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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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Deckbuilding with Neil Reeves

Anand Khare

November 05, 2005

One of the more recognizable professional players at the $10K today is Neil Reeves. A consistent Pro Circuit money finisher and resident of Dallas, Neil has yet to see a single card in the Justice League of America set. Still, he’s a Sealed Pack specialist with high hopes for today. “This is a Sneak Preview,” he said, “but it’s a Sneak Preview for a lot of people.” The format this weekend is eleven rounds of Sealed Pack, and players get to try their hands at building a new deck after the fifth round. There is a deck swap, which means that players register sets of cards that will then be randomly redistributed for deck construction. Neil was still anxious to see the cards that he wouldn’t be playing, as it would be his very first look at the set.

The first thing Neil did after cracking his packs was organize the cards by team. He quickly ran into a problem with Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist. “What team affiliation is this guy on the deck sheet?” he asked. A judge was standing by and explained how ally worked. As Neil continued to open more packs, a few cards stood out. “This card is insane,” he said, indicating UN Building. UN General Assembly also got a nod of approval. “This is Bat-Signal for JLI.” Neil was extremely happy with his last pack. “I have two copies of this guy,” he said, showing me Ted Kord ◊ Blue Beetle. “But he’s not really good unless you have this other guy . . . who I just opened in this pack.” Neil displayed Booster Gold, Michael Jon Carter with a smile. “Whoever gets this is playing this team, obviously.” After all of his cards were out on the table, Neil had one last comment about his card pool. “Two characters with 54 ATK! How nutty is that?” I’ll leave you to decipher what he was talking about. Neil finished registering this initial card pool and then packaged everything up for the deck swap. He seemed pretty happy with his first look at the set.

At this point, there was a lull as everyone waited for the less experienced players to register their decks. Finally, the deck swap was completed, and Neil got to take a look at the card pool he would actually be building his deck from. He shuffled through with a laugh—he had three copies of UN Building. Neil took some time to read his other cards, but nothing else earned a comment. “This looks bad,” said Neil. “I don’t think my plot twists are very good, and I don’t think my characters are very good, either.” After he had verified that the cards he had were registered correctly, he set about the business of constructing the deck. As before, characters were separated by team affiliation. Neil started off by seeing what a JLA/JLI deck would look like. “These are my only JLA characters,” he noted as he indicated six cards with a frown. “My JLI doesn’t look that bad, though.” As he rifled through his plot twists, he picked up a Teleport Tube. “This card is so good, but I can’t play it; I don’t have enough JLA characters.”

Clearly, there were not enough cards in just those two affiliations to construct a deck. Neil began looking elsewhere. The Creeper, an extremely powerful new Gotham Knights character, was moved to the playable pile. He delved into Secret Society to supplement the somewhat reasonable curve that JLI provided. The layout that this yielded seemed promising, but Neil was still unenthusiastic about what he had to work with. “I only have five 2-drops in my entire card pool,” he lamented. Neil’s character lineup was established as JLI/Secret Society, and he started to go through his plot twists and locations. “I guess I only play one of these,” he said, holding his three copies of UN Building. “Better make it two.” Not on My Watch earned a nod of approval. “I think this card is pretty good]. After he had a preliminary plot twist set up, he went back to his characters. “I have to play these JLA and Injustice Gang 2-drops. I don’t have a single 2-drop on my team! This guy is pretty good as a 2-drop, though,” he said, showing two copies of Copperhead. Scarecrow, Fearmonger was held up as one of Neil’s better characters. “This guy’s pretty nuts.” He spent a while contemplating his 7-drops. He had Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas, Guy Gardner, Egomaniac, and two copies of Ultra-Humanite. In the end, Aquaman made the cut, despite the fact that he was JLA. Neil characterized his effect as being just too powerful. He was joined by one of the Ultra-Humanites. As Neil finalized his build, he once again expressed displeasure at the cards he had to work with. “Man! Almost no ally effects.”

A few minutes later, Neil had his final build. He was unhappy with his card pool but fairly happy with how his deck turned out. Check it out and see if you would have built this deck differently.

Played Cards

Characters

Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas

Elongated Man, Ralph Dibny

Red Tornado, John Smith

Joseph Jones ◊ General Glory, Lady Liberty’s Champion

2 Metamorpho, Rex Mason

Rocket Red #4, Dmitri Pushkin

Tasmanian Devil, Hugh Dawkins