Welcome back, true believers. This week’s Breaking Ground is a continuation of last week’s. You’ve seen the deck . . . now you get to hear about the playtesting experiences I encountered and see how it fared at a recent City Championship event.
For those of you who didn’t read last week’s article (or just flat-out don’t remember since it’s been a full week), here’s the original decklist:
A Meeting of the Minds (60 cards)
Characters (28)
4 Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways
2 Morg, Slayer
4 Air-Walker, Gabriel Lan
1 Hawkeye, Loud Mouth
4 Professor X, Headmaster
3 Emma Frost, Friend or Foe
1 Red Shift, Rift Walker
3 Jean Grey, Red
1 Ronan the Accuser, Supreme Public Accuser
1 Silver Surfer, Harbinger of Oblivion
1 Rachel Summers ◊ Phoenix, Phoenix of the Future
2 Supreme Intelligence, Kree Collective
1 Galactus, Devourer of Worlds
Plot Twists (27)
4 Against All Odds
4 Brave New World, Team-Up
4 Enemy of My Enemy
4 Intergalactic Summit
4 Kindred Spirits
4 Level 12 Intelligence
3 Phoenix Rising
Locations (5)
4 Slaughter Swamp
1 X-Corp: Amsterdam, X-Corp
This was the starting point for what I hoped would be a successful foray into the City Championship in Waco, TX.
There’s No “I” in “Team” . . . but, Ironically, There Is a “Me”
My playtesting for the Waco City Championship began in the same way as all of my other jank-tastic ideas that have a legitimate shot at doing well: with a post to the Team Alternate Win Condition forums. One of the great things about being a part of a team is that I have sounding boards for my various ideas, and the feedback I get helps me to improve weaker areas of my deck.
In this case, I was aided by TAWC’s own monarch of jank, Tim Batow. As a player who is renowned for his outrageous and amazing deck ideas, Tim is a great resource for any Vs. System deckbuilder. Tim briefly discussed his thoughts on the deck and made the following suggestions:
1) Replace one copy of Brave New World with X-Corp: Amsterdam, X-Corp. At a basic level, the two cards are functionally the same, but X-Corp: Amsterdam, X-Corp provides an additional effect that can be quite useful in certain situations.
2) Change my 7-drop to Mar-Vell ◊ Captain Marvel, Enemy of the Empire. While Ronan the Accuser, Supreme Public Accuser can be useful from a disruption perspective, Mar-Vell is a reservist, which makes him a great deal more flexible. In addition, the deck will often have five cards in hand when Mar-Vell is recruited, so he will usually get a decent stat boost for the turn.
3) Drop Rachel Summers ◊ Phoenix, Phoenix of the Future for another copy of Emma Frost, Friend or Foe. With Phoenix Rising playing such a prominent role in the deck, I would often need that fourth copy of Emma Frost to make sure I could recover her when necessary. In addition, this provided a little more insurance for hitting my preferred 5-drop.
With these changes in place, I went forward to testing the deck that I had placed my hopes and dreams upon. Almost immediately, I noticed a couple of play issues myself. First, I was almost never recruiting Morg, Slayer. Because Professor X, Headmaster is so important to the deck, I almost always needed to have Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways out on turn 2 to ensure that I could search for Professor X. Besides, once Professor X came out, I would have a much better off-curve control play in Hawkeye, Loud Mouth.
Second, Phoenix Rising is just plain amazing. I knew this from the times that I played X-Mental, but I really didn’t see this particular deck needing four copies. During playtesting, there was rarely a time that I didn’t want to have one handy. Thus, my initial assumption was probably flawed; I needed to have four copies of Phoenix Rising in my deck.
Finally, despite the fact that I could usually win with Supreme Intelligence and Galactus, Devourer of Worlds on turn 8, I was still missing Rachel Summers. I initially put her in the deck because I wanted an option for turn 8 just in case Supreme Intelligence didn’t pan out. While this didn’t happen all that often in playtesting, I was nonetheless nervous about not having a backup plan. In essence, I really wanted to have Rachel Summers in the deck, if for no other reason than she was a “security blanket” of sorts.
My playtesting changes became a combination of Tim’s and my own. Ronan the Accuser and one copy of Morg were out. In their place came Mar-Vell and another copy of Emma Frost. I swapped out a Brave New World for another X-Corp: Amsterdam, X-Corp. Lastly, one Slaughter Swamp was taken out for the fourth Phoenix Rising.
Here is the revised version of the original decklist:
A Meeting of the Minds (60 cards)
Characters (28)
4 Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways
1 Morg, Slayer
4 Air-Walker, Gabriel Lan
1 Hawkeye, Loud Mouth
4 Professor X, Headmaster
4 Emma Frost, Friend or Foe
1 Red Shift, Rift Walker
3 Jean Grey, Red
1 Mar-Vell ◊ Captain Marvel, Enemy of the Empire
1 Silver Surfer, Harbinger of Oblivion
1 Rachel Summers ◊ Phoenix, Phoenix of the Future
2 Supreme Intelligence, Kree Collective
1 Galactus, Devourer of Worlds
Plot Twists (27)
4 Against All Odds
3 Brave New World, Team-Up
4 Enemy of My Enemy
4 Intergalactic Summit
4 Kindred Spirits
4 Level 12 Intelligence
4 Phoenix Rising
Locations (5)
3 Slaughter Swamp
2 X-Corp: Amsterdam, X-Corp
My playtesting with this deck revealed it to be extremely consistent—I only missed a drop during turns 2 through 7 about one out of ten times. Still, I was a bit troubled by the deck’s lack of versatility. One trait of my X-Mental deck that I loved so much was that it could act either as a defender or aggressor as the situation required. Against aggressive decks, X-Mental could play the stall game until the later turns, when the larger late drops would beat the aggressive player over the head. Against curve and stall decks, X-Mental had enough power to win the game in the mid-game before the late-game deck could ever get its strategy going.
The Supreme Intelligence deck lacked the aggressive ability of the pure X-Mental deck. Its defensive power was just as potent, but it tended to falter against decks with strong mid- to late games. Since I had taken out a good number of the powerful disruption cards that usually allowed me to win late-game matchups with X-Mental (War of Attrition, Mutant Massacre, No Man Escapes the Manhunters, etc.), I was at a severe disadvantage against strong curve decks like Checkmate / Villains United and Heralds / Inhumans. Given that my deck was supposed to thrive on the late game, this was dire news indeed.
Nevertheless, I said that I was going to play the deck at the City Championship, and I am a man of my word. I hoped that my play skill and knowledge of the deck would be enough to get me through unfavorable matchups.
Tournament Report: City Championship, Waco, TX
Compared to Dallas, Waco is a relatively small town, but that didn’t affect the turnout. Players from Waco, the Dallas area, and even Austin made the trip to play in this City Championship tournament.
True to form, the Waco players were sporting some cool and innovative decks (except for Paul Hagan, who was touting a standard Checkmate / Villains United deck . . . Boo! Hiss!). The real surprise, though, was that no one was playing QuickFate. Everyone was considerably happy about this, as none of us wanted to see the Waco City Championship won by the current “Curve Sentinels” of Silver Age.
Round 1
My first round opponent was Michael. Michael is a player from the Dallas area who often makes trips to premier Vs. System events. Though I hold the edge in our match records, Michael is always challenging to play against. When he revealed that he was playing Checkmate / Villains United (Boo! Hiss!), I knew that I was in for an uphill battle.
Initially, things went well for me, as I was able to get my optimal setup of Silver Surfer; Air-Walker, Gabriel Lan; and Professor X. In addition, I had X-Corp: Amsterdam, X-Corp and Phoenix Rising in my resource row, and my curve through turn 7 was in my hand. I looked to be in pretty good shape.
With the initiative on turn 4, Michael sent his Bizarro, ME AM BIZARRO #1 into my Professor X. He had Sarge Steel protecting Bizarro, so I was pretty sure that Sarge would be taking the stun for the brutal 4-drop. To save some endurance loss for myself, I flipped X-Corp: Amsterdam, X-Corp and gave Professor X a point of DEF. Sure enough, both Professor X and Sarge Steel stunned. Since I had a ready Air-Walker, Michael wouldn’t be attacking with Ahmed Samsarra. Michael had other plans, however; he returned Sarge Steel to his hand to play No Mercy on my Professor X.
No Mercy?
I was completely caught off guard by this unorthodox card in his deck. While I had a Phoenix Rising ready to use, I didn’t have a copy of Professor X in my KO’d pile, nor any way to find a copy. Worse yet, I had exhausted my X-Corp: Amsterdam, X-Corp to save a paltry point of DEF, so I couldn’t team-up my characters. Considering that Emma Frost was the only 5-drop in my hand, this was quite problematic. After taking that brutal hit, I dug for my copy of Red Shift to salvage the game. Unfortunately, the hidden Herald remained hidden within my deck, and I was forced to scoop on turn 5.
0-1
Round 2
I was a bit discouraged from the first round, but I consoled myself knowing that it was already a bad matchup without the No Mercy from left field. I settled down and got ready for the next round.
My second round opponent was Josh, another player from the Dallas area. Josh frequently plays cards over at my local shop—Insanity Cards and Games in Mesquite, TX—and is well known for his love of late-game stall decks involving Darkseid’s Elite characters. Sure enough, Josh was toting a Darkseid’s Elite disruption deck.
I was careful not to get too greedy with my resource row, as I knew giving Josh too many cards via the effect of Darkseid, Apokoliptian Oppressor could be disastrous. I was graced by good fortune when Josh missed his 6-drop; this allowed me to take control of the board. Even though I wasn’t able to get a complete lock on Josh with Silver Surfer, Harbinger of Oblivion, bringing out Galactus and Rachel Summers via the effect of Supreme Intelligence was more than enough to force a concession.
1-1
Round 3
The wind was back in my sails as I headed into the next round. My opponent this time was Jason (a.k.a. “babyarm” for all of you who frequent VsRealms). Jason is a classy guy, and I never tire of talking Vs. with him. I knew from my discussions 
before the tournament that Jason would be playing his Hellfire Club / Kang creation. My feelings were that as long as I drew enough copies of Against All Odds, I would be able to win the matchup.
Once again, I started off in splendid fashion with Silver Surfer, Air-Walker, and Professor X. Jason, on the other hand, underdropped on turn 2 and completely missed on turn 3. When he only had another copy of Kang, Master of Time on turn 5, I knew that I was in good shape.
On turn 7, though, my brain completely shut down and I lost all sense of rational thought. With 35 endurance and the initiative, I was feeling pretty good about my chances to make it to turn 8. Jason, however, had managed to get both Donald Pierce and Sebastian Shaw into play. I knew that my chances were better if I attacked Donald Pierce instead of letting him attack me. Unfortunately, I over-committed with three attackers. While I was concerned that he had some defensive tricks up his sleeve, Jason probably wouldn’t have had enough to stop the 26 points of ATK from just Mar-Vell and Emma Frost. I assumed that I could safely reinforce one attack by Sebastian Shaw with Jean Grey, Red, so I rushed in headlong and got my Mar-Vell stunned for my efforts. After I bounced an attack on my Professor X by Kang, Master of Time with a timely Against All Odds, Jason caught me off guard with a Flying Kick on Sebastian Shaw. With the ability to take to the skies, Jason’s 20 ATK Shaw proceeded to pound my Jean Grey into the ground. Shaw then readied with his effect and laid the smackdown on my Professor X, bringing me to -2 endurance. Good game . . .
1-2
Round 4
I was extremely irked by my misplay in the last round. Unfortunately, this round didn’t help my mood any. I was paired up against Eric, the brother of a local player in Waco. While Eric was extremely new to the game, he had a very innovative Heralds / Inhumans deck. None of his losses to that point had come from any deck weaknesses; rather, they were from the standard play mistakes that a new player tends to make. Fortunately for him, that was all about to change.
My opening draw gave me the goods character-wise, with my optimal character curve coming into play. The defensive plot twists that are so key to success with this deck remained deeply buried, however. On turn 4, Eric had a board of Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth; Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Soul Searcher; and Moondragon with no team-up. He decided to send Frankie Raye into Professor X with two copies of Relentless Onslaught. A single Against All Odds would have ended the attack right there, but my defensive cards were mad at me in this match. I tried to get out of the attack with Enemy of My Enemy fetching another Professor X to power-up. Eric responded with a power-up of his own, so I flipped Slaughter Swamp and pitched a Level 12 Intelligence to try for the desperate brickwall. My dreams were shattered, though, when Eric produced a third copy of Relentless Onslaught. Bad beats.
Things got much worse on turn 5 when Karnak hit the board for Eric. Of course, Eric finally found his team-up in the form of Extended Family, which enabled Karnak to bring Emma Frost’s DEF down to 0. Eric followed this up with a bit of a misplay by sending Karnak into Professor X for a two-sided stun (even though he had a Blue Area of the Moon face down). Even this mistake didn’t matter, though, as Eric continued his perfect draw by hitting another copy of Extended Family to give Karnak back his counter. With Jean Grey in play, I desperately searched for a copy of Against All Odds to help me salvage the game. My deck, however, had other ideas, and the ensuing attacks dropped me below 0.
1-3
Round 5
One unexpected plot twist. One play mistake. One horrendous draw. Alone, any of these is easy enough to recover from. Together, however, these individual events put me at three losses. To make matters worse, I was matched up against the only other 1-3 still in the tournament—Skyler (a.k.a. “Skittles”).
I knew that, under the correct circumstances, my deck had absolutely no chance against Skittles’s deck. After all, he was playing my Blackbriar Thorn Shadowpact deck. Usually, Skittles is very good with the deck; however, I had made a few changes to it, and one in particular—Nightmaster, Jim Rook—was causing a great deal of trouble for Skittles. By nature, Skittles is a very aggressive player. Thus, when he has a chance to play a 1-drop who can easily get to over 20 ATK in a given turn, he will go all-out to make that 1-drop as huge as possible. Unfortunately, Skittles didn’t quite understand that this extra ATK came at the price of his own endurance. I tried to explain to Skyler that Nightmaster was only supposed to be played on the last turn, and even then after you had already played most of your Magic plot twists to keep from burning yourself out of the game. Still, Skittles is indeed a fan of the proverbial “bigger and better mousetrap,” and he just couldn’t resist playing the problematic 1-drop whenever he had the opportunity. As a result, two of his three losses had come from the endurance loss due to Nightmaster.
I wish I could say this round was going to be different.
I kept an opening hand with Silver Surfer in it, but I was forced to play Enemy of My Enemy to search for Air-Walker on turn 3. This was met by a swift and certain copy of The Conclave by Skittles. Fortunately, I had drawn into three copies of Enemy of My Enemy, so I was able to successfully resolve the second one.
Play progressed slowly, and Skittles methodically built up his counters on Blackbriar Thorn. Fortunately, I had a trick up my sleeve for Skittles—Red Shift. On turn 5, I recruited the Herald to take care of the troublesome 2-drop. In response, Skittles went slightly on tilt, recruiting (you guessed it) Nightmaster, Jim Rook along with June Moon ◊ Enchantress, Good Witch and Madame Xanadu. Red Shift took down Blackbriar Thorn (along with about ten +1 ATK / +1 DEF counters). I then tried to get a stun on Zatanna, Magical Manipulator by attacking with Professor X. While Skittles probably should have let this attack go through without any action and moved on to turn 7 (where he would have undoubtedly crushed me), he went into aggressive mode. An Abjuration and two copies of The Phantom Stranger, Fallen Angel gave Skittles the brickwall with the stunback. With me sitting at 35 endurance, he tried to go for the win with a huge attack by Nightmaster. To be fair, the resulting 20 ATK Nightmaster was impressive—but it was still only enough to bring me down to 10 endurance. More importantly, Skittles put himself at 6 endurance with all of his attacks.
Turn 6 was fairly elementary, as Skittles missed his drop (due to pitching Detective Chimp, Shoeless Gumshoe for The Phantom Stranger). In turn, I recruited a copy of Hawkeye, Loud Mouth (to stun his Blackbriar Thorn) and Air-Walker (to exhaust his Manitou Dawn). Even after tossing all of his pumps to the ill-advised attack by Nightmaster a turn prior, Skittles was still able to take me down to 0 endurance. Unfortunately for Skittles, the return attack by Red Shift on Zatanna put him at -2.
2-3
Round 6
While I was a bit sad that I had just beaten my little buddy Skittles (especially in a matchup that he should have easily won), I was glad to get back to winning ways. One more win would put me at even for the day—not a great showing, but respectable nonetheless.
Robert was my final round opponent. I wasn’t sure that I had ever met him before, so I had no clue what he would be playing. It turned out to be a rather clever Checkmate / Marvel Defenders creation. I wasn’t too sure what the synergy was between the two teams, but I quickly found out . . .
On turn 2, Robert dropped out Beast, New Defender. This was followed up by Christopher Smith ◊ Peacemaker on turn 3 with a team-up. On turn 4, Robert brought out the amazingly annoying Richard Rider ◊ Nova, Xandarian Nova Corps. He activated Nova once on my Professor X, then activated Peacemaker to target Beast, then activated Beast to target Nova. He then readied all of his characters and repeated the process (with Nova targeting Air-Walker this go-round). With all of his characters exhausted though, he was in no position to attack.
For a moment, this caused me a great deal of confusion. Why would Robert target Beast twice with Peacemaker if he didn’t plan on attacking with Beast? Then, right before I declared an attack on Beast, it dawned on me. Peacemaker’s effect triggers whenever the targeted character stuns a defender. Since Beast has evasion, he could evade while defending to stun himself, thus triggering Peacemaker’s effect. Brilliant! Since I became wise to the plan, I managed to avoid the Beast-Peacemaker trap.
Still, I started falling into a big hole as the Nova activations took their toll. Robert built up an impressive board of Peacemaker; Nova; Annihilation Protocol ◊ OMAC Robot; and Terrax, Harbinger of Ruin. On the other side, I had the much less impressive Emma Frost and Jean Grey. With the initiative, Robert made the interesting play of substituting out Nova for Samantha Parrington ◊ Valkyrie. A couple of Valkyrie activations (thanks to The Order) gave the OMAC and Terrax the ability to attack twice that turn. His first attack was shot down, as a copy of Against All Odds bounced Terrax’s attempt on Emma Frost. With both of my characters still ready, Robert decided that discretion was the better part of valor and sent a team attack of his OMAC and Terrax into Jean Grey. Of course, he was caught completely off-guard when I chose to stun the OMAC instead of Terrax (even though my 12 ATK Jean Grey couldn’t have stunned the 13 DEF Terrax anyway). This left Peacemaker unable to use the OMAC’s effect to KO Jean Grey. Success!
. . . or so I thought.
Robert flipped up a Death Trap to send Jean Grey careening back to my hand. Since I still hadn’t drawn a Phoenix Rising, my 6-drop—the key character to my deck’s success—went flying off the board.
I had Mar-Vell in hand for turn 7, but as I had several face-up resources still, I was forced to replay Jean Grey. I was given some small comfort by the fact that Robert missed his 7-drop. Unfortunately, his answer for this was another copy of Nova. I was seriously starting to get tired of that guy.
My attacks were academic, as Jean Grey shot down the OMAC (to prevent KO mischief) and Emma Frost took out Nova. A recycled Against All Odds bounced another attack by Terrax on Emma Frost. With no cards in his hand and only one face-down card in Robert’s row, I felt pretty good that my Jean would stick around for turn 8. Nova’s effect triggered, and my Red stunned. Then Robert revealed his face-down card . . .
Another Death Trap.
Murphy seemed to be making me his whipping boy that day, as everything that could have gone wrong in this match did go wrong. I was left with a 5-drop in play to face down Robert’s entire board. He missed again with his drop on 8 but managed to delight me by replaying Nova yet again. Even without a 7- or 8-drop, things were looking pretty good for him.
Still, I am nobody’s fool. Before Jean Grey met her second untimely demise, I used her effect to replace all but one face-up resource in my row. On turn 8, I used Emma Frost’s ability to flip down my lone face-up resource: a Team-Up. I then placed Rachel Summers in my resource row (alongside the previously shunned Mar-Vell). Supreme Intelligence then came into play, and as I had no face-up resources, his effect triggered. With his effect on the chain, I played a copy of Intergalactic Summit from my hand to crossover X-Men and Kree. The effect of Supreme Intelligence then resolved, and my board went from just Emma Frost to Supreme Intelligence, Rachel Summers, Mar-Vell, Professor X, and Emma Frost.
Having gone from an almost “can’t lose” situation to a “can’t win” scenario, Robert scooped up his cards.
Final record: 3-3
My Supreme Intelligence finished in 10th place—just out of the running for Top 8. While I was certainly disappointed that I wasn’t going to get to put my deck into contention for the UDE R&D tournament, I was gratified that it stood up to the competition at the City Championship. At the very least, I was able to spawn a new and unique deck that should provide me and (hopefully) others a good deal of fun in the weeks to come.
I hope that you all enjoyed my tournament report. If you did, then you should be thrilled when I bring you a second tournament report next week from the City Championship in Mesquite, TX. True to form, I will be playing another one of my bizarre concoctions in hopes of taking down the prize and a spot in the Top 8 of UDE R&D’s tournament. I’m not going to outright tell you what to expect next week, but I will give you one small hint:
DDD!
Michael Barnes (a.k.a. BigSpooky) is an avid Vs. System player who is a founding member of Team Alternate Win Condition (TAWC). When he isn’t concocting crazy deck ideas that no sane person would think of, he occupies his spare time working as an accountant in Dallas, TX. Any questions, comments, suggestions, or guesses regarding which deck will show up next week that you might have for Michael can be sent to him at BigSpooky1@hotmail.com.