With the conclusion of $10K Charlotte, the Silver Age metagame is about as defined as it will ever get. All of the top decks have been covered in some form or another, so for the remaining PCQ season, most of your work has already been done for you. Now, all you have to do is pick a deck you like and become comfortable piloting it and playing specific matchups. However, most players have already shifted their focus to Pro Circuit Indianapolis and DC Modern Age. Instead of continuing to cover decks for Silver Age, I’m going to begin looking at potential archetypes for PC: Indy 2006.
Unknown formats are really hard to define, so the decks that I showcase in the next few weeks may or may not actually show up at the Pro Circuit. While there’s always a deck that’s predicted to show up in large numbers, the actual PC event can yield very different results. Pro Circuit San Francisco was a great example: people believed that G’Lock would be the deck to beat, and then Ivy League dominated the tournament. G’Lock actually ended up being the fifth most-played deck, so in the end, it’s nearly impossible to predict the metagame of a brand new format accurately. So, instead of reviewing the rouge decks that could break the format or flop in it, I’m going to stick with decks that the player base knows will show up in one form or another. Know in advance, though, that the lists I provide in these articles are extremely basic. Until the metagame becomes more defined, you don’t really know what to tech against, so it’s not worth adding in tech cards for matchups that might turn out to be favorable or non-existent. These DC Modern Age articles shouldn’t be looked at as the end-all guide to playing these decks, but rather as starter guides to getting the innovative wheels turning.
Good Guys is the heavy “favorite” of this format, mainly because they’ve already proven themselves in both Golden and Silver Age, but writing a second article on them would be a bit redundant. So, I’m going to look at a deck that was supposed to do well in Golden Age: the Injustice Gang.
Introduction and History
When Justice League of America was released, there was a lot of excitement surrounding the Injustice Gang team. The brand new affiliation utilized a theme that no one had ever dreamed of: forcing your opponent to draw excessive numbers of cards. Normally, a strategy like this would benefit your opponent instead of you, but characters like Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist and The Joker, Headline Stealer turned all the cards in your opponent’s hand into blank pieces of cardboard. As your opponent’s hand size steadily increased, he or she would be unable to use any of those tricks, but you would still have access to powerful combat modifiers such as Power Siphon and All Too Easy. Finally, Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist and Dr. Destiny would burn for a combined total of more than 25 endurance, effectively ending the game on turn 6. The total lockdown and enormous amount of burn that the Injustice Gang created in testing was enough to convince many players that Lex and crew would be dominating the tournament scene for quite some time.
Yet to this day, Injustice Gang has yet to make Top 8 at a $10K or Pro Circuit. The Injustice Gang team is certainly powerful, but they have a subtle weakness that becomes more and more apparent over the course of playtesting. The “big hand” strategy is easily disrupted by KO effects or missed drops because, to put it plainly, your character setup is very fragile. Sure, if you hit a perfect curve of IQ; Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist; The Joker, Headline Stealer; Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist; and Dr. Destiny, you can lock down your opponent and burn a huge chunk out of his or her endurance. But how often does that really happen? What happens if Lex is KO’d or otherwise leaves play?
What happens if you miss Lex altogether? If you’re missing a piece of your perfect curve, then the extra cards your opponent is drawing are only going to be helping them beat you down. Injustice Gang’s big hand theme is strong, but at the same time, it’s very hard to maintain and easily disrupted.
The Build
Injustice Gang
Characters
6 Infernal Minions, Army
4 IQ, Ira Quimby
4 Captain Boomerang, George Harkness
4 Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist
4 The Joker, Headline Stealer
3 Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist
1 Floronic Man, Alien Hybrid
3 Dr. Destiny, John Dee
1 Ocean Master, Son of Atlan
1 Gorilla Grodd, Simian Mastermind
1 The Joker, Permanent Vacation
Plot Twists
4 Criminal Mastermind
4 Power Siphon
4 Magical Lobotomy
4 Secret Files
4 Revitalize
4 Watch the Birdie!
Locations
4 Injustice Gang Satellite
To combat the problem of Injustice Gang’s frailty, I took a more defensive approach when compiling this list. I think the mistake many people have made with Injustice Gang is that they’ve been playing it incorrectly. With a card like All Too Easy, the team may seem very offensive-minded, but their strategy is more akin to that of a control deck. What you want to be doing with a team like Injustice Gang is controlling games by limiting what your opponents can do, then burning them to death on turn 5 or 6. If you play Injustice Gang aggressively, you’ll end up losing significant characters through combat and will be unable to burn for the maximum amount of damage with Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist and Dr. Destiny. I’m not saying that you should refrain from attacking with this deck, but rather that you should always make sure your attacks will succeed and that you won’t lose board advantage because of them.
The Strategy
Your mulligan condition is Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist. If you can’t find him within your first fourteen cards, then you’re in trouble, because he is the most important piece of the big hand strategy. If you see a hand with a 2-drop and Secret Files, you can keep that because you have a way to search out Lex. Seeing a hand with only a Secret Files and no 2-drop is a tougher decision, because there’s a chance you’ll draw into one of your eight 2-drops and be able to search out Lex. However, if you want to play it safe, always mulligan a hand that doesn’t contain Lex or a way to get him.
Although you can generally function on either initiative, taking evens will allow you to use Injustice Gang Satellite on your opponent’s 4-drop. Also, having the initiative on turn 4 will generally prevent you from having both The Joker, Headline Stealer and Lex stunned at the start of recovery, so you can ensure that both will be sticking around for one more turn. By taking evens, you also only have one true “defensive” turn, putting less pressure on you to draw into Power Siphon or Revitalize.
Infernal Minions is a luxury card. If you draw into one on turn 1, that’s great, but if you miss, it’s no big deal. Infernal Minions provides a free exhaust for Criminal Mastermind and allows you to play Secret Files on turn 2. You can also send a Minion on a suicide mission to put a +1 ATK / +1 DEF counter on another one of your characters, either preventing that character from stunning back or allowing you to cause an extra point of breakthrough endurance loss. Minions also make great discards for Injustice Gang Satellite if you draw them after turn 1.
IQ is your preferred character for turn 2, but Captain Boomerang, George Harkness will work just as well. Captain Boomerang is actually pretty useful for bouncing problematic 2-drops such as Booster Gold, Sarge Steel, or opposing copies of IQ. You should always use Captain Boomerang’s effect as soon as possible, because if you wait too long, your opponent’s 2-drop will be KO’d during recovery or your own Boomerang won’t stick around to see your next attack step. Depending on how long IQ stays in play, he can be the difference between a turn 5 or turn 6 victory. However, missing him or getting him KO’d usually isn’t that big of a deal, because even though his burn effect is good, keeping Lex or The Joker on the board is much more important.
The reason you don’t run any 3-drops besides Lex is that he’s the only character you ever want to play on turn 3. Lex is the centerpiece of the big hand strategy, and his ability to limit your opponent to a single plot twist per turn is amazing. You want to protect Lex at all costs, putting him behind bigger characters to prevent him from becoming stunned and recovering him instead of your 4-drop. Yes, he’s that important, and if you don’t hit him on turn 3, it’s extremely difficult to come back and win the game.
The Joker, Headline Stealer is your only 4-drop, mainly because there aren’t any other good Injustice Gang characters at that slot. Secret Files can search out any affiliated character, so you could run Fatality, Flawless Victory as a one-of, but her ability jeopardizes Lex, so she’s probably not a good idea. The Joker’s effect is similar to that of Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius because your opponent will always have more than enough cards in hand to limit him or her from playing any plot twists. The combination of Lex and The Joker will force your opponent to plan ahead and set all the plot twists he or she wants to use in the resource row. In bad situations where you don’t hit Lex on turn 3 or he gets KO’d, you can replay him and an Infernal Minions on turn 4, but both of these occurrences are rare.
Turn 4 is also the first turn that Injustice Gang Satellite comes online. If you can draw into one by then, what you want to do is team attack into your opponent’s 4-drop (to ensure it stuns) and then use Satellite to KO it. Satellite’s ability to be used multiple times throughout the course of the game is something that you should take advantage of so every turn you can try to KO your opponent’s biggest character. By doing so, you should keep your opponent down to two characters every turn, allowing you to maintain your important characters and continue to force your opponent to draw extra cards.
On turn 5, you have two different options. Against every matchup except Checkmate, you want to play Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist. Scarecrow’s burn effect will burn for an average of 10 to 15 endurance per turn, so over the course of two turns, he should take out roughly half of your opponent’s endurance. Checkmate’s reliance on locations basically neutralizes Lex’s effect, because on average, they’ll only need to play one plot twist a turn. Dropping Floronic Man, Alien Hybrid on turn 5 will allow you to pseudo-replace a Checkmate Safe House or Brother Eye and prevent your opponent from flipping any more locations.
If you played Floronic Man on turn 5, then on turn 6 you should boost Scarecrow so that you can begin burning. Otherwise, you have a few different options. Dr. Destiny is your optimal 6-drop because his burn effect will always allow you to end the game on or off your initiative. His concealed status can be irritating, but the massive amounts of burn that he can cause will more than make up for it. However, Dr. Destiny’s unaffiliated status makes him an illegal search target for Secret Files, so you have to run some backup characters to ensure you don’t have to under-drop on turn 6. Ocean Master will single-handedly win you the mirror match, allowing you to turn all of the excess cards in your hand into +1 ATK / +1 DEF counters. Gorilla Grodd forces rush decks to make sub-optimal attacks to ensure that one of their characters isn’t stolen during combat, and it generally makes your opponent think twice about his or her attack step.
If the game goes to turn 7 (which it rarely should; not only are Modern environments always extremely fast paced, but also if you haven’t won by turn 7, then something went wrong), The Joker, Permanent Vacation will double your opponent’s hand size and clean up.
Most of the non-character cards are self explanatory. Power Siphon will brickwall any attack, Criminal Mastermind forces more cards into your opponent’s hand, Secret Files searches for characters, and Injustice Gang Satellite KO’s any character you can stun. Revitalize reinforces the defensive nature of the deck, providing an alternate way to keep Lex around for multiple turns. Basically, Revitalize acts as your fifth through eighth copies of Power Siphon. If you use Power Siphon on your biggest character, you effectively prevent a stun, allowing you to recover a smaller character during that turn.
Revitalize does the same thing in a different way; it allows you to “prevent a stun” by recovering a character instead of stopping an attack. However, Revitalize doesn’t always work the way you want it to. For example, if you have Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist and The Joker, Headline Stealer in play and your opponent stuns The Joker first, you won’t be able to use Revitalize to recover a character. Be sure to form your characters wisely. But in general, if you and your opponent have the same number of characters in play, Revitalize will do the same thing as Power Siphon.
Magical Lobotomy is strictly for the Good Guys matchup. It can act as a random attack pump if necessary, but specifically, it prevents power-up effects. Injustice Gang suffers the most in a format without a true Unmasked, and while this substitute doesn’t prevent your opponent from actually powering-up and discarding cards, it does prevent him or her from getting any bonuses from it. I’ll go into more detail on this card in the matchup section.
This DC Modern Age format has a limited amount of hidden hate compared to last year’s format. Satellite HQ is better suited for decks that have the necessary tools to search it out without any trouble, and there simply isn’t enough room in Injustice Gang to run the four copies you need to ensure that you can get one by turn 4. Instead, Watch the Birdie! is an interesting hidden hate card, mainly because it has uses outside of shipping hidden characters to the visible area. While attacking across the curve, you can play Watch the Birdie! and prevent your character from being stunned—another “defensive” trick Injustice Gang can take advantage of. If you can get a copy of Injustice Gang Satellite by turn 4, then you can use Watch the Birdie! to bring Ahmed Samsarra to the visible area and KO him, thus stealing a win from his alternate loss condition.
Matchups
Since DC Modern Age is a completely undefined format, it’s really hard to compile a solid gauntlet before the Pro Circuit. However, it’s likely that Good Guys, a Fate Artifacts–based deck, and Checkmate / Villains United will show up because of their success in Silver Age, so for the time being, our gauntlet will be composed of those three decks.
Good Guys:
Power Siphon and Magical Lobotomy are key here. As I’ve said before, Good Guys is capable of generating extremely large ATK values, so you have to match that with equally large DEF values. Magical Lobotomy should be played from your resource row so that you can pay 4 endurance to flip it back down. Don’t forget to factor in ally effects, because even though the basic effect of powering-up is offset by Magical Lobotomy, all of your opponent’s ally effects will still trigger. Booster Gold still provides an extra point of DEF, and Katar Hol ◊ Hawkman, Thanagarian Enforcer still gives characters +2 ATK while swinging up the curve. Getting this card in multiples can really wreck the Good Guys player, because after the first copy, every time your opponent powers-up, his or her characters actually shrink in size. You have to rely on burning Good Guys to death through Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist and Dr. Destiny, because it will be rare that you can execute a safe attack into one of their characters. If you can KO Katar Hol with Injustice Gang Satellite, then you can easily survive until turn 6, but even if you team attack with all of your characters, you won’t always be able to stun him.
Play very conservatively and focus on setting up your big hand tricks while saving your defensive cards for when they’ll be the most devastating.
Checkmate / Villains United:
Take advantage of Ahmed Samsarra’s vulnerability, but don’t waste all your resources trying to get him KO’d. If you have a Satellite and Watch the Birdie! on turn 4, try going for the quick win, but if they’re teamed-up with Villains United already or have a face-up Threat Neutralized, don’t bother trying to get rid of him. Other than KO’ing Ahmed, the Satellite isn’t too useful in this matchup because cards like Knight Armor and Checkmate Safe House will always stop your attacks. However, their 3-drop (Ahmed) probably won’t be attacking, so defending on off initiatives becomes much easier. Playing Gorilla Grodd on turn 6, burning with Scarecrow, and then stealing their Bizarro, ME AM BIZARRO #1 mid-combat is almost as good as using Dr. Destiny, so if you can’t search him out, Grodd is a more than acceptable play. Focus less on combat and more on how you’re going to burn for the win, because their defensive tricks won’t do anything if you don’t walk into them.
Fate Artifacts:
I will admit that the term “Fate Artifact–based decks” is extremely general, but until a definite build emerges, I don’t know what else to go by. The Fate Artifact builds that I’ve seen going around generally feature Checkmate and JLA and play a curve including Ted Kord ◊ Blue Beetle; Sasha Bordeaux, Knight; Ahmed Samsarra; Katar Hol ◊ Hawkman, Thanagarian Enforcer; and John Henry Irons ◊ Steel. The +4 ATK / +4 DEF that the Artifacts provide is nice, but it shouldn’t matter very much if you’re able to stun and KO their equipped character. Generally, the only pumps that Fate Artifact decks run are the Artifacts themselves, so you won’t have to worry about defensive tricks. You can send your entire team into their equipped character and use Satellite to KO it without having to worry about failing the attack. Power Siphon will almost always stop an attack, the only exception being if the Fate Artifacts player swings down the curve and has Brother Eye in play. You should be able to burn for a lot of damage on turn 6, almost altogether ignoring combat throughout the course of the game. Compared to the other two matchups, this one is very easy, mainly because people overestimate the power of the Fate Artifacts. If you can’t beat them in combat, beat them outside of combat through burn effects!
Conclusions
Injustice Gang hasn’t done too well in past formats, but maybe DC Modern Age will finally give them their chance to shine. Depending on how the metagame shapes up, different cards in the build can be dropped to tech for bad matchups, because aside from the core line-up of characters, the deck is very flexible. Filling up your opponent’s hand and winning through burn effects is a unique strategy and a very strong one if the Fate Artifacts are as popular as everyone says they are. If you avoid combat altogether and win through burn effects, then you don’t have to deal with characters an entire spot above the curve. By rebuilding Injustice Gang as a defensive deck, you can easily protect your important characters like Lex from becoming stunned. And this article is just a basic guide for the Injustice Gang; there are dozens more possibilities if you team them up with another team. Experiment with card choices, play around with ratios, and who knows . . . maybe you’ll create the next broken deck for DC Modern Age.
Questions, comments, complaints, suggestions, criticism, and requests can be sent to gvl@nc.rr.com.