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4 Black Panther, King of Wakanda

4 Space Bears, Construct

4 Ch'p, Green Lantern of H'lven

2 Guy Gardner, Strong Arm of the Corps

3 Light Brigade, Construct

2 Sinestro, Green Lantern of Korugar

Plot Twists

4 Locked in Combat

4 Leslie Thompkins's Clinic

3 Tooth and Claw

Locations
1 Birthing Chamber

4 Book of Oa

2 Central Power Battery

Equipment
4 Green Lantern Ring

1 Mindtap Mechanism

Thanks for any help,

Mike

This deck is based around the interaction between the Construct characters and Leslie Thompkins’s Clinic, as Mike indicates. When a Construct character is put into play by exhausting characters with willpower, a delayed trigger is set up that KO’s it at the start of the recovery phase. With that trigger on the chain, Leslie Thompkins’s Clinic can be activated targeting the character to prevent it from being KO’d. (The trigger will only go on the chain once, on the turn that the Construct is put into play, and not on later turns.) With that in mind, we have a few things that we want to put together in any given game:

1) Leslie Thompkins’s Clinic in the resource row.

2) Space Bears or Light Brigade in hand.

3) Ready characters with a combined 4 or 8 willpower, respectively.

4) A way to ensure that the Construct is stunned at the start of recovery when the delayed trigger goes on the chain.

5) A reasonable way to make sure nothing else we care about is also stunned. There’s little point keeping Light Brigade around stunned because we had to recover our actual drop for the turn instead of the Brigade.

The first thing to do is go through the options for achieving each of these key points:

1) Amadeus Arkham, Architect of Insanity is one option, but is somewhat situational because our location search is prone to being completely wrecked by defensive tricks, inconveniently ready defenders, and other problems. We also won’t be able to set the location we find as a resource until after the turn we can get our stun, which may make a turn 3 Space Bears impossible to stick. Here a better option seems like Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose, since we aren’t dependent on getting a successful attack in on an exhausted defender. On the downside, we will need someone to KO to Poison Ivy. This could mean free characters like Fiddler, Isaac Bowin, an off-curve or swarm strategy, or Dr. Light, Master of Holograms to provide extra characters each turn.

2) Kyle Rayner, Last Green Lantern is cheap, has 2 willpower, and searches for Construct characters, recovery effects, Chopping Block, or Catcher’s Mitt. What’s not to like? Kyle Rayner being in the deck along with Poison Ivy is pushing me further toward Dr. Light.

3) We do have a few options for meeting our willpower requirement. Kalandine used Black Panther, King of Wakanda to fetch Green Lantern Ring, which could be transferred to Kyle to supply the 4 willpower to exhaust for Bears, or transferred to Ch'p, Green Lantern of H'lven to push his willpower up to 8 for a Brigade. I may still play the Green Lantern Rings, but my 3-drop of choice will be Dr. Light, Master of Holograms as already indicated. He seems custom-made for a deck like this, which wants to assemble a disparate group of cheap characters depending on the situation and the cards already drawn. He also gives access to a wide variety of cheap characters with willpower. The two most interesting are Faith, “The Fat Lady” for turn 4 or earlier and Olapet, Green Lantern of Southern Goldstar from turn 5 onward. Faith is a JLA 2-drop with 4 willpower, 2 of it thanks to a cosmic counter, and Olapet is a 2-drop that can provide 6 willpower. Green Lantern Rings to supplement these characters may or may not make the cut, partly depending on whether we can search for them.

4) We have a few options here. The options that Kalandine went for are the +2 ATK / -2 DEF plot twists Locked in Combat and Tooth and Claw. Another option is Chomin, Qwardian Spy, who can stun our Construct and deal some direct endurance loss to our opponent in the bargain. On turns where we control the initiative, we will simply be able to choose our attack order appropriately to ensure stuns, and when we’re off-initiative, Coast City would provide a useful way of forcing our opponents to attack a Construct before a character they consider more important (such as Dr. Light).

5) Recovery effects are possible, such as the Construct Lanterns in Love. Defensive plot twists are another option, and may be necessary given that our characters are likely to be exhausted to put Constructs into play. I’m going to flag Rise from the Grave here as a recovery effect that doesn’t require an exhaust. The question is simply whether the endurance loss to play Rise will be offset by the board position gained from the extra character. I suspect it will, given the benefit provided by keeping Ch’p or Dr. Light around an extra turn.

The deck is already moving in a different direction. The original list was a straightforward curve list, reliant on resolving at least one early attack on an exhausted character to search for the Clinic, and had only The Ring Has Chosen to smooth its curve. This meant missing even a single early drop could cripple our ability to search for our drop for the turn. The bulk of the changes I’ll suggest will be working toward minimizing those inconsistencies and chances for weak draws or dead cards.

There are a few other characters in addition to those already mentioned that will probably make the cut. Salakk, Green Lantern of Slyggia is a 1-drop with 2 willpower and has a strong pedigree of enabling The Ring Has Chosen to start fetching characters on-curve turn 2, making it an inclusion in the original deck that will stay. Higher up the curve, Ch’p, Green Lantern of H’lven, also included in the original list, is a 4-drop with a willpower of 6, taking only a Green Lantern Ring, Kyle Rayner, or Salakk to summon a Light Brigade. Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern of the Universe has only 3 willpower but has a global Coast City effect that can force our opponents to attack through the Construct we play that turn if they want to stun our regular characters. Unfortunately, he has uniqueness issues with Kyle Rayner, Last Green Lantern, and this is a bit of an insurmountable obstacle. As in the original list, Ch’p will be the 4-drop of choice.

At 5, Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz provides both 4 willpower and reinforcement for our unaffiliated Constructs. At 6, Guy Gardner, Strong Arm of the Corps provides a nice aggressive punch with boost, and Sinestro, Green Lantern of Korugar provides his usual attack deterrent, especially with a Coast City effect of some kind (either Coast City itself or Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern of the Universe). Finally, Gorilla Grodd, Simian Mastermind with Light Brigade allows us to almost steal a 4-drop for free on turn 6. It’s this unique and powerful trick that I will be focusing my attention on for turn 6; exhausting Olapet and Salakk to steal our opponent’s 4-drop is incredibly powerful.

Now that we have a skeleton starting to take shape, let’s put down some first-draft numbers. Some cuts may be made later, and some cards may get extra copies. This is just to give some focus to the rest of the process.

1 G’Nort, Green Lantern of G’Newt

3 Chomin, Qwardian Spy

4 Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose

2 Faith, “The Fat Lady”

1 Olapet, Green Lantern of Southern Goldstar

4 Dr. Light, Master of Holograms

4 Space Bears, Construct

2 Ch’p, Green Lantern of H’lven

3 Light Brigade, Construct

1 Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz

1 Gorilla Grodd, Simian Mastermind

That’s 34 characters, but we should almost treat the Constructs as plot twists as far as deckbuilding goes since they will be played outside our actual character curve via their alternate recruit cost. With that in mind, we arguably have a little space left for another character or two if it turns out we need them.

Certain resources are key. The first is Leslie Thompkins’s Clinic, and the second is a group comprised of our search cards. The Ring Has Chosen will be our first choice, with our second option either Enemy of My Enemy, Straight to the Grave, or a mix. Straight to the Grave can be played earlier, but unless we run four copies of Slaughter Swamp, we’re likely to be using it to feed Dr. Light. In that case, we don’t need it before turn 3 anyway. For now, Enemy of My Enemy has to be the choice, and four copies of The Ring Has Chosen and Enemy of My Enemy should give us a very solid game from turn 3 onward. Birthing Chamber is perfect for us, as although we may be KO’ing characters to Poison Ivy, we will also be playing extra characters for free. We can activate Birthing Chamber before using Ivy, or we can use it once we no longer need her to fetch locations (although she can also KO a used Birthing Chamber to search up a fresh one). There are some locations that we will run singletons of to search out, such as Coast City and Slaughter Swamp. For now I’m going to add some of the recovery effects mentioned earlier, and initially I’m going to try four copies of Rise from the Grave and a single Lanterns in Love that can be fetched with Kyle Rayner, Last Green Lantern if we already have our Construct characters in hand. A single copy each of Catcher’s Mitt and Chopping Block will round out our Constructs.

4 Enemy of My Enemy

4 Leslie Thompkins’s Clinic

4 Rise From the Grave

2 Lanterns in Love

At this point, I shuffled up and started doing some test draws without an opponent, just to see how the deck curved out uninterrupted. A few things made themselves apparent:

1) Salakk is your favored 1-drop to such a great extent, and willpower so important for cards like The Ring Has Chosen, that Chomin can’t really justify his three slots; a 1-drop that isn’t a priority for mulligans is a 1-drop that will rarely get recruited turn 1. You can’t get him into play early and often without sacrificing the willpower you need to play Constructs in the first place. One copy will probably stay, as it gives you access to a burn ability that may be useful against stall decks that won’t stun back Light Brigades in the later turns.

2) Assuming a turn 3 Dr. Light, you will generally want your first two 2-drops to be Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose and Kyle Rayner, Last Green Lantern to enable you to set up. Poison Ivy is powerful enough that even if you naturally draw a Leslie Thompkins’s Clinic, you will still want her early in most games. The 2-drop numbers felt right, with Faith and Olapet giving you Dr. Light diversity later on and ensuring you have targets for his ability if Kyle and Ivy are still around.

3) The numbers on Space Bears and Light Brigade can probably be reversed, as the games in which a turn 3 Space Bears is possible tend to involve Kyle Rayner either on turn 2 or turn 3 via Dr. Light anyway. By contrast, you want to be playing a Light Brigade on turn 4, a Light Brigade (and possibly a Space Bears) on turn 5, then possibly two Light Brigades on turn 6 (usually combining willpower from Olapet/Kyle and Ch’p/Salakk).

4) The deck needs a 7-drop and an 8-drop. Until Gorilla Grodd was added, I could pretend that the deck was going to go all-out aggro and try to win on turn 6, but the added value from 7- and 8-drops in a deck with Grodd is substantial. At 7 the obvious options are Alan Scott, Keeper of the Starheart, with enough willpower to put a Light Brigade into play unaided, or Krona, Creator of the Anti-Matter Universe, with less willpower but a higher DEF and a fantastic ability. At 8, the best option by far seems to be Psycho-Pirate, Roger Hayden. With Grodd, he can account for a 6- and 7-drop on his own, allowing your Brigades to come in for the kill (possibly directly, if Krona hides an opposing 8-drop).

5) Mosaic World, or something like it, is critical. Without the +2 ATK / -2 DEF plot twists, you will often need to team attack with your Constructs and other characters. On defense, Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz should be all you need.

6) Slaughter Swamp is important to ensure you can recycle Constructs on later turns. For example, you can put a Light Brigade into play on turn 6, KO it to Gorilla Grodd, then use Slaughter Swamp to get it back and put it straight back into play.

Putting this all together, we have:

Characters

1 G’Nort, Green Lantern of G’Newt

1 Chomin, Qwardian Spy

4 Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose

2 Faith, “The Fat Lady”

1 Olapet, Green Lantern of Southern Goldstar

4 Dr. Light, Master of Holograms

3 Space Bears, Construct

2 Ch’p, Green Lantern of H’lven

4 Light Brigade, Construct

1 Martian Manhunter, J’onn Jonzz

1 Gorilla Grodd, Simian Mastermind

1 Krona, Creator of the Anti-Matter Universe

1 Psycho-Pirate, Roger Hayden

Plot Twists

4 Enemy of My Enemy

4 Leslie Thompkins’s Clinic

4 Rise from the Grave

2 Lanterns in Love

Locations

Equipment

At this point, I managed to get a few testing games in against some casual decks put together by my testing group, along with a couple of early drafts of decks we wanted to try out for serious Constructed play. This seemed like a good environment for testing out an interesting little oddball like this, rather than immediately throwing it up against the heavyweights of the format like Deep Green or Good Guys. It worked surprisingly smoothly. The cut of the extra copies of Chomin felt right, as in practice you rarely need any help stunning your characters. I’m happy leaving a single copy as a pseudo-silver-bullet for stall decks or the occasional 1-drop, but he isn’t helpful often enough to justify multiples. Lanterns in Love turned out to be surprisingly easy to play (with a Construct that was put into play by Ch’p, Faith, or Olapet providing half the cost along with, usually, Poison Ivy), while Rise from the Grave is about as painful as expected and can only really be played once in any game. As such, a three and three split on Lanterns in Love and Rise from the Grave should be fine.

Despite all the fun involved in getting to play free 5-drops every turn from turn 4 onward, it’s Gorilla Grodd that really holds the deck together. He gives you an outlet for extra Light Brigades, giving you the choice of attacking or stealing an opposing 4-drop, and he allows you to use Krona to move an opposing 7-drop to the hidden area, then steal the opponent’s 6-drop, or use Psycho-Pirate to steal both a 6- and 7-drop. Add to that his decent stats and reasonable willpower, and you have a gem.

It also became rapidly clear that Fatality, Flawless Victory is a bit of a problem. Thankfully, Poison Ivy gives us a decent solution in the form of The Alley; otherwise, we’d be getting our board wiped on turn 4 with depressing regularity. Catcher’s Mitt, on the other hand, hasn’t really been doing anything. The combination of Mosaic World for “surprise” reinforcement and Martian Manhunter from turn 5 onward renders Catcher’s Mitt at least partially redundant, neatly freeing up the slot for The Alley.

The search card base is proving solid, as expected. Although it may seem that having low numbers of the higher drops would be a problem, you have eight search effects combined with card drawing from Birthing Chamber. Also, often during the early and mid-game you will find yourself wanting to play a search card simply to discard a card for Dr. Light to bring back. You can happily take that opportunity to search out a higher drop that you have yet to draw, for example playing The Ring Has Chosen on turn 3 to discard a Poison Ivy in hand while searching for Ch’p for next turn.

So, the final decklist:

Characters

1 G’Nort, Green Lantern of G’Newt

1 Chomin, Qwardian Spy

4 Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose

2 Faith, “The Fat Lady”

1 Olapet, Green Lantern of Southern Goldstar

4 Dr. Light, Master of Holograms

3 Space Bears, Construct

2 Ch’p, Green Lantern of H’lven

4 Light Brigade, Construct

1 Martian Manhunter, J’onn Jonzz

1 Gorilla Grodd, Simian Mastermind

1 Krona, Creator of the Anti-Matter Universe

1 Psycho-Pirate, Roger Hayden

Plot Twists

4 Enemy of My Enemy