The last couple of weeks certainly haven’t been dull. To begin with, Pro Circuit San Francisco was, from an online spectator’s perspective, absolutely amazing. The field was littered with a plethora of new, exciting decks, and the Top 8 was an amazing collection of card-flipping talent. The event produced a number of firsts. We have our first non-U.S. Pro Circuit Champion, Ian Vincent. Vidi Wijaya was the first player to compete in consecutive PC finals. Kim Caton was the first woman to reach the Top 8 of a Pro Circuit, and we also had our first legally blind player reach Day 2 of the event. Congratulations to Jamie Tachiyama for achieving that feat.

There was a lot of fallout after the PC. Justice League of Arkham had rattled a few cages, including the good fellows over at R&D who took their “ban-stick” and gave the card a good thrashing (so much so that it will never see the light of competitive play again).

Just before time was called on JLoA, Michael Jacob managed to squeeze in a win with the deck at $10K Hamilton. This is another first for Vs. System. Mr. Jacob is widely regarded as one of the best players in the world, and with good reason. The win marked his fourth $10K title, an unprecedented achievement. Congratulations to you, Michael. The Hamilton $10K may have been the swan song for Justice League of Arkham, but it demonstrated the point I was trying to make last week. Silver Age is probably the most diverse and, therefore, the most entertaining format we have. Take a look at this breakdown of what was being played:

21 Checkmate (5 with Fate Artifacts)

8 FTN Squadron

8 Squadron (3 with Fate Artifacts)

7 Injustice Gang (1 with Fate Artifacts)

6 G’Lock

5 Good Guys

3 Ivy League

3 Avengers reservist (1 with Fate Artifacts)

3 AGL

3 Mental

3 High Voltage

2 Wrecking Crew combo

2 Shadowpact

1 Villains United / X-Statix

1 Anti-Matter

1 Hellfire Club / Marvel Knights

1 X-Men / Spider-Friends

1 Brotherhood reservist

1 Marvel Knights

1 Hellfire Club

1 Villains United

1 Avengers (non-reservist)

1 Secret Society / Injustice Gang

1 Squadron / Avengers / Marvel Knights

1 Fate

1 X-Statix

1 X-Men / Brotherhood

1 Villains United / Masters of Evil

1 Hellfire Club / Checkmate

1 JLI with Fate

1 X-Men

1 Checkmate / JSA

Checkmate was an expected favorite after its PC triumph. Although the “Ivy League” deck may be stronger, it is far more complicated, so the netdeckers went for the deck that was easier to pick up and play. There are some great ideas in there, and the Top 8 showcased a great diversity of decks. Something that captured the imagination of players—regardless of what deck they played—was the allure of the Fate Artifacts. It seems like people are shoehorning these powerful equipment cards into a multitude of decks, so let’s take a closer look at the cards in question.

Amulet of Nabu

The Amulet bestows a healthy +1 ATK / +1 DEF to the bearer for each Artifact you control. Ideally, this means your equipped character has +3/+3 with flight and range. Which is pretty snazzy, even before you take into account any latent abilities your character has.

Cloak of Nabu

The cloak is perhaps my favorite of the three Nabu cards. It grants +1 DEF, which should never be underestimated, but the real gem is that your character cannot be targeted by effects your opponent controls. No need to worry about Gorilla Grodd monkey business here!

Helm of Nabu

The Helm rounds things off and should ideally be equipped last as you get to draw/discard a card for each artifact you control. It tops your stats off with a +1 ATK bonus, meaning that with all three artifacts your character is +4/+4 with flight and range and they cannot be the target of effects your opponent controls. The icing on the cake is that the character now gains the identity Dr. Fate, making it a legal target for:

Fate Has Spoken, Magic

Here we have the potential win condition of the Fate Artifact deck. Not only do you have a character with stats well above the curve, but you also get to attack twice with him or her. That’s some awesome power right there!

Dr. Fate's Tower

The tower is a bit of support for organizing those artifacts we treasure so. You can search one out upon flipping the location, and the backup ability ensures you can get all the pieces of the puzzle onto your most willing warrior for the turn.

These three pieces of equipment are clearly quite powerful and have had a huge impact on the game already, despite being released less than two months ago. The first time they really shook the game was when a decklist popped up on VSRealms.com with a way around the unique qualities of the equipment. The deck used Black Panther, King of Wakanda and other Marvel Knights trickery to have incredibly large characters in play, thanks to the Artifacts. The Jedi Masters at Upper Deck obviously felt a major disturbance in the Force and set about closing the loopholes the deck exploited with a few changes to the uniqueness rules. For those of you who may have missed that memo, here are the details:

705. Uniqueness Rule

705.1 As part of resolving a recruit effect for a unique character, its controller-to-be puts each other object he or she controls with the same name as that character into its owner's KO'd pile. This is not the same as KO'ing those objects.

705.2 As part of flipping a unique location face up, its controller puts each other object he or she controls with the same name as that location into its owner's KO'd pile. This is not the same as KO'ing those objects.

705.3 As part of attaching a unique equipment to a character, that character's controller puts each other object he or she controls with the same name as that equipment into its owner's KO'd pile. This is not the same as KO'ing those objects.

705.4 The uniqueness rule is checked only when resolving a character recruit effect, flipping a location, or attaching an equipment. It does not apply to any other modifiers that put an object into play or change control of an object.

In short, this means that there is no longer any way to have a character equipped with multiple copies of each Artifact.

Another indication that the Artifacts were just ripe to be abused came when Daniella Grijalva and David Frayer picked up a few copies and created a nice little "turn 3 win" deck. I'd heard rumors about a deck that blasted away the competition at a recent PCQ, so I tracked down Daniella — the young lady who piloted the deck to success — to ask her a little about it. David was the brains and put the deck together, whilst Daniella was the brawn and smacked the opposition around the head with it.

Fantastic Fource v2.0

Characters: 18

3x Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl

3x Ant Man, Scott Lang

4x Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards

1x She-Thing

4x Thing, Ben Grimm

1x Human Torch, Hotshot

1x Franklin Richards, Trapped in Time

1x Mr. Fantastic, Stretch

Plot Twists: 20

2x Marvel's First Family

2x Blind Sided

2x Tech Upgrade

2x Signal Flare

4x Team Tactics

4x Cosmic Radiation

4x Salvage

Locations: 4

4x Antarctic Research Base

Equipment: 18

3x The Pogo Plane

1x Advanced Hardware

4x Unstable Molecules

3x Amulet of Nabu

3x Cloak of Nabu

4x Helm of Nabu

You can potentially draw your entire deck through Helm of Nabu and Antarctic Research Base. Then, once you have your necessary offensive tools in place, you can attack for impressively large amounts of damage using Team Tactics and Cosmic Radiation. Throw a little Blind Sided into the pot and that's game, thanks for coming, have a safe trip home.

Here's what Daniella had to say about the deck:

Okay, so this, believe it or not, was a relatively untested version. We knew the deck was powerful, because when I play-tested it the night before, I was able to defeat Dave, playing Avengers, on turn 3. Some of the cards that shut this deck down are Heroic Sacrifice, Roy Harper, Terra if you have no cloak for your Thing or if they use the abilities on their own guys, and Die for Darkseid!. Basically any card that can KO their guy to negate the attack. Also Rigged Elections just outright beats this deck.

Once again, Dave Humpherys and the gang sensed trouble on the horizon should a deck like this be allowed to go unchecked, so, for the good of the game, the decision was made to ban Antarctic Research Base. It's important to understand that this was not a knee-jerk reaction to Daniella and David's deck, though it was what tipped the scales. You can read the full details in last week’s article by Dave Humpherys here.

As the dust settles, we see that the Artifacts not only remain, but are sitting there screaming, "Break me!" Well, I don’t know about breaking them, but I thought that since PC: Indy has been announced as DC Modern Age, I’d have a crack at putting a list together.

Fate’s Secret

4  Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster

2  Jaime Reyes ◊ Blue Beetle

4  Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose

1  Deadshot, Floyd Lawton

3  Quakemaster

2  Captain Cold

1  Floronic Man, Jason Woodrue

1  Fatality, Flawless Victory

1  Poison Ivy, Kiss of Death

3  Katar Hol ◊ Hawkman, Thanagarian Enforcer

4  Scarecrow, Fearmonger

1  John Henry Irons ◊ Steel, Steel-Drivin’ Man

2  Gorilla Grodd

1  Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster

4  Straight to the Grave

4  Sorcerer's Treasure

3  Fate Has Spoken

1  Removed from Continuity

1  Transmutation

1  Membership Drive

4  Slaughter Swamp

3  Dr. Fate's Tower

1  Gorilla City

3  Amulet of Nabu

3  Cloak of Nabu

2  Helm of Nabu

Whether or not anything will come of this, only time will tell. It is a first draft of the deck, and I've only managed limited testing so far, but I’m sure something can be salvaged from it. Let’s take a tour inside my mind as I run through my thought process; please wipe your feet.

The Troublesome Trickster has enabled Secret Society to move out of the shadows. He makes Slaughter Swamp totally free and is inexpensive fodder for Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose. Quakemaster is included as tech against Checkmate decks. I personally prefer Captain Cold if you measure the two of them against each other, but I suspect that a little bit of location control will go a long way in DC MA. I’ve gone off team for the primary 4-drop. Katar Hol has the potential to be very big. In an ideal world, I begin by playing Membership Drive, then recruiting Hawkman with any Artifacts I have. In testing, I’ve regularly been able to play the Amulet and Cloak, making Hawkman 11 ATK / 12 DEF if I managed the Membership Drive as well. Then Scarecrow rolls in, and I normally have a Tower to transfer everything to him, as well as to search out the missing Helm if so required. You can steal Hawkman’s counter if you wish, making Scarecrow 15 ATK / 14 DEF. If you have drawn the marvelous Fate Has Spoken, that’s pretty much game. Don’t make the same mistake I did my first time playing this deck and attempt to search out Fate Has Spoken with Slaughter Swamp. Sorcerer’s Treasure won’t help you either. The only way you’re getting it out of the KO’d pile is if you have Floronic Man. I’ve included a copy of John Henry for similar reasons. If you’re stuck with a missing artifact buried in your KO’d pile, you don’t need Indiana Jones to get it out. John Henry does the job quite nicely. Of course, this is all theory and preliminary testing. At the very least, it makes for a fun deck to play down at your Hobby League, or any local level DC Modern Age event.

I’d love for this to be a community project, so if you’re interested in developing and furthering the deck, feel free to send me your ideas and findings.

We approach the end of another One Step Beyond. Before we part ways, I have the results of the Deckbuilder Challenge Cup—Cosmic Challenge. Votes were collected via email and the poll on my website. Here are the final standings:

Participant	Entry Title	Votes
Brian Herman	Fantastic Assassins	31.2%
Jin Yi Huang	The Zeitgeist Shuffle	22.9%
Sam Roads	Both Pies Cooking	18.6%
Robert Bridge	Multiple Moonriders	14.6%
TheLord	Xtastic Discard	12.5%

Place	Name	Points
1	Brian Herman	5
2	Jin Yi Huang	3
3	Sam Roads	1

Congratulations to Brian Herman, who tops the first leader board. Next week, I will reveal the top five decks for the second Deckbuilder Challenge—Counter Crazy!

Steve Garrett

If you want to discuss anything from my articles, or anything in general, feel free to email me @ kamiza989@gmail.com or pop along to www.the-kamiza.com to give me a hard time.