Editor: Staff. Saturday 8th April 2006.
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You are: Home -> Articles -> Columns -> 'Rally Against Defeat'
Editor: Staff. Saturday 8th April 2006.
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by Ean Press
After months of intense studying of top 8 decks, playtesting, building and constructing my idea of the best deck for myself, I have resulted in somewhat of a stand-off. A stand-off to me is when I just can't seem to build the right deck with the right mix of everything. I tried many new decks, Morlocks Evasion, Giant Morlocks, Squadron/Avengers, Avengers/Brotherhood Reservist, among many others. People (and by people, I mean mostly friends) often ask me, "You're Ean the guy that writes for VSParadise.com, right, the guy who's hellbent on making straight New Gods work, that's you right." Every time I hear that it makes me get to thinking. Should I have given up on the gods? Ahhh…..The same conundrum I have racked my brain with for the last several months, Can New Gods be a viable team by themselves? When the Chicken Supreme craze began, my answer was a hearty "No," with the latest developments in my New Gods deck, (to be shown later in the article) I might have a different opinion. Recently, I read an article on Vs.Tcgplayer.com entitled The New Gods, by Dan McCoy, I read through it and thought that he made some pretty good points on the status of the New Gods and backed-up what I have been saying about underdog teams. He also pointed out the fact that New Gods can stand alone and help from other teams are not absolutely necessary. The same friends that asked me that other question also asked why I would even bother, why anyone would. "Teams from Superman, the set, were terrible," they said. First of all, New Gods is not bad at all. Second of all, New Gods have the one thing that you don’t see in hardly any other team, that is the element of surprise, the invaluable technique that often leads me up the curve to victory with New Gods. When you enter a major tournament expecting to see the best of the best Squadron, Faces of Evil, Avengers, New School, etc. and you see New Gods, the reaction mostly always will be sour. I have criticism towards that New Gods article though, especially regarding the deck. He says that Big Bear is an essential 3 drop, I disagree. Big Bear has the worst cosmic effect there could be for a 3 drop on New Gods. Think about it, the entire team, give or take has low or average stats and Big Bear adds to that and if you are going to have low stats, have low stats and have a good effect to fall back on. My pick is Mark Moonrider without a doubt. In The Prophecy Fulfilled version I still have, Mark Moonrider might be seen 3 times on the field by turn 5. He says that Soldiers of New Genesis is not a necessity, I could agree with that, being that they are useless with The Exchange and Astro Force. I use them for quick advantage, I call it. If you play a character like Soldiers of New Genesis on turn one, most likely they think its Blue Abuse and they wonder and that is the key, make them wonder. I will always dislike Big Barda as a character because you have to pay half of your endurance, in this deck that is not smart to do on turn 6 when you are probably in need of more endurance as it is and you probably still have an Astro Force or 2 left. I would not run Vykin either, solely because I have lost games just because of not having Serifan and he is another key. I like the Mobius Chair idea a lot but only to ensure that Mark Moonrider or Serifan are safe, or to have a character that is guaranteed to be recovered for Prophecy. I also do not like Fastbak, he has low stats and his effect although was utilized while I was testing it didn’t have much impact. Commander or Izaya are much better alternatives to Fastbak. I also think people don’t realize the Escape Artist fiasco’s that I go through. Escape Artist is a fickle card and a card that I have misused and regretted doing so many a times. See although it is the, as he said, "Ultimate get out of jail free" card it has a couple drawbacks that I think are needed to make people aware of. A defender you control needs to be readied to use it and sometimes in this deck having more characters than your opponent is a must, an absolute must. The Source is not as good as everyone hypes it to be and is not the backbone of New Gods, its good, don’t get me wrong but people expect it after awhile and learn not to set there plot twists, also it is horrible with a capital H against reservist decks. Rebuilding the New Gods this time made me want to add more burning to the deck, so after playtesting this is what I came up with. New Gods, Version 1.6 Characters 30
1 Drops
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