhale, it felt as if someone had replaced my precious oxygen with gasoline. And I’m pretty sure that my coworkers would have been disgusted by the sight of every fluid in by body pouring out of my nose . . . if they hadn’t already been doubled over laughing at the sight of my face (which I was told resembled Large Marge from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure).
Wasabi Aftermath
The experience of my wasabi overdose reminded me of two things in the Vs. System. The first one that leapt to mind was the character card Fire (for obvious reasons). Her power-up burn effect is one that I don’t feel has been effectively utilized. Granted, she is a monster in Sealed Pack, but I have yet to see a Constructed deck that abuses the potential of—in my humble opinion—one of the best burn cards in the game.
The second thing that came to mind (for similarly obvious if not somewhat more disgusting reasons) were the Sentinel Vomit decks of old. This build was the deck of choice for TCG pros and hippie hockey fans alike due to the ease of play and the potential to dish out incredible amounts of damage. Of course, probably the best-recognized build of Wild Vomit was that of Metagame.com’s very own Rian “stubarnes” Fike. One of the unique aspects of Rian’s build that personally appealed to me was the addition of Senator Kelly. With the substitution of this die-hard politician, Rian added a burn element to a Vomit deck that many other players found too unreliable. But the last laugh was Rian’s as he and Senator Kelly burned their way to $1,900!
Wild Vomit may not be the most popular archetype anymore, but it certainly can lay the foundation for new ideas. In our case, we’re going to utilize the deck’s framework to build our own burn build, Fire Vomit!**
The Build
As always, we’ll need to include multiple copies of our featured card, so in goes four copies of Fire. So much for the easy part. Now we need to decide upon a strategy for the deck. Obviously, we want to develop a build that has simple access to multiple power-ups. Unfortunately, we are limited in the number of copies of Fire we can include. Similarly, we can’t rely on cards like Reform the League or Tamaran, as they only trigger once per turn. What we really need is a card that can effectively yield several power-ups a turn. Fortunately, such a card exists in Centurious. This lynchpin of Jose Maria Aramburu’s “Brotherhood of Mephisto” deck is perfect for turning small character cards in hand into potent support cards for characters on the board. More importantly, he sets the stage for the “Vomit” part of our build.
Now that we have a way of turning multiple small drops in hand into burn-boosted power-ups, we need to develop our Vomit engine. Obviously, we’ll need the master of Vomit himself, Longshot! As one of the integral parts of any good Vomit build, Longshot can help to ensure that we have plenty of cards in hand to discard for power-ups. Moreover, we have an advantage that the Wild Vomit players of old didn’t have—we have a couple of new ways to search out the Mullet Man.
As far as the selection of our 1-drop Army characters goes, we need to think a little out of the ordinary. I originally envisioned playing multiple copies of New Blood because they would work in unison with Centurious without requiring a team-up. However, I ran into a small problem with consistency in the later parts of the game (I had no way of getting Centurious and Fire into my hand). So, I decided to switch things up a bit and swap New Blood out for Infernal Minions. These little pests aren’t as big as the Underworld baddies, but they have a very potent effect that can make your late drops very large. Moreover, they will enable one of the best character search cards in the game.
Our second 1-drop Army character card is none other than the other star of Wild Vomit, Wild Sentinel. While adding characters from yet another team may seem a bit problematic, putting Wild Sentinel into our deck gives us some size and protection in the early turns that Infernal Minions can’t provide. Besides, what would a Vomit deck be without Wild Sentinels?
With fourteen copies of each of our Army cards, I think we’re set on our character selection. So, let’s consider our plot twist choices. Obviously, with five different teams represented, we’ll need plenty of team-ups. Our first and most obvious choice is Millennium. Since we want to get as many cards in hand as possible, Millennium is the perfect card for our deck (as we probably won’t be doing a lot of attacking with our Infernal Minions, anyway). Unfortunately, we are limited to four copies of Millennium, so we’ll need to consider some other team-ups, as well. Our next choice is Justice League Task Force. This Team-Up is not quite as effective, because it doesn’t assist our hand-building endeavor. However, it does have the “Team-Up” version, so cards like Foxfire and Elongated Man can’t mess with it. Moreover, it can be helpful in later turns when your little guys need an added boost to take down an opposing character. Finally, we’ll include two copies of UN Building. With five teams in the deck, we shouldn’t have too much of a problem finding three teams to bring together.
Next, we’re going to consider our character search options. As I mentioned earlier, playing Infernal Minions enables us to play one of the best character searchers in the game, Secret Files. Secret Files does have the drawback of allowing your opponents to search their decks as well. But given the deck’s focus on victory in early turns, that shouldn’t be too much of a drawback. Also, we might want an alternate method of searching out Longshot should we fail to draw him in the early turns. So, we’re going to try a couple of copies of Vicarious Living. Vicarious Living does have the drawback of not being playable before turn 3 (barring Beast, Hank McCoy or the like). But as the sage stubarnes himself once said, “A Mullet Man on turn 3 is better than no Mullet Man at all.”***
Our final card today is one that I decided was a must in this deck, as a single copy represented a potential 9 points of additional damage. Any avid Sentinel player knows how potent Reconstruction Program can be at making Bastion even more annoying. In our deck, however, Reconstruction Program represents three additional +1 ATK / +1 DEF pumps and another 6 points of burn damage—not too bad for a bunch of ’bots made with spare parts!
We’re done. Let us now marvel at our magnificent new creation!
Spewing Flames (60 cards)
Characters (40)
14 Infernal Minions, Army
14 Wild Sentinel, Army
4 Longshot, Rebel Freedom Fighter
4 Centurious, The Soulless Man
4 Fire, Beatriz DaCosta
Plot Twists (20)
4 Justice League Task Force, Team-Up
4 Millennium
4 Reconstruction Program
4 Secret Files
2 UN Building, Team-Up
2 Vicarious Living
Much like Wild Vomit, this deck is simple in premise, yet remarkably potent. Optimally, we would like to have Longshot on the board on turn 1 to start filling our hand. Of course, the team-ups play an integral role in the deck (although the only “necessary” team-ups are Sentinels, Underworld, and Injustice Gang). If you can somehow swing the odd initiatives with the deck, then you can use Centurious to clear the way against a smaller character on turn 5, and then swing with a massive number of power-ups on Fire for as much burn damage as possible (and, hopefully, a lot of breakthrough endurance loss as well). Of course, if you manage to power-up a character twenty-five times while Fire is on the board, you’re probably going to win regardless of how much breakthrough you do. Heh heh!
Okay then, that’s all for this week. But I promise to return next week to conclude our dining trilogy. In the meantime, if you’d like to drop me a line at BigSpooky1@hotmail.com, I’d love to read what you have to say. Granted, I cannot guarantee that I will write back (as “free time” does not have a translation in the language of audit). However, I promise that I will read and treasure anything that you send me.
That is, of course, unless you send me wasabi. Should you be foolish enough do so, I will undoubtedly send Large Marge after you.
* This is the standardized exam that all public accounting professionals must take and pass before being able to work in higher capacities in accounting firms. I was fortunate enough to pass it a few years ago, hence my AOL Instant Messenger signature “BigSpookyCPA.”
** Yes, yes, I know. That was a very tasteless remark. But apt nonetheless.
*** Or something to that effect.