It’s the end of round 3, and Sydney player Marc “Shaboogen” Losper is sitting at 2-1. There’s been a bit of talk about Shaboogen’s deck. It’s something that’s been toyed with in the Sydney Vs. System community for a little while. This latest tweak of the build seems to be serving him well enough, and we’ll be keeping an eye its performance. We sat down with Shaboogen to learn the ins and outs of his ‘Silver Rage’ deck.
“I usually get destroyed in most $10Ks,” he tells us. “I’ve been a control player for a very long time, and those sorts of decks are usually very match-up dependant. I’ve also made some bad meta calls in the past. This time around, I decided to go with mindless beats. And it seems to be going well so far!”
What’s your deck called?
Me and Alex Antonios are constantly arguing about this. Luke has called it ‘Silver Rage’ — which is meant to be a combo of Quicksilver, Inhuman by Marriage and Blinding Rage (PUMPS!!). I’ve been calling it Speed, because it’s full of characters from the Speedster style, ie, Slipstream, Johnny Quick, and, my personal favorite, Fastbak — the guy from Man of Steel!
What’s the theme of the deck? What does it aim to do?
It’s basically a beats deck. But it’s kind of a combo really too — it has many characters that can ready during combat to attack twice, and it uses Inhumans to drive the deck and pull everything together. It was originally based around Fate Artifacts, as thought up by Alex Antonios, but I felt that it was too much of a mise, and this build has more consistency.
What's the best card in the deck?
Blue Area of the Moon, and Himalayan Enclave are amazing in the deck. The Fate Artifacts’ original purpose was to get a dude big enough so it wouldn’t trade. Blue Area does basically the same thing with less vulnerability to the metagame. Himalayan is really important to the deck, because it allows me to manipulate character placement, which is the key to maximizing some of the characters’ abilities.
What's your optimal opening hand?
The absolute best hand would be Himalayan Enclave, Blue Area of the Moon, Extended Family, and San. The locations and the plot twists provide the combo, and San has the search to help you hit drops later.
What does it win to?
This deck was build at 4am on Friday morning based from some limited testing we’d done with the Fate Artifact version, so that’s all we can go on. So far, from the limited testing we’ve done, it appears to do well with Kree, Faces (and weenies generally), and any curve build, bar Good Guys.
What does it lose to?
Katar Hol ◊ Hawkman, Eternal Hero owns it. My one loss so far today is solely accredited to that card.
What do you think makes it so powerful in the current meta?
We made a gamble that Kree would turn up in great force at this $10K. This deck is good against Kree builds, and also has inherent power over weenie builds generally, so it works well against the latest Faces trend. Good Guys being popular is a little bit of a problem but, that being said, Good Guys has a lot of problems against a lot of decks, so it’s not such a huge issue for me.
Who is the hottest Vs character?
I can’t think of anything specifically, but the art on Teamwork is kinda cool. And by kinda, I mean obviously ridiculous.
Thanks, Shaboogen. We’re looking forward to seeing how your deck travels throughout the day.