My love for burn is widely known, and I have to admit that the second I saw Mark Moonrider on the Superman, Man of Steel spoiler list, I wanted four of him in my burn deck. I play a Mutant Nation burn deck, and fitting in a New Gods 3-drop would be a tricky endeavor, both for team-up purposes and for synergy. The deck relies too heavily on team stamps to support a lot of outside characters, and I was already using Puppet Master as my backup to Pyro.

I briefly thought of making a burn solitaire deck, which I’ve heard players on three separate continents have built and tested. However, if I thought that splashing Mark Moonrider into Mutant Nation would be tricky, throwing in Human Torch, Hotshot and/or Cosmic Radiation would bring inconsistencies to the deck that I don’t want to deal with. I don’t have the patience that the intercontinentals have—I live in Canada, where if you’re too patient, you get swallowed by glaciers!

Instead, my answer was to drop one of the teams in the Mutant Nation and replace it with New Gods. Several factors played into this, one of them being that Mark Moonrider’s ability depends on his cosmic counter, and burn decks like to use Rogue, Power Absorption and Mimic to swipe powers. You can’t do that to Moonrider if his counter is totaled. A second factor was a superior team-up card, Royal Decree. This card would not only allow me to team up any teams I liked, but would also reward me with a draw if New Gods was one of those teams. This made splashing Rogue very simple, as Royal Decree would work as easily on her as it would on the Brotherhood characters. Mutant Nation is team dependent and wouldn’t work on Mark Moonrider.

The New Gods also have a ton of great resources, easing the pain of losing great stall (Dazzler), solid healing (Children of the Atom), double burn (Xavier’s School), backup beat sticks (Wolverine, Logan and John Proudstar), and one of the best 7-drops in the game (Professor X, World’s Most Powerful Telepath). The first resource I discovered after replacing Mutant Nation with Royal Decree was New Genesis. This location is strong not only because of its healing abilities, but also because it replaces Mark Moonrider’s cosmic counter. That allows him to recover and keep burning away, turn after turn. With Avalon Space Station, it’s easy to gain enough cards for the discard without losing your hand, and removing Dazzler and Children of the Atom from the deck meant that I no longer had any other discard costs to worry about.

Then I discovered The Prophecy Fulfilled. This card is key. It is, in fact, a central card to the deck’s strategy. You don’t need it to win the game, but it sure helps. With this card, you can aggressively burn and burn and burn again, all without worrying about losing endurance. Granted, you should exercise caution—you don’t want to lose too much endurance prematurely, as you still need to be able to take your opponent to 0 or less. Once you hit a turn where you can conceivably take your opponent down, flip The Prophecy Fulfilled and try to recruit as many characters as you can. It’s best to get two team-ups and/or Prophecies into the resource row, if possible, as Have a Blast! can really hurt this deck. That is where The Source comes in. If you play it correctly, it can eliminate the Have a Blast! threat before it causes too much damage.

Once the Prophecy is flipped, you’ll want to recruit those extra characters. As long as you have more targets than your opponent can attack, you’re basically assured the victory if you have enough burn to get him or her down to 0. Arsenal and friends can make this task daunting, but you can always follow the curve against an Arsenal Abuse deck or play Scarlet Witch. The Mutant Menace is also very handy in the final turn, as it gives a nice, unexpected endurance burn that your opponent may not have counted on.

Here is the deck:

2 Izaya ◊ Highfather, the Inheritor

2 Lightray, Solis

4 Mark Moonrider, Forever People

4 Mimic, Calvin Rankin

2 Puppet Master, Philip Masters

4 Pyro, St. John Allerdyce

3 Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff

4 Rogue, Power Absorption

4 Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff

1 Scott Free ◊ Mister Miracle, Escape Artist

3 Nasty Surprise

4 Royal Decree

4 Surprise Attack

3 The Mutant Menace

3 The Prophecy Fulfilled

3 The Source

3 War on Humanity

3 Avalon Space Station

2 Metropolis

3 New Genesis

I have tested an alternate, more aggressive build. It dumps Lightray and Mimic for two more copies of Puppet Master, an extra Quicksilver, an extra Izaya, and an extra Scott Free, which makes it 60 cards instead of 61. I find that games with the alternate build generally end on turn 6, though, so if you want to dump anything, it might be better to drop the Lightrays for a couple of Puppet Masters and/or a Scott Free. In the primary build, however, Rise to Power is a very strong card to consider adding, because it almost guarantees success if you need to follow your curve . . . especially with Avalon in play. If worse comes to worst, you can always use it for Avalon or New Genesis. To make room, you can cut a War on Humanity or two and a Mimic.

I also like Blob as an alternate 4-drop, but I chose Izaya instead. Not only is his healing ability (which, combined with New Genesis, can essentially recover three characters in one turn) important, but he also feeds the team-ups and the loyalty requirements on Scott Free if you miss Wanda. I wanted Scott Free in case I needed a New Gods character in the later rounds, and while I considered Metron instead because of his fantastic ability, Scott Free’s evasion and anti-attack ability (which could be refueled by New Genesis) were more important.

I used Metropolis instead of another team-up plot twist to diversify my resource types. The Source can’t hurt Metropolis, for example, although it can wipe out my Royal Decrees. Nasty Surprise is a late addition. I used to run Burn Rubber, but I discovered that I didn’t care about breakthrough. I wasn’t trying to get my opponent below my total, just below 0. Burn drops your opponent very quickly, anyhow, so you can afford to take a big hit or three. As well, it hurt my opponent a lot more when he or she lost a character or two because of a Nasty Surprise (losing extra endurance in the process) than it did when I prevented a bit of breakthrough endurance loss.

In the end, this deck hasn’t been tested to extremes, but it has played solidly, winning about 65% of the games I’ve played with it. It works nicely in multiplayer, assuming you’re not targeted by the entire board in a “burn purge,” as the healing nets you some serious board advantage when your opponents are all KO’ing their excess stuns. And remember, if you build it, they will burn!

Also known by his screen name, Kergillian, Ben Kalman has been involved in the Vs. community since day one. He started the first major player in the online community, the Vs. Listserv, through Yahoo! Groups, and it now boasts well over 1200 members! For more on the Yahoo! group, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Marvel_DC_TCG.