It’s a new year, and it’s time for a little reflection. It’s a good time for taking stock, as the quiet part of winter kicks in and waistbands slowly start to creep back towards pre-Christmas sizes. For Vs. System, however, there’s a little more spring in the step than the foul weather and restricted hours of daylight might suggest. The long-awaited Hellboy Essential Collection is almost ready to spring out on an unsuspecting world, and the Marvel Team-Up expansion is following hot on the heels of Hellboy, Abe, and Liz, promising a one-two punch of new teams (Wild Pack and Marvel Defenders) and re-features (Spider-Friends, Underworld, Sinister Syndicate).

Even better, not only do we have two sets full of shiny, low-calorie, high-taste goodness on the radar, but also the Golden and Silver Age metagames are adjusting to possibly the most fun-positive ban in the game’s history—the nuking from orbit of the cockroach-persistent Dr. Light, Master of Holograms. As far as I can tell, other than furtive preliminary testing for the upcoming Pro Circuit in Sydney, the various Vs. System metagames have been holding their breath over the holiday season, waiting for an injection of fresh blood.

So where to go with the first Deck Clinic of the year? Well, it turns out that my talk about “reflection” and “taking stock” earlier is going to be some nifty foreshadowing—as will the reference to Marvel Team-Up, long rumored to be the final resting place of the long-awaited replacement for Antarctic Research Base. With Golden Age in a state of flux as a result of the Dr. Light-fueled control strategies getting cut off at the knees, curve may yet be king again. Where do we end up if we start looking back to the early days of Vs. System, with curve, the Fantastic Four, and equipment in mind? For my money, you get Matt Boccio’s deck from the Top 8 of the very first Pro Circuit.

Characters

4 She-Thing, Sharon Ventura

3 Luke Cage, Hero for Hire

4 Thing, Ben Grimm

3 She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters

4 Invisible Woman, Sue Storm

2 Wolverine, New Fantastic Four

4 Mr. Fantastic, Stretch

1 Thing, Heavy Hitter

3 Hulk, New Fantastic Four

2 Wolverine, Berserker Rage

1 Thing, The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing

Plot Twists

4 It’s Clobberin’ Time!

4 Acrobatic Dodge

2 Overload

2 Savage Beatdown

4 Signal Flare

3 Tech Upgrade

2 Ka-Boom!

2 Have a Blast!

Equipment
4 Fantasticar

1 Personal Force Field

1 Twin Firearms

There are more recent Fantastic Four decks that I could look back on, from Common Enemy and other multi-team decks to Dean Sohnle’s mind-warping Fantastic Fun. That said, there’s a straightforward, brutal simplicity to Boccio’s deck. He eschews the trickiness of trying to cycle Unstable Molecules for cards with Antarctic Research Base, Flamethrower wasn’t even printed yet, and A Child Named Valeria is sadly bereft of any text even vaguely resembling “+3 ATK.” Matt would prefer, instead, to politely inform you that it is—in case Sir has forgotten—Clobberin’ Time.

Personally, I find a good beatdown deck strangely therapeutic. Sometimes I’m up for a headache-inducing, multi-team pile of weirdness, and enjoy trying to win the game by sucking reality through a sieve. Sometimes, though, I just want to play a deck whose purpose in life is hitting people in the face with a Tom & Jerry frying pan. For all Dean’s tricks and off-curve weirdness, the Fantastic Four have always been good at finding, equipping, and attacking you with said frying pan.

What can we do now with FF Toys? We have an awful lot of new options. I am here to tell you that we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We can make it better than it was before: better, stronger . . . faster.

The first thing to look at is the significantly expanded pool of Fantastic Four characters—the Marvel Origins roster expanded both by legacy content in later expansions and by the Fantastic Four starter deck.

1-drops

I have fairly high requirements for 1-drops in aggressive curve decks. A built-in search ability (think Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend or Bolivar Trask, Creator of the Sentinel Program) or an alternate recruit cost is a must have. Sadly, the Fantastic Four don’t have any characters that meet those requirements. Alicia Masters, Blind Sculptress and Franklin Richards, Child Prodigy are both powerful cards, but belong in very different decks from ours. Ant Man, Scott Lang is the best aggressive 1-drop, but unless his ability is something we particularly feel a craving for, I’ll pass.

2-drops

She-Thing, Sharon Ventura and Luke Cage, Hero for Hire: one’s an equipment-nuking 3 ATK / 3 DEF, and the other’s a 3 ATK / 2 DEF that can turn into a 5 ATK / 4 DEF at the drop of a hat. Y’know, if I don’t end up with some non-Origins characters in this deck, I’m going to feel a little foolish. If we want to press the “bash face” angle of the deck even harder, Human Torch, Johnny Storm is always an option here.

3-drops

Here things get a little interesting. There is, of course, Thing, Ben Grimm. I’m pretty sure a 5 ATK / 5 DEF for 3 resource points will never go out of style. His payment power has fluctuated in usefulness through the game’s history, and my honest answer to the question of how good it is now is, “I have no idea.” In Boccio’s deck, and for much of the game’s history, the knee-jerk backup 3-drop for Fantastic Four beats has been She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters. Unfortunately, Jennifer’s stats when you’re attacking with her have always been a little unimpressive. Two relatively recent additions to the roster provide some competition for the slot—Human Torch, Sparky from Heralds of Galactus and Luke Cage, Reserve Member from the Fantastic Four starter. Eagle eyes will have already picked out the potential for uniqueness issues if we’re careless with our 2-drop and 3-drop selection. Essentially, we can run Human Torch at one drop and Luke Cage at the other. Given the attack-friendly game plan, I’m going to go with the 2-drop Torch and 3-drop Cage, taking the pairing that offers slightly more ATK and an extra card over the out-of-combat direct endurance loss of 3-drop Sparky.

4-drops

Ah, a lot of new options. From four Marvel Origins 4-drops to twelve available now, can we find anything better than Sue Storm and Wolverine? Some are obvious cuts—Mr. Fantastic, Doom’s Adversary, for example. Sadly, for all the options, there aren’t that many truly aggressive choices. Wolverine, New Fantastic Four is the only 8 ATK option, despite his power being unlikely to trigger often (here’s another place where a character with an alternate recruit cost would be useful, letting us effectively use such a character as a Savage Beatdown later in the game). I think I’m going to turn instead to the slightly less reliable Franklin Richards, Trapped in Time, instead. After all, if he keeps his cosmic counter through turn 4, he could easily hit 9 ATK / 9 DEF or 10 ATK / 10 DEF turn 5. Given the underwhelming nature of Wolverine’s triggered power in a curve deck like this one, I’m prepared to give Franklin a shot.

For defensive options, Invisible Woman, Sue Storm remains the premier defensive drop. There’s a strong argument, however, for the best defense being a good offense, and a certain recent set does provide a strong 4-drop option. Though not defensive per se, Human Torch, The Invisible Man will at least keep our endurance total high while still attacking and getting board advantage. Not including at least a single copy of such a powerful endurance gain card would be rude, as it gives us a powerful option against short-curve and off-curve aggro decks trying to blitz us out before our dominating late-game beaters kick in.

5-drops

Ah, Stretch. I’ve missed you. Mr. Fantastic, Stretch should need no introduction. If he does, read him, then read Fantasticar (and possibly Personal Force Field or Cloak of Nabu). Then think about how much better the already beefy Fantastic Four characters look with an additional +2 ATK / +2 DEF. Looking at backup 5-drops, it’s tempting to jump straight for Thing, Heavy Hitter. But Thing is going to be our primary 3-drop (Ben Grimm) and probably our 7-drop as well (The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing). As such, we may want to look elsewhere, much as it hurts to do so. The backup 5-drop I’m going to suggest is . . . nobody. Really, given the available options, the number of character search cards available, and the raw power of the equipment plan (particularly the Cars), I don’t think the deck will benefit significantly from a backup 5-drop at all. If you disagree, a copy of Mr. Fantastic, Illuminati (providing a power-up for your primary 5-drop and a card-filtering power) or Ghost Rider, New Fantastic Four (to help race other aggressive decks) would be my suggestions.

6-drops

Given the weak stats of Human Torch, Super Nova and our plan to recruit Thing on turn 7, Hulk, New Fantastic Four remains the only real option at 6. It’s probably the least exciting point on the FF curve. Thankfully, coming the turn after the Fantasticars hit, a big guy is often exactly what the doctor ordered.

7-drops

Speaking of big guys, they don’t come much bigger than Thing, The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing. Invisible Woman, Flame On! provides an off-initiative option for curve matchups; that may make a copy worth playing.

8-drops

Not available to Boccio, a copy of Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd seems like a worthy piece of insurance.

Taking a stab at a curve, then:

4 She-Thing, Sharon Ventura

4 Human Torch, Johnny Storm

4 Thing, Ben Grimm

3 Luke Cage, Reserve Member

3 Franklin Richards, Trapped in Time

1 Invisible Woman, Sue Storm

1 Human Torch, The Invisible Man

4 Mr. Fantastic, Stretch

2 Hulk, New Fantastic Four

1 Thing, The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing

1 Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd

That’s 28 characters. It’s lighter than Boccio’s original list (as you’d expect in these Mobilize-fueled times), and provides more space for fun.

As you might expect, while the character base for the deck is quite similar to the original list (beefy characters being something Marvel Origins was very good at), the options for equipment, plot twists, and locations have multiplied at a ferocious rate. This provides a dizzying variety of angles of attack, from the old school “Four Cars and a Force Field” setup to a full-on, searchable pseudo-plot twist suite of Catcher’s Mitt, Chopping Block, Quadromobile, and pals. Check back tomorrow, when I’ll be talking through the real meat of the deck: the equipment choices and the resources to support them.

Tom Reeve is a member of the Anglo-Canadian Alliance (like the Rebel Alliance, but with public transport instead of X-Wings) and would-be professional layabout from London, England. While his love of all things ninja has resulted in an arguably unhealthy affinity for the League of Assassins, that particular quirk turned into a healthy plus with the birth of the Silver Age deck Deep Green, with which teammate Ian Vincent took home the Pro Circuit San Francisco trophy to dear old Blighty.