The end of the month of March can only mean one thing: it’s almost time for me to finish my harrowing experience as an auditor. I’m sure that most of you already know this, but I will recap for those of you who haven’t been privy to my life experiences. Away from the mad, mad world of Vs. System, I am a forensic accountant. This job often sounds more glamorous than it actually is, as it involves a lot of late nights crunching numbers and creating data tables to analyze figures that may or may not be relevant to questionable accounting activity. Yeah . . . not nearly as cool as what the folks on CSI do. Still, it’s interesting work to me and something that I am quite good at.

Concealed—Not Optional

Sadly, there is a dark shroud covering my otherwise enjoyable occupation: audit. For the past two years, I have been part of a rotation in the audit practice at my employer. While still related to accounting, audit is nothing like the job that I so dearly enjoy. Rather, audit is a merciless profession with an attrition rate higher than many service industries. The long hours, intense stress, and dreary work will weaken all but the hardiest souls. True, those who can survive the experience can pretty much write their own paychecks, as accountants with audit experience fetch a premium in the private sector, but most people (including myself) don’t consider this particular juice to be worth the squeeze. To be totally honest, I would have departed long ago if not for the knowledge that I would be leaving the accursed audit practice come April 22nd.

With the passing of March into April comes the long-awaited exodus back into the forensics practice, where I will never again have to let the black shadow of audit darken my weakened soul. I will leave the world of accounting torment behind for a job with far less stress, much better pay, and only a few weeks a year where the workweek hours go into the 50s and 60s.

And that, my friends, is the only thing about the month of March that you need to know!

Aren’t you forgetting about something, baby?

Secret Selections and Underdogs

Well, well, well . . . what a surprise! Ladies and gentlemen, it’s famous college basketball commentator and personality Dick Vitale! How’s it going, Dick?

Things are awesome, baby! It’s college hoops! It’s the field of sixty-five! It’s March Madness, baby!

Yes it is. I’d been meaning to congratulate you on your picks this year. It looks like you have this field pretty well pegged. I’m pretty sure that you would be winning my office pool right now if you entered it.

When it comes to the NCAA tourney, I’m a perfectly predicting prognosticator!

Um . . . yeah. I did want to ask you about a little bit of a bias that I think you might have. I noticed that your picks for the Final Four were all coastal teams—three on the East Coast and one on the West Coast. You do realize that there are colleges in the tournament from the central United States, right?

What can I say? I go with what I know, and I know ACC and Big East hoops.

Well, have you considered looking at the Big 12? I mean, that conference has had more teams in the Final Four over the past decade than any other, and you didn’t predict any Big 12 to go past the Elite Eight. And what’s with the Tarheels winning the whole thing? Have you ever made a bracket prediction that didn’t involve a team from North Carolina winning the whole thing?

Hey baby, I didn’t come here to fight . . . I came here to talk Vs. System!

Oh yeah, that’s a good idea. Well, since you’re an expert on analysis over groupings involving four teams, why don’t you tell me which team out of Marvel Team-Up you think is the MVP?

If you like early game dominance, you can’t go wrong with the Sinister Syndicate. They may hurt you, but they’re sure to hurt your opponent even more—that is, of course, unless your opponent is playing the Spider-Friends. They’re literal proof of the saying that the best defense is a good defense . . . deny, deny, deny! Of course, the Marvel Defenders know more about defense than anyone—it’s part of their name! The opportunities available for the Marvel Defenders are so truly exhausting that they have to turn most of their characters sideways. Still, I’ve always been a fan of the underdog. Who’s a bigger underdog than the Underworld? They may be underrated, but they can be downright underhanded. It can’t be understated, because everyone needs to understand . . . they’re awesome, baby!

Well, you heard it here first, folks. Dickie V. has a strange love for the Underworld team, so that’s who and what we’re featuring this week: the Underworld with Strange Love. Hopefully we can find the perfect deck to merit the #1 seed that Vitale has given them!

The Build

In my opinion (and Dick Vitale’s), Strange Love is one of the most potent cards in Marvel Team-Up. Remember Children of the Atom? Talk about a card that’s just plain amazing! Strange Love gives the Underworld the same effect, and we can discard any card to play it. Now that truly is awesome, baby!

Strange Love does have a slight restriction in that it can only be played if we control a Team-Up. Thus, in order to wield the power of Strange Love, we will have to play a Team-Up card in our deck. We could play a mono-Underworld deck with Team-Ups splashed for Strange Love, but this seems a bit redundant. Instead, it might be a better idea for us to actually play a team that has some synergy with the Underworld. Let’s see . . . the Underworld’s primary theme is KO’d pile manipulation. Who else do we know that shares this theme?

If you answered Secret Society, you are indeed correct.

Between Underworld and Secret Society, we should be able to achieve unparalleled KO’d pile manipulation. How will that aid us? Let’s get to building and find out!

At 1, we have the master of deck depletion: Manhunter Clone. This little guy was an MVP in the deck-destruction deck from a few weeks back. This week, he can aid us by filling our KO’d pile. Since he has evasion, Manhunter Clone is sure to stun quite a bit and still stick around. Also at 1, we’re going to play a single copy of The Dwarf. Because a Team-Up is so critical for our deck, we must ensure that we have one in play. In the tradition of great 1-drops like Dagger, Child of Light and The Calculator, Noah Kuttler, The Dwarf doubles as a character and search card.

Turn 2 gives us a choice of characters that can enable our recursion options. For the Underworld, we have four copies of Black Rose. The wife of Johnny Blaze isn’t a big 2-drop, but what she lacks in stats, she makes up for with an amazing activated power. Even if we never find another recursion card, Black Rose can make sure that we can fetch our drops from the KO’d pile to hit our curve. Of course, the Secret Society also has a 2-drop that can aid us with recursion. Peter Merkel ◊ Ragdoll costs us a bit more, with the stun requirement for his effect to trigger and the discard cost if we use it; however, Ragdoll is a bit less restrictive than Black Rose, as he can fetch any character card from the KO’d pile. In addition, since Ragdoll doesn’t need to exhaust for his effect, we can use him to attack as well. A bit of offense with our recursion? Yes, please!

We’re also going to play a single copy of Deadshot, Floyd Lawton. With problematic 2- and 3-drops like Quicksilver, Inhuman by Marriage and Ahmed Samsarra running rampant in Silver Age, it behooves us to have a method for dealing with these threats outside of combat. Since we will be trying to stock our KO’d pile with all sorts of goodness, we will usually have the requisite ten cards in our KO’d pile to make Deadshot active. Sacrificing a 2-drop to take out a critical opposing 2- or 3-drop is always good business.

At 3, we have a copy of Floronic Man, Jason Woodrue. Here’s a card that players either love or hate. The staunchest board control advocates will argue that paying 3 resource points just to return a card from the KO’d pile is a bad investment. Other players will argue that when it comes to ensuring that you have a critical card in hand, no price is too great. I am of the mindset that there can indeed be a time and place where having the right card in hand is an enormous benefit. Thus, a single copy of Poison Ivy’s mentor will be in the deck for just such a “just-in-case” situation.

Still, we really want to start dishing out the beats on turn 3. This is why our primary 3-drop is going to be the awesome Meatmarket. At 5 ATK / 4 DEF, Meatmarket is already a respectable 3-drop; however, when you start dropping copies of him into the KO’d pile, he becomes ridiculously huge. If we max out the number of Meatmarkets in our KO’d pile, then he can become a whopping 8 ATK / 7 DEF. That’s a 3-drop who’s bigger than most 4-drops, folks. And with Black Rose around to fetch power-ups of our 3-drop from the KO’d pile, he could quite easily swing up into 5-drops without any help from plot twists or locations.

Keeping with the theme of beefy characters, we have Lex Luthor, Criminal Genius filling our curve at 4. Consider the potential for Lex if we hit all of our early drops. If we opt to keep our curve hidden, then Lex will still be an 8 ATK / 8 DEF thanks to Manhunter Clone. Of course, we can also go for the visible character route. In this case, Lex could easily become a 10 ATK / 10 DEF when all of our other characters exhaust to his effect. In this scenario, all but the hardiest of 4-drops will need some help to secure a stun on our 4-drop. He may be evil, but he’s worth it!

We’re also going to go with a backup 4-drop in the form of Blackheart, Black King. Remember the discussion we had about Deadshot? That reasoning is also applicable for the inclusion of Blackheart. In this case, though, we don’t actually need to get rid of our 2-drop. Rather, we simply need 1) three character cards in our KO’d pile (which we should have plenty of); 2) an Underworld character in hand or in play for Blackheart’s loyalty—reveal (which we should also have plenty of); and 3) to exhaust Blackheart. Problematic low drops are a thing of the past, as Blackheart can wipe them clear off the board.

Since we are playing a deck that focuses heavily on putting lots of cards into the KO’d pile, you can probably guess who our 5-drop is going to be. Satana is just plain amazing for pretty much all the same reasons that Meatmarket is amazing. The difference here is that Satana only gets a boost to her ATK. Still, this 5-drop also boasts 10 DEF, meaning that she can already attack into most 5-drops without stunning back. And with multiple copies of Satana in the KO’d pile, our 5-drop can easily swing up the curve into most 6-drops and even a few 7-drops. KO’d pile FTW!

Both Secret Society and Underworld boast some pretty amazing 6-drops. Gorilla Grodd is a great equalizer against decks that have powerful 4-drops. Since our own mid-game is pretty solid, though, we probably don’t want to KO any of our characters. For the Underworld, Madelyne Pryor, Goblyn Queen has an absolutely crippling KO effect, but she really doesn’t do much to enhance our KO’d pile theme. In my opinion, Dweller-in-Darkness is the strongest possible play you can have in a deck with a substantial KO’d pile. Unless your opponent commits an enormous amount of resources into an attack (like multiple plot twists or several team attackers), Dweller-in-Darkness will most certainly cause it to fail. Against any aggressive deck, this is amazing! Not since Varnae have we had a card that can virtually guarantee an opponent will have to attack more than once to secure a stun.

If we haven’t finished our opponent by turn 7, then Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster should be the icing on the cake. In the correct deck, this 7-drop will be better than any 7-drop your opponent can play. What type of deck is “correct”? Why, one that feeds the KO’d pile . . . just like the one we’ve been building! With a paltry ten cards in our KO’d pile, Blockbuster becomes a gigantic 18 ATK / 16 DEF. Moreover, once we hit our ten-card condition, Blockbuster cannot be stunned while attacking. If we have the initiative on turn 7, then that should spell the end for our opponent.

Of course, we won’t always get our preferred odd initiatives. If this is the case, we might want an insurance policy for turn 8. Since we should have most of our deck in our KO’d pile by this time, we should be able to make good use of Psycho-Pirate. This 8-drop is certainly a bit behind the curve stat-wise, but he bolsters those paltry stats by recruiting opposing characters to join our cause. Simply by removing cards from the KO’d pile, we can steal an opposing character with cost 6 or less. Against most decks, this is backbreaking. Against a short- or off-curve deck, this is game, set, and match.

Now let’s take a look at our plot twists. As mentioned earlier, we will need to have Team-Ups in play to make Strange Love effective. Thus, we will play a single copy of Ritual Sacrifice. Since we have a single copy of The Dwarf in our deck, we can find this Team-Up anytime we need to get our two teams working together. Our primary Team-Up, however, has to be Funky’s Big Rat Code. This Secret Society Team-Up is perfect for our deck concept. Not only does it give us the Team-Up card that we need to make Strange Love work, but it also helps us fill our KO’d pile with a nifty deck-depleting effect. With more cards in the KO’d pile, we increase the overall effectiveness of our characters in play.

Appropriately, our search cards for the deck also supplement our KO’d-pile-focused theme. Straight to the Grave needs little introduction, as it has been one of the more popular generic search cards in Vs. System over the past year-and-a-half. While Straight to the Grave can work in any deck with a recursion engine, it truly shines when used by the Secret Society. In addition to placing a character card in the KO’d pile, Straight to the Grave can thin out our deck a bit by placing a non-character card into the KO’d pile. Of course, if we have Floronic Man in play, then Straight to the Grave can effectively search for anything in our deck.

While the Underworld doesn’t have a search card for non-character cards, it’s hard to argue that their character search card isn’t every bit as good as Straight to the Grave. Death’s Embrace gives us immediate access to a character without us having to worry about recursion. While this can be helpful, the true beauty of this search card is that it still fills our KO’d pile. Consider the possibilities with a card like Meatmarket. Not only will we hit our vaunted 3-drop, but he will also be 6 ATK / 5 DEF when he comes out. Such powerful search and siphoning of character cards can help us make Meatmarket and Satana much bigger than any of their 3- and 5-drop counterparts.

Our final plot twist gives us a bit more aid on the recursion front. Because the KO’d pile is such a powerful tool in our deck, we will undoubtedly benefit from ways to utilize synergies with it. For the most part, we want to keep it filled to the brim with as many characters as possible; however, when we can trade our KO’d pile size for hand advantage, it might not be a bad trade. This is what Dimensional Rift enables us to do. Whether it helps us recur a character to hit our curve, provides a critical power-up, or even just gives us fuel for random discard effects, Dimensional Rift provides a very strong 2-for-1 trade. With correct play of our critical cards, we can use Dimensional Rift for maximum advantage while still keeping a good number of character cards in our KO’d pile.

Our locations will finish off the deck. With the recursion-heavy theme and Secret Society as one of the primary teams, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that we’ll be playing Slaughter Swamp. This recursion location is a powerful tool in many different decks, but nowhere is it more potent than in a deck designed to utilize the KO’d pile to its fullest potential. In addition, the secondary effect of Slaughter Swamp to ready whenever we recruit a Secret Society character with a cost of 3 or more ensures that it can impact a game more than just once per turn.

Finally, we’re going to throw in a bit of offense for our deck. Gorilla City rates as one of the stronger location ATK pumps in the game, providing a potential +3 ATK. It also tends to aid its own cause, as every activation of Gorilla City will put an additional card into our KO’d pile.

Because Dickie V. has so much faith in the Underworld, so should we. Let’s see where the Marvel Team-Up MVP has gone in our latest creation:

Lords of the Underworld! (60 cards)

Characters (33)

4 Manhunter Clone, Clone of Paul Kirk

1 The Dwarf, Soul Broker

4 Black Rose, Roxanne Simpson

1 Deadshot, Floyd Lawton

4 Peter Merkel ◊ Ragdoll, Malleable Miscreant

1 Floronic Man, Jason Woodrue

4 Meatmarket, Lilin

4 Lex Luthor, Criminal Genius

1 Blackheart, Black King

4 Satana, Satana Hellstrom

2 Dweller-in-Darkness, Fear Lord

2 Mark Desmond ◊ Blockbuster, Mindless Brute

1 Psycho-Pirate, Roger Hayden

Plot Twists (21)

4 Death's Embrace

4 Dimensional Rift

4 Funky's Big Rat Code, Team-Up

1 Ritual Sacrifice, Team-Up

4 Straight to the Grave

4 Strange Love

Locations (6)