Editor: James Kong. Monday 1st March 2005.
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Editor: James Kong. Monday 1st March 2005.
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“A League of My Own” The king is dead, long live the king. Magic: The Gathering is almost history
in Sydney as gamers grew tired of the game's stagnation and have sworn their
allegiance to another master: The Vs System. With its generous prize pool and
unorthodox game design, Vs System is one of the few games that managed to
threaten Magic as the number one TCG in the past 15 years. Like a good sheep in the herd, I have
followed the trend to the future but although I have been drafting Vs for a
while, I have only started playing the constructed format about 2 weeks ago.
Starting a new game is always hard because you have to learn all the rules,
learn all the current deck types and memorize over 1000 cards in the constructed
format. This is on top of finding all the cards you need for a deck, play
testing and choosing a deck that is most suited to your style. It is fortunate
that I am friends with
Scott Hunstad and Paul Vanderwerk because I would be
paying 50 cents for commons if I have to buy the cards from a shop instead. In
total, I think my League/Brotherhood (LB) deck cost around $100, which is not
that much when a return train ticket to the City costs $8 with never on time
schedules and appalling services.
So why did I choose to play this particular deck you ask? Well I have never been
the type to play the "best deck" in the format. In fact I make it a point not to
play tier 1 decks because I hate playing mirror matches. I never seem to draw as
well in mirrors and I spend too much time drinking when my opponent is play
testing. I also enjoy the challenge of turning something ordinary into something
extraordinary and
spending $150 for Savage
Beatdowns is definitely not
my ideal way of spending money.
Before I tried the LB deck, I have tinkered with TNB
and pure League of Assassins (LoA) but since TNB is a
tier one deck, I never really considered playing it in
tournaments. Pure LoA on the other hand, is pure ass.
Sure you have the searchers but what good are
searchers when you have nothing good to search for?
Range also seems to go for a premium rate with League
characters and fliers are non-existent, which severely
limits your combat options.
The height of the LoA deficiencies would be that the
main character of the deck: Ra's Al Ghul is the
biggest tool in the game with its average stats, lame
abilities and demands for loyalty. All in all, playing
LoA makes you feel a real underdog, a fighter for the common people because you
are always trying to beat down the bigger guys even though the characters have
the exact same recruit cost. Though I said that I enjoy a challenge, to be THAT challenged I would have to
be in a hospital of some sort or play Arkham Inmates.
Unlike LoA, LB combines the best elements of League and
Brotherhood as you can search for good characters
instead of crappy ones. If things are getting a bit
tense on the board, you can always exhaust a man by
giving it a bit of Demon's Head and get some green for
your labour. You may find it childish of me to make
such innuendos but how can you avoid making these
comments in a game filled with cards like
Killer Croc,
two different versions of Men of Steel and three
Dicks? I am only human!! Back to the article, LB also has great match ups
against Teen Titans (TT) and that pleases me because I
don't particular appreciate the
Garth and
Teen Titans Go! combo.
This is why Tower of Babel is a god send against that
deck because it just shut it down by making TT skip
their attack. It is common knowledge that teenagers
cannot achieve much unless they are in gangs.
The current LB deck I am running is very similar to
Kai Budde's version at 10k Hannover and the link is
here. If I have to categories what type of deck LB is, I
would say that it is a combo/control deck. Sure the
deck hands out its fair share of beats but I find that
for most part, you would spend turn 1-4 exhausting
characters to get a nice row of green in the resource
row, with Lost City and
Metropolis as must haves.
Without Metropolis, you would find it difficult to get
out your 5-7 drops because your
Mountain Stronghold
can't search for Brotherhood characters. Lost City on
the other hand, is your only stats combat trick in the
deck and you would find it very difficult to win in
combat without it. Once the various combos are
established, you can focus on beating down your
opponent.
Since the version of this deck exploits the
Avalon Space Station and
Lost City combo, nearly every
character in this deck have 2 versions of itself to
maximize Lost City's effect. This is why although
characters like Pyro,
Toad and
Blob maybe better but
they have been left out of the deck. Even though
Sabretooth have a crappier counterpart on the higher
end of the curve but after some testing, I've realized
that this deck really can't afford to discard more
characters when you need them for power ups, Avalon
Space Station fodders and Mountain Stronghold payments.
The characters that made it into the deck despite of
the "2 versions" rule are
Talia, Daughter of the
Demon's Head and Merlyn, Deadly Archer. I cannot
stress how important Talia is but I almost always try
to mulligan into her because she can usually dig twice
for locations before getting KO'ed, which is huge in a
location heavy deck. Merlyn not only serves as the important 4 drop in the deck
but is also usually
the first character to KO something in this deck. The
guy is also amazing late game if you have a solid row
of green in your resource.
In relation to plot twists and locations, I don' think
I need to go into details to explain them because they
are very self-explanatory. After some games against
Curve Sentinels (CS), I've added 2 copies of
Not So Fast in the deck and took out a copy of
Flying
Fortress and a Quick Silver, Speed Demon as I find it
very rare for me to search for a Fortress when I can
search for a Savage Land.
Quick Silver 5 drop is a
HUGE disappointment because it nearly always needs help
to stun an opposing character. When the 2 drop
Scarlet
Witch came out, I was hoping that I can replace the
Quicksilver but much like someone I knew, the strumpet
cost too much money to woo and is really only good
with one thing.
Due to the search options with this deck, it takes a
lot of practice before you can correctly predict when
to search for what at which situation. In addition,
when you are playing against beat intensive deck like
CS, TNB and TT, it feels like you are running
uphill when they are smashing your head in while you
try to set up your locations. On top of all this,
because of the heavy location nature of this deck, you
are usually able to do one thing with your resource a
turn while your opponent does 3. So you would have to
be very careful in what you want to do with your
resources and decide whether you want to team up,
power up or search before combat.
As I am still testing this deck, there are still a lot
of things that I simply cannot decide on. For
instance, because of Merlyn, it seems natural that I
should choose the even initiative so I can KO 3 drops
on turn 4. However, some of my best characters, like
the 2 versions of Magnetos are odd drops and it seems
a waste for them to sit on defence. I am also not as
accustomed to the awesome power of
Tower of Babel as I
would like to be and I still haven't quite worked out
why CS decks always seems to get the curve even though
they have no searches except for
Boliver Trask.
The deck, like the game itself is something that I am
still trying to get accustomed to but I believe that
they both have the right tools for success. Ideas and
suggestions would be most welcome as I am still trying
to get the right build.
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