Check the Papers and the TV…

Nothing says loving like reaching out and touching someone. In modern, no one handles chin checking kids who make your point like an impressionist like Marvel Knights. The two main components? Cloak and Encircled.

Cloak, Shadowmaster: 5/4 Marvel Knights, Concealed, Activate> The controller of target front row character moves it to his hidden area. Use only during the combat phase.

Encircle: Threshold 3, To play, move a hidden Marvel Knights character you control to your visible area. Target opponent moves a visible character he controls to his hidden area.

Looking at cloak, he’s solid for our purposes. 5/4 means he’ll end up counter stunning most other 3 drops, even if he himself is lost to darkness in the process. The main drawback to Tyrone is that he can only move a front row character. Still, it receives passing marks for our purposes.

Encircle offers a strategically interesting possibility.  The Marvel Knights that can go hidden can only BE hidden. In fact, no Marvel Legends card I searched for was Concealed-Optional. I’m not saying that we’re looking at defense gods robbed of their true calling. I’m saying meat shields are meat shields and sometimes Wolverine, Covert Predator soaking up those 3 precious endurance points could mean the difference between Guy Gardner and Bring it on! Not often, but we’ve ALL lost a game by less than 3 before. It’s a niche card, but if you build in a niche it’s great.

Now looking at these two as the main methods for getting the lead out of the way, we have to look at a few things.

There are 3 steps to fighting as per the Combatives level 1 manual: Close the distance, Gain Superior Position, and finish the fight. You’ve done all but the last in a sense. Without meat shields you’ve opened a path straight to their teeth. Nothing says ‘I want first place’ like playing pinball with someone’s skull. So We’re going to want concealed, on drops 1,2,4 and 5. If you’re still suffering fools at 6 you’ve hit a problem that only losing will solve.

Ordinarily I’m loathe to include 1 drops unless they serve a distinct and irreplaceable function like Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend or Royal Flush Gang, Full House. Well speed is of the essence in this case my friends. Of the 6 options we have I’m partial to black cat and nick fury. If we go with an equipment heavy dead, Nicky is a force to be reckoned with. Black Cat can be equipped to do damage, and extra card draw is rarely a bad thing. moving on to 2… I just don’t like MK 2 drops. Sorry. They suck. Run 1 drop weenie rush, or… I don’t know. Just don’t run 2 drops. The only one I really like won’t help this deck(yes, I’m one of like, 3 people who like Vampire Slayer).

3 is the realm of cloak, 4 brings us Wolverine, Covert Predator(Because nothing says spiteful like throwing everyone to the hidden area, then proceeding to slaughter them in said hidden area) and Punisher, Guns Blazing in a defensive build to kill anyone who dares attack your face. 5 is simply whichever finisher you like.

Throw in Equipment and Atk pumps and you have a face beating painfest. With the proper search additives you shouldn’t have too much in the way of consistency issues. For giggles you can even run neighborhood watch and run off team pumps because… it’s funny and mildly offensive in cases where your opponent is actually playing the affiliation in question.

The other thing is that your opponent, if he isn’t playing a hidden deck, is going to be thrown off center. A few reasons come to mind, but the main reason is simple: When people make decisions for you it throws you off. When I decide that all of the Sudden we’re going to hide Last Son of Krypton it’s going to throw his controller off a bit. Not much, but enough to make him rethink his strategy. It’s going to open up possibilities to him that he’d never been able to entertain. By allowing nonstandard strategies, his mind will open to those possibilities. That’s a lot more mental load. He has to make the most of your gift before the knife goes in his back. That’s extra strain on him. Adding more of a load is going to by its very nature unbalance that load.

The mechanical side is a bit more solid than most of my jank, but the player vs player aspect is where the deck makes most of its money. It takes a bit of skill to use a tiny thing like hidden or visible to establish control over the board in your opponent’s mind but it can be done… and once he thinks you’re in control you are.

It’s always more than cardboard.

Friday Reformat: Strange Bedfellows

Ok, let’s keep it fresh. To that end, at the end of each week I’m either going to lay down the rules for a different format, or explore the tech and strategy of an existing alt format. Welcome to the Friday Reformat(Just in time to try it at HL tomorrow night)

Today we’re discussing Strange Bedfellows.

Strange Bedfellows is a format that’s derivative of the Legends format. It follows standard construction rules for the Age, and observes the Banned List. The difference from a standard Legends deck is that of the 12 card minimum for legends, at least 8 must be from your protagonist, 4 from your antagonist. There must be a justifiable story correlation between the two as enemies. Superman/Lex Luthor is an easy green light. Batman/Captain America is a judge decision, as they were one of the Marvel Vs. DC matches from the mid 90’s. Captain America/Cat Woman is not acceptable because the two have never been drawn on the same page, let alone been at each others throats. So story plays a crucial role in this format.

Example of Deck Construction: I’m running an X-Men/Brotherhood SB deck. Wolverine is my Protagonist, Sabretooth is the obvious antagonist. Some of the possible Premutations:

Wolverine, Logan and Adamantium Claws make 8 cards for Wolverine. A full compliment of Sabretooth, Feral Rage rocks Mr. Creed out at 4. Thus your 12 card minimum is met.

Wolverine, Logan and Wolverine, Bub as characters with Adamantium Claws and Healing factor make the Weapon X Veteran’s presence known at 16 cards. We’re going to go with Feral Rage at 4 again, and 2 Copies of Genocidal Savage at 7. Sabretooth has 6 cards. 12 card minimum is met.

3 Logans and 3 Age of Apocalypse Wolverines mix with 2 Feral Rages and 4 Genocidal Savages. Not letal. You have 12 cards devoted to your legends, but neither is the protagonist with 8 dedicated cards.

It’s a simple variant on a format I really dig. I think the fun is going through your old comics and finding different matches of enemies. Wonder Woman, Ambassador of Peace and Superman, Metropolis Marvel would count. They fought in Infinite Crisis. Alexander Luthor and Lex Luthor Surely. Deadshot and ANY JLA member for the most part. My favorite? Batman and the Punisher from their crossovers back in the day. Wolverine and the Hulk. All sorts of crazy combinations lie waiting to be discovered. It’s just a question of finding the means to justify it. The fun for this format is the deckbuilding, with the pay off being decks ending up much different than they would in standard constructed.

As I’ll request every Friday, leave your impressions in the comments once you’ve tried a few decks(Built and/or played) and let me know what you think.

Taking Control of the Means of Production

I’ve been on a political kick lately, and I’ve been looking to work with teams I’ve been stumped on. The two mixed as I was rereading some passages from Marx last night. It’s either going to go well, or fail miserably.

Following the idea of a proletariat revolt, I began looking at Novice Assassin, Army. These guys are weird. A 0/1 1 drop that gets +1 ATK for each of their brothers in arms. Then I thought about the proliferation of hidden love that’s come to be a hallmark of my own deck ideas lately. I love hidden, as it allows my effect based characters to survive without fear of their low stats. It was also an Earth 3 deck that took MWLA last month… all hidden.

The concept revolves around the idea that either you put in meat shields or I go to your face. This makes concealed-optional a tougher choice, as anyone you put on the board will be stunned. The reasoning is that as long as I can spend each resource point on more assassins, I’ve blown the curve away. If you think of a unit of Novice assassins as a single drop, then your ATK curve goes 1, 4, 9, 16, 25. More than enough to kill a hidden deck by 4. When you factor in that against some decks you’ll be sporting 6 hidden assassins on 3 in play,  if they have no one to soak up the team attack you slap them for 36 i the face, after nailing them for 1 and 9 on the previous turns. that clinches the game because if their 4 drop gets stunned, they die.

So the problems?

Drawing enough Assassins each turn. Going with shooting for a full slew every turn through 4, that means we need 12 assassins in our hand. Our solution? Damocles Base and The Demon’s Head is one good option. Running 20+ Assassins means you’re probably going to be able to name them and draw one, and Demon’s head to get another Damocles base to rinse and repeat. That serves a secondary purpose in that it slightly thins your deck out, giving you better odds of drawing another Novice assassin.

Defense is also an issue. This is easy enough. The mainstay of your plot twists are going to be Burn Rubber, Poker Night, and Nasty Surprise. With a board full of reinforcement ready characters you SHOULDN’T need a lot of plot twist based reinforcement. Then again, there are always those times you will. Between Nasty Surprise to take out their attacker unexpectedly. A Defensive counter stun helps you, as your one assassin in stunned/exhausted without having to exhaust his friends to attack. That leaves more ninjas in reserve for the final strike to the face.

It’s a potentially powerful build, but it’s fragile. Not enough assassins in your opening hand will kill you. Too many and no defensive tricks will leave your Endurance an open book to those that would take it. Still, it’s a weak deck at a glance. Your opponent will probably underestimate you. That’s an advantage you don’t break in a pack.

The Healing Power of Laughter

My wife… she loves the Joker. Aside from the fact his significance to the literary history of comics, he’s just a fun villain. Well… maybe not ‘fun’ like playing a game of football fun, but I don’t think fun is inappropriate. Anyway, the way things go he’s got some powerful effects. Let’s look at what The Joker has going for him:

Modern Versions:

Crazy for you, 6 Drop, Arkham Inmates, 12/12 Whenever The Joker is discarded, you may remove him from the game. If you do, shuffle your hand into your deck, then draw a card for each card you shuffled in.

Not that useful outside an Insanity deck… but super powerful in that madness. Still, he won’t make the cut.

Out of His Mind, 3 Drop, Arkham Inmates, 5/4 Whenever The Joker is discarded, you may remove him from the game. If you do, shuffle your hand into your deck, then draw a card for each card you shuffled in.

Interesting enough, but I don’t have the play experience to make the judgement. Still, holding him out for a power-up replaces a dead hand with a few extra pumps.

The Man Who Laughs, 1 Drop, 2/1 Arkham Inmates Whenever The Joker stuns a character, you may discard a card at random. If you do, target opponent loses 3 endurance.

I’ve posted a strategy thread on this guy. I think he could make for interesting rush Tek. Still, not for the deck we’re building.

Headline Stealer, 4 Drop, 8/7, Arkham Inmates*Injustice Gang, Each opponent can’t play plot twists from his hand with cost less than the number of cards in his hand.

The greatest of Jokers. He kills opponents dead. A staple in IG decks, and Joker Legend decks. An auto include.

Killer Smile, 6 Drop, 12/12, Arkham Inmates/Injustice Gang Whenever The Joker causes breakthrough, you may stun target character with cost less than the number of cards in its controller’s hand.

Wow. A powerful Game ender. He gets worse once you work in the fact that their handsize is going to be huge by Injustice Gang. So then, how to make the Joker realize true power? Well, the Joker’s Wild Pack.

Wildpack’s big draws are: Bounty Hunt, Capture Net, and Powell. Bounty Hunt fills your hand. Capture Net removes their character from the board and fills their hand. Powell goes straight to the KO’d Pile to find Criminal Mastermind, Bounty Hunt, and your Team-Up. Add to that a sniper situation with Hovercraft, and you have yourself a nasty set-up. Run Wild Pack rush through turn 3. On turn 4 you rock out Joker with Lex Luthor, Metropolis Mogul to complete their shutdown. Turn 6 brings in Killer Smile, and The Joke’s On You!.

IG has, hands down, the best pumps in the environment right now. Power Siphon and All Too Easy! make things nasty, and quick. Throw Laughing Gas on Killer Smile and we find ourself in a terrible predicament. We’re burning for our handsize, losing our biggest character because Killer Smile punked the 3 drop that’s survived this far, in addition to any break through and stun damage. As with every concept it needs work, but I think Joker’s Wild could be vicious in the wrong hands.

As Demanded By the Good DJ

Two Deck FAQ

What is the Two Deck Format? It’s an alternate format that divides a 60 cards Vs deck into two 30 card decks. One deck is your character deck(containing your Characters and Equipment) the other is your writer deck(Containing Plot Twists and Locations).

What are the deckbuilding rules? Minimum of 30 cards in each deck, with no more than 4 copies of any given name/version. Army cards are the exception, which have no maximum. The standard Vs banned list is held in place.

 How do you Draw Cards? Alternating from the writer deck to the character deck. The rotation resets at the beginning of each turn. Example: If you draw a card during your recovery phase and it comes from your Writer deck your first out of draw phase draw would still come from the writer deck the next turn. Replacing resources is considered to be drawing cards. If another player’s effect replaces the card it still follows your rotation.

How Do Search Cards work? Search cards target the deck containing the target for your search. If you play a Bat Signal, you will search only your character deck. Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend can search either deck as he searches for Equipment OR Plot twists.

What about cards that reveal the top card? Cards that say to reveal the top X cards of your deck alternate between decks following your draw rotation. Example: Cerebro says reveal the top two cards of your deck. You’d reveal in the rotation order, revealing the top card of both decks.

How do you win? Standard Vs rules. Each player gets 50 endurance, etc.

Are there Separate KO’d Piles? No. A single KO’d Pile is used. Effects that put cards on the Top of your deck put their targets on the appropriate deck. Example: If Poseidonis activates targetting a plot twist it goes on your Writer deck, you cannot put it on top of your character deck.

Any other questions can be left as a comment and I’ll update as more questions arise.

A Change of Pace

Just a Heads Up: My original blog is going the way of the ‘general’ gaming blog. The mixture of trying to keep it proper enough to participate in the Vs Blogger Community combined with what I wanted to write about just kinda turned the blog to dreck. That and the last few weeks have been a smidgeon busy. To that end, I’ve started Tek Upgrade as a true to form tech and strategy blog. Enjoy. Expect the FAQ DJ Midsouth demanded for 2 deck format later today.