By the time that most of you read this, a few things will have already occurred:

1)     I will have completed seven-and-a-half weeks in my audit rotation—only seven-and-a-half more to go!

2)     Vs. System players from around the world will have headed (or will be in the process of heading) to Australia for the first Pro Circuit of 2007, PC: Sydney.

3)     Yeah . . . because 1 and 2 occur at the same time, I won’t be among the players heading down under.

4)     Marvel Team-Up will have hit your local store shelves.

A Look at the Silver Age to Come

This last point is of particular importance. PC: Sydney will be the final Silver Age tournament before Marvel Knights rotates out of the format and Marvel Team-Up takes its place. On one hand, we’ll be saying goodbye to Silver Age stalwarts like Mikado and Mosha, Meltdown, and Wild Ride. On the other hand, the promise that the new expansion brings gives us a whole new set of opportunities for legacy teams that we love and adore. Spider-Friends have some unique control tactics that allow for an immense amount of disruption at the expense of their characters’ ATK and DEF. Sinister Syndicate may be the most potent rush team that Vs. System has seen to date, with cards and characters that trade endurance for an immense amount of power. Finally, Underworld takes up where their Marvel Knights counterparts left off, drawing upon extra resources available from the cards in the KO’d pile.

My personal interest was piqued by the Marvel Defenders. If you read Billy Zonos’s preview article on the Marvel Defenders, you probably recall that the team is a unique take on a familiar archetype. Much like the X-Statix “loner” strategy and the Hellfire Club “one visible character” theme, the Marvel Defenders focus on the strength of a single character. To accomplish this, the supporting cast of characters boasts powerful activated effects that enhance the strength of another character. I was able to experience this power firsthand at the Marvel Team-Up Sneak Preview. In one memorable game, I was able to attack twice successfully with a 14 ATK / 11 DEF Moon Knight, Fist of Khonshu . . . and that was after I paid 3 ATK to ready him!

There seems to be an immense amount of potential for the Marvel Defenders in the upcoming Silver Age. Instead of having to rely on each individual character rising to the task of taking down opposing characters, the team has one character take the role of “champion.” True to form, the champion is generally bigger and badder than any other character in play and can often attack multiple times in a single turn. The benefits of having a 15 ATK 5-drop that can attack two or three times a turn rather than a standard 3-, 4-, and 5-drop curve are undeniable.

One Down, None to Go

There is, however, one small problem with this strategy: it focuses all of its energy on a single character. While having a gigantic character attacking multiple times each turn is certainly tremendous, it only works if we are able to perform multiple successful attacks. This could be a major problem if our opponent has a few extra copies of Live Kree . . . or Die! or What are Friends For?. With enough pump, even Aunt May, Golden Oldie can stun Galactus, Devourer of Worlds.

So, what to do? If we are going to execute multiple attacks in a turn, we may need a bit of insurance. One way to do this is to give our champion a little protection. For example, an effect like Bamf! would ensure that no matter how many ATK boosts our opponents have, our champion will survive to attack another day.

When pondering this dilemma, I perused a listing of Marvel Defenders characters for inspiration. One particular feature of the Marvel Defenders lineup stood out. Along with several characters with backup, an inordinate number of characters have substitute. Obviously, this is a mechanic that fits quite will into the Marvel Defenders theme. On the turns when we want to become aggressive, we can replace our idle characters with characters who have powerful backup powers, such as Tania Belinskya ◊ Red Guardian and Samantha Parrington ◊ Valkyrie, Chooser of the Slain.

The substitute sub-theme of the Marvel Defenders led me to recall another team that is replete with substitute characters, Darkseid’s Elite. The Darkseid’s Elite characters from Legion of Super Heroes are similar in nature to those of the Marvel Defenders, but instead of boasting backup powers, the Darkseid’s Elite characters use come-into-play effects to enhance the power of other characters. For example, Dark Thanagarian can provide a small ATK boost for a single turn, Dark Martian allows for damage-maximizing attacks by removing reinforcement options, and Dark Champion allows for the possibility of +2 ATK to all of your characters across the board.

The character that really impressed me, though, was Dark Lantern. We are looking for an effect that allows a character to attack without stunning, and Dark Lantern’s comes-into-play effect prevents a character that you control from becoming stunned while attacking that turn.

Bingo!

With a Team-Up, Dark Lantern can make our Marvel Defenders champion truly unstoppable. So, let’s fire all of the teachers so that the substitutes can come out to play.

The Build

Our featured card also kicks off our character curve. Four copies of Dark Lantern should ensure that we always have a copy to substitute into play when we reach our kill turn.

Also at 2, we have three copies of Red Guardian. The Squadron Supreme and High Voltage decks of old proved how powerful Mega-Blast was as an ATK pump, and Red Guardian is effectively a reusable copy of Mega-Blast. Of course, Red Guardian actually gives the ATK bonus for the entire turn, so she almost doubles as a copy of Nasty Surprise. With an unstunable champion swinging for the fences, an extra +4 ATK could certainly be beneficial.

Finally at 2, we’re going to play a character that’s neither Marvel Defenders nor Darkseid’s Elite. Madness, you say? Perhaps. But then again, it’s hard to argue that San isn’t worth it. San has concealed and decent stats, which is already a plus for us. It’s his power to search for a location, though, that really makes him valuable. With a one-time trigger when he comes into play, he will be a prime candidate for replacement by one of our key substitute characters during the later turns.

Turn 3 brings a slew of additional substitute characters. Kicking off the festivities is Dark Firestorm. While Dark Firestorm doesn’t provide any additional ATK boost, he does have a relevant effect for our deck. Since we’re substituting several characters in every game, we’ll need to get a hold of as many extra cards as possible. Dark Firestorm allows us to draw a card when he comes into play. Whether we recruit him normally on turn 3 or substitute him into play, Dark Firestorm will always replace the cost of playing him by netting us an additional card.

Our other Darkseid’s Elite character at 3 is Dark Thanagarian. Just like Dark Firestorm, Dark Thanagarian has substitute. However, Dark Thanagarian is more important to us as a late game substitute due to the ATK bonus he provides. With the +4 ATK from Red Guardian and +2 ATK from Dark Thanagarian, our champion will be receiving some substantial ATK bonuses on our kill turn.

Our last 3-drop provides us with a bit of off-curve control. Since we no longer have Mikado and Mosha to lean on, we’ll have to depend on the archer himself, Hawkeye, Loud Mouth. He may be a little too loose with his tongue, but there aren’t many characters better at dealing with low drops. And since Hawkeye has substitute, we can bring him into play at our discretion.

Another Darkseid’s Elite Mockery sees us into turn 4. Dark Martian has an absolutely amazing amount of potential. With cards like Funeral For a Friend and Marcus Daniels ◊ Blackout seeing play in Silver Age off-curve decks, we need to have a way to remove reinforcement channels to allow our champion to get in for significant amounts of damage. Dark Martian can be substituted into play to allow our champion to get his beats on, and then substituted back out again for additional effects.

And what, pray tell, would these additional effects be? There can be only one . . . and in this case, it’s Valkyrie. Oh my word, this lady is amazing! Remember that champion that we want to attack with multiple times? Valkyrie automatically gives us another attack each turn. Once we have set up our champion for a series of massive attacks, we can activate Valkyrie to let our champion ready on its first attack. Since Dark Lantern will be protecting our attacking champion from harm, we are virtually assured of at least two attacks when Valkyrie is in play.

Turn 5 is where we turn up the heat. If we don’t control the initiative, then we will usually want to play it safe with Dark Warrior. A character with concealed will enable us to swing back for a couple of swift strikes after our opponent has already attacked (assuming we have Valkyrie in play). With 11 DEF, we can rest fairly secure that Dark Warrior will be able to attack a couple times without getting stunned back, even if we miss Dark Lantern.

If, however, we control the initiative on turn 5, then we can probably go for the jugular with Dr. Strange, Founding Father. What’s better than +4 ATK from Red Guardian? An additional 8 ATK from Red Guardian! Of course, we need to be somewhat clever when we play Dr. Strange. You see, we can only substitute for ready characters. Thus, a bit of a problem arises if we use Red Guardian twice because we won’t be able to substitute Dark Lantern in. But we can use the chain to give Dr. Strange all of the bonuses that he needs.

Here’s how it works: Perform your normal recruit with Dr. Strange. Once his effect is on the chain, add a substitute of Dark Lantern to the chain. Then resolve Dark Lantern coming into play, and then resolve his effect. Then, with Dr. Strange’s effect still on the chain, substitute Red Guardian in for Dark Lantern and activate her backup power. Finally, resolve Dr. Strange’s effect and ready Red Guardian. Easy? No. But effective nonetheless.

While we would certainly like to win on turn 5 every game, sometimes we will need to plan for the worst-case scenario. In such a situation, having a couple of 6-drops to follow up with can’t hurt. For optimal offensive options, Silver Surfer, Prodigal Herald is a very good play. If we don’t plan appropriately, then Silver Surfer can do more harm than good, as he will exhaust everyone on our side of the board. With a slew of backup powers, though, this usually won’t be an issue. Not only can Silver Surfer hit for quite a bit, but he can also bounce characters he stuns.

Of course, we may desire a bit more finesse on turn 6. In this case, we’ll go with the wielder of the quantum bands, Wendell Vaughn ◊ Quasar. Quasar is the same size as Silver Surfer, so he’s certainly a respectable play on 6. But our real reason for including him is his backup power. Quasar can sacrifice his own opportunity to attack and give one of our characters +4 ATK / +4 DEF while attacking. That kind of a bonus is just immense! Some of the most powerful and widely played plot twists in the game cap at +2 ATK / +2 DEF. Granted, we do have to exhaust our 6-drop to get this bonus. So you may be asking, why on Earth would we wish to sacrifice a potential 13 ATK / 12 DEF character for only +4 ATK / +4 DEF?

I’ll tell you why—because we have a monstrous 7-drop: Hulk, Strongest One There Is. If there was ever a finisher for our deck, this is it. Hulk is already an unreal 17 ATK / 17 DEF. With Red Guardian and Quasar adding their powers, Hulk leaps up to 25 ATK / 21 DEF. At this point, it is doubtful that we even need Dark Lantern. There are no 7-drops and few 8-drops that could stun our big green brute. And with a little help from Valkyrie, Hulk can attack three times in a turn. Folks, that’s 75 combined points of ATK coming at our opponent. Check, please!

We now have a couple of locations to look at. First, we are going to play a single copy of 31st Century Metropolis. With San filling the role of location searcher, we want to have a Team-Up available for him to search out. 31st Century Metropolis not only gives us the requisite Team-Up to let Marvel Defenders and Darkseid’s Elite work together, but it also enables us to bring an outside character like San into the fold for a turn. San helps himself out; what could be sweeter?

Our other location is almost a no-brainer in a deck full of substitute characters. As was stated earlier, we will need to replenish our hand after playing multiple substitute characters. So, we’re going to light up the Furnace of Apokolips to help us burn through some cards. With the extra draw power, we won’t notice the drain on our hand nearly as much. More importantly, Furnace of Apokolips provides us with additional incentive to substitute characters out each turn.

At long last, we have reached our plot twist choices. Of course, we’re going to be playing a few additional Team-Ups besides 31st Century Metropolis. Considering the structure of the deck, Joining the Darkseid seems like an apparent choice. Since most of our characters have substitute, we will benefit from a moderate ATK boost. With a couple copies in play, even our support characters can be a force to be reckoned with.

Speaking of substitute characters, let’s look at our first character search card. It may not bear the name of either of our teams, but Titans of Tomorrow is a great choice for us to search for relevant substitute characters. This card doesn’t actually help us hit our character curve, but it virtually guarantees that we will get out our all-important substitute characters when we need them.

Since Titans of Tomorrow doesn’t actually help us with our curve, we will need a little more search assistance. Fortunately for us, Marvel Defenders has one of the best in The “B” Team. Sure, the discard requirement of The “B” Team is pretty stringent—a backup Marvel Defenders character. A quick count of our characters reveals that we only have ten backup characters in the deck. We’re able to search out any of those characters with Titans of Tomorrow, though, so we do have a bit of insurance. In addition, having one-sixth of our deck as legal discards for The “B” Team should be enough that we can reliably use it to search one or two times a game. Considering how powerful of a search card it is, it’s certainly worth playing.

A lot of discussion has revolved around how we can use our support characters to boost our champion. While that is all well and good, we’re still going to want a little old-fashioned plot twist ATK power. Personally, I prefer a reliable, turn-based pump with incidental benefits. Of course, I am talking about Flying Kick. I have said before that Flying Kick may be the perfect Vs. System card. It is extremely good but not at all broken. In our deck, it can lift our normally grounded Hulk into the sky to deliver some punishment all over our opponent’s board. The +3 ATK ain’t bad either!

On the flip side, we’re also going to go for a bit of defense. Where Flying Kick may be the perfect ATK pump, Acrobatic Dodge might be the perfect DEF pump; +3 DEF is a substantial boost, but not too extreme. Unfortunately, we can’t actually play Acrobatic Dodge in Silver Age. We could bemoan this fact, but luckily, the Marvel Defenders team has a card that can very effectively emulate Acrobatic Dodge: Defenders Defend! It’s certainly conditional, but because most of our characters will be exhausted on any given turn, Defenders Defend! will almost always be useful. In addition, Defenders Defend! can be occasionally useful when we miss using Dark Lantern to prevent our attacker from stunning.

Our final plot twist is one that trades a bit of damage for board control. In some cases, we will simply want to attack a couple of times each turn for maximum damage on some non-reinforceable characters. But we will occasionally find the need to gain board control. In this situation, we can trade those massive amounts of breakthrough for extra attacks with One-Man Rampage. This unique plot twist may prevent us from dishing out additional breakthrough when we play it, but with a copy or two in hand, we can pretty much clear our opponent’s board. Even though we lose some damage, we gain substantial board presence. That kind of power can’t be ignored . . . and we certainly won’t!

And with that, we’re done. Let’s see if our team of replacements can put up any kind of a fight:

Substitute Teaching (60 cards)

Characters (31)

4 Dark Lantern, Mockery

4 San, The Alienated One

3 Tania Belinskya ◊ Red Guardian, Cold Warrior

4 Dark Firestorm, Mockery

2 Dark Thanagarian, Mockery

2 Hawkeye, Loud Mouth

2 Dark Martian, Mockery

4 Samantha Parrington ◊ Valkyrie, Chooser of the Slain

1 Dark Warrior, Mockery

2 Dr. Strange, Founding Father

1 Silver Surfer, Prodigal Herald

1 Wendell Vaughn ◊ Quasar, Protector of the Universe

1 Hulk, Strongest One There Is

Plot Twists (24)

4 Defenders Defend!

4 Flying Kick

4 Joining the Darkseid, Team-Up

4 One-Man Rampage

4 The “B” Team

4 Titans of Tomorrow

Locations (5)

1 31st Century Metropolis, Team-Up

4 Furnace of Apokolips

Against a rush or short curve deck, a turn 5 kill should be relatively simple to pull off. With Dr. Strange readying Red Guardian for an additional +4 ATK, he should be plenty big enough to take out any opposing characters. Of course, against a control or stall deck, we may have to wait until turn 6 or 7 to finish the game. Still, Silver Surfer and Hulk should provide enough firepower to decimate an opponent completely in the late turns.

We really want to see a character on turn 2, so we should mulligan for one of our eleven 2-drops. San is our best play, as he clinches a Team-Up. If we already have our Team-Up in hand, he can get us a copy of Furnace of Apokolips for additional card draw. Optimally, we won’t play Red Guardian until our kill turn (to save the +4 ATK for when we need it), so we may want to tighten up the mulligan for a 2-drop with concealed.

With that, we conclude the final Breaking Ground before PC: Sydney. Good luck to all who attend the first PC in the southern hemisphere. Much like every other Vs. System fanboy out there, I am eagerly anticipating the tech we will see from the best and brightest at the Pro Circuit.

Michael Barnes (a.k.a. BigSpooky) is an avid Vs. System player who is a founding member of Team Alternate Win Condition (TAWC). When he isn’t concocting crazy deck ideas that no sane person would think of, he occupies his spare time working as an accountant in Dallas, TX. Any questions, comments, suggestions, or tea and sympathy that you might have for Michael can be sent to him at BigSpooky1@hotmail.com.