You're still playing EMS? That's so Old School! Jason Hager and the boys from West Virginia brought out New School—the newest and zaniest deck his twisted mind has come up with yet. If you don't know the team, you will now. They call themselves the Hong Kong Cavaliers, and they feature Hager, Matt Oldaker, Anthony Justice, Heath Baker, Marshall James, and Shane Adams.
Taking the framework of Hager's Evil Medical School, New School was a team contribution, each member testing and contributing ideas on how to improve certain inconsistencies within the old EMS frame. The new deck still capitalizes on
Boris, Alfred,
Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius and
Dr. Light, Arthur Light, but instead of going with the weenies, this deck curves out using
Marvel Knights tech to increase its consistency and take advantage of the best team-up in existence.
Here's how it works:
The first key to this deck is
Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius. Not only is Doom useful with his plot twist prevention, but his ability to flip down plot twists is unsurpassable. With
Mystical Paralysis as a central piece of the New School puzzle, using it multiple times in a turn can help to stall out your opponent. And this deck likes to stall, taking as little endurance loss as possible, preferably until turn 9, when it throws out a boosted Dr. Light, who brings back everyone in the KO'd pile (which will, hopefully, include a Lord of Latveria waiting to pounce).
So far it sounds similar to Evil Medical School, except for a little extra team and search tech, right? Well, that's certainly true, and Jason Hager mentioned that “the biggest perk is never missing Diabolic Genius, which EMS does on occasion. It's also way better against
Micro-Sentinels.”
The biggest difference, however, between this deck and “old school” EMS is that this deck features two characters that can change the face of the game in a heartbeat. The first is
Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man. The mother of all exhaustion engines, retrospectively it's no surprise that Jason likes to choose the even initiatives, as using Spidey on turn 6 to exhaust the field is a brutal strategic move, knowing that you want to stall as long as possible.
The other interesting addition—and one that absolutely flabbergasted me when he showed it to me in his hand during a feature match, is
Glorious Godfrey! This deck is the mother of all team-up decks, running seven, including the four copies of
Midnight Sons that allow you advance team-ups. Glorious Godfrey needs a team-up to work, but when he works, he's magnificent! He exhausts a character of cost 4 or less, dealing endurance loss equal to its cost at the same time. Hager recounted that, “we went through every single character and drop, one by one, and looked for the best choice—especially defensively, since we want to stall until turn 9.”
And Godfrey is a stalling machine. You're using Godfrey turn after turn after turn, sucking off 3-4 endurance a turn, from as early as turn 5 onwards, often twice in a turn if you draw a
Press the Attack or two. As well, with boosted Mark Vs often hitting the field on turn 5 and Curve Sentinels being the predominant deck at the PC, Glorious Godfrey can gloriously handicap your opponent and drain him or her of endurance at the same time. “We originally had Garth and
Pleasant Distraction in the deck, but we felt that Godfrey was the better stall character, turn after turn.”
The
Bat-Signals and
Fizzles are still in the deck. “Eight search cards equals pure card advantage. Plus, they directly replace themselves, unlike other search cards—there's no discard.” Also,
Fizzle is a good means to discard Lord of Latveria to feed Dr. Light's boost ability. New School has also dropped
Devil's Due and
Pleasant Distraction in favor of a single copy of
Entangle and a single
Power Compressor, which is particularly nasty against Titans. “
Entangle is especially good with Spider-Man 6, and it also puts things in your KO'd pile and gives
Psimon something to do. It's really ridiculous in concert with 8-drop Doom, who can flip both
Entangle and
Mystical Paralysis face down when he comes into play. Power Compressor is the hardest card to search for, but Alfred and
Press the Attack together mean that you can get it right away if you need it.”
Their only worry is
Latverian Embassy. “It's a
huge worry for us. We had
Have a Blast! in the deck this morning, but we decided that its ability wasn't diverse enough, so we pulled it for a second
Fizzle.
Jason told me that most of the Cavaliers are playing this deck and have been testing it since
Marvel Knights was released. He's now 4-2, and his only losses so far were against Curve in a close-call—surprising because it's a good matchup, but he was out-drawn—and Evil Medical School, of all things, which he calls his worst matchup (ironically
because of all of the weenies that he has shunned for the curve). He also eked out a win against
Xavier's Dream, stunning his own 8-drop Doom and Fizzling two copies of
A Death in the Family to make sure the Dream didn't come true.
New School is not the easiest deck to play; there are so many decisions to make, and the chains of effects from this deck can be miles and miles long. Still, it's caught several people off guard, and that surprise factor will be major. The ability to lock down an opponent every turn through exhaustion, return, and stun effects is simply massive. It's especially solid against Curve Sentinels, with multiple ways around the
Hounds of Ahab lock and various tricks to stop the big boys cold, and with the field in this PC, I won't be surprised to see a few of these decks on top of the standings heading into Day 2.