Crossing the Aisle

One of the many notable people I’ve met and consider friends from my time in the Vs community is one Rian Fike. While I lost his address and need it again, with multiple apologies, so his Wild Childs can be sent out, I’m still happy to speak with him on most matters. We disagree fundamentally on some things, but I believe we both agree on the most important issues, namely: A person cannot relinquish their fate to the ideas of another. Self empowerment is as fundamental to one’s existence as breathing. At least, that’s how I see our interactions.

Empowered he has been, through his own very vocal love notes and song to the girl with the wood rats. It seems for at least ten minutes, probably longer, Rian has longed for a Squirrel Girl card. A few hours, it dropped like an S bomb, blowing away rush and army deckbuilders. Of course Squirrel girl would have an army related ability. That’s what makes sense. And it’s that army ability, combined with the new nick fury that we’re going to look at today. Rian, today’s such a monumental day for you that I’m going to post a deck idea that LITERALLY has 20 ATK printed in the whole deck. That’s right. Some 8 drops have printed attack equal to your whole deck. The fun part is that no more than 5 printed attack will be on the board at any given time.

The basis for the deck is Squirrel Girl, and Nick Fury. Squirrel Girl keeps the cards from going to the KO pile, while Nick keeps them coming hard and fast. But let’s face it, burning for two every time that you drop someone isn’t going to win you the game. It’s going to keep you alive with artificial reinforcement, though! And that’s where things start to get silly.

Proletariat Uprising is comprised of a Dozen Novice Assassins, and Ten SHIELD Agents. By crossing over LoA and SHIELD you can have two new assassins every turn. Also, with LoA you can use tower of Babel to cripple Team stamped plot twists, and abuse locations like Mountain Stronghold, and Flying Fortress. The only thing you have to worry about is keeping cards in your hand. Luckily, Doreen makes it so your Army Characters don’t really die. They just get dropped again next turn. The twist? You don’t run defensive plot twists outside Burn Rubber, and maybe Poker Night. You should have sufficient board presence to reinforce anyway. You run things like Savage Beatdown, Flying Fortress, Crackshot, and the like. You make it so your SHIELD Agents clear a path and then your Novice Assassins take care of the rest. The impossible Game?

Turn 1 Squirrel Girl+SHIELD Agent. She swings, they’ve lost 3 Endurance.

Turn 2: 2 Novice Assassins, flip the Multiverse. A Crackshot from the resource row lets your SHIELD agent take down their 2 drop, and 4 goes to your opponent’s face(7 total lost)

Turn 3: Nick drops in, played by himself, not David Hasselhoff. He puts two more assassins into play. A crackshot on squirrel girl takes down their 3 drop. 4 assassins swing in for 16 Damage.(23 Total Lost without adding in stun damage)

Turn 4: However you pull it off, 4 assassins drop. 3 take out their 4 drop, Nick takes their 3 out, and you swing to 25 to the face. That’s game. And you only ever had 5 ATK printed on the board.

Proof positive that with Squirrel Girl on your side, you don’t need to be big. You need to be smart, with a lot of dumb friends. These friends bring the most refreshing sauna, though. With that lovely sauna your opponent can attack Squirrel girl directly to stop her power from activating, then you recover her mid attack on another army character. That’s a lot you can do with the deck, methinks. I can’t wait for more SHIELD stuff to drop.

Dude, If I Could Clone My Wife…

One thing about pumps is that 4 is the magic number. Any pump that’s 4 or higher is a surefire way to swing into someone two drops higher than you. Fantastic Four is fun because they have a great one: Family of Four. It gives +1/+1 for each of the fantastic four you have in play(only Dick, Sue, Johnny, and Ben) so it’s a potential +4/+4. BUT WAIT! What about Secret Society, who have a printed +4/+4 pump. On top of that, Poison Ivy is there.

The thing is Family checks for each character with that name in play. Invisible woman is the only 1 drop on the list, but that’s immaterial. All we need is 1 trigger for the card to be a first turn drop. Assuming you rock out Sue, then Reed on 2, Poison Ivy on 3, and finally you drop Johnny on 4, you have an interesting set-up in motion. Pam can get Sue from the discard pile, assuming a team-up, and put her into play without worrying about silly things like uniqueness. Silly rule book. That means on turn 4 you can have 3 Invisible Women(Dick, you’re a lucky lucky man), Mr Fantastic, and Human Torch in play. That makes Family of Four +5/+5. That’s savage beatdown worthy.

When we make it to 5 we have Thing, Heavy hitter. He’s naturally an 11/11. With the fourth and final Sue dropping to make the pump insane. That does two things: It makes Family a +7/+7, and allows use of Four Freedoms Plaza. If you can get all 4 in your hand, you have a 39/39 swinging for a win. 2 Savage Beatdowns and a Blindsided makes him 49/49 that can’t be reinforced against. That’s… massive. Anger and hate, Savage Beatdown, Acceptable Loss, and Family of Four give your deck about a 1:4 ratio of 4+ pump factors.

To keep everyone alive you have Invisibility, and Reed and Sue. The main issue is keeping everyone alive so Ben can finish things off on 5. If you can rock that out, you’ve won. Period.

Z?

So I was discussing my disappointment in the Hulk stuff. Most of them… they aren’t BAD cards. They’re just a little more middle of the road than I’m used to from Vs. A word, if I may, about Vs as a set of mechanics.

The thing that makes me love Vs is that it has depth. Every game has its core set of equations. For L5R, it’s a combination. If X>39 At Point in 00:00, If Y<-19, XX=5 or if Z=0 where X=Your Honor, Y=Your opponent’s honor, Z=The number of your opponent’s province, and XX=The number of elemental rings with different elemental keywords. That’s it. L5R through poorly written math. Magic, in retrospect is simply ‘X<1 where X=your opponent’s life total’. Vs is a midway between as X>(Y>0) Where X if your endurance and Y is your opponent’s endurance. It’s not 4 equations to worry about, but it’s still more complicated than X<1.

The reason I love Vs is that there are a myriad of options opened up by the simple (0<Y). It opens up Kamikaze possibilities that allow you to drop your own endurance below 0 to win. It allows more freedom of form, as your opponent is your opponent instead of you against your opponent and the rule book. The simple exclusion of the rule book as an opposing force has a huge impact.

Vs is a game whose design philosophy is, in essence, controlled chaos. Design says ‘Here are your inputs. Solving the forumla is up to you’. I can mix teams, formations, team-ups, ongoing plot twists, and other mechanics to effects I want. I, for myself and by myself, am the sole arbiter of the proper solution to X>(Y>0). MUN -8 brought that freedom of expression to the table. You could drop Cap on 2, Mr Fantastic, Flexible thinker=Eureka to get Cap’s shield on 3, Then Clash of Worlds/Champion License on 4, then teamp-up Avengers and F4, and flip pier 4. That gives you an ability to exhaust up to 4 people every turn(depending on your ability to find said shields). That’s just one example, and I believe the next 5 days will show a dozen more premutations of X>(0>Y)=Z.

Warbound seems to play as seen. MUN -7 seems to be finding Z by looking in the back of the book. These are, like all of my MUN thoughts, based on a view of less than 5% of the whole product. Still, with this new slew of cards, strategies, and solutions for Z, I think the summer is going to be very exciting for the Artists of Vs. Tell a friend: It’s going to be amazing.

MUN is Vs Au Ju

A few closing comments, a Wrap Up if you will, on Hulk Week.

First, to the Design Team, congratulations. I’m impressed that Design has done such a good job translating the Flavor of the Hulk. He’s powerful, but that power comes at a price. He’s a stand alone, take all comers who is paradoxically defined by those whose friendship he holds so dear. A tragedy in that his power, that which allows his existence, separates him from those he wishes to exist with. Design did an excellent job of taking that flavor, and infusing each card with it like a Basil Infused Olive Oil of Green Hate.

Unfortunately, I think the Hulk’s a crappy character. Say what you will, but I think he’s misused as a literary figure and ends up bottom of the barrel. I view Hulk Comics the same way I view the AVP series. Either they put too much into defining characters at the cost of the action that made me want to see the movie in the first place, or they finally capture the brutality and danger of the encounter at the cost of me giving a damn about anyone in that danger. An equilibrium is never met. So it is with the Hulk.

Let’s look at each card individually. Each card can be found here with a deep thanks to OnyxWeapon for keeping the list fresh, and sexy. If there’s one thing Onyx knows, it’s how to keep it sexy.

Hulk, Green Scar-Flame Trap on a stick. Decent Stats. Combined with Righteous Anger you have a potential early game ending set-up. Violently wonderful. I approve. It’s got the power and versatility that make me giggle with sinister delight.

Hulk, Gladiator-10/10 5 drop with massive stats. A bit too fragile, and costly ability. Still, marginally functional as long as your opponent doesn’t run Grodd, or Pathetic Attempts. The price of power, and ease of interruption are what relegate this card to the ‘maybe’ pile for me. Solid, to be sure. Not a game breaker.

Caiera, The Oldstrong- Mrs Hulk has respectable stats, and an ability that can be combined for 3 massive attacks from a prepared Hulk 5 drop that end the game on 6.

Righteous Anger-If any card made the Hulk Cool, it would be this one. Nothing to say about it. Like Taft in 1912, this card can let its record speak for it.
Hulk, Worldbreaker- This is where I begin really differing with people. Don’t get me wrong, this card can be raw power. It can be. Unfortunately, the Warbound previewed don’t show an ability to make it to 8. There’s no true to form stall, as the only stall card burns you. A stall deck can be used to get to 8, then drop this and Righteous Anger to clear their board and kill Kathy Lee Gifford.

The Strongest There Is-Kinda give and take version of ‘No Match for Darkseid’. Really it’s the potayto of no match’s Potahto. It has its place, but my problem with Strongest will be discussed in the final verdict.

The Great Arena- I can’t give words to the exact amount of crap I think this card is. When ever I see the number is in yellow I can feel it. I can hear the vein in my head that’s going to kill me, and it’s laughing. This card brings its day of triumph years closer every time I look at that terrible, damning yellow font color.
Final Verdict- Week 1 I looked at the previews and saw a world opened to me. The Hulk has earned his name
. He’s broken those dreams of an idealistic deckbuilder. The man who strode proudly into the Monday previews finds himself a bitter, cynical veteran of a week of ‘almost’. The Hulk was almost good. Some of it is, legitimately, awesome. Green Scar has such possibilities… Gladiator is… a 10/10 5 drop. Mrs. Hulk can set the game up for a turn 6 finisher. Righteous Anger is a giant leap towards redemption. Worldbreaker neither excites nor disappoints me. The Strongest there is weakens the grip of those thick green sausages. It’s cool, but it’s nothing new and requires a Stun. Then we get into the ass rare that is The Great Arena.

Allow me to get onto my Bully Pulpit about the wholly misleadingly named ‘Great Arena’. The thing about the hulk, and this is part of the reason I love the flavor and think design did a great job on the Warbound, is that he suffers for his power. No matter how many writers fail to capitalize on the wealth of subtlety that is Bruce Banner and his Radiation infused alter ego, design has taken it and run with it. They ran right into a brick wall, from the small sliver of the map I can see.

This is because let’s see how many effects require a stun, or comparable endurance loss: The Great Arena, Righteous Anger, The Strongest There Is, Worldbreaker, Green Scar, and Mrs. Hulk. The lowest cost hulk previewed thus far is a 4 drop, though I guess a 3 drop is leaping round the bend. Still… let’s say on turn 4 you decide to Great Arena their 4 drop, then Righteous Anger to ready him and clear their 1 and 2. Ok. Cool. You just took 8 damage. That 8 loss incurred and 4 endurance loss to your opponent and prevents you from using any effects on Hulk for his final swing. Guess what that means? If you’re swinging into Wolverine, Logan, you’re a turnabout from screwing the pooch and losing 12 to their 4. If my opponent wants to burn though 24% of his allotted endurance in a single turn and I have to pay 8% of mine for it… awesome. I’m ecstatic if I can cause damage to my opponent on a 1:3 ratio. Ask anyone who’s played Vs against me. Calculated Loss is a concept I use whenever possible.
The issue I have with the Warbound is that using them will kill me faster than my opponent kills me. The price is too high in an environment where negation is about as hard to find as smear ads in October. The cost is too high, the rewards too few. The affiliation can’t make it past 5 to use Mrs. Hulk in the current speedtastic environ.

These cards drip with flavor. Unfortunately that flavor just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Edit: I just saw Hulk, Ultimates and Hulk Smash! Hulk, Ultimates is S.H.I.E.L.D. affiliated and pretty sweet. Haven’t seen enough Shield yet, but considering Captain America, Champion License is Shield, I think you could stall into him for a nasty, nasty game ender. Hulk smash is a 3 threshold plot twist that gives an attacking Hulk +8 ATK. Holy ‘eff’. That’s… that’s horrible. I believe that’s prevented by the Geneva Convention. AWESOME!

Strangely, It Doesn’t Run ‘Heroes of Two Worlds’…

Mightiest Heroes and Avengers Reassembled are the best of times, and the worst of times. They don’t allow you to draw the card you searched for, but they do allow for search. AR lets you replace a resource you control. Avengers have reservist as one of their themes, so this makes sense. JLA, though, also has Reservists. 6 in fact, and they rock out on turn 1, 2, 5, and 6.

Spider-Man, New New Avenger is a 2 drop Reservist that you can reveal from your resource row to crossover Avengers and whoever. The fun thing about New New Avenger is that Avengers Reassembled will put him into your resource row if you pay your pound of flesh. That’s nice, as it allows you to have a team-up out without having it face-up and therefore a target for Batman, Founding Member. It also lets you crossover JLA and the Avengers on turn 1. Not often an issue, but one to be aware of.

Then we go into Captain America(Who, after 60 years as an O-3, probably should’ve been picked up for major by now). Here we find the crux of our deck. With 3 tutors(Avengers Reassembled, Mightiest Heroes, Mobilize), and a curve that runs through 7 (that’s right, 7) we can get to work.

Now, turns 1-3 are kinda strange. We’re going to start off with Aztek and blackbird, you’ll see why in a bit. From there we move into 2 sporting Captain America, The Patriot mixed with Gypsy, Operative. On 3 we hit Katar Hol, Hal Jordan, Founding Member, and Batman, Founding Member. 4 gives us Captain America, Champion License drops, with Wonder Woman, Ambassador of Peace as backup. 5 Drops Batman, Justice’s Shadow. 6 brings us Captain America, Living Legend, ending with Hal Jordan, Fearless.

The way the deck is set to run you hit your curve with Katar Hol being the first important drop. On 4, Champion License goes infront of Kator Hol. The shield goes on the Captain, and he swings into a soft target. Then the shield pops to exhaust another one of their people. When their last guy gets an attack, he either swings into Captain America, or he swings into Captain America via his ability. An auto-Power-Up makes Cap a 9/8. If you’d played a stalwart defense earlier, he becomes a 9/10 against their attack. Batman, Founding Member drops to give Captain America the ability to swing into the opposing 5 drop. A Charging Star turns him into a 9/12 for the attack. The Shield keeps exhausting an opposing character while Steve Rogers draws the big attacks to himself.

The finisher involves Hal Jordan, and a good mix of Fearless, Assorted Alias, and Savage Beatdown, if not Armageddon(yes, I said Armageddon) swinging into their softest target for 25+ ATK, which should finish them on turn 7. The proactive stall should keep whittling their board and endurance throughout the turns.

The last card important to the deck, and really the crux of the deck, is SRA. Superhuman Registration Act allows you to immediately recruit the guys you search our with Avengers Reassembled and Mightiest Heroes. That adds the little bit of speed you need to get the necessary edge for a proactive stall deck like this.

The decklist is going to change quite a bit over the next two months, but I think the general idea is going to remain the same: Mix Avengers and JLA for consistency and pumps, using Captain America to draw in fire from the opposing board while exhausting an opposing character every turn. It’s going to be a tightwire to walk until we get some more Avengers love. Even as is, it’s a delightfully frustrating deck to play against… at least in a game of Mental Vs.

The Correlation of Fast and Right: An Observation

I work out every day with coworkers. Sometimes I choose the regimen, other times my supervisor calls the shots. I took charge yesterday, so he took it today. We ended up doing a circuit, a 1 mile cardio run, and finished it up with a few sets of Sprints. The problem? The guy behind me in the circuit was catching up while I was doing squats. So as not to hold up the others, I sped up. For those unfamiliar, a squat involves holding weight on your shoulders and squatting until your thighs are parallel to the ground. You have to keep your back straight or you end up hurting it. I sped up and my form suffered. 3 Tylenol later, I can walk and do my job. Wow.

So this coincides with Hulk Week. How funny. Maybe it’s just the excrutiating pain of running a mile with a strained back, or maybe it’s my gun shy attitude towards the Warbound. Still, I see a bit of a correlation. The thing is, the Hulk is turning into a turn 5 kill, turn 4 kill if you do it just right.  Think of it this way: Hulk 4 drop is an 8/7 with a built in flame trap. He kills rush. Batman, Founding Member is a 5/5 3 drop. Hawk girl is a 4/5 2 drop.

With the right pumps, you should be able to leave only thei 3 and 4 on the board on turn 4. Hawgirl gets a power-up to nail their 3 drop, Batman takes aim at their 4 drop. They should be around 40 endurance by the end of your onslaught. So 2x Battle Training and 1x Crackshot make the Hulk 19/7 for the turn. If he has an Nth Metal equipped he becomes a 20/8 each attack. Righteous Anger makes him a finisher on 4.

You might be saying ‘But Kenpachi, that belongs in the ‘never gonna happen’ thread!’. Maybe not that exact situation, but 4 turn long pumps(Combat Reflexes, Battle Training, Crackshot, and Flying Kick) can make up 20% of your deck. Fartifacts+Fate’s Tower take up another 20%. Heroes of Two Worlds,  Call in a Favor and Mobilize make up another fun 15%, with team-ups making up the last of it. JLA’s ‘New Era’ finds as many Fate’s Towers as you want/need, and turn it into metropolis when you’re done, teaming up Warbound and JLA. 3 pumps(which you’ve cycled into) plus fartifacts(which you’ve towered into) make Hulk a 20/11 for the turn while attacking. With the board cleared via Hawkgirl and Batman, you have a straight shot to your opponent’s face.

The strategy focuses on doing it right, not forcing the speed. It seems like the problem with loner decks is their necessity in the speed department. Slow is Smooth, smooth is fast. I think that as I await previews these next few days I’m going to try to keep that in mind. I don’t want Bruce pulling his back.

I’m Not Gonna Cook it, But I’ll Order It From Zanzibar

Talk about semi-obscure titles.

MUN’s bounty has rained upon us in the form of an angry green man with, I believe, self esteem issues. World War Hulk was the post Civil War cigarette Marvel gave us last fall. It mainly involved the Hulk returning to earth to exact revenge. It wasn’t… well the writing was on the level of a high schooler’s creative writing final, and the final emotionally devastating betrayal was telegraphed and unimpressive. WWH was about one thing: Kicking people’s asses. Asses were kicked, my friend. Asses were indeed kicked.

In regards to the asses in question, and the main kicking component was the Gamma Rager, with his new pack of drinking buddies the Warbound. They were survivors of the ship exploding… you know what? Let’s not pretend there was a story to WWH. It was mindless molly whopping to restore the balance after the 6 month political discussion that was Civil War. We’ll leave it at he had friends, they were named the Warbound. He was a King, and they were his loyal followers and brothers in blood. They lived and died for each other. As long as ‘each other’ is latin for Bruce Banner.

Design has gone a way we haven’t seen since MMK’s X-Statix affiliation: A one man wrecking Crew. Two hulks have been previewed, along with Mrs. Hulk(May she rest in peace). We have a 4 drop Hulk, a 5 drop hulk that eats the 4 drop, and a 6 drop wife with a honey do list that she’s very passionate about. I believe my wife is emotionally healthy enough to allow my small failures without ending her life as a motivator. Ceiala or however you spell it is not so emotionally stable. She’d rather be dead than have the trash not taken out.

The Hulks in question are interesting. 4 drop is a flame trap that 5 drop eats to gain the strength to out of combat stun one of their guys. Straightforward.

Ordinarily, I’d give a few tek ideas for the previewed cards, and basically pee myself over what the good Mr. Seck and his posse have unleashed on my Vs collection. All I can do is sigh and hope that when I wake up tomorrow afternoon, I have something to work with. I’m thanking the fortunes I didn’t get these because there’s not much good I can say about this from my point of view. They’re solid cards, don’t get me wrong. Unfortunately, RTFC is king with Warbound so far. Read the card. That’s what it does. It doesn’t synergize, it doesn’t do anything. The best I can say is Hulk, Grumpy Goliath+Mrs. Hulk makes for the hulk staying on curve. Oh stop, my beating heart.

The problem I see with the initial offering of Warbound is that 1) They’re beginner card. Warbound seems designed for little Billy Smith whose mom just let him buy a few packs of MUN. They do what they say they do. They make a prepackaged deck that can be played to nasty effect as is. Basically: Design made something so horrendously WYSIWYG I have no comment.

The other problem is the Loner issue. Guess how you kill a loner deck? Coup D’Tat, Fatal Weakness, Deadpool, Vigilante, Fastball Special, Finishing Move… some brands of cotton depending on allergies… I mean, they’d better have some godlike protection effects, or the Warbound 3 drop better have the ability ‘Activate>Make me a sandwich’ or some high calibur ability in regards to my own procurement of sustainence without any work on my own behalf.

The final nail in the coffin of initial preview euphoria is the fact that it’s a lategame deck with little to no stall power. Sure, Hulk 5 drop has solid stats. a 10/10 on 5 is AWESOME… until you look at Pathetic Attempt stopping his ability, losing your 4 drop to use his PA-able ability in the first place, and the fact that Ben Grimm can molly whomp him. This guy could get into a FIST FIGHT with a Dr. Strange that used his magic to its limits to make himself as strong as possible. He’s so strong he can punch through magic… but some space radiated, rock looking guy whose catch phrase is nowhere near as fun can mop the floor with this Hulk. I’m disappointed. It’s too little, too late as far as hulk strategy is looking at first glance.

The only really lasting thing I can walk away with from the first forray into the Warbound is that it’s interesting that a weapons technology is presented as weaker than human exploration and ingenuity. The thing’s freak accident on peaceful mission of knowledge makes him stronger than a scientist whose work would end the life of millions. An interesting social commentary. Unfortunately the Hulk isn’t about social commentary. It’s about breaking stuff. Sadly for Hulk Fans the one thing immune to raw  human anguish given form is Modern Age. The one thing Hulk isn’t going to break is the current environment. At least, not without the help of his friends.

Stuff I Need When My Wife Gets Angry

So the thing about gaming is that we’re all after the same thing. We want to get your endurance below 0, and lower than our endurance. That’s the point, right?

Well, taking things beyond cardboard, we find ourselves asking: Do we really want to worry about endurance? Looking at all things from a strategic angle, we should be able to agree most players come to the table with the intent of taking your endurance below 0, and keeping theirs higher than yours. You know where your opponent is going. Most deck archetypes you’ll see are already discussed or you have good experience with, so you know where they’re coming from. So then… what? You know what they’re going to do, generally speaking.

Sun Tzu made a good point: When they come left, you counterstrike right. Well that involves either AWC, or simply preventing them from reaching their end point through stall. The problem with AWC is their lack of prominence, and easy of execution. Stall is fine, but it’s just another path from point A to point B. You’re doing the same thing as your opponent.

As I was thinking about things a few days ago, I was discussing deck construction for my other game with my buddy Dev. While discussing how a player’s personality effects tek and strategy, he stated something that got me thinking: I don’t need to win, I just need to make you lose as much sanity in the process of making me lose as possible. So I sat down to think about how I could integrate this into a right strategy for the left strikes I was expecting at the tourney yesterday. To add to the issues, it was for Strange Bedfellows that I was going this.

My default base for any deck is GK. I love the versatility of GK, and I love Batman in general. He’s more or less the literary equivalent of the American Dream. His life has been one of tragedy, but he’s overcome and turned his scars into strength. He stands for Justice, even going so far as to defend a man who murdered one partner and crippled another because the way he was going to be taken down was unjust. He is a man of principles, and the will to realize those principles. He is willpower in action. Love Batman.
On a mechanical level they have a great attack pump(Taking Aim for a +8 is always nice), Card Cycle(The Hook-Up), Card Draw(Card Draw Barbie), a common Tutor(Bat Signal) and the ability to interrupt your opponent’s tek and disrupt their rhythm(Most Modern Legal Batmans, From the Shadows, Bat Got Your Tongue, Interrogate, etc.). So you have a solid base to build from. Mechanically they’re one of the best rounded teams in modern. So then with my mechanical inclinations, and literary devotion, I had a base.

Still, a base without meat and veggies is just broth. Also, to meet the Strange Bedfellows reqs I needed to mix a villain in with the whole thing. Joker+Batman=Robber Barons. Already played that last month. So then, who? A brief look through the old binder o’ love and I see Hush. Hush is definitely a Batman villain. Awesome.

So GK/Arkham Inmates. Taking these two, I found an idea fluttering around my head. The problem with Ideas fluttering around your head is that if they stay in there, they just bother you. You have to let them out. It’s similar to a fly fluttering around your car while you drive. You have to roll down the window and let it out. And so I sat down and let this idea out. When I rolled the window back up and looked down at the table, I saw all hidden GK characters, allowing me to have only one visible character: Hush. That meant that with no one visible but Hush, he’d be adjacent to no one. No one Adjacent meant his effect would trigger, and I realized what that idea was going for: If anyone attacked Hush, they’d die.

Let me backtrack here, to explain in full, the text of Hush, Silent and Deadly reads: While Hush is not adjacent to any character, whenever he stuns an exhausted character, KO that character. As you have to exhaust to attack, generally, that means anyone he counterstuns dies. Point blank, they’re gone.  Unfortunately at 7/7 on turn 4 he’s paid for that kind of skill with stats. What are Friends For? and Nasty Surprise make up for that, allowing him to counterstun up to a 6 drop. And thus, Wall of Silence came into its first incarnation.

The deck was run, it did well, but it needs work. The main problem is that I refuse to run Fartifacts. I find them immoral. The problem is that with Fate’s Tower, Fartifacts, and Shaw Industries, I’d have a 14/14 4 drop with an auto kill ability. The added cycle of Fartifacts would only make the cycle tek of the Gotham Knights more potent. That’s really what should go in the deck, but I’d feel like a sell out for running them. So I need a way to build up Hush. My inclination is to run Universal Weapon instead of a 5 drop to give him +3/+3, turning him into a 10/10. A few heroic efforts and I can rock him out as a 14/14 by the time all is said and done.

Now back to Dev’s comment and how it relates to Wall of Silence: Point A>Point B and the running off of said issue. Hush buffed to 6 drop stats means you’re unable to attack without losing people. A few defensive tricks like Against all odds, and general pumps like Great White, and Shaw Industries and even when outgunned by a team attack he simply repels the hate with Bruce and Company preventing opposing pumps and Tek. You Play completely defensively, contradictory to the common sense approach of A to B. You allow them to become stymied, unable to attack without losing a massive amount of people, and after they shatter against the deadly quiet you come in and clean up. Your “to” in the “A to B” is simply kicking the opponent’s “To” out of the equation, never allowing them to get to B. Not winning, but making them lose.

It’s a different way of looking at things. It’s not stall, because you’re not trying to make it to a higher turn. You end it on 6, after they’ve exhausted everything they have just to fail. Attrition. Hush’s job is not to die for his country, it’s to make some other poor son of a bitch die for his.

Throw Away Youth

So then it came to pass that Superhuman Registration Act was previewed today. It team stamps everyone with the Pro-Registration affiliation, makes you play with the top card of your deck revealed, and allows you to recruit the person you revealed that way if you haven’t recruited anyone else with that name this turn. Going back into my renewed interest in Reservist, I’m drawn to this.

I thought of using it as loyalty abuse, but CaptainSpud gave me a well earned slap in the ‘OMFG OLD!’ when 3 plot twists and two locations do the same thing(Well, that I can think of off the top of my head). It allows you to recruit people without taking a hit in the hand size. Rush deck? methinks yes. Titans are Kings and Queens of Team attack Rush. It accentuates their current build a good bit.

But there’s an interesting angle to this whole thing. What if you don’t like or need the card on top? That’s when we gamble. Tutors like Mobilize, Straight to the Grave, and Heroes of Two Worlds cause you to reshuffle your deck, yes? Now let’s look at a few other things in regards to gambling:

Cerebro: You look at the top two cards of your deck, put X-men in your hand, the rest on the bottom. This gets you a new top card.

Damocles Base: Name a character, top two card(or three if you named Kang). Copies of the named character go in your hand, the rest on the bottom of your deck.

Underground Resistance: Discard a brotherhood card to look at the top three cards of your deck, pick one and put the rest on the bottom of your deck.

Mr. Fantastic, Critical Thinker does the same thing without the discard. Forge lets you look at the top card of your deck and put it in your hand if its cost is less than the number of cards in your hand. A lot lets you move the top card of your deck if you’re not a fan of it. X-Men seems to be the best at it, between being able to run Forge, Cerebro, Damocles Base, and Domino using the predetermined card to protect herself and cable. Using the gamble with those people, statistically you’re going to be able to rush and force the odds to get you the card you need. New life for X-Babies perhaps?

MUN is Making me Crazy

Wow. I can’t wait to see more from MUN. Right now, we have a slew of Captain America noise. Charging Star is amazing. Two decks I think that are going to make massive abuse of the good Captain:

Sincere Flattery: This is a strange mix of Legend abuse, and sheer silliness. Mystique on 4, Basil Karlow on 5, and Captain America himself on 6, you have a curve of people who can equip and use the shield. By getting the shields in play, and bouncing them back into your hand every turn you find yourself in an interesting situation: Stalling half an opponent’s board every turn. The thing about The Shield I haven’t seen much talk of(some, but not as much as one would think) is that exhausting Captain America is an effect, not a cost. That means ultimate stall on init, as you swing into their lowbies, and then send the shields back to your hand to exhaust their higher ups. As with most modern stall, you have the Darkseid/Endgame finisher unless a new late game coup de grace finds its way into the scene with MUN. I’m betting it will. The tek I’m looking to add: Low drop KO/Stun tek. X-Babies rush might help by running fastball specials. For the purposes of everyone being one team, It might behoove me to run Fatal Weakness(Spider-man, New New Avengers+World’s Worstest). The real trick of the deck is keeping their numbers no greater than 4(Let them stun 1 person. I’ll give them that.). I’m going to have to work on that, but the two copy cats along with Clash of Worlds and the Shield make for some nasty, nasty tek. More to come as more MUN is unveiled.

Patriotic Youth: This one I think is going to be able to hit consistent pretty well. Using Avengers Reassembles and Mobilize, along with massive resource replacement, you cycle your whole deck for effects via Teen Titans and get to the people you need. That’s really all it is: Eat your deck until it vomits the reservist you need. Use Cap 4 Drop to divert attacks into Garfield Logan(who consistently grows larger through standard beastboy tek). Really standard decktype that’s looking like it might make a comeback with the new avengers squad hitting.

Your Mom Went to College: Simple: Barracuda on 3, Human torch on 4, crossover IG and F4, and Circe on 5. Running Agamemno to put on your deck for a 9 burn you just sit back and play defensively while you burn with Circe, and Torce every turn(should be 10+ if IG card draw is functioning like it should. Simple, Elegant, but delicate. It needs work, but Your Mom has potential, I think.

As more previews meander along I see these decks getting fleshed out more and more. I think MUN is going to be worth every hour we’ve spent dreaming about it.