Well, it’s official; another member of TAWC has tied the knot. Shortly after Pro 

I’ll save the storytelling for Shane, as I am sure he will regale you with tales aplenty about the events of the weekend, including but not limited to:

·         The literal hours of discussion regarding deck ideas for PC: Los Angeles.

·         John’s joke of the weekend, expressing his hope that Shane didn’t change his mind about the wedding at the last minute (much the way Shane did about his deck at PC: Indy).

·         Never-ending Aqualad abuse.

Hungering for Heralds of Galactus

Despite the fact that I left Lake Jackson without scoring any bridesmaid phone numbers, the weekend was quite fun. Of course, the only thing better than a wedding weekend with your Vs. System buddies is a wedding followed by a Heralds of Galactus Sneak Preview weekend with your Vs. System buddies!

After fulfilling our groomsmen duties, Tim, John, and I drove up to Waco, TX to attend the Heralds of Galactus Sneak Preview at The Game Closet. We all had a chance to glimpse the card list thanks to Dylan Northrup’s Vs. System card search engine, but still we were largely unprepared for what the new set had to offer.

In prior Vs. System sets, Sealed Pack strategy was relatively straightforward. Although different cards, teams, and archetypes had different means of achieving victory, the same basic patterns of stat enhancement and board control were present. In essence, the most popular and powerful strategies utilized ATK pumps, DEF pumps, and KO effects. Other effects (like search and deck cycling effects) might be present but usually acted as support for the pumps and board control effects.

Heralds of Galactus turned previous standards on their ear by promoting strategies that weren’t fully utilized when drafting previous sets. The Heralds of Galactus team supports curve-stall strategy (in a way that hadn’t fully been explored before) by using a clever combination of board control and endurance-gain effects to reach later turns. They are opposed in that respect by the Kree, who have a viable off-curve strategy that manifests itself in an unconventional bounce theme. The Inhumans excel at resource row and cosmic counter exploitation, providing tremendous bonuses to players and characters that can maintain these fragile conditions. Doom presents a flavorful take with its “ally sacrifice” bonuses; obviously, Dr. Doom has no problem whatsoever with KO’ing his own troops if it will benefit him. And the Skrull team is unique, giving huge stat boosts based on the number of teams a player controls. I’d expect that massive amalgamations of teams with several Team-Ups to abuse these Skrull characters will be a popular strategy in Heralds of Galactus Sealed Pack play.

Draw . . . FTW!

If you read my preview of The Infinity Gauntlet, then you probably already know that the team I was most interested in was the Infinity Watch. This team is reminiscent of the Arkham Inmates from DC Origins. Even though the team has some very strong characters, they don’t really share any cohesive theme. I suppose this is fitting, as the only thing that the members of the Infinity Watch had in common was that they all possessed one of the Infinity Gems. I would expect that the Infinity Watch will take a role similar to that of the Fearsome Five: not at all popular as a mono-team deck, but viable when combined with other teams.

This week, I would like to explore this aspect. You see, every Vs. System player has a particular aspect of the game toward which he or she gravitates. Many younger players tend to drift toward early game rush decks, as the opportunity to end the game in the first few turns is appealing and simple. Players with more experience in strategy and combat games often prefer control and stall decks. While these archetypes are more difficult to operate, they provide the benefit of greater influence on the state of the game with the ability to control the actions of opposing characters and players.

Personally, I am a huge fan of decks that draw massive amounts of cards. It has been said that Vs. System is one of the least draw-dependent trading card games. This makes sense, as holding four cards in hand that are immediately usable is much more beneficial than holding forty cards in hand that you cannot use at all. One only needs to look to one of the most popular competitive archetypes of the past year, Squadron Supreme no-hand, to see that in Vs. System, the power to draw cards is not a requirement for a strong deck.

Still, I am of the school of thought that more cards means more knowledge and more options. One of my favorite cards is Batman, The Dark Knight. While many other players dismiss him as unplayable, I have spent a great deal of time and energy building decks around him and his potential to become an absolute monster. In addition, I have long praised the role of Longshot, Rebel Freedom Fighter in decks like Wild Vomit and Force for his ability to reap massive hand advantage. And recently, Zatanna, Showstopper has been the object of my card-drawing affection in my variant on John Clemens’s and Jeremy Mulldune’s “Fiddler on the Roof” deck. Drawing your entire deck is so much fun!

This is where my experience at the Heralds of Galactus Sneak Preview comes into play. After reading Alex Brown’s preview for Moondragon, I got really excited about the prospect of a character that could potentially double the number of cards a player could draw at once. When I cracked open my packs at the Sneak Preview, I was elated to see a copy of Moondragon. In addition, I was able to supplement her effect with cards like Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Soul Searcher; Relentless Onslaught; and Intergalactic Summit. In most of my games, I was able to draw through at least twenty-five of the thirty cards in my deck. That’s some powerful draw right there, folks!

The Build

We’re going to use my Sealed deck from the Sneak Preview as the base; it incorporated characters and cards from the Heralds of Galactus and Inhumans teams to supplement Moondragon. The Heralds of Galactus team is invaluable for providing card drawing and search support, while the Inhumans have several nice ways of replenishing those very important cosmic counters.

Our character curve runs all the way from 1 to 9, so we’d better get a move on! At 1, we have the devoted hound Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend. In our early game, we will be sporting several playable Inhumans characters. This beast can “fetch” a copy of any one of these characters for play in a later turn. If we get Lockjaw early, he can be invaluable for helping us fill holes in our curve.

We have representatives from both the Heralds and Inhumans at 2. Our Herald at 2 is the much lauded Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways. This guy has been touted as one of the better cards in the set, with an activated ability that can help us set up our hand for the later turns. Of course, his effect is only relevant if he has a cosmic counter. With the various methods of replenishing counters available to us, however, we should have little trouble getting multiple uses out of him. Our Inhumans character at 2 is Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth. As any reasonably experienced Vs. System player will tell you, cosmic characters lose their cosmic counter when they become stunned. Thus, it behooves us to have a way to move our cosmic characters out of harm’s way by shipping them into the hidden area. Franklin Richards should have little problem acquiring a cosmic counter by waiting in the hidden area for his cosmic—surge to trigger. Then we can use him in later turns to move our valuable cosmic characters out of the visible area.

Turn 3 is where the greater part of our strategy commences. We have a single copy of Crystal, Elementelle available to us, which our canine friend Lockjaw can fetch if we fail to hit our preferred 3-drop. Crystal’s ability to search out a Team-Up can certainly be useful since we will need multiple Team-Ups and one of our Team-Ups replenishes cosmic counters. However, we would probably much rather have Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Soul Searcher at 3. This Herald is a great compliment to Moondragon, allowing us to accelerate our card drawing each turn. And at 4 ATK / 5 DEF with flight and range, she can be effective on offense and defense.

We have four copies of Moondragon at 4. While we might initially want to consider playing a backup Heralds or Inhumans character at 4, the simple fact is that Moondragon is the engine of the deck. As such, we really don’t want to play any other character on this turn. Fortunately, we should have enough search and draw effects that finding a copy of her by turn 4 won’t be a problem. At the very least, we can use Silver Surfer to put her on top of our deck!

At 5, we have a single copy of Air-Walker, Harbinger of Despair. His effect is marginally useful. However, it is his 11 DEF in which we’re really interested. Since we will occasionally be shipping our normally visible characters to the hidden area with Franklin Richards’s effect, we will need some potent defense to protect our endurance. Of course, we won’t always have Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth around to move Moondragon to the hidden area, so we might want to have some other means of protection for our card-drawing psychic. That’s the reason we also have two copies of Alaris. At 10 DEF, he’s not nearly the defensive dynamo that Air-Walker is. Still, our opponents will have to get through Alaris if they want a shot at Moondragon.

If everything has gone horribly wrong up until turn 6 and we still don’t have Moondragon in a safe place, then we can recruit our last hope in Dinu. This Inhuman serves the double duty of moving a vulnerable character of ours to the hidden area or sending a troublesome opposing character out of the way so that we can attack more freely. However, we’d like to hope that things will have gone much better up to this point so that we can bring out The Fallen One. Not only is this guy great for restoring cosmic counters, but his effect is also absolutely unreal in this deck. With Moondragon filling our hand with all kinds of good cards, it’s a sure bet that we’ll have more characters than our opponents will. Thus, The Fallen One will almost always be able to bounce a character back to an opponent’s hand. That’s board control at its finest.

Turn 7 is where the set’s namesake comes into play. Galactus, The Maker has decent stats, flight and range, and an effect that can occasionally be useful against other late-game decks. However, the main reason that we are playing four copies of this 7-drop is because he fuels a great number of effects in our deck. Since many of our plot twists and locations require a reveal or discard of a Heralds of Galactus character card (or even Galactus himself), it would be nice to have a spare copy or two of The Maker at our disposal.

Our single character at 8 is the first non-rare 8-drop ever printed, Tyrant. This Herald is imposing enough at 19 ATK / 19 DEF with flight and range, but he also has a relevant effect. With strong enough board control in the late game, we should be able to use Tyrant’s effect to force our opponent to KO a significant character on his or her side of the board. This paves the way for our impressive late-drops to clean house on our opponent’s remaining characters.

Finally, we have none other than Galactus, Devourer of Worlds at 9. Bottom line: if the game goes to turn 9, the Devourer of Worlds will put your opponent in a hole that he or she will never be able to get out of, period!

Our plot twists are varied but support the deck’s theme nicely. First and foremost, we need Team-Ups to bring our three teams together. One copy of The Herald Ordeal would probably not be amiss, as we can use the secondary effect to turn extra cards in hand into endurance gain. Probably even more precious to us, though, are the cosmic counters that fuel our characters’ amazing effects. This is why we want to play the full four copies of Extended Family. Any Team-Up that supports our characters in such a great capacity merits inclusion in our build.

Speaking of cosmic counters, Terragenesis is almost a no-brainer in our deck. Obviously, our build will have two notable characteristics: we will have a lot of characters with cosmic and we will have a lot of cards in hand. Thus, any card that can turn our spare cards in hand into spare cosmic counters should find a way into our deck as well.

Although we will be drawing cards like mad, a little extra card search probably wouldn’t hurt. Our first search card is Kindred Spirits. With the exception of the 4-slot, we have a Heralds of Galactus character at every drop in our deck. While Kindred Spirits doesn’t actually let us put a character card in our hand, it does stack the deck in our favor for up to two future turns without even requiring a discard. In that regard, it is almost better than a standard character search card in its efficiency. In this deck it is certainly better, because the drawback of interrupting the normal draw by putting cards on top of the deck is nullified by our accelerated draw.

Our other search card can be a global search with the aid of Galactus. Creation of a Herald is good as a simple character search, but if we chuck a copy of Galactus (which shouldn’t be too hard with five copies in the deck), then we get whatever card we want. That kind of search power is just too hard to ignore.

Our last plot twist will give us a bit of aid on the defensive front. Because we will be drawing so many cards, Absorba Shield is a fine defensive card for our deck. Obviously, the +2 DEF it provides is decent, but if we discard a large character card like Galactus, then we will be almost guaranteed an additional +2 DEF (for an impressive +4 DEF total). Against a deck like Good Guys or Squadron Supreme, which  rarely plays any cards that cost more than 5 or 6, a discarded Galactus is a definitive bonus for Absorba Shield.

We have one very obvious pick for one of our locations. Since our deck is without a shadow of a doubt focused on drawing cards, we want to play a full four copies of Elemental Converters. With a quick discard, we will be drawing an extra card every turn . . . no, an extra two cards every turn thanks to the combo between Moondragon and Elemental Converters. More cards! Bring me more cards!

We might find ourselves in a situation where we would like to fetch back a discarded card or two. In this situation, Soul World is an effective solution. This location emulates Avalon Space Station and Slaughter Swamp in function. However, instead of requiring discards, Soul World uses endurance payments to retrieve character cards. Normally, this cost would be 4 endurance, but our card-drawing superstar, Moondragon, helps to defray this cost by 2 endurance after teaming-up with our other affiliated characters.

Another tech location we’re going to include is Worldeater Apparatus. Since our deck’s ultimate goal is to stall out until later turns, we certainly could benefit from a little extra endurance gain. On turns where we control the initiative, we can use our larger, more powerful characters to control the board through effective attacks. On off-initiative turns, we can exhaust our defending characters to activate Worldeater Apparatus. It won’t be as effective at endurance gain as some cards in Vs. System, but the extra 10 to 20 endurance that we could gain via its effect can keep us in the game until the later turns.

Our final location is designed to help us with a deck deficiency. Our superior characters should allow us to compete easily with other curve decks, but rush and combo decks could be more problematic because they tend to put out several smaller characters that aim to attack up the curve. In this situation, we’ll want to find our copy of Worldship to maintain a little board control. While our opponents will still be able to recruit large numbers of small characters, they won’t be capable of effectively keeping these characters in play because a single stun will force a character back to an opponent’s hand. After that, the accompanying endurance gain and larger characters of our curve deck will allow us to take control of the board and the game.

Our final card selection is one of the equipment cards from the new set. Since we are focusing our deck on the protector of the Mind Gem, it only makes sense that we include Mind Gem in our deck. Apart from the flavor of this choice, Mind Gem actually works quite well in unison with Moondragon’s effect, turning a rote deck cycle of one card into a Birthing Chamber effect . . . without needing six characters in play! Also, Mind Gem gives us a card drawing effect for the build phase, meaning that we could potentially draw extra cards in each of our four phases via Moondragon’s effect (if we include Frankie Raye and Elemental Converters). An extra seven cards every turn (on top of the two that we would normally draw) is nothing to scoff at.

Once more into the breach, dear friends! We are ready to see how our Heralds of Galactus concoction looks and plays with our nifty Moondragon tech:

Moon-drawing (60 cards)

Characters (32)

4 Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend

4 Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth

4 Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways

1 Crystal, Elementelle

4 Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Soul Searcher

4 Moondragon, Protector of the Mind Gem

1 Air-Walker, Harbinger of Despair

2 Alaris, The Outgoing One

1 Dinu, Face of Terror

1 The Fallen One, The Forgotten

4 Galactus, The Maker

1 Tyrant, The Original Herald

1 Galactus, Devourer of Worlds

Plot Twists (19)

4 Absorba Shield

4 Creation of a Herald

4 Extended Family, Team-Up

4 Kindred Spirits

2 Terragenesis

1 The Herald Ordeal, Team-Up

Locations (7)

4 Elemental Converters

1 Soul World

1 Worldeater Apparatus

1 Worldship

Equipment (2)

2 Mind Gem, Infinity Gem

The deck is completely void of offensive pump, so the play strategy is largely defensive; attempt to hold off until the later turns when the larger characters can take over. If you know that you are going against a more aggressive deck, then the even initiatives are probably preferable so as to allow Alaris and The Fallen One to be fully effective. However, odd initiatives would work better against late game decks so that Galactus, The Maker can keep an opponent’s endurance in check to prevent wins with Captain Marvel, Champion of Magic and the like.

The mulligan is somewhat open-ended. It would be hard to mulligan a hand with either Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend or Kindred Spirits in it. However, it’s important to remember that recruiting Moondragon is the ultimate goal. Lockjaw is certainly a keeper if you have a copy of Moondragon or Creation of a Herald along with him. And Kindred Spirits is a definite keeper because you can search for Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways with it, then use his effect to put Moondragon on top of the deck.

Well, that concludes yet another exciting week of Breaking Ground. As always, if you have questions, I have answers at BigSpooky1@hotmail.com.

Take care, and I’ll see you back here next Wednesday for another look at Vs. System cards gone wild!