After all the craziness of Worlds and the DCU set being unveiled, I thought I’d slow down and do what I used to do with this blog… take one card, and examine a bevy of possible uses for it, obvious and otherwise.  The card I want to look at today is called Phyla-Vell <> Quasar, Protector of the Universe.  As far as the sealed environment goes Phyla is dyno-mite!  She grants your entire team the ability to team attack and reinforce as though they had all team affiliations.  This ability means that you don’t have to run as many team-ups in the sealed environement, or at least you don’t have to stress about hitting them as consistantly.  However, it’s another one of her abilities that I want to focus on today.  I’m far more interested in her ability to auto-recover whenever she becomes stunned.  “Whenever” might be a poor word choice on my part because this ability is a cosmic one.  After the first time that she stuns and recovers she loses her ability to do it again.  My goal today is to look at ways to eliminate that drawback.  Before we can do that though, we’ve got to think of reasons we would want Phyla to stick around…

1. Board presence is usually a good thing unless you playing X-Statix, Hulk, or Hellboy.
2. We can try to arrange it so that our opponent’s inability to eliminate Phyla is detrimental to his deck’s plan of attack.
3. We could be gaining something from her constantly stunning and recovering.

Our first point is that Board presence is usually a good thing.  This is an obvious statement because decks have been battling for board  presence for years.  Many people run KO effects like Finishing Move to hurt their opponent’s board presence, while others run recovery effects like Lanterns in Love to improve their own board presence.  Phyla helps our board presence without the drawback of extra card slots.  Gaining board position is healthy in most decks, but one type of deck that really benefits from it is a team attack deck.  After all, it’s pretty hard to pull off a team attack with only one character.  Teen Titans, Outsiders, Legionaires and Avengers all have team-attack themes and would benefit nicely from Phyla’s ability.  Normally when you think of Teen Titans team-attacking, you think back on the days of Roy Harper <> Arsenal, Sharpshooter.  The Titans decks back then were not true team-attack decks because they only team-attacked so that they would all ready when Roy’s ability stunned their defender.  Their team-attacking was part of an engine, not an actual attack.  Modern Titans, on the other hand, don’t have the same luxuries because Sharpshooter was not reprinted alongside Teen Titans Go!

Typically, in the past, to get enough characters on the board to perform multiple team attacks you had to flood the board with little characters on a later turn.  Phyla lets us stick more closely to our curve by starying around and keeping our character count up.  Since Titans and Legionnaires have both team attack AND cosmic themes, let’s see if they have any cards that would be synergistic with Phyla…

• Legion of Super-Pets is a Savage Beatdown for a team attacker
• Legion World is a burn card similar to Playroom.
• Overwhelming Force prevents all team attackers from stunning.  It’s a Bamf for everyone!
• Teen Titans Go readies your team attackers (non of whom probably stunned with a card like Overwhelming Force in your deck)
• Cunning Strategy is a Tim Drake stamped card that returns opponent’s defenders to hand.
• Forged in Crisis is similar to Cunning Strategy, but it doesn’t require your deck to play Tim Drake.
• Blinding Light replenished your cosmic counters when team attacking.
• Infiltrate lets you team attack protected characters, essentially giving your board flight.
• New Recruits searches for any character with cosmic, which would include Phyla.
• Science Police Central gives all cosmic attackers +2 ATK
• Youth of Tomorrow specifically teams up Titans and Legionnaires and allow for cosmic counter manipulation.
• Clash of Titans is a +3 ATK pump that replenishes cosmic counters.

These two teams bring some pretty clutch characters to the table as well.  Tim Drake <> Robin, Titan in Command has a chance to net you a card every time he team attacks.  There is also a three drop Tim that replenished cosmic counters and a four drop Tim that gives all team attackers +2/+2.  Add to the mix Tim’s other legend card ‘Follow the Leader’ which gives all your attackers +2 ATK and I’d say it would be pretty easy to make this a Tim Drake legend deck.

On the Legionnaire’s end of things you’d want to run the four drop Wildfire, Drake Burroughs who replenishes a comic counter to any cosmic character that recovers.  This combos extremely well with Phyla who’ll auto-recover when she stuns - and reciever her counter back.  If only there was a way to give Phyla reinforcement and force our opponent to attack her without having to splash in Duty Calls and Wonder Woman, Deflection Diva!

Let’s change gears entirely.  Team attack decks are fun, but annoying our opponent’s is even better.  My second listed reason for keeping Phyla around involved making her presense detrimental to our opponent’s plan.  Above I mentioned giving her reinforcement and forcing our opponent to attack her.  The best team I could think of for that was actually Heralds of Galactus.  On turn two you can recruit Silver Surfer and his Board and move them hidden with the Board’s text.  Then, whenever Phyla loses her counter, Silver Surfer’s Board can replenish it.  On four, The Human Torch, The Invisible Man can give Phyla permanent reinforcement.  To make sure this reinfocement lasts, we could use a card like Underground Movement, Team-Up to move the Torch hidden.  If you wanted to stick with Fantastic Four (The Human Torch’s second affiliation), then Invisible Woman, Sight Unseen could move the Torch hidden when she comes into play on turn five!  This would be particularly brutal against a hidden rush deck that aims to kill on turn five.  They would have to waste at least three attacks on Phyla (if she’s getting a second counter from Surfer’s board) for a measley nine endurance.  That’s pocket change for a deck aiming to do 40+ damage to you that turn.

My third point covered taking advantage of a character recovering over and over again.  To this end I briefly entertained splashing Phlya into the Thunderbolts team to use Speedball is dead on her.  I figured that we could use multiple copies of the card on her to make her something like a +6/+6 when she finally recovered the natural way.  This team-up would also allow us the use of Faith in Monsters with no real drawback to the card.  Anyway, I scrapped the idea as soon as I remembered this was Radioactive Man’s team.  I didn’t actually forget that, but I was hoping to find enough synergy with the Thunderbolts to make my case.  Alas, I could not.

My final cool collaboration for Phyla was mixing her with Lex Luthor, Master Manipulator.  He would stun her to gain 3 +1/+1 counters at no loss to your board.  If you run Wildfire as your four drop, she’ll be constantly gaining her counter back and you can use Lex’s ability multiple times!  I’ve always wanted to find a way to use this version of Lex, and now I can!

I’m sure there’s countless other ways to abuse Phyla.  If you can think of any, drop me a line here.  Also, I wanted to warn my readers (all two) that I might need a week off to catch up with work, then I’ll be back in full swing!  See you all in a week or two!

P.S. 3000+ hits on the blog… I’m officially a rock star!

I’m finally ready to relay my Worlds 2008 experience to the masses.  I must apologize for the lateness of this submission but I put in 100 hours of work last week (barely humanly possible) and typed a preview article for the DCU set (which is sweet!), so I had little time for a tournament report.  As such, I may have forgotten a few details, but I’ll do my best to recreate my super-fun-adventure time!

I went to the Origins Game Fair with my friends Paul and Eric Madden.  These were the same two that accompanied me to Mega-Weekend Chicago, and like Chicago we used the drive and our first night in the hotel to do all our playtesting.  Why so little testing you ask?  Well, I put in insane work hours (see above) and the Maddens don’t own Vs. cards.  It’s all good though because we go for the experience.  Winning is just a cool bonus… a bonus that the Maddens experience more than me!

Our one night of cracking my MUN case and playtesting led us to a few conclusions:

1. Hulk.dec has large beats potential.
2. Eric’s Radioactive Man idea was not as crazy of an idea as I originally thought (nor was it even a dark horse at the tournament).
3. Hidden beats decks like Birds of Prey and MKKO were still strong choices in an uncertain environment.

We ended up building Hulk, Birds of Prey, Radioactive Man, and World’s Finest (I still don’t have half the rares to build Family of Four) to choose from.  We even started to build an Avengers deck that used Human Torch, Secret Avenger to put The Sentry, Mighty Avenger on top of the deck multiple times for some big burn, but there was no time to iron that one out.  Eric chose to play the Hulk despite only playing his Radioactive Man deck during playtesting.  His Hulk deck was extremely similar to the one I wrote about two weeks back, but he dropped Caiera and the seven drop Hulk and focused on boosting in the six drop Hulk and hitting Hercules on seven.

Paul played a deck that locked down the opponent’s plot twists with Radioactive Man.  This deck ended up being present at the tournament in large numbers, but our build was a little more agressive  than most.  Eric, the deck’s designer, focused more on beats than piling up counters.  Venom with a T-Wagon almost seemed more vital to this deck than Radioactive man, but we did splash Black Panther, Secret Avenger into the build to help us pile on some crucial mid-game counters.

Finally, I played Birds of Prey/Gotham Knights.  My list was almost identical to the one I featured a few weeks back, but I was unable to acquire a full set of Lady Blackhawks so I added another Gotham Central and another two drop.  Hanson’s “Mmmm Bop” was this deck’s theme song all day because of the acronym BOP for Birds of Prey.  Here’s my decklist:

2x Lady Blackhawk, Zinda Blake
4x Huntress, Vicious Vigilante
3x Gypsy, Illusionary Operative
4x Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Elite
2x Catwoman, Feline Fatale
4x Batman, Twilight Vigilante
1x Vixen, Mari Jiwe McCabe
2x Kate Kane <> Batwoman, Katherine the Younger
1x Savant, Brian Durlin
2x Dinah Laurel Lance <> Black Canary, Cry in the Dark

4x Mobilize
4x Bat-Signal
4x The Hook-Up
4x Crushing Blow
4x Blinding Rage
4x Savage Beatdown
4x Birds of a Feather
4x Skreeeeeee!

3x Gotham Central

Round 1 Vs. Curtis Brown with Secret Avengers

Curtis Brown is better known by the Vs. community as T’Challa over on vsrealms.com.  He is an incredibly cool cat that gave everyone he played against a Wonder Woman counter (sorry for the low quality picture!).  Apparently his lady friend works in graphic design, so he has a great connection to awesome things like this.  For the rest of the day I used this counter to show when Barbara Gordon had used her free ability.  Curtis won the die roll and took odds.  After we both passed on turn one, I recruited Huntress and Curtis recruited Dr. Strange or Hawkeye on turn two.  I can’t remember which one.  I know it was a hidden Avenger two drop that rallied for a card, but it was not Captain America.  On three Curtis put down Punisher, Secret Avenger and I started to worry that perhaps his deck was an MKKO variant.  I threw down Babs and flipped The Hook-Up to get my card draw on.  On four I hit Batman, Twilight Vigilante, but Mr. Brown was forced to underdrop.  Captain America, Secret Avenger and his shield hit the table and successfully rallied to give everyone +1/+1 counters.  Essentially this meant that six attack had been recruited on turn four and Barbara Gordon would not be attacking ever again, so it was hardly an underdrop.  I looked at a couple of Skreeeeeee! in my hand and decided to take out a couple of characters from his side.  I also wanted the burn effect from Batman, so I swung him into Captain America as his Punisher was a power-up from stunning Batman back.  It was a futile effort anyway since Curtis flipped a Nasty Surprise from the row and Batman turned dirt-side.  I then swung Huntress into Punisher for another two-way stun.  Curtis must have thought trading stuns was more valuable than using Punisher’s ability on my stunned Batman, because that’s what he opted to do.  At the end of the turn he lost Punisher and I lost Huntress.  On five I dropped Kate Kane, totally forgetting to use her ability (first game jitters I guess), but it did not seem to matter.  Curtis hit Black Panther (of course!) and swung with his board into my face.  I swung back with all my plots into his equally open board and when the dust settled the final score was -10 to -19. (1-0)

Round 2 Vs. Warren Snider with Family of Four

Warren got evens and once again we went to turn two before a character hit the table.  Once I saw Luke Cage, Steel-Hard Skin I got nervous.  If you go back and read my Mega-Weekend Chicago tourney reports you’ll find my hatred of the Family of Four (FoF) deck come up more than once.  The deck usually only looses when it draws very poorly.  I would run the deck myself if anyone would trade Force Field Projections, Only Humans, and Family of Fours, of which I have essentially none!  This build of FoF was a bit upgraded.  He played Carrying the Torch to give his characters other names when he needed to get off late game Force Field Projections or power-ups.  He also ran the unaffiliated Human Torch from the Galactus tin as his six drop.  We both curved in this match.  I hit Huntress, Barbara, Batman, Savant, and Dinah, while he hit Luke Cage, Sue Storm, Mr. Fantastic, Thing, and Human Torch.  On turn six he used Mr. Fantastic’s ability and attacked with his Human Torch into a Dinah Laurel Lance that I put visible to soak up some damage, but passed to me with a ready Thing.  At this time I had not seen Carrying the Torch in his deck, so I could not fathom why Thing did not attack.  Savant ran into Thing, but all of the sudden Thing turned into Jessica Alba and my attack was on the pointy end of a Force Field Projection.  Darn!  I had to pass the rest of my attacks because I had little in the way of pumps.  On turn seven he used Mr. Fantastic’s ability and the real Sue Storm hit the table to make my whole board (and his) -3 attack.  I ran Dinah and Batman into Sue with a face-up Gotham Central for fourteen attack and added a pump to the mix. Then I ran my other three characters (Huntress, Barbara, and Savant) into Thing for 12 combined attack. This brought Warren’s life to -13 while mine was still at 14.  He had a swing back with human torch for 13, but it wasn’t enough. This game involved waaaay to much thinking.  (2-0)

Round 3 Vs. Niles Rowland with Squirrel Girl’s Agents

I finally won a die roll, but it did not matter in the least because I missed huge on this one.  Niles, by the way, is one cool guy.  I enjoyed this loss immensely!  The Ben Seck was also watching this match, so I had an audience for my deck’s colossal misfire.  I didn’t have a drop on turn one or two, but I enjoyed looking at two Bat-Signals and two Mobilizes in my hand the whole time.  On turn three I underdropped a Gypsy, and my life total was going to be so low that I didn’t mind showing Niles what she milled off the top of my deck.  On four I got to recruit Vixen, but it was waaaay too late because I had taken so much face damage.  Niles was rocking a S.H.I.E.L.D. army deck that used Cape-Killers Units to rally for AND recruit S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents.  He also used some team-up to make all his guys Brotherhood characters, then proceeded to play The Next Brotherhood to add on to the fire that his Helicarriers were sending my way.  It was -10 to 46 before I threw in the towel.  Vixen is big, but not that big!  Kudos on a sweet army deck!  (2-1)

Round 4 Vs. Mark Smith with World’s Finest

Mark Smith came all the way from New Brunswick, Canada.  He was an incredibly fun guy to play against because even losing was a good time for him.  Sometimes I’m the same way, but Mark seemed to have the market on good moods.  He won the die roll and took evens.  We both missed on one, but he put a tell-all one drop down on turn two: Alfred.  He was obviously playing World’s Finest.  Batman, Founding Member was his three drop, which ended up working well for me.  I attacked Alfred first and Mark chose not to return Alfred to hand because he was not worried about my ability to attack hidden.  But one Skreeeeeee! later his whole board was stunned and he was unable to use Alfred at all.  On four he put down Huntress and I recruited my Batman for a Gotham Vs. Gotham showdown.  His attack with Huntress brought the game back to close, but when my Batman attacked back and got his double stun damage in, I pulled back into the lead.  On five I hit Savant, but he could not get anyone in his deck.  The only search card he had in hand was For the Man Who has Everything.  He wanted to get Superman, Last Son of Krypton so that he could play him, Alfred, and The Hook-Up, but he could not meet the Loyalty-Reveal of the Last Son.  He also could not get Superman, Metropolis Marvel for the same reason.  This is pretty much where the game ended.  The score was 38 to 15 and Mark decided to scoop.  This left me with three wins on the day, and only four are needed for day two.  I though I had it for sure, but I had a harder battle ahead of me than I though! (3-1)

Round 5 Vs. Travis Frazier with MKKO

Travis Frazier made the trip all the way from California only to lose a die roll to me!  I took odds because it suited my endearing but goofball nature.  In all seriousness though, this was a sweet game for me! I missed on one, two, and three. On four I recruited gypsy who put a huntress on the top of the deck.  Then I used the Hook-Up to ditch a six drop and draw the Huntress so I could recruit her. On turn five I underdropped again with Bats. My deck just savagely misfired. His deck on the other hand hit Punisher on two, Blade on three, Wolverine on four, and Daredevil and Blackcat on five.  He KO’d Bats on five with a Wolverine and Punisher one-two punch.  That same turn Blade swung into a two drop of mine leaving me with only one attack back, everyone else on his side laid some beats to my face. I think this one even went to turn six, but it was waaaaay too late for me to turn things around.  I wish I would have curved out because MKKO was a matchup that I was very curious about the night before while playtesting, but just never had the time to try.  I lost this one -28 to 25. (3-2)

Round 6 Vs. Chris Buelo with Radioactive Man (”My eyes! The goggles! They do nothing!”)

I know I don’t have this one entirely correct, but here goes…  I took evens.   He was playing a Thunderbolts deck that focused on using Radioactive Man to stop opponents from playing plots.  Paul was playing something similar and Paul, like this guy, made it to day two with this deck.  He had a ton of guys gaining counters at the start of the recruit step, but I don’t remember which ones they all were. He also used Heroic Effort and I Am Doom to put counters onto Radioactive Man.  I literally could not play any plots this game unless Radioactive Man was stunned or exhausted. This became a huge problem because I could only team attack since his counters made his defense too high while simultaneously stopping my my attack pumps. On five I put down Savant but he underdropped two two-drops and a Green Goblin one-drop that put a counter on his Radioactive Man. I managed to stun Radioactive Man so that I could Mobilize for a Dinah to recruit next turn.  On six Dinah went visible so I wouldn’t lose with all the direct damage I would have taken.  I should have gotten Kate instead though to get an out-of-combat stun on Radioactive Man.  He dropped Melissa Gold. I teamed Savant and Huntress into Melissa, then smacked Radioactive Man with Dinah. He reinforced and choose Radioactive to KO because I mobilized for Kate Kane (finally).  His Radioactive man was like a 10/9 that stopped all plots so it actually was a tough call for him! On seven I dropped Kate Kane to ping one of his low drops, but he had already recruited Bullseye. POOP! I ran Batman and Huntress into Melissa and Bullseye’s ability made sure both stunned. Then I ran Savant with pumps into Melissa for the stun and kate kane direct, but it wasn’t enough. I lost -22 to -18.  I should have gotten Kate Kane on turn six when I got to use Mobilize, but that’s all Hindsight.  Another big play of the game came on turn six when we were both at 5 endurance.  I ran into a front row two drop of his with a bunch of pumps because I needed him to tap his support row character (who was seven attack) for reinforcement. That way I wouldn’ t lose on his attack back.  My lack of flight was really hurting in this game.  (3-3)

Round 7 Vs. Herve (Harvey) Robichaud with Brotherhood

Harvey got evens and we both passed on turn one.  On two he put down Quicksilver, Mercurial Speedster while I had a Gypsy.  On three I had Babs to his Random (Uh-Oh!).  I ran Gypsy into Quicksilver with a power-up and he flipped a Total Anarchy. He then activated Random so that Gypsy stunned back.  We both KO’d. I then run Babs into Random with a Crushing Blow hoping for a one-sided stun. He has Nasty Surprise (the most appropriately titled card in the game) so that we both lost our guys again!  On four we both had our four drops. I have Vixen to his Magneto, Mutant Supreme. Magneto activated to stun me because Total Anarchy had made my Vixen the lowest drop. Ouch!  On five he put down Juggernaut and I put down Savant.  Mags activated to stun my four again and Savant traded stuns with Juggernaut.  On six he dropped the Sentinel Mark VII so I couldn’t put my six drop visible anymore.  At the very least he could no longer use Mags on my four drop because I lost her last turn!  He swings directly to the face for 30 with his three characters.  I swing back with all I got, but it’s not enough.  The final score ended up being -20 to -10.  (3-4)

I didn’t make day 2 after a 3-1 start.  I’ve got to be one of the biggest choke artists out there.  The deck probably would have been a little more consistent with four Lady Blackhawks in at the one drop position, but most games came down to whether or not I hit Batman, Twilight Vigilante.  His extra burn damage made him the day’s MVP.  Oh well though, Paul did make day two, and Eric and I got to play Sealed, which is my favorite format by far anyway!  Here’s a picture of me finding my final standings after the seven-round Modern Age tournament.  I came in 63 place which is sweet because the top 64 get packs.  It’s also worth noting that the top 62 went on to play in day two.  This officially makes me the BEST OF THE WORST players there!  It made my day to find that neon sign (seen above) at a nearby bratwurst stand.

I did fair better at the Sealed event the next day.  I was 2-2 going into my final round and got paired against… Eric Madden.  That’s right folks, I once again had to play someone I came with.  Eric is seen pictured to the right in his awesome JLA cutoff that’s two sizes too small.  I think I mentioned in my Mega-Weekend article that I always play a Madden at every tourney I go to, which kind of sucks, but what do you do.  I squeaked out a victory against Eric to end up 3-2.  That made me 6-6 for the whole trip, which I thought was just fine.  Pretty darn good for a kid who never has time to practice!

My journey through the world of CCGs has been a slow, but progressive chapter of my life. I started out sucking hard at multiple games (Decipher’s Star Wars; Score’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Upper Deck’s Vs.). Eventually I became almost competent at Vs., at least competent enough that I was comfortable writing a weekly blog.  Now, starting July 2008, I take my biggest step forward as a CCG gamer. That’s right… preview card entitlement!

I never thought this day would come, yet here it is… my first preview card(s)! I’m not quite sure how they paired these preview cards up with me; it’s almost like they knew I was a Green Lantern fan! Anyway, without further ado, here are your cards.

The first card is Hal Jordan, Rebirth.  You’ll notice that the art on the card is oddly similar to the art found on my banner.  That is because I did the artwork for both.  All kidding aside, this is an incredible card.  Hal’s text box says that whenever he stuns a character, you get to draw a card.  Without any tricks, it’s likely that a vanilla 9/9 five drop will get two stuns off in any given game, one stun on both turns five and six.  That’s two free cards for doing nothing different than you were already planning on doing!  Of course with careful planning, we can get some abuse out of this card.

Before we talk about optimally using Hal Jordan, Rebirth, I wanted to first show you my other preview card.  It’s unlikely you’ll ever create a deck that includes one of these preview cards, but not the other, so it’s useful to think of them in tangent when trying to abuse them.  Lantern of Earth is a sweet little ongoing plot twist that gives Hal Jordan +2/+2 whenever he powers up.  This is a replacement effect similar to Lost City, so he’s not technically powering up when he does this.  A +2/+2 bonus might not seem that significant, but think about how often something like this stonewalls your attack.  Sure if you only get off Lantern of Earth a couple of times in a game, it won’t be very good.  However, if you design your deck around it like Big Brotherhood did with Lost City, you could leave your opponenet in a world of hurt.  Let’s see what has synergy with these two cards…

The obvious thing to look at first are the previous Hal Jordan legend cards.  Fearless is a plot twist that powers up a Hal Jordan twice.  Combine that with Lantern of Earth and you are looking at a +4/+4 attack pump on the attack or defense.  This is much easier to pull off than Family of Four, and that card has proven to be quite brutal in the current meta.  This is also significant because Hal Jordan will likely not be stunning back.  This means that we can keep his card drawing ability around even longer!

Recharge! is another Hal Jordan legend card; this one is an ongoing that lets you draw an extra card per turn.  This could help you draw into a lot of power-ups to feed Lantern of Earth.  Big Brotherhood had Avalon Space Station to net them extra power-ups for every discard, we’ll simply have to rely on drawing into more of them.

There are many other cards that we can use to power up Hal Jordan, but a lot of them currently lie on the JLA team.  Let’s see what cards we could use in a JLA/Green Lantern Team-Up in the Silver Age environment.

First I have to mention Truth and Justice, Team-Up.  This is a card that teams-up AND powers-up!  When you consider that the three drop Hal Jordan, Founding Member is already on both teams, this seems like a natural inclusion in a Green Lantern/JLA power-up deck.  Also, if you’re teaming up with JLA, you’d probably want to run the Hall of Justice.  This location allows you one power-up per turn, and all you have to do is mill a card off the top of your deck.  Similarly, Reform the League allows you to discard character cards to power-up JLA characters you control once per turn.

The last couple of cards that would probably be auto-inclusions in a JLA/Green Lantern power-up deck are Magnificent Seven and Nth Metal.  Both are power-up cards with their own advantages.  Magnificent Seven stands to net you a replacement card while Nth Metal is an equipment that will stick around and give you multiple power-ups, essentially making any Hal Jordan you equip permanently +2/+2.  With an Nth Metal, Hal Jordan, Rebirth is at minimum an 11/11 character with flight and range that will net you a card every time he stuns someone!

Recharge! and Hal Jordan, Rebirth are already drawing us cards, but what if we include The Captain, Can’t Remember His Real Name as our four drop?  He’ll also draw you cards if you can remember all his names.  The first name you give him could be Hal Jordan so that you can get use out of Lantern of Earth and other Hal Jordan legend cards on multiple characters.  When you recruit Hal Jordan, Rebirth on turn five you won’t have to replace The Captain because they don’t technically have the same name.  The Captain’s name would technically be “The Captain; Hal Jordan” while Hal Jordan’s name would only be “Hal Jordan”.  A hilarious rule, but helpful for our purposes!

If you don’t want to splash in Nextwave cards, then how about using Aquaman with Hal?  The four drop Aquaman, Founding Member returns character cards from the KO’d pile to hand if you control characters with the same name.  Wait a tick… if they have the same name as a character in play can’t they power-up that character?  How sweet is this synergy?  You could run Hal on three and five while running Aquaman on four and six.  You’d probably have to run Clash of worlds, but you could have a double legend deck that actually rocks!  Heck, you could even use Poseidonis to put cards on the top of your deck that you’d previously lost to effects like Reform the League and Hall of Justice!

Speaking of Clash of Worlds, there is another DCX card that you can use in this deck: I’m Back, Poozers!  That’s right, the willpower mechanic seems like it’s going to be making an appearance in this set.  Hal Jordan, Rebirth has a willpower of five.  If there is a curve of Green Lanterns with willpower, I’m Back, Poozers! will be an amazing recovery card.

Alright, I’m going to try to stop here before I try to team Hal up with every team out there.  This set seems amazing already and I’ve only seen two cards.  It might be that I’m biased because of my fandom of all things Green Lantern, but I think these cards seem cool without being outrageously powerful (which is often a pitfall that fantasy cards face).  Kudos to the creators of this set, and many thanks to them for the opportunity to get a first look!

I’ll be back next week with my World’s tournament report!

Concealed MKKO (Marvel Knights Knock Out) made a big splash back in 2005 taking down $10K (remember those?) crowns everywhere. The success of the deck was due to its speed. It was too fast for Titans and Sentinels. Titans needed to make it to turn six to flood the board with weenies, and Sentinels needed to make it turn six to stonewall with Bastion. MKKO consistantly killed on turn five. Here’s the list of the deck that won a Golden Age $10K in Germany.

1 Micro-Chip, Linus Lieberman
4 Mikado and Mosha, Angels of Destruction
4 Iron Fist, Danny Rand
3 Hannibal King, Occult Investigator
3 Death-Stalker, Phillip Sterling
4 Elektra, Elektra Natchios
4 Luke Cage, Street Enforcer
3 Yelena Belova <> Black Widow, Enemy Agent
4 Daredevil, Matt Murdock
1 Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man

4 Crime and Punishment
4 Crushing Blow
4 Flying Kick
4 Quick Kill
4 Savage Beatdown
3 Swan Dive
4 Wild Ride

2 Punisher’s Armory

What’s important to note is how many cards are still available in the Modern Age cardpool; Crushing Blow, Quick Kill, Savage Beatdown, and Wild Ride are still here and still good cards. It’s also worth noting that this older version had a four drop Luke Cage that could attack the hidden area, and the new version has Wolverine, Covert Predator, that can hit the hidden area. This ability gives Marvel Knights a leg-up on other hidden area decks like Birds of Prey and Injustice Gang because you can wreck their field without having to top-deck into a Skreeeeeee!

Let’s see if we can come up with a competitive Modern Age MKKO to compete with Birds of Prey, Hidden Injustice Gang, and other powerful decks in the Modern Age meta. We’ll try to keep our curve full of powerhouses, and our plot twist selection limited to pumps, searchers, and KO effects.

At one we’ll run Black Panther, Silent Stalker because he’s got the stats of a two drop. We’ll also run the amazing Black Widow, Femme Fatal. She’s brutal in the mirror match (or any match with a hidden area crew) because she can swing, then KO their one drop with her ability to prevent them from swinging back.

At two we could have a couple of Daredevils (one being an imposter) that get bigger when attacking up the curve. Daredevil, Fearless Survivor gets +3 up the curve, while Iron Fist <> Daredevil, Imposter gets +2/+2. The only problem with this is that Iron Fist is not concealed. This isn’t that big of a deal because Iron Fist is essentially a three drop on turn three, but there is another option at two that is still good and concealed. Punisher, Suicide Run will be the true backup of the deck. Punisher is sweet against other concealed decks because he can swing straight to the face and still get his KO ability off. Wait… how can we get his KO ability off against another concealed deck when we can’t attack their characters? That’s where our three drop comes into play.

At three we’ll want to hit the new Blade, Independent Contractor from the Marvel Universe set. Blade has the crucial ability to attack the hidden area to smash Barbara Gordon, Batman, Black Manta, Owlman, First Lady of the Fantastic Four, etc. He also has the power to move the characters that he attacks visible, guarenteeing you get to smash those same characters over and over again! Every three drop that I just listed is brutal to play against, so Blade’s ability is one of the things that gives Marvel Knights that little extra something to be competitive. Ghost Rider, The Devil’s Rider is also pretty cool when you’re playing against visible decks. He gets larger for every stunned character on board, so just swing with him last for some big beats.

I also want to include one copy of Cloak, Shadowmaster. It sucks that he has to tap to use his ability, but it sure is a useful ability. If you are missing a crucial pump to take down someone like Thing, Heavy Hitter on turn five, Cloak can just send Thing packing. If your opponent put equipment that isn’t Concealed-Optional on a character, then Cloak can destroy that equipment by moving the equipped character hidden. He is very versatile, just not much of a beat-stick.

Finally, I’ve been debating Echo, Masterless Samurai. She could sit visible and soak up some damge from other hidden area decks that would otherwise weasel around a stunback. This could make her valuable. Her low attack means that she goes against our deck’s agressive nature, however; so I’ll omit her for now

At four we’ll want Wolverine, Covert Predator. His ability to attack hidden is awesome, much like Blade’s. The Blade and Wolverine one-two punch can guarentee that other hidden decks in the environment won’t stand a chance, even if they’re running more pumps. I’m also going to include a copy of Elektra, Masterless Assassin in this build. Elektra isn’t that good if you didn’t design the deck around her. Her ability to smack directly is actually sometimes a hindrance because she’s not taking a beefy defender out of the way of our little guys. There might be an occaison, though, where our opponent has put up a huge unstunnable four or five drop that we just can’t get through <Cough>Captain America, Loyal Patriot<Cough>. In this scenario, it might be nice to search out some direct damage.

At five we’ll stray from the beaten path and include a visible character. Vengeance, Spirit of Vengeance is one cool cat because he burns for five when he stuns. This extra damage might be exactly what you need to push your opponenet over the edge on your kill turn. If you are on the defensive on turn five and need to guarentee a swing back, we’ll include the only hidden Marvel Knight five drop, Moon Knight, Knight of Khonshu. His ability is very Injustice Gang-ish. He’ll probably not stun back when he attacks on their initiative because he will be a 10/12 five drop. Not too shabby.

If we’re forced to go to six, we’ll need a couple of options. Like Vengeance, Ghost Rider, Spirit of Vengeance can burn our opponent to death, only this time much more savagely. Essenetially, every character you control (other than Ghost Rider) will do extra burn equal to their cost. If you opponent can survive this, then you were losing the game a long time before Ghost Rider hit the field. Our other six drop will be Hulk, Savage Hulk. Hulk has the ability to end the game pretty quickly. Sure he drops you to zero endurance, but he also puts up a brick wall. If you have 15 endurance left, then your opponent will have to attack through a 27/27 six drop. I’m betting that they’ll probably have to throw their whole team into him (and then some), and you’ll get to swing back from the hidden area with a big smile on your face. Hulk also works well on turn seven if your opponent somehow survived a turn six Ghost Rider.

For plot twists we’ll have to include the mandatory search package. With a straight Marvel Knights build we’ll be able to run Wild Ride and Mobilize. For pumps we’ll run some combination of Savage Beatdown, Crushing Blow, Crackshot, and Combat Reflexes. Marvel Knights also has Quick Kill, which is an amazing reprint that lets you KO an opposing stunned four drop without exhausting one of your own characters. This is a very important detail in an aggressive deck! Here’s the new build:

4x Black Panther, Silent Stalker
4x Black Widow, Femme Fatale
4x Daredevil, Fearless Survivor
4x Punisher, Suicide Run
4x Blade, Independent Contractor
1x Ghost Rider, The Devil’s Rider
1x Cloak, Shadowmaster
3x Wolverine, Covert Predator
1x Elektra, Masterless Assassin
1x Moon Knight, Knight of Khonshu
1x Vengeance, Spirit of Vengeance
1x Ghost Rider, Spirit of Vengeance
1x Hulk, Savage Hulk

4x Desert Eagles

2x Stryker’s Island

4x Wild Ride
4x Mobilize
4x Savage Beatdown
4x Crushing Blow
4x Crackshot/Combat Reflexes
4x Quick Kill

This deck has not been tested at all. I have a twelve hour drive to Worlds ahead of me tonight to playtest this beautiful beast, so I have no idea how well it’s going to do. Speculation is the name of my game! I apologize for how short and slapped-together this post was, but rest assured, next week’s tourney reports should be worth the wait! I hope to see you all at Worlds!

Who knew that Hulk Hogan was thirty seconds in MS Paint from becoming an awful rendition of The Incredible Hulk? That ref in the background sure looks surprised at the transformation. Seriously, I need Adobe PhotoShop or something!

As you can probably guess, this week’s article is about The Hulk. I did not go to the first Hulk movie in theatres. The trailers for it looked awful, and my friends that went opening night had nothing good to say about it (they actually saw a boom in the shot). Eventually, I rented the movie through my online Blockbuster subscription and found that I hadn’t missed much. It had an incredibly slow story that focused on character development a little too much for such one-dimensional characters. Also, I still don’t think I understand what happened in the final battle.

Anyway, the bad taste in my mouth from the first movie stopped me from running out to see the sequel; especially when I heard about its star’s (Edward Norton) unhappiness with the final cut. This time around though, the fan buzz has been better, so I think I might head to the local theatre and see it this weekend. In leiu of my popcorn munching adventure-time, I thought I’d try an initial build of the Warbound team. I know, I know, this team has had tons of buzz around the net already, but I have a couple of reasons for investigating them. First, my friend Dave Jones is moving to Oregon, never to be seen again (as mentioned last week). He is a big fan of The Hulk, and asked me to do an article on him this week. My second reason has a lot to do with Warbound’s similarity to the X-Statix team. My roommate Martie’s first real obsession was with an X-Statix deck. He even bought all their comics because he enjoyed their loner theme so much.

Warbound kind of builds itself. Sure there are little changes you can put into place to make the build your own (as I will attempt to do), but there are not many options at each drop. In fact, the only drop with more than two choices is the three drop position (and that’s only if you’re counting Archangel as a character instead of a Flying Kick). For my build, I’m going to skip right over the one drop position. I like Mastermind, but I want to curve consistently to turn seven, and there are only so many character slots. Besides, it’s much more consistent to mulligan for a two drop than a one drop. Add to the mix that the three viable search cards for a Warbound deck (Mobilize, Warbound to the End, and Uncertain Legacy) are all three cost, and you’ve got a no-brainer.

At the two drop spot we have a couple of sweet characters. You won’t be disappointed if you draw into either one. Rick Jones, Monster’s Best Friend draws you cards like crazy. He might as well say, “Activate -> Draw a card.” Pretty much every card in this deck (if not EVERY card in this deck) should have Hulk somewhere on the cardboard, so tap Jones every turn. Your other two drop is Miek, The Unhived. Miek is sweet in this deck. He basically turns every Hulk you’ll ever recruit into a Ra’s a Ghul by making it so that anyone defending against The Hulk can’t be reinforced. How handy would that be all game? I can’t decide which is cooler; 2-3 extra cards for the game, or a perma-Blind Sided!

The three drop position in this deck is a little unusual. Archangel, Champion is a Flying Kick for Hulks, but he’s just a vanilla three drop, so you’d really only want to drop him if you’re going to miss your other three drop. You can’t help but include Archangel, however, because anytime you draw into him after turn three he’s still incredibly useful. I love this kind of utility in a character card. The other three drop I’m going to include in my build is Hulk, Exile. Hulk, Exile is a four drop that they apparently misprinted with a three in the upper left-hand corner of the card. He’s a 7/6, similar to Black Panther (when you had a row of reservists) from the Avengers set, and we all remember how good he was. I run Hulk at three because he’s a three drop AND a backup four drop; I’m also not very fond of the four drop Hulk. The four drop Hulk, Green Scar works like a Flame Trap, so he’s only situationally useful. The five drop Hulk (which we’ll talk about later) is amazing, so I decided to focus on hitting Hulk on turns three and five every game.

The three drop that’s omitted from this build is Hiroim, The Shamed. He makes Hulk invulnerable for the rest of the game. I was originally going to focus on a Hiroim/Imperial Dreadnaught build because it would be very similar to an X-Statix build running X-Statix HQ, but the other choice at the four drop position made me decide that I only wanted to recruit Hulk on four as a last resort. I’m talking about Brood, Brood Creature 2 of 6, who turns all your Hulks into Punisher, Guns Blazing. That’s right, everyone you stun on offense and defense will KO once Brood has done her thing!

At five, we’ll run Hulk, Gladiator. He’s a 10/10 beefstick that can KO your three or four drop Hulk (instead of replacing them) for the sweet, sweet bonus of stunning an opposing character of equal or lesser cost. This essentially negates the drawback of losing your three or four drop Hulk. Also, I’m not quite sure about this, but I believe that Brood’s ‘remove from game’ ability applies when you stun a character with Hulk, Gladiator’s boost ability since Brood does not specify that the stun happens during the combat phase. If this is the case, you’ll want to remove Brood from the game when he stuns on turn four; then on five you, when you boost Gladiator, you’ll KO your Hulk, Exile to stun and KO their three drop. After this, run Gladiator into their five drop to KO him too. Now they have a four drop and you have a five drop going into turn six.

For turn six you’ll have options for either initiative. If you have evens, you’ll want to hit Caiera, The Oldstrong. She let’s a Hulk you control attack twice as long as they don’t stun back. As I mentioned earlier, you should have a five and six drop going into turn six while you opponent should only have a four and six drop. If it’s your attack step on turn six you might want to immediately stun and ‘remove from game’ Caiera against their six drop; run Hulk, Gladiator into their four drop (there should be no stunback); then smash straight to the face again with Gladiator! This is especially great if you have a couple of Hulk Smash! in your hand. Alternately, if you get odds, you’ll want to recruit Hulk, The Green King replacing your five drop Hulk. Green King would come into play as an 18/18 behemoth that should force you opponent to team attack. If this is the case, you’ll have plenty of defensive tricks like Hulk Red and Bloodsport to ensure you get a swing back.

On seven there are also two options. If you dropped Caiera on six because you got stuck with evens, then you’ll want to drop Hulk, Sakaar’Son on seven so that you’ll have a 17/17 double attacker. If you dropped Hulk on turn six because you got odds, you’ll want to drop Hercules, Secret Avenger, who’ll allow The Green King to double attack (18/18 on the first attack, 21/21 on the second). To quote the wise Qui-Gon Jinn, “Either way, you win.”

As far as plot twists go, there are some obvious inclusions. Hulk Smash! is a +8 attack pump that can be used as early as turn three. This is RIDICULOUS! Also, Trouble with Dinosaurs is an almost equally large attack pump. Trouble with Dinosaurs gives an attacker plus eight attack, then subtracts one attack for each character you control. Since you are usually going to have only one character, at most two on board at any given time, this pump will always be for six or seven attack! Fight or Die is also a cool pump that can be a +3 or a +6 if you so desire. If we run all three of these we will have twelve pumps in the deck that are better than Savage Beatdown! If you count Archangel, there will be a total of fifteen pumps in the deck. Hidden Injustice Gang might have more pumps than that, but all their pumps are smaller!

When you’re on defense, you’ll want Hulk Red, a plot twist that, when optimal, gives your Hulk +4 defense. There’s also Bloodsport, a very crazy defensive plot. Bloodsport removes all but one team attacker from an attack when Hulk is defending. This means that if you opponent team attacks, you can turn it into a one-on-one battle, which will most likely go in your favor. If your opponent was already just attacking with only one character, then Bloodsport can still serve as a Reset, making him waste pumps.

Righteous Anger also serves a few purposes in this deck. First, it can be used as a suedo-Pathetic Attempt on the defense (at the price of loosing endurance from the stun). It can also be used to “Reset” the attack by removing your Hulk as a defender. Finally, this card is the bomb on the offense. If you’ve just attacked twice because of Caiera or Hercules, but did not stun, then use this card to get in a third attack!

The Great Arena is a must in this deck as well. It allows you to get a final use out of any Hulk that you might be replacing. For instance, if Green Scar is on the table and I’m about to put Gladiator into play, I can exhaust Green Scar to exhaust their three drop, then use Gladiator’s boost to KO Green Scar and stun their four drop, then I can attack their five drop with Gladiator. It’s a pretty awesome turn of events!

I kind of touched on possible search cards earlier in this article, but I’ll elaborate here. When building this deck, I basically could chose from Mobilize, Warbound to the End, Uncertain Legacy, and Origin Story. Origin Story is basically the same as Uncertain Legacy, except that it forces us to return a Hulk to our hand. While that might be good for a power-up, it neuters all of our Hulks that KO Hulks with their boost ability. Uncertain Legacy is amazing in this build because it nets you a card with no cost attached. You’ll just have to replace your Hulk when your new one comes into play, which this deck is designed to do anyway. When I compared Mobilize to Warbound to the End I found that Mobilize was a little weaker. Sure, Mobilize can get anyone, but so can Warbound to the End (WttE) once Hulk, Exile is in play. Besides, Mobilize can’t be peeled from the top of the deck by Rick Jones. Neither can Uncertain Legacy for that matter, so lets make WttE our primary search card.

Alright, I think I’ve talked about everything I can, so here’s my final list:

4x Rick Jones, Monster’s Best Friend
4x Miek, The Unhived
4x Hulk, Exile
3x Archangel, Champion
4x Brood, Brood Creature 2 of 6
1x Hulk, Green Scar
4x Hulk, Gladiator
2x Hulk, The Green King
1x Caiera, The Oldstrong
1x Hulk, Sakaar’Son
1x Hercules, Secret Avenger

3x The Great Arena

4x Warbound to the End
2x Uncertain Legacy
4x Hulk Smash!
4x Trouble with Dinosaurs (or Savage Beatdown)
4x Fight or Die!
4x Hulk Red
3x Bloodsport
3x Righteous Anger

I love this deck already because it’s poised to kill you in so many ways without being watered down. Also, there are only seven cards without the word Hulk in title or gametext for Jones to peel off the top of the deck, so he’ll have an 88 % hit rate. Nine out of ten successful draws is pretty amazing when you think about it. This is the reason that I run Fight or Die! over Savage Beatdown though. I feel like Beatdown should only be used to replace another non-Hulk card like Trouble with Dinosaurs. Let me know what you think. I already saw a bunch of variations on the realms, but they’re welcome here too!

*****Addendum/Apology*****

Apparantely nothing in this article is valid according to Ben Seck’s recent post on the mothership…

Fin Fang Foom - I made a little mistake in my preview article about the dragon with pants. I said you could chain plot twists to an FFF entering play. Except this isn’t possible, as the resource KO’ing is part of the alternate cost, and therefore the resources aren’t even there when he actually enters play! ~TBS

This does not make sense to me because of Fing Fang Foom’s text.  The key thing to note is that his text says, “…when you recruit Fin Fang Foom this way…”  This means Fin is already recruited before his KOing crap goes on the chain.  This should give you a window to chain effects.  I’m not sure who went wrong with what, but an explanation for this error needs to be posted pronto!

*****Enjoy this now worthless article!*****

TROGDOR!
TROGDOR!

Trogdor was a man
I mean, he was a dragon man
Or maybe he was just a dragon

But he was still TROGDOR!
TROGDOR!

Burninating the countryside,
Burninating the peasants
Burninating all the peoples
And their thatched-roof COTTAGES!

THATCHED-ROOF COTTAGES!

(Woah, this has wicked dueling guitar solos!  It’s like, Squeedly versus Meedley over here.  Go Squeedly!  Go Squeedly!  SQUEEDLY WINS!)

When all the land is in ruin,
And burnination has forsaken the countryside,
Only one guy will remain.

My money’s on TROGDOR!
TROGDOR!

And the Trogdor comes in the NIIIGHT…

When watching old classic films you’ll often  notice the phrase “El Fin,” at the end of the movie.  This is just a fancy (read: Spanish) way of saying, “The End.”  It’s fitting then that the word “fin” is in the name of the card Fin Fang Foom,” because when he hits the table, it really is “The End.”  Above is a picture of the next card to be put on UDE’s banned list.  I think they could have done a little bit better on the art, but Mike Mignola is relatively new to the artist scene!

The wording on Fin Fang Foom (Trogdor for short) is clearly designed to get around the most obvious way to abuse him… Bodyslide.  When Trogdor comes into play, you have  a chance to chain things onto his effect.  If you recruited Cable on turn three and chained Bodyslide onto Trogdor’s effect, he would come back into play that same turn during your attack step, and still be bounced to hand at the end of the turn.  If you don’t chain Bodyslide to his recruitment effect, then you lose Cable and the threshold required to pull off Bodyslide.  The new Cable from MUN has a similar ability, but he can’t do it until turn five anyway.

I’m currently working my way through the spoiler of MUN so maybe there is a way to abuse Trogdor in-set that I’m not aware of yet, but; so far the only way I’ve thought of abusing this character is with the backup ability of Samantha Parrington in Silver Age.  I mean, when you’re told that you can have a twenty attack character on board, but only for one turn, what do you immediately think?  Either you wonder when your last eye appointment was, or you think of ways to get as many attacks out of that character as possible.  Since Samantha’s ability is usable during the build phase, she can chain her ability onto Trogdor’s ability when he enters play.  Getting two attacks for twenty on turn five without any plot twists or Fartifacts is pretty impressive, but what if we added those things to the build as well?

Obviously we’ll want to look at the whole Marvel Defenders team because their backup abilities can all be put onto Trogdor before he KO’s the characters.  We know that he’ll be our finisher, so let’s look only at the 1-5 drops that will help Trogdor out.

At the one drop position we have Wong, Mystical Manservant.  He’s an obvious inclusion because we need to make sure that we curve out, and our search options are limited to The “B” Team and Mobilize, which are  plot twists that can’t be played until turn three.

A couple of two drops help us out.  Tania Belinskya <> Red Guardian, Cold Warrior is amazing when you have the initiative on turn five because she will make sure that both your attacks are +4/+0.  That’s eight more damage total for those of you keeping score at home!  Beast, New Defender, on the other hand, is good for when when your opponent’s have initiative on five and you need help guaranteeing that you can attack back.

Hellcat, Patsy Walker is a great choice for a three drop.  She’ll add +2/+2 to both of Trogdor’s attacks.  This ability can also be used on your other visible characters (along with Beast) prior to recruiting the dragon, to help you stall out to turn five.  The other choice at three is Hawkeye, Loud Mouth, which helps against weenie decks.  He really helps against all decks because he takes out low drops that would otherwise be used in team-attacks to take down your beefed up characters.

The four drop spot is already filled by Samantha Parrington and Fin Fang Foom, although Fin is technically an eight drop, but who’s counting?  We will include a five drop though, because there’s no way to search for Trogdor, and if we include one five drop Marvel Defender to search out, then we can have one more turn to try and draw into the Dragon.

There are three candidates for a five drop that stay on team.  Devil-Slayer has made a splash in the past, but if we include Fartifacts, he’s weakened.  Mr. Fantastic is cool because he can target Samantha after she’s targeted herself with her own ability.  Finally, we have Hulk,  Grumpy Green Goliath.  I’m choosing The Hulk for my build because it is Dave’s (Dizzle’s) favorite comic book character, and Dave is moving away forever to Oregon next week.  This is my official send-off, unless I can think of something better for next week!

For plot twists we will have to include some for-the-turn pumps that we can target Trogdor with before he wrecks our threshold.  In a previous article (Instant Harm Paragon) I found all the usable ones.  These plots will be used in conjunction with the Fartifacts to make Trogdor HUGE!!!  Also, you could try Consulting the Orb to help dig for Fin Fang Foom, but this build won’t.  Here’s my slapped-together and NOT playtested build:

4x Wong, Mystical Manservant
4x Beast, New Defender
4x Tania Belinskya <> Red Guardian Cold Warrior
4x Hellcat, Patsy Walker
3x Hawkeye, Loud Mouth
4x Samantha Parrington <> Valkyrie, Chooser of the Slain
1x Hulk, Grumpy Green Goliath
4x Fin Fang Foom, He Whose Limbs Shatter Mountains

4x The “B” Team
4x Flying Kick
4x Crackshot
4x Combat Reflexes
4x Blind-Sided

4x Dr. Fate’s Tower

4x Helm of Nabu, Fate Arifact
2x Cloak of Nabu, Fate Arifact
2x Amulet of Nabu, Fate Arifact

Fin Fang Foom with Fartifacts, Tania, and Hellcat is a 30/23 that can attack twice.  Pretty sweet if you ask me!  If you try this deck out, make sure that you dramatically say “Enter the Dragon” everytime you recruit Fin Fang Foom. It’s either that or you have to sing the Trogdor theme song posted above!  See you guys next week!

I was trolling through the blogs the other day on the Vs. System Network (see my links) when I came across Lost Hemisphere’s “Thursday 13″ about cards that have yet to be broken.  When I got to his #10 on the list and saw that it was Lobo, The Main Man, I slapped myself.  I had not thought of that card since it was previewed before DC Legends was even released!  Now that he was freshly in my mind I decided to build a deck that included him.  I decided not to build a deck “around him,” just one with good synergy.  The fact is, I can’t really see how to break him in a format that usually ends the game before he even comes into play!  However, that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun and find ways to put his power to use.

If you don’t know what Lobo does, here’s what his text says: “Whenever Lobo becomes stunned, search your deck for a copy of Lobo and put him into play exhausted.”  Since the new copy of Lobo is put into play instead of recruited, he will not KO the Lobo you already controll.  If you want a precedent, think of Poison Ivy’s ability to put multiple copies of The Riddler into play.

Before I picked a team to include Lobo in, I wanted to see what kind of plot twists could be used on him to reap his tasty rewards.  Join us or Die came to mind first because it allowed us to stun and recover a Villains United character, which would leave us with two, non-stunned Lobos.  This is perfect if we can give Lobo the Villains United team affiliation.  Unfortunately for us, cards like World’s Worstest, Team-Up; The Insiders, Team-Up;  Rann; and Thanagar only work on affiliated characters.  The only ways I could feasibly think of giving Lobo an affiliation in the current Silver Age environment was through Battleworld; Professor X, Headmaster; Storm, Leader of the Morlocks; and Roberto Da Costa, Heir to the Throne.  With any of these options we would still have to team-up with Villains United just to pull off Join us or Die.  If only Villains United had an easy way to team-up with people…  (despite my inability to actually pour sarcasm through the screen  at you, I am kidding).  They Have Calculator, Noah Kuttler and Coercion, who are similar to the Dagger/Midnight Sons engine from Marvel Knights.

So, we have an easy way to team-up with Villains United and Join us or Die to get two Lobos out on turn six.  There are still a couple of problems with this idea.  The major concern is that you’ll be stunning your six drop with Join us or Die to get another Lobo into play, leaving you six endurance down and with two exhausted six drops.  Storm, Leader of the Morlocks helps us with the endurance problem in addition to making Lobo a Morlock.  When she’s around, your out-of-combat stuns don’t cause you any damage.  This will be a great help in making sure you survive long enough to use both of your shiny Lobos.  Let’s see what else the Morlocks can bring to the table.

The Morlocks have a decent bundle of low-drop evasion characters.  The problem is often picking between them all.  My roomate Martin once built a straight Morlocks deck and complained that it was to hard to get enough characters into play to abuse the cards that give bonuses for each stunned character on your side of the board.  His solution was to run all possible one drops and skip two drops altogether.  This meant that he could have three characters evading as early as turn two to increase the power of his plot twists while not really caring about the fact that he wasn’t getting to swing with them.  I want to go a different route with this deck because Villains United has some characters that make up for this glaring weakness in our beloved poop-tunnel dwellers.

First of all, they have Dr. Light, Furious Flashpoint.  He brings a one or two drop into play each time he stuns.  This means that when you draw your first two drop on turn three (which happens faaaaar too often!), you can still get him into play.  Villains United also has Talia, Daughter of Madness.  This crazier-than-crazy villain performs similar to Dr. Light; she brings in one or two drops to help the Morlock plot twists become more powerful.

Healer, Life Giver will serve as a backup drop on three because his ability to gain life could help us survive until turns six and seven.  On turn five, Marrow, Gene Nation will be our Morlock inclusion because she can become rather large when you evade your low drops.  Evading just three one drops will make her a 12/11.

For six drops we’ll run three copies of Lobo because he can’t be searched for like everyone else in the deck.  Running only two Lobos could also screw you over if you happen to draw into both of them, rendering his ability useless.  Callisto is included because, like Marrow, she can also grow to enormous proportions.  She can also be searched for in case you missed Lobo.

Morlocks have some good plot twists too.  They have Good Samaritan for recovering your peeps, which is huge, because what’s the point of running Lobo if you can’t keep both of them for turn seven?  They also have some solid attack pumps in Bum’s Rush and Retribution, both of which rely on you having stunned characters on the board.  Here’s the list:

Dreadlocks meets Morlocks

4 The Calculator, Noah Kuttler
2 Tommy, Runaway
2 Artie, Arthur Maddicks
2 Electric Eve, Livewire
2 Leech, Inhibitor
2 Postman, Memory Thief
2 Tar Baby, Adhesive Ally
4 Dr. Light, Furious Flashpoint
1 Healer, Life Giver
3 Storm, Leader of the Morlocks
1 Sinestro, Villain Reborn
1 Talia, Daughter of Madness
1 Marrow, Gene Nation
3 Lobo, The Main Man
1 Callisto, Morlock Queen
1 Deathstroke the Terminator, Ultimate Assassin

2 Coercion
4 Join us or Die
4 Good Samaritan
4 Bum’s Rush
2 Retribution
4 Enemy of my Enemy
2 Bloodhound

3 Sewer System
3 The Hill

There you have it.  Storm helps keep us from burning away our own endurance so that we survive long enough to use our multiple Lobos.  But what if we want to use both Lobos on turn six?  Is there a team that can ready Lobo?  Professor X, Headmaster can help us with our problem of having both our six drops exhausted on turn six.  He doesn’t do it in his text box though (that’s just going to be used to make Lobo an X-Man); instead, he simply gives us access to To Me, My X-Men (To Me, My X-Men is one of the few readying effects available in Silver Age).

For one drops we can run Archangel to search out Worthington Industries, X-Corp and we can run Shadowcat, Phase Shifter because she’s huge and can help us stonewall to turn six.  On turn two we can run Bishop, Age of Apocalypse because he’s going to get us X-Men Assemble (or Marvel Zombies if we want him to!).  Bishop will be the mulligan condition for this build so he’ll be our only two drop.

On three we’ll try to hit Morph.  Most three drops that our opponent could be running will need a pump to take Morph down, and he’ll just get bigger for next turn thanks to X-Men Assemble!  As a backup to Morph we’ll include Xorn, Shen Xorn because of his recovery ability.

At four there’s really only one choice.  ‘Ol Wheels is needed to make Lobo and X-Man, and he draws us a card to boot.  Plus, how awesome is that eight defense?  The new Emma Frost has to activate to get us a card, and she only gets one more defense!

Turn five is a little odd for an X-Men Assemble-orientated deck.  On five I run Wolverine, The Best at What he Does.  This Wolverine auto-recovers at the start of the recovery phase just like Morph.  This is huge because it frees up your recovery effects for other characters like Professor X or Lobo.  Wolverine, Age of Apocalypse is often the Wolverine of choice, but his ability would be near useless without many more Wolverines forced into our build.

At six I decided to run Lobo, but you already knew that didn’t you?  I also included Colossus because he’s searchable with Mobilize and turns into a seven drop going into turn seven.  As an added bonus you have the chance to use the stacker of Wolverine and Colussus!

The plot twist package is pretty straightforward.  Children of the Atom and Marvel Zombies are used to recover your X-Men.  To Me, My X-Men readies Lobo.  Turnabout and SNIKT! are pumps that can be used on the attack or defense, and they’re both very strong pumps.  Finally, Xavier’s Institute is there to net you cards similar to what Professor X will hopefully be doing.  Here’s the build:

Aggressor meets Professor

4 Archangel, Angel
4 Shadowcat, Phase Shifter
4 Bishop, Age of Apocalypse
4 Morph, Exile
3 Xorn, Shen Xorn
4 Professor X, Headmaster
3 Wolverine, The Best At What He Does
3 Lobo, The Main Man
1 Colussus, Organic Steel
1 Juggernaut, The Unstoppable

4 X-Men Assemble
2 Marvel Zombies
4 To Me, My X-Men!
4 Turnabout
2 SNIKT!
4 Mobilize
4 Children of the Atom

3 Xavier’s Institute of Higher Learning
2 Worthington Industries, X-Corp

There’s also the possibility of combining these two decks with the team-up, Above and Below.  Not only does this team-up net you a card, it would give you access to both Storm’s endurance saving ability AND To Me, My X-men!  Not to mention the synergy that evasion has with a card that gives you recovery bonuses!  I’m not giving you a decklist for this one, simply build the two decks above, shuffle them together, and throw half of your 120 card deck away!  Maybe it’s not that easy, but I’m not going to do all work for you!

Speaking of “Below,”  I had mentioned that team-from-Hell’s Roberto Da Costa earlier in the article.  The only real synergy I found between Lobo and the Hellfire Club, was Magneto’s ability to stun Lobo to stun your opponent’s five drop.  If Magneto had been a five drop I would have investigated this option more thoroughly.  As is, I think this team-up would be really forced.

Well, there you have it.  Do you have any sweet ideas for fitting Lobo into a deck?  If so please let me know because I love getting free characters into play!  See you guys next week!

If you have a pulse, you know that Monday was Memorial Day.  As I drove to work on Memorial Day I noticed (as I always do) hundreds of cars sporting the bright yellow ribbon shown at the right.  I’m going to do my best not to go off on a diatribe about these ribbons, but it is kind of relevant to this week, so why not.  First of all, I dislike (hate’s such a strong word!) these magnets, but not because it’s a bad thing to support our troops.  I dislike these ribbons because they make it look like the people sporting them care more than I do about our troops.  You’d be hard-pressed to find an American that isn’t appreciative of our troops - even if those same Americans aren’t particularly fond of the wars that our government sends those troops to.  This is similar to how the Lance Armstrong bracelets make people look like they care more about curing cancer than I do.  They certainly don’t care more, they just jumped on a trendy bandwagon with everyone else.  Again, I greatly appreciate the armed forces, but that’s not what these magnets are about.  They are about money in someone’s pocket.  Someone once told me that the Armstrong bracelet sales went to a non-profit group, but why don’t you just send that same group the money without making them waste time and money making you a bracelet that shows the rest of the world that you donated.

This does give me a great idea though… what do you guys think about necklaces that say, “I donated in Church this week,” or “I was a good role model this week.”  If you disagree with my point, I understand, but I hope you really think about what this past weekend actually meant.  It had nothing to do with the capitalism these ribbons represent, it was about making sure that the US wasn’t renamed <insert German/Japanese-sounding word>.  Here endeth the rant!

And now for something completely different…

In honor of Memorial Day I wanted to take a look back at successful ARMY decks of the past.  It doesn’t get more appropriate than that!  The first one that comes to mind was Wild Vomit.  Early builds of this deck only had seven different cards.  Longshot and Underground Sentinel Base made sure that you never ran out of characters to recruit, and the Mark IV meant you had a lot of power to swing at your opponent.  Multiple Man and Senator Kelly now usually go in this deck because Multiple Man becomes a Sentinel character without a team-up, and Longshot makes sure that you have multiples (pun!) of him in hand to put into play with his ability.

Wild Vomit

4 Longshot, Rebel Freedom Fighter
25 Wild Sentinel, Army
15 Sentinel Mark IV, Army

4 Combat Protocols
4 Cover Fire
4 Reconstruction Program

4 Underground Sentinel Base

Wild Vomit isn’t the only Sentinel army deck that you could create.  In fact, Curve Sentinels dominated the meta longer than any other deck in the history of Vs. (I can’t actually back that up!).  This deck relied on Bastion and Nimrod to help their army buddies out.  Nimrod prevented his owner from ever losing board position while Bastion either brickwalled attacks or helped his owner smash an opponent’s face.  The seven drop position was filled with various persona’s including Magneto, Juggernaut, Two-Face, etc.  Here’s an old build of Curve Sentinels

Curve Sentinels

4 Boliver Trask, Creator of the Sentinel Program
2 Hounds of Ahab, Army
7 Sentinel Mark II, Army
8 Sentinel Mark V, Army
4 Nimrod, Mutant Hunter
4 Bastion, Leader of Operation: Zero Tolerance
3 Magneto, Master of Magnetism

4 Acrobatic Dodge
3 Finishing Move
3 Flame Trap
3 Nasty Surprise
4 Reconstruction Program
4 Savage Beatdown
3 Total Anarchy

4 Genosha

Somehow this deck had an answer for everything.  It wasn’t until Avengers Reservist came out that that these robots found their way back into the card boxes.  Avengers had more attack pumps than Sentinels had defensive pumps.  They also got an out-of-combat stun from Wonder Man that made up for having to stun Nimrod twice.  Sentinels are still playable in Golden, but they don’t fair well against Crisis Doom, the current Golden Age deck of choice.

Next in line is Fat Bat.  This deck relied on flooding the field with Reed, Sue, and a bunch of GCPD Officers so that you were drawing a ton on turn seven with Batman, The Dark Knight.  Reed and Sue enabled A Child Named Valeria, which was essential to keeping up your board position.  Batman got pretty “fat” once your hand was filled, and he was able to swing two or three times for massive breakthrough (thanks to Press the Attack and Blind Sided).  This one is easily my favorite army deck to date.  Maybe it’s because this deck was the only way that a Batman character card was playable before the release of Word’s Finest.

Fat Bat

4 Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend
4 Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl
13 GCPD Officer, Army
1 Ant Man, Scott Lang
1 Harvey Bullock, GCPD Detective
1 Spoiler, Stephanie Brown
1 Wyatt Wingfoot, Keewazi Adventurer
1 Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Information Network
4 Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards
2 Batman, The Dark Knight

4 A Child Named Valeria
4 Bat-Signal
1 Blind Sided
4 Cosmic Radiation
2 Crowd Control
4 Fizzle
2 Marvel Team-Up
2 Press the Attack
1 Team Tactics
2 World’s Finest

2 Utility Belt

Blue Abuse was a deck that took advantage of Superman, Blue’s cosmic ability by flooding the field with one-drop army cosmic characters.  The Soldiers of New Genesis were already large one drop army characters, the fact that they also had a cosmic abilility that made them invulnerable made them even sweeter.  New God’s natural team-up, Royal Decree, also helped by netting you a card to make sure that you didn’t run out of Soldiers.  I believe this deck came out as an answer to the Dr. Light rush decks that controlled the meta at the time.

Blue Abuse

18 Soldiers of New Genesis, Army
4 Lois Lane, Star Reporter
4 Superman, Red
3 Superman, Blue
2 Cir-El <> Supergirl, Daughter of Tomorrow

4 Lanterns in Love
3 Man of Tomorrow
2 Millennium
4 Royal Decree
4 Shock Troops
4 Trial by Sword

2 Birthing Chamber
2 The Source

4 Supercycle

When Chomin was first printed as a legacy card I though, “What a worthless ability!  No thank you!”  It wasn’t until later that I remembered the text of AGL and Xallarap.  They had to KO at the start of the recovery phase unless they were stunned (which turns off their text box).  Chomin prevented you from losing your entire board by stunning them for you, since it was unlikely that your opponent would be stunning back your 4/4 dudes until turn three or later.  This deck hit my local meta like a storm.  My roomate and I played it to great success, but we saw it everywhere we went.  Then one day it was just gone!  Not really sure what deck squeezed this one away, but it’s still a favorite of mine when you don’t want to do too much thinking!

AGL

14 Anti-Green Lantern, Army
4 Chomin, Qwardian Spy
2 Shadow-Thief, Carl Sands
4 Xallarap, Anti-Green Lantern Corps
4 Felix Faust, Infernal Dealmaker
1 Fiero, Qwardian Conglomerate

4 Bad Press
4 Banished to the Anti-Matter Universe
4 Cosmic Conflict
4 Mega-Blast
3 Savage Beatdown
4 The Ring Has Chosen
4 Trial by Fire

4 Willworld

Anti-Matter didn’t just have big stats though, you could also stall with them using Shadow Creatures.  Who would have thought that Shadow Creatures would be playable?  The fact that they had Willpower and were one-cost was all they really needed.  They were just exhausted to Rain of Acorns so that your opponent could not attack you back; and to Qward to get a few out-of-combat stuns on your opponent’s initiative.  The fact that your guys were hidden meant that you could build up a board in no time.  Here’s a list:

Qward

18 Shadow Creatures, Army
3 Qwardian Watchdog, Gatekeeper
1 Malvolio, Lord of the Green Flame
4 Kiman, Chief Weaponer
1 Katma Tui, Green Lantern of Korugar
1 Element Man, Qwardian Conglomerate
1 Evil Star, Servant of the Star-Band
1 Krona, Creator of the Anti-Matter Universe
1 Anti-Monitor, Architect of Destruction
1 Two-Face, Split Personality

4 Helping Hand
1 Lanterns in Love
4 Men of Steel
1 Rain of Acorns
4 The Ring Has Chosen

2 Anti-Matter Cannon
4 Birthing Chamber
4 Qward
4 Sector 2814

I played a Doomed Earth deck at PC Indy 2007 and went about .500 with it.  I really like the deck’s ability to swarm the board despite the heavy drawback of Doomed Earth.  Armies of Doom, Mole Man, Dr. Doom, and Mr. Fantastic kept bringing Moloids back into play from the KO’d pile and everybody got +2 attack per Doomed Earth in your row.  it was real easy to amass a lot of attack very early in the game.  This deck did well in the Chicago Mega-Weekend this year as well.  I believe it got top-eight in the Silver Age tournament.

Doomed Earth

13 Moloids, Army
2 Elite Doom Guards, Army
4 Mole Man, Moloid Master
4 Dr. Doom, Richards’s Rival
3 Mr. Fantastic, Doom’s Adversary
2 Divinity, Vampiric General
2 Ultron <> Ultron 11, Army
1 Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant

2 Armies of Doom
1 Astral Suppression
4 Big Leagues
4 Doomed Earth
4 Flying Kick
2 Mask of Doom
4 Mobilize
4 SKREEEEEEE!
4 Unthinkable

I first saw this deck in Steve Garret’s “Last Man Standing” article series and was amazed at how quickly Swarm-Bots could beef up Dr. Doom.  I think it ultimately lost due to a bad first round matchup, but I found myself severly bummed that the deck was immediately rotating out of Silver Age.  The deck, like Moloids, played it’s one-drop army characters from the KO’d pile with Armies of Doom, but it also used Attend or Die because Manhunter Clones filled your KO’d pile quickly.  This is a very synergistic team-up.

Swarm Bots

4x manhunter clone
2x Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom
16x Swarm-Bot
4x Doom-Bot
4x Dr Doom, Diabloical Genius
2x Dr Doom, Gypsy King

4x Supersize Me
4x Attend or Die
4x Striaght to the Grave
4x Forbidden Loyalty Team-Up
1x For The Glory of Doom!, Team-Up
3x Armies of Doom
3x Mystical Paralysis

2x Slaughter Swarmp
2x Arsenal of Doom

1x Mandarin Prototype

Infernal Minions are cool beans when combined with Zazzala because not only are they dispersing +1/+1 counters, but they are helping you burn you opponent to death at the same time!  The other characters in the deck mostly help you get the Minions into play to keep this process up and running.  Tattooed Man gathers counters and removes them to put Minions back into play for a rinse/repeat-type cycle.

War Paint

18 Infernal Minions, Army
1 Shadow-Thief, Carl Sands
4 Mantis, Power Parasite
4 Zazzala <> Queen Bee, Mistress of the Hive
1 Witchfire, Rebecca Carstairs
4 Tattooed Man, Living Ink

4 Air Strike
4 Infestation
4 Level 12 Intelligence
4 Secret Files
4 World War III

4 Birthing Chamber
4 Hard-Light Storage Tank

Army characters have played roles in other decks too.  Ultron <> Ultron 11, Army combos well with Coup d’Etat and Gorilla Grodd; Robot Destroyer was often used as tech in Common Enemy decks as a way to take out Dr. Doom in the mirror match; OMAC’s made their way into Checkmate/Villains United buillds; etc.  Army characters have had an impact in almost every facet of our beloved game.  Unfortunately I was unable to come up with a competetive build that used US Army Rangers, which I thought would be cool for Memorial Day.  The only real idea I could think of was combing the Rangers with Damn Nazis so you’d have a KO-able character for Project Ragna Rok.  The problem with this was the deck would have Nazis and US troops working together.  probably not appropriate for Memorial Day!  Oh well, if any of you guys can think of competetive decks that use either of these two army characters let me know.

VS.

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