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The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017

While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
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Deck Profile: Rian Fike

Jason Grabher-Meyer

December 03, 2004

Rian Fike played an aggressive burn-oriented build of The New Brotherhood at the Gen Con So Cal PC. Is he a traitor? A madman?! A DIRTY STINKING POSEUR?!?!

Nope. He’s the same old loveable Rian, with or without his purple minions, and his classic play style shows through even in this deck. He just decided to expand his repertoire a bit and try something new, and as of round 3 he was 2 and 1. The deck is cheerily nicknamed Risk Versus Reward, and win or lose, it’s a great example of Rian’s risky playstyle.

The deck is sort of a more diluted version of familiar TNB decks with more direct endurance loss than comparable builds. The deck is generally played with a spread of Brotherhood 1-drops, and seeing any of them is pretty common, but seeing them all in one deck isn’t nearly as prevalent. This is one of the differences from a standard TNB that makes it a bit more risky: the deck is low on 3-drops in order to include more 1-drops.

At the 2-drop level the deck seems pretty standard, packing four Pyros and two Toads. But, it’s also running one Unus and two Avalanches, which again eats into the deck’s presence on the 3.

The deck only has three 3-drops, and they’re all one-ofs: Rogue, Quicksilver, and Mystique. The spread allows multiple 3-drops to be recruited as needed, and the low number of 3-drops leaves space in the deck for the huge quantity of 1 and 2-drops.

Rian’s 4-drops were the one conventional part of the deck. It used four copies of Sabretooth, Feral Rage and one copy of Blob, so it’s at best completely the norm, and at its worst, one Blob short of its more mundane counterparts.

The 5-drops are pretty basic as well. Like other TNB decks, it foregoes Quicksilver in favor of four Magnetos in order to combo with Genosha. But the Magnetos also fill another need in this deck—with flight and range, they can reliably clear out ranged characters and small guys in the back row. Combined with A Death in the Family, this can mean that an opponent’s support row can be emptied without him or her having any sort of recourse. Surprise Attack will then hit for the full 5 endurance loss instead of 3.

The Mutant Menace is the deck’s last source of direct endurance loss. Watching Rian play against a Doom deck on turn 7 of round 3, all seemed to be lost—his opponent had a Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius in his back row, exhausted after attacking, and a Sub-Mariner exhausted for the same reason. After some stick-and-jab attacks from Rian’s little guys against some of his opponent’s characters, all that was left ready was a Magneto. Magneto swung in on the Diabolic Genius (which was backed by a Doomstadt), stunned it, and three Surprise Attacks and a The Mutant Menace for 7+ endurance finished the game in a heartbeat. The Mutant Menace is extremely good in this deck, as it often has board presence of six characters or more to draw on.

Lastly, Savage Beatdown and The New Brotherhood fill the roles they always do: turning 1-drops into huge thugs.

The deck hits hard and fast, and if the game goes into later turns and it doesn’t get squashed by big hitters, it can often squash itself through early and mid-game uses of A Death in the Family. It’s a high-risk deck, for sure, but it’s one that did exceedingly well for the Purple Man himself at the Gen Con So Cal PC. Rian Fike solidly demonstrated that he doesn’t need Sentinels to play a risky hit-or-miss deck, and play it to great success.