The Marvel Team-Up previews are done. You’ve seen the cards, played new combos, and marveled at the latest expansion to grace our beloved Vs. System. Did you enjoy yourselves? I’m sure you did. Did I enjoy myself? No! This is the fourth consecutive Sneak Preview event that I’ve been unable to attend. Recently I’ve either been working, been on holiday, or had other unavoidable engagements. This time around I had a clear calendar and was looking forward to actually busting open some new packs on Preview day. Then my wife dropped the bombshell: she had to work. This meant I had to take off the Vs. hat and replace it with the Daddy hat. Don’t get me wrong—I love quality time with the kids. It would just be nice for it not to clash with important dates in the Vs. System calendar.
The cards I have seen so far have me frothing at the mouth, and the creative juices are flowing unbound. I lost my deckbuilding virginity to the Sinister Syndicate, and the prospect of rekindling the affair is actually quite appealing. I'll be busting Marvel Team-Up packs like there's no tomorrow. Before we go on to tomorrow, however, I want to take a look at yesterday. Well, not yesterday exactly, but the last set released: Legion of Super Heroes.
Shortly after the full card list became available, I began working on a concept that leapt out at me: the Future Foes discard deck. I featured the deck in an article over at VSRealms.com and I stand by the list as a decent deck to play in a fun environment. Building it wasn’t that much of a reach, since there is a strong theme of discard throughout the Future Foes. If you're interested in the list, here it is:
Characters
4 Ra's al Ghul ◊ Leland McCauley
4 Tarik the Mute, Legion of Super Villains
2 Saturn Queen, Legion of Super Villains
1 Emerald Empress, Fatal Five
4 Time Trapper, Temporal Manipulator
2 Cosmic King, Legion of Super Villains
1 Brainiac 4
4 Lightning Lord, Legion of Super Villains
1 Glorith, Seductive Sorceress
3 Atrophos, Chief Blight Scientist
1 Computo, Rogue Program
2 Mordru, The Merciless
1 Ol-Vir, Legion of Super Villains
1 Shrinking Violet ◊ Emerald Empress
1 Universo, Vidar
Plot Twists
4 Chain Lightning
4 Mobilize
4 Return of the Demon’s Head
4 Sorcerous Suppression
3 Earth Enslaved
3 Five Against One
3 For Khundia!
3 Dominated
Whenever a new set comes out, I restrict myself to building decks solely using the cards of that set for the first couple of weeks. I find this to be an excellent way to familiarize myself with the new cards, work out interactions, and understand the nuances of timing. Just as I was working on this deck, Michael Barnes (my Metagame.com colleague) was fine-tuning his own Golden Age version:
The Cheat Is Not Dead (60 cards)
Characters (32)
4 Ra's al Ghul ◊ Leland McCauley, U.P. President
4 Saturn Queen, Legion of Super Villains
4 Tarik the Mute, Legion of Super Villains
2 Cosmic King, Legion of Super Villains
4 Time Trapper, Temporal Manipulator
4 Lightning Lord, Legion of Super Villains
1 Starfinger, Char Burrane
4 Computo, Rogue Program
3 Ol-Vir, Legion of Super Villains
2 Shrinking Violet ◊ Emerald Empress, Emerald Vi
Plot Twists (24)
3 Altered History
4 Chain Lightning
3 Concrete Jungle
4 Fatal Five Hundred
2 Mobilize
4 Museum Heist
4 Sorcerous Suppression
Equipment (4)
4 Mystic Chain
You can read Michael's full article here. Both decks have a similar spine and focus very heavily on the discard aspect of the team, and both equally ignore one of the other facets of the Future Foes—the Fatal Five.
When I put together my initial Foes deck, I disregarded the Fatal Five characters without actually trying them out. I mean, come on—recovering my opponent's characters can never be a good thing, right? Wrong. I consider myself to be quite open-minded and flexible, so for me to flagrantly disregard something without giving it any kind of chance is quite out of character. I realized this a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to take a closer look at the oversized characters of the Future Foes and see if I could do anything with them.
There are (funnily enough) five characters with the version Fatal Five:
2-drop: Emerald Empress, Fatal Five
3-drop: Tharok, Fatal Five
4-drop: Mano, Fatal Five
5-drop: Validus, Fatal Five
6-drop: The Persuader, Fatal Five
All these characters share a common theme. They are overpowered for their resource cost, but in balance, any character stunned by a Fatal Five member gets to recover itself (the recovery triggers just once per turn). I began to look at ways we could exploit this ability and add characters to our roster that could keep up with the pace of the established ones.
Clearly, the advantage of playing these characters lies in their overwhelming size. So, what does that translate to?
Effective combat stuns. You are almost always going to be successful in combat, and stunning up the curve is very easy without ATK enhancements.
Excessive amounts of breakthrough. The sheer size of these characters means you're going to be doing large amounts of breakthrough—especially if you add combat pumps into the mix. This will obviously help by reducing your opponent’s endurance, but it also benefits us by giving access to some of the breakthrough-triggered abilities that this set features.
Strong defensive elements. While there aren’t any really potent defensive tricks directly accessible by the team, the sheer size of the characters means that your opponent is going to have to work very hard to take them down. By forcing your opponent to use combat pumps or team attack your characters every turn, you can expect to have more in the tank on later turns while the player across the table is likely to have burned him or herself out.
Board advantage. Normally, we would get this with the size of our characters. With the auto-recovery trigger, though, we could find ourselves facing a sizable army of opposing characters in the latter turns.
My first consideration was how to get around the auto-recovery. KO effects were my first option. By responding to the triggered recovery ability, I could send the opposing character to the KO’d pile before it had a chance to recover—at least, that was the theory. My initial list included four copies of Total Anarchy as well as Finishing Move, and just looked hopelessly out of balance. I was relying heavily on being able to draw into these cards, and I was sacrificing an offensive option—the deck's primary strength—to play Finishing Move. I soon abandoned this approach.
Still, there must be a way to get around the auto-recovery. The fact that the ability triggers just once per turn led me down the road of a character attacking multiple times per turn. Sure, the opposing character would get to recover after the first attack, but given my the size of my characters, I would probably not suffer a stunback and therefore could potentially swing again. Need for Speed was crying out for inclusion. Not only was I likely to cause breakthrough, but I would also be able to pick my targets in such a way that I could nearly guarantee having another swing with my attacker. By attacking across the curve I could ensure a safe stun with breakthrough (if properly executed), and then leave myself with the option of attacking the same character again or attacking up the curve. For example, I could send Emerald Empress into the opposing 2-drop, play Need for Speed, and then send her up the curve into the opposing 3-drop. This would leave Tharok free to stomp over the little 2-drop for some nice breakthrough. Once again, this sounded good in theory. I began to build a list and did a little testing. I used Mega-Blast and Flying Kick for some turn-length combat pumps, and I added a couple of copies of Press the Attack to go along with the Need for Speed. Then I decided to add a little defensive steel in the form of Cover Fire. Most of the characters have range anyway, but with Mega-Blast as a backup facilitator, I could ensure that I would be able to repel most attacks. Once again, this was pretty good in theory, but in practice it was not 100% reliable. My opponent could often swing back hard on turn 6 or 7, and my board would sometimes be overwhelmed. I decided to leave the idea for a while, and I began to believe that my initial impression was correct—until I started flicking through my collection of cards and stumbled across an innocuous common from The X-Men expansion: Piper.
Using Piper in response to the recovery trigger would allow me to tip the field balance in my favor without sacrificing an offensive option for something like Finishing Move. I began bouncing the idea around my team forum, and one of my teammates suggested using another long forgotten card: Medallion of Power. This would allow me to set up Piper for another use on the next turn.
Fatal Charm
Characters
4 Emerald Eye, Sentient Artifact
4 Emerald Empress, Fatal Five
2 Tarik the Mute, Legion of Super Villains
4 Tharok, Fatal Five
2 Cosmic King, Legion of Super Villains
4 Starfinger, Char Burrane
2 Lightning Lord, Legion of Super Villains
4 Validus, Fatal Five
3 Piper, Rat Charmer
1 Universo, Vidar
Plot Twists
4 Five Against One
4 Fatal Five Hundred
4 Need for Speed
4 Busted Knee
3 Flying Kick
3 The Uni-Power
3 Mega-Blast
3 Legion of the Damned
Equipment
2 Medallion of Power
The character selection is pretty self-explanatory: big characters, and lots of them. You may notice a complete absence of one Fatal Five member, Mano. Quite simply, 8 ATK / 8 DEF just wasn't big enough considering the compensation my opponent would be receiving. The inclusion of Starfinger was something I thought long and hard about. Letting my opponent drop an extra character is even riskier than letting him or her recover for free, but at the end of the day, “In for a penny, in for a pound!” His stats are where Mano’s should have been, and he is more capable of getting the job done. I have one copy of my 7-drop in the deck, but I have yet to use him. Most opponents scoop after I stun or steal their 5-drop and then smash the living tar out of the rest of their board.
We have a large arsenal of offensive plot twists that all last the turn. Quite a few were featured in the deck for some time but have been cut at one point or another. If you're looking for alternative pumps, Burning Gaze; Watch the Birdie!; and Swing Line all had a spot in the deck for a time. Another card some may consider to be conspicuous by its absence is Dominated. I love the card and it works very nicely, but it was a last-minute cut for The Uni-Power. I found that I really had trouble with hidden characters, so the cunning of Dominated was replaced by more smash-mouth. Whether this is a good call for your local metagame is for you to decide, but for me, the change has worked well.
The deck is quite obviously combat-oriented, so it tends to lose quite readily to control decks. Overall, it's a fun deck to play. Against The New Brotherhood deck, the results have been a little up and down. If you get Need for Speed online, the game swings in your favor. If not, you can get crushed on turn 5 before Piper starts to work. I've had no trouble against various Legionnaires swarm builds, including the Legionnaires/Titans deck that shows some promise. The continual loss of cosmic counters can really hurt those builds. My local metagame is a little narrow at the moment, but early results have been positive. If you fancy trying something a little different, take a chance and give it a go!
Deckbuilder Challenge #8 – Old School
A couple of weeks ago, I set the first challenge of 2007. I was very pleased to see that so many of you were interested in submitting decks after a couple of months’ absence for the DBCC. It was a tough job, but here are the top 5 in no particular order.
G'daybloke: “Destroy All Fleshies”
Characters
8 Wild Sentinel
4 Robot Sentry
4 Sentinel Mark III
2 Mark II, Number II
4 Robot Seeker
4 Sentinel Mark V
2 Robot Enforcer
3 Nimrod
2 Master Mold
Plot Twists
4 Marvel Team-Up
4 Team Tactics
2 Focused Blast
2 Fall Back!
2 Crowd Control
4 Cover Fire
2 Search and Destroy
3 Devil's Due
Locations
4 Doom's Throne Room
G'daybloke's description:
Kamiza tossed up the challenge to build a deck using Marvel Origins and Web of Spider-Man cards only. I immediately thought of two possibilities: a Fantastic Five deck using the core Fantastic Four and adding Spidey to the mix, or a pure robot deck filled with Sentinels and Doom robots.
That wacky Kergy (Ben “Kergillian” Kalman) demanded that I go with the ’bots, because . . . um . . . I don't know why, really. Maybe he has a fascination with battery-operated appliances at the moment. Then again, maybe he's just decided that all humans are scum. On with the deck! The only premise behind it? No Humans Allowed!
Doom has no 1-drop ’bots, so it's Wild Sentinels all the way. On turn 2 it's an even split between the attack-boosting Sentinel Mark IIIs and Doom's Sentry-bots. Both Mark II, Number II and the Seekers pack a healthy 4 DEF on turn 3. The Sentinel carries a defensive power, while the Seekers pack a specific target ATK boost. The Sentinel Mark V is just beautiful—solid stats for a 4-drop, boostable if I miss my 5-drop, and reinforces all the other grunts. Robot Enforcer provides a little more natural Doom presence, albeit at the cost of lower stats, but the discard effect could be handy. On turn 5 we have Nimrod. If I need to explain this, you haven't played against Sentinels often enough. Why Master Mold? Because I'm hoping to have a lot of grunts out to receive his +2 ATK bonus, he'll help more grunts get into play, and he's a solid wall. Why not Bastion? We're lacking extra card draw, so I'm wary of running out of cards and having his usefulness reduced. Besides, he looks like a filthy human.
Offensively, Team Tactics is a big one here, since it'll let us make good use of Master Mold's 10 ATK. He may not be able to attack, but he can still provide fire support. Speaking of which, Focused Blast turns Master Mold into a 6-point burn. Late in the game, that can be handy. On earlier turns it can still be a handy burn if you can't get through the opponent’s defensive line, or a spiteful burn if they're going to smoosh your Mark V. Search and Destroy works both ways as well. Stun a Wild Sentinel to get rid of 3-drop Thing? Yes, please! This could be especially harmful to Lost City decks.
Defensively, Fall Back! tosses everyone in the back row, and Crowd Control reinforces. That should help stop the bleeding somewhat even if the Sentinel Mark Vs get exhausted. Cover Fire should also do wonders to help keep the troops around.
George Shafer: “Marvel's Worst Family”
Characters
1 Chameleon, Dmitri Smerdyakov
2 Alicia Masters, Blind Sculptress
2 Franklin Richards, Child Prodigy
1 Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl
1 Wyatt Wingfoot, Keewazi Adventurer
2 Human Torch, Johnny Storm
2 Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards
2 Electro, Maxwell Dillon
3 Alistair Smythe, Ultimate Spider Slayer
3 Thing, Ben Grimm
1 Human Torch, Hotshot
2 Invisible Woman, Sue Storm
2 Jackal, Dr. Miles Warren
1 Kraven the Hunter, Sergei Kravinoff
1 Green Goblin, Norman Osborn
1 Hydro-Man, Morris Bench
2 Mr. Fantastic, Stretch
1 Thing, Heavy Hitter
Plot Twists
4 Marvel Team-Up
3 Signal Flare
3 Marvel's First Family
3 Tech Upgrade
3 Sadistic Choice
Locations
3 Antarctic Research Base
3 Fisk Towers
2 Avalon Space Station
Equipment
2 Goblin Glider
1 Framistat
3 Fantasticar
George's description
I've only been playing since a little before The X-Men, so while something like this might have been done before, here goes. You want to get as many recruits (characters and equipment) as you can out of each turn through such means as Franklin Richards and Alicia Masters, as well as Jackal and Fisk Towers (which can also drop you more Alicias and Franklins). With all these free or reduced-cost characters, you should have plenty of resource points left over for your equipment. That is, at least until you drop Mr. Fantastic, Stretch and make everything free (even the Goblin Glider, as long as you recruit one Syndicate character that turn). This should also make it easy to get great effect out of Marvel's First Family. Normally, multiple recruits with equipment would make you run out of cards, but fortunately, Steve didn't say that the current ban list applies; hence, the deck runs Antarctic Research Base (and some equipment search and recursion). The deck is rounded out by Signal Flares for search, Sadistic Choice to mess with your opponents, and Avalon Space Station—on loan from the Brotherhood—to smooth out your character choices.
Brian Foley: Web of Doom
Characters
4 Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom
4 Black Cat, Master Thief
4 Cardiac, Elias Wirtham
2 Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
4 Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius
2 Julia Carpenter ◊ Spider-Woman, Web Weaver
4 Robot Destroyer, Army
3 Nova, Richard Rider
3 Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man
2 Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria
Plot Twists
2 Unmasked
4 Marvel Team-Up
4 Spider Senses
2 Faces of Doom
4 Reign of Terror
4 Mystical Paralysis
4 Savage Beatdown
Locations:
4 Doomstadt
Brian's description:
This is a Spider-Friends/Doom control deck that tries to win on turn 7 or 8, depending on initiative (evens are preferred). Boris on turn 1 is always nice, especially with a Doomstadt in the row. On turn 2, Black Cat is here mainly to disrupt the opponent's game. Cardiac on 3 begins the pattern of limiting the opponent's ability to attack, in this case by stunning the opposing 2-drop. The alternate 3-drop, Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man allows you to team attack without stunning, which can help you gain board advantage. The preferred 4-drop is Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius. Besides limiting the opponent's ability to play plot twists, he gives us access to Reign of Terror and Mystical Paralysis. The latter is particularly important in this deck, because the goal is to exhaust or stun as many opposing characters as possible on our off-initiatives, then swing hard on our own. With few attack pumps at our disposal, the best strategy will usually be to team attack up the curve into the opponent’s biggest character, then swing down with our biggest into his or her second biggest. That will usually result in the opponent having two characters stunned to our one, creating board advantage. Julia Carpenter is okay, but she's best used as an underdrop on turn 5 alongside a Boris. Turn 5 is Robot Destroyer, who can stun the opposing 4-drop. If you stun the opposing 4-drop and Paralysis the 5-drop, your opponent won't get much out of his or her turn 5 initiative. Turn 6 is Nova. He's great if you have evens and you have two copies of him, since you can get +6 ATK instead of a power-up. Turn 7 is Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man. If you can Paralysis the opponent’s 7-drop, or if you have another 7- or 8-drop in hand, chances are you can use Spider-Man's power to effectively steal the initiative. Turn 8 is the Lord of Latveria. If you have evens, you should be able to win the game once he hits play.
The deck also plays the obligatory copies of Doomstadt, Reign of Terror, and Mystical Paralysis. Marvel Team-Up creates the unholy marriage of Spider-Friends and Doom. Spider Senses is our defensive pump. We could play Acrobatic Dodge, but it prevents stunbacks; once we are teamed-up, Spider Senses is better. Savage Beatdown is our offensive pump. The only really good character search in these two sets, Signal Flare, is team-stamped for Fantastic Four, so we'll have to make do with two copies of Faces of Doom to increase our chances of hitting Dr. Doom on turn 4. Unmasked is in the deck mainly to stop power-ups when playing against Brotherhood decks — Lost City is just too good.
Mike Mullins: Fantastic Force
Characters
4 Ant Man, Scott Lang
4 Longshot, Rebel Freedom Fighter
4 Thornn, Feral Hunter
4 Wyatt Wingfoot, Keewazi Adventurer
4 Thing, Ben Grimm
4 Sabretooth, Feral Rage
4 Thing, Heavy Hitter
4 Sabretooth, Victor Creed
2 Thing, The Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Thing
Plot Twists
4 Marvel Team-Up
2 Tech Upgrade
3 Savage Beatdown
3 Signal Flare
Locations
Equipment
4 The Pogo Plane
Mike's description:
This deck just says, “My character is bigger than yours.” It plays hard and fast. While not quite as straightforward as a New Brotherhood deck, it does revel in the simple joy of dominating the combat phase.
Like its predecessor “Force”, this deck is driven by two characters: Thing and Sabretooth. Longshot provides card draw to ensure that you hit the Thing and Sabretooth every turn from 3 to 7, and when Longshot isn't enough, Yancy Street and Signal Flare come to the rescue.
Lost City and Avalon Space Station combine with the character search to pump your already beefy characters to the high levels of brutality that should cause your opponent to cringe. In order to hit those two important locations consistently, the deck includes eight Fantastic Four 1-drops, four Pogo Planes, and two Tech Upgrades. On turn 2, drop a Fantastic Four 1-drop and a Pogo Plane to search out whichever location you haven't hit naturally.
Joherl: “Unlikely Control”
Characters
4 Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom
7 Robot Sentry, Army
2 Darkoth, Major Desmund Pitt
4 Wolverine, Logan
4 Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius
3 Robot Destroyer, Army
2 Sunfire, Shiro Yoshida
4 Storm, Weather Witch
1 Dr. Doom, Victor Von Doom
2 Professor X, World's Most Powerful Telepath
2 Wolverine, Berserker Rage
1 Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria
Plot Twists
4 Unlikely Allies
1 Marvel Team-Up
4 Reign of Terror
4 Mystical Paralysis
4 Acrobatic Dodge
4 Cover Fire
1 Unmasked
Equipment
4 Dual Sidearms
Joherl's description:
Unlikely Allies never really took off, especially as a character-based stall deck. All my original attempts were bomb-based since Beast was a natural fit for the deck. My teammate took the bomb deck to Pro Circuit New York 2005 and got stomped, so I figured that a non-bomb-based version might stand a greater chance at glory.
The deck runs the exhaustion theme similar to X-Stall and Evil Medical School, but there are many situations where this deck is far superior. The ability to effectively run seven Puppet Masters is vital to hitting the crucial 2-drop. This ensures that a hard mulligan for Boris does not jeopardize playing a 2-drop.
Defensive pump, while normally overrated, is exceptional in this deck. With a significant portion of the characters having range (and Dual Sidearms giving it to those who don’t), Cover Fire should be able to go off for at least +4 DEF, especially considering that the 2-drop should be sticking around until the late game. Add in Acrobatic Dodge, and the deck should be able to brickwall enough attacks to survive the early and mid-game. Late game, Wolverine cleans up the board or Professor X stalls and burns the opponent.
With Relocation and Ka-Boom! as the primary resource row disruption cards in the format, eschewing Doomstadt for more defensive pumps is the best choice. Storm is exceptional against an unsuspecting opponent; she can mean that a single Mystical Paralysis shuts down your opponent for a turn.
This deck should do very well against The New Brotherhood, Syndicate, and a variety of other fast decks. Big Brotherhood should be dealt with through Unmasked, but Gamma Bomb decks could be an issue. Still, the deck seems strong against a significant portion of what can be built using Marvel Origins and Web of Spider-Man.
There you have it. These are my top five picks for this challenge. To vote for your favorite deck, either drop me an email (kamiza989@gmail.com) or pop along to my website (www.the-kamiza.com) and vote on the poll there.
Cheers,
Steve
Steve “Kamiza” Garrett has been an active member of the vast Vs. System online community since day one. Steve is an ardent supporter of casual Vs. play and the European game on the whole. If you are interested in supporting UDE games within Europe or have any comments regarding this article, please pop along to his website: www.the-kamiza.com.