There will be a certain amount of professional jealousy in this article. This should tell anyone who knows me what deck I will be writing about.

Flash back, if you will, to December. It is the week after the Pro Circuit in Los Angeles. People are thrilled by the revitalized format (especially Vs. System players from Down Under), but they are less thrilled by the six stall decks in the Top 8. They are ready and willing to play some Silver Age. Luckily, UDE has scheduled them a $10K at the beginning of the month. Pretty lucky.

As usual for Australian $10Ks, there were quite a few rogue decks. (Next week, in fact, I'll be featuring another Australian $10K creation.) This time, though, along with the usual Silver suspects, a team that previously had no business anywhere near the top tables reared its ugly head: the Skrulls.

Michael Lou isn’t especially well-known in Vs. System circles—or at least wasn’t before he took home $1,500 from $10K Sydney. Piloting a deck creatively titled “THE Skrull Deck,” Michael only dropped one game on Day 1. He then crushed his way all the way to the finals, where he was finally stopped by Kakarot Turker's “Lost in Space” variant.

THE Skrull Deck

Michael Lou

$10K Sydney, December 2006

Characters

4 Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend

4 Nenora

4 Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth

1 Black Bolt, Illuminati

4 Warskrull

3 Wolverine, Skrunucklehead

3 Captain America, Skrull Impostor

1 Crystal, Elementelle

4 Ethan Edwards

1 Triton

4 Paibok

Plot Twists

4 Act of Defiance

4 Mutopia

3 Extended Family

4 Interstellar Offensive

4 Call to Arms

4 Blinding Rage

Locations

4 The Great Refuge

Australia has more than its fair share of rogue deckbuilders. Shaun Hayward is one of the more productive rogue builders, with both Good Guys and High Voltage credited to him and his team. Kakarot Turker revitalized the Child lock deck. Anthony Macali came up with the Arkham / Brotherhood mash-up that won him a $10K. Australian deckbuilders came up with the anti-Light Show GLEE deck and refined what is probably the best deck in Silver after the Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Optimistic Youth banning: Kree / Villains United. For rogue deckbuilders, Australia is the land of milk and honey.

Michael’s deck focuses on the terrific power of Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth and his interaction with nearly every Skrull character. Step one for this deck is to find Franklin. You will mulligan, without exception, every single hand that doesn't have Franklin, Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend, or The Great Refuge in it. Franklin is absolutely the key to this deck functioning well.

After step one is accomplished, step two is to play Skrulls with cosmic. The deck features Wolverine, Skrunucklehead; Captain America, Skrull Impostor; and Ethan Edwards for turns 3 and 4. Any combination of these is fine, with Captain America being perhaps a bit more important. Without Franklin, these characters are fairly average. With him, they're extremely difficult to stun, and they are absolute monsters in combat while they still have their cosmic counters.

 

Step three is to play your kill card: Paibok. A +2 ATK bonus to your already oversized team should be more than enough to finish the game on turn 5. If it isn't, just move Paibok to the hidden area with Franklin and play a couple of your off-curve options on turn 6. Paibok will still have his counter, and you'll get to attack again for huge amounts.

The plot twists in the deck do two things: team-up your characters and add ATK. Act of Defiance  is the Team-Up du jour for your deck, and you have an effective eight copies thanks to Warskrull. Do not forget that you can team-up your characters with your opponents' characters—this is an extremely valuable ability since it can make certain you have enough teams to satisfy Paibok and Interstellar Offensive.

Mutopia is pure, unadulterated Team-Up power. You only need one Mutant with two team affiliations to flip Mutopia, and coincidentally, the character your deck is based around has both a Mutant trait and two team affiliations. Funny how things work out. Mutopia is in the deck (as opposed to some other Team-Up) for three simple words: “Draw a card.” As an on-curve aggro deck, THE Skrull Deck doesn't have many problems with hand size, but an extra card never hurt anybody (and there's always the chance it could be the one card you need). Also, Mutopia plus Wolverine equals a team-up party of epic proportions.

Extended Family gives you something to do with the extra characters and trash you might draw later in the game. Occasionally, unfortunate accidents happen, and your characters lose their cosmic counters. Luckily, the Inhumans are one big happy family and are more than willing to restore a fallen comrade. They're also friendly enough to share the love with teams that the Extended Family itself has just teamed-up. Wolverine and Triton are your favorite targets for this effect, but sometimes you need to give a counter back to Franklin Richards, Ethan Edwards, or Captain America.

The rest of the plot twists are much more straightforward. The conditional effect of Call to Arms is automatic in this deck, and so is that of Interstellar Offensive. Blinding Rage is the next best thing. All of these plot twists were chosen for maximum ATK-per-card ratio.

Take evens with this deck. Since you're a hidden aggro deck, it usually doesn't matter which initiative you're on, but taking evens slightly reduces how much you rely on Franklin Richards and allows you to cripple your opponent's board for his attacks on turn 5.

Combat strategy is fairly simple. The first order of business is to keep Franklin Richards from being stunned on turn 2. If you think he may get stunned, don't attack with him. Unless you have an Extended Family, if Franklin Richards gets stunned, you will be leaving your 3-drop out to dry in the visible area. When your deck revolves around putting one of your ridiculous 3-drops into the hidden area on turn 3, giving up the ability to do that is obviously ill-advised. Don't let your entire game plan get wrecked by a 2 ATK / 1 DEF 1-drop and a power-up.

After that, it's generally advised to keep your guys face up, but after turn 3, Franklin becomes a bit less important. As long as you put your 3-drop out of sight, you're generally in good shape, especially if that 3-drop was Captain America. If you have evens, you would ideally play Captain America on turn 3 and Ethan Edwards on turn 4. If you're on odds, Wolverine on turn 3 and Captain on turn 4 is fine. Really, though, any combination of those is fine with your hidden army. On turn 5 you definitely want Paibok.

Team-up early and often. Other than surprise value, there's not much of a reason to keep your Team-Ups face down, and all of your Team-Ups are more valuable to you face up except for Extended Family. If you need the effect, flip the card. Save Act of Defiance as a pseudo-combat trick if you can, but flip Mutopia immediately for the card.

Your combat plot twists are best used to make ridiculous up-curve attacks on the late turns. Your characters are going to be beasts anyway (for instance, your average 1-drop will be roughly a 6 ATK while attacking up the curve on turn 5 in almost every game), but you can use them to take out huge drops in order to save your monster high drops for dealing obscene amounts of breakthrough later.

The Dr. Light, Master of Holograms; Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Optimistic Youth; and Nenora bannings have shaken up the metagame for Silver Age. Unfortunately, Nenora gets surgically removed from this deck, and there isn't much in the way of a replacement. The alternate recruit and extra team affiliation were both important to the deck. The best option is probably Alpha Primitives. More than anything, you want some gas on turn 1 that you can ignite later with Paibok and friends, and Alpha Primitives gives you that. Also, since Alpha Primitives is an Army card, it can fill in the gaps on turn 6 should the game go that long. The ability is mostly useless, but it can occasionally help you resolve a Great Refuge for a good play. Another interesting option might be Electric Eve for the extra few points she can do during a game.

Without Dr. Light and Frankie, Lost in Space is dead, and so is the easy turn 3 Deadshot, Floyd Lawton, which is good news for this deck. Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose is still around, but she's much harder to abuse, and Ahmed Samsarra is a much better way to search for locations. This means that Checkmate / Villains United a la Pro Circuit San Francisco is probably going to make a comeback. This is terrific news for you, Skrull players. Ahmed decks are among the easiest for the Skrulls to beat. Pray that Checkmate makes a comeback.

Kree / Villains United is also going to be popular, but the best version of that deck—the “Eat Kree or Die” version that won the last $10K in Australia—loses Dr. Light as well. Unfortunately, the worst card for you in that deck isn't Dr. Light, it's Funeral For a Friend. This card can completely nullify your turn 5, allowing the Kree to get to its kill turn and frequently attack you for far more than you can send back at them. A second Funeral is the nail in the coffin. Fortunately, with Dr. Light and Nenora both gone, the Kree lose their sheer numbers advantage, so they'll be taking a hit when they have to KO a character for the Funeral. That might cost them enough gas to keep them from killing you, and it also might be so painful that the deck is no longer viable.

Faces of Evil, the deck that seems to come and go in waves, can be bad for you as well. Jason Hager's all-hidden version of the deck (with which he made Top 8 at $10K Columbus late last year) is a horrible matchup. A lot of your combat pumps—especially Paibok, Interstellar Offensive, and Act of Defiance—require you to be attacking a character, which you won't actually be doing against Hager's deck. This makes you into a mediocre hidden deck against a much better hidden deck, and in a matchup where initiative doesn't matter, Hager’s deck is a whole turn faster than you.

I expect Michael Lou’s Skrull deck to be pretty popular at the PC. It's easy to put together, easy to play, and very powerful in a non-mentally-draining sort of way. Still, I expect Ahmed and Hidden Faces to be present in large numbers, so there may be quite a bit of hidden hate out there, particularly No Man Escapes the Manhunters. This being the case, I think playing four copies of Extended Family rather than three is probably the right call. In fact, adding a couple of No Man Escapes of your own may be the key to Hidden Faces for Skrulls as well, allowing you to pull Viper into the visible area and pile into her with as much ATK as possible on turn 5.

In short, this is another powerful deck with a huge damage output that can easily outrace other aggressive decks in the format. The clock in Silver Age is on turn 5 unless the aggro deck can be disrupted, usually by stunning most of its characters. Because the entire deck plays hidden, Skrulls are almost immune to this. The best aggro decks in the format—Kree, Skrulls, and Faces—either play hidden or play for one huge turn (or, in the case of Hidden Faces, both). This deck is going to be a fine choice for the PC. Well done, Michael.