Editor: Michael Mason. Wednesday 5th January 2005.
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Editor: Michael Mason. Wednesday 5th January 2005.
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Yes my friends, DC is back, and it is bad. Bad like James Brown. And crazy. Crazy like a fox. I love sealed play with the new Man of Steel set. In the next few weeks I am intending to write articles regarding drafting the new set (including my favourite faction - the Revenge Squad). However, good intentions pave the road to hell. I only hope the road to hell is also paved with those bastards who knocked in my door last Sunday morning (while I was still sleeping) to tell me about god. When I'm walking my godless ass over them I want to be able to look down and say "see where those early mornings got you!". Anyway, enough of my rant - before I lose my column - lets talk Superman. I finally got to crack a box of MoS. When I am in this enviable position, I like to get extra value about of the packs by dividing them into lots of 5 and then simulating pools in a sealed pack tournament. As I was doing this I came up against 2 pools (out of 4!) that were real doozies. In this article I am going to post the hardest of the card pools, and discuss the deck I would make from these cards. Part of what made building a deck from this pool so hard was the large number of decisions involved. In Web of Spiderman sealed the decks almost built themselves. However, in MoS, with a limited card pool involving 4 teams (often in fairly even numbers) and limited availability of team-ups the choices are much harder. Do you simply play the best character in each costing regardless of affiliation? Or do you try and restrict your choices to as few affiliations as possible? Obviously, the answers to these questions are, at least partially, dependant on the card pool available to you. So, on that note, on the the cards: Hopefully, at this point you see my conundrum. In Hordes of the Apokalips, Omega Beams, and Armagetto, you have three if the best blue/green cards in the game. In a game between otherwise even decks and players, more often than not it is the better resource row that wins the game. But, they are all Darkseid's Elite specific and when one looks at the character pool, there are only 8 DE characters. Do I try and build a deck around these cards? When building a limited deck the first thing I always look at is the plot twists and locations. I Hate Magic!, Heat Vision, and the 2 Female Furies are automatic inclusions. As I am going to have to play at least 2 affiliations Metropolis likewise chooses itself. None of the other plot twists or locations are automatic inclusions. Much as I am always happy to open The Source ($$$) I do not think it is a useful card in limited. Especially when there is a poor pool of New Gods. So, after considering my blues and greens I decided to play Darkseid's Elite, for Hordes, Omega Beams and Armagetto. These means playing all 8 Darkseid charectors, even though with the exception of Devilance I do not rate most of them highly. Revenge Squad looks like the best option to fill gaps in my curve, but still leaves me short in the 4 and 5 cost slots. I decided to opt for Alpha Centurion and Cir-El <> Supergirl. Here is the deck I built:
Points to note:
I struggled more with building this deck, than with any other pool of cards I have ever confronted. I eagerly await your comments in the forums. Please feel free to totally rubbish my build (if you can offer a better alternative with sound reasoning!) or to suggest you own builds with this card pool. Depending on the level of response I may do a follow-up article. I look forward to seeing many of you at the Melbourne 10K, and at the PCQ at Card Heaven (www.cardheaven.com) the day before. Until then, may all your draws be good draws. Kman | ||||||||
