Two weeks ago, I put my Sealed Pack up for the entire world to see. It wasn’t the most broken pile of cards I’d ever seen, but it was a very solid deck nonetheless. I asked you to put a build together the way you would have played it in the Sneak Preview and let me know what you came up with. Last week, I gave you what I came up with for my version and let you know what mistakes I thought I made in hindsight. Now it’s time to see what you guys came up with.
I was really impressed with the variety of different decks, and especially with the fact that so many of you rationalized your decisions very well. That’s one of the most important things to me in this exercise; if you learn anything from this little series, I hope it’s the reasoning behind the cards you play and not just the memorization of the good cards. The value of the cards changes depending upon the rest of the deck. I was pleased to see that many of you were spot-on in your decision-making process.
I’m going to start with Steve, who sent me the following list:
Characters
Manhunter Clone (Target yourself right away to go with Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster and other cards.)
Professor Ivo (Ensures that you get Queen of Fables or Rama Khan.)
James Jesse ◊ Trickster (Continues the Clone’s job.)
Queen of Fables (Solid stats, even if you can’t get the full use of the ability.)
Dr. Sivana
The Shark, Karshon
Rocket Red #4 (Need to splash to get a fourth 3-drop, and he’s got great utility.)
The Joker, Headline Stealer
Hector Hammond, Mind Over Matter
Henry King ◊ Brainwave
John Stewart, Emerald Architect (Not enough ongoing plot twists to support Maxima.)
Darkseid, Heart of Darkness
Valkyra
Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist
John Henry Irons ◊ Steel (Can’t resist his upside.)
Gorilla Grodd
Remoni-Notra ◊ Star Sapphire, Zamoran Champion (Can’t argue with the stats.)
Captain Atom (I’m not impressed with Ocean Master, and Atom boosts to 7.)
Rama Khan (Awesome ability.)
Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster, Mindless Brute (Truly brutal if you have the initiative.)
Plot Twists
Funky’s Big Rat Code
Lair of the Mastermind (These are your Team-Ups, and they help your unaffiliated characters.)
Slaughter Swamp (A second location to go with Rama Khan, and good recursion.)
Wall of Will (We’ve got a lot of willpower.)
Mysterious Benefactor (We have leaders at drops 3 through 6.)
Lead by Example (Hitting on the leader theme again.)
Midnight Cravings (Works on offense or defense and is a great counter to Wall of Will.)
2 Membership Drive
Counterterrorism (Great anti-cosmic, Scarecrow, and Membership Drive card.)
Equipment
Nth Metal (For Steel if you get him, and he works great with allies.)
You’ve got tons of Secret Society and Injustice Gang characters and they work well together, so I figure that should be the focus of the deck. I usually end up going with 41 cards and it always seems to work well for me. With the potential of your own and your opponent’s actions to run your deck out of cards in this set, running one extra card definitely won’t hurt.
I wanted to find room for All Too Easy, but I don’t have ways to make my opponent draw cards. I wanted to play The Plunder Plan, but it works too much against Blockbuster, your ideal 7-drop. Not on My Watch and Secret Files would have been nice to include, but they just didn’t make the cut. I like to devote two slots to teaming up and then get as many combat tricks in the deck as I can, along with maybe one or two character search cards if possible.
Upon first inspection of my card pool, Secret Society was one of the first teams that really jumped out at me. They were deep, had good characters, and really fit the curve well. As for Injustice Gang, I had the characters but was unimpressed with my supporting plot twists.
The unique thing about Steve’s build is his use of the unaffiliated characters. I got to talk with many of R&D’s members about my experience at the Sneak Preview and my first impressions of the cards. They were calling the unaffiliated characters their “fifth team,” which makes sense given the number and quality of the support cards in the set. I’m glad to see that someone decided to give them a whirl.
The major downside I see to building the deck this way is that you are left with many teams but the ability to team up only two of them. Lair of the Mastermind allows you to team attack as though your characters were on the same team, but the real thing you are lacking is the ability to target them with team-stamped plot twists. This build gets around that by not including any in the deck. Unfortunately, the team-stamped plot twists are some of the most powerful in the card pool. I think it would be a mistake not to include at least some of them.
Overall, Steve’s reasoning behind including the cards he did in this build is very good, and I’m glad to see that the choices he made were synergistic with the way he chose to build this deck. The only real downside I see is the lack of power due to the cards that were left out because the deck was unable to support them.
I wanted to take a look at the next decklist I got because it was creepily similar to the one I built. Let’s take a look at the differences between the two and see if I can’t come up with a good combination of both.
Zack sent me this list:
Characters
Bluejay
Maxwell Lord
Booster Gold
Rocket Red #4
Kimoyo Hoshi ◊ Dr. Light
Fire
Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz
Captain Atom
Guy Gardner, Egomaniac
James Jesse ◊ Trickster
Dr. Sivana
Hector Hammond, Mind Over Matter
Henry King ◊ Brainwave
Darkseid, Heart of Darkness
Crystal Frost ◊ Killer Frost
Remoni-Notra ◊ Star Sapphire, Zamoran Champion
Gorilla Grodd
Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster, Mindless Brute
The Shark, Karshon
The Joker, Headline Stealer
Professor Ivo
Queen of Fables
Plot Twists
Justice League Task Force
Funky’s Big Rat Code
Plasma Blast
Lead by Example
2 Membership Drive
Magnificent Seven
Mysterious Benefactor (Able to get Dr. Sivana, Henry King, Martian Manhunter, Darkseid, Captain Atom, and Gorilla Grodd . . . amazing!)
Equipment
Nth Metal
He also had this to say:
I think the best thing to do would be to play it simple—just try to hit your curve and play the basics (attacking up the curve, pumping out of stuns, and so on). JLI and Secret Society fit your curve nicely, with a few Injustice Gang and some unaffiliated characters to top it off.
You’ll want to capitalize on your opponents’ errors (such as them missing a drop). In order to do this, you want to use a slightly higher number of characters at each drop. I really don’t feel that 1-drops are key in this set’s Sealed Pack environment, since not many of them are capable of taking down 2-drops on their own. Removing 1-drops from your deck also gives you more space to ensure that higher drops are hit more consistently.
As for the rest of your deck, you just want to get the basics down (as said before). Lots of things that give your characters +1 ATK / +1 DEF will usually let you attack your opponent’s same-drop character and not get stunned back. They also mean your opponent will need some tricks if he or she wants to attack into your character. With six cards able to do this, you should be pretty well off.
This was, for the most part, what was going through my head as I built my deck. One major difference between my deck and this deck, however, is the introduction of Professor Ivo and Queen of Fables. These two popped up a bunch in the decks that people sent me, and I understand the reasoning behind it. A 4 ATK / 5 DEF is a pretty big character in most cases. However, in this set, she isn’t all that above average. Of the 22 3-drops in this set, 8 of them can stun her. Of the 14 that can’t stun her, she can only stun 5. In other words, she can only stun 5 3-drops that can’t stun her back. That’s not like in previous sets, where 4 ATK / 5 DEF was big enough to take an opponent’s team apart and still live to tell the tale. Since her ability isn’t that effective, I don’t think she warrants being put that far ahead of the other 3-drops in the set. Of the 5 3-drops in the set with 4 ATK / 5 DEF, she is by far the weakest. Unless you open a sealed deck that is able to take full advantage of the unaffiliated characters, I’m not sure if the non-broken ones are worth playing, because they can’t be teamed up.
As for the rest of the deck, I noticed many people putting Membership Drive in, and I even had it played against me a few times. After thinking about it a bit, it seems to me that this card can be very good. In general, a plot twist that gives a one-time benefit of +1 ATK / +1 DEF is at least worth considering. It isn’t amazing by any means, but it’s good enough to make your opponent have to do something. This card allows you to give a character that boost permanently. It’s like getting a free power-up on every attack. The one major downside is that it lacks the surprise factor of the other plot twists. This makes it somewhat worse because your opponents can now play around the larger character. The more information your opponents have, the less mistakes they make. Barring this, however, if your deck is a little weak in the plot twist department, this card would make an excellent addition.
That’s about all I have for this week. Next week, I’ll try to begin my breakdown of JLA for Sealed Pack. I really appreciate all of the input you guys have been giving and the responses to my articles. Keep reading them, and I’ll keep writing them. Questions and comments can be sent to the_priceis_right@yahoo.com.