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“Tweaking Sinister Beatdown Part Deux”
Howdy again. In my previous two instalments I proposed an initial decklist for a new aggressive Sinister Syndicate (SS) deck and then went through the processes involved in tuning it and refining the card selections.
Now I’m going to have a look at the match ups.
This was the deck I tested against a variety of decks. These mightn’t have been all the decks in existence, nor all of the good decks in the metagame … they were just a variety.
Before I get too far into this I should point out that the validity of my findings might be diminished by the fact that I do not have a lot of experience playing a lot of these decks. Having only very limited opportunities to play against Pez (who obviously wanted to play the deck he was working on), I had to play both sides. Also, the Teen Titans (TT) deck I tested against probably wasn’t quite as tricked out as a genuine tournament-worthy Titan decks would be.
For these reasons and for reasons of preference and cynicism I will try to avoid straight statistics such as 60/40 or 70/30 match percentages. When I do use percentages and the like, these are by no means put forward as absolute and irrefutable fact, although they will be truthful.
Vs Common Enemy
I gave SS the odd initiatives, figuring that CE would often taken evens at any rate in an attempt to best abuse its powerful cards. Sinister Beatdown beat CE about 70 per cent of the time, although I expect that the powerful aggro-control deck would probably do better than this if the timeline and number of games were extended. A quick aggressive start by SS was often a deciding factor and if it could achieve the Hobgoblin'ing to keep the game around the six resource level it was hard for CE to do its do (especially as it only has a very small number of five and six drops, choosing instead to tutor for them). Ka-Boom! was also valuable in disrupting their access to Dr. Doom for the purposes of Boris'ing and Faces of Doom'ing. CE, however, could really rain on SS’s parade with Reign of Terror and Mystical Paralysis. The deck delighted in using either of these cards on Rhino after SS paid his four endurance upkeep. Also, if CE gets its more aggressive Fantastic Four beatdown kind of draws, it could give SS headaches as these characters have good size and the Syndicate characters’ drawbacks started to bite hard.
Vs Big Brotherhood
This time, I alternated the odd initiative between the two decks. Again, if Sinister Beatdown succeeded in retarding the resource development of the game, it went a long way to sealing the match. My results in this match up were not quite as good as versus CE, which I found surprising, as I kind of thought the aggro-control deck would be more troublesome for my creation. I also found that the initiative played a huge role in these matches. BB won most of the matches it played with odd initiatives and the same was true for Sinister Beatdown. Quicksilver (3) was surprisingly good for BB and often did 15 damage through his burn ability, as SS rarely had anyone ready in the support row for very long. Even when I recruited Electro on turn two, I usually wanted to use his ability to stun Quicksilver, who could then burn me in response. I somehow didn’t think Sinister Salvo was a good option, even though it’d provide a comprehensive solution to this problem. It seemed that if BB got the opportunity to recruit Magneto (7) that was all she wrote as he was just too big, too strong and too powerful … especially if they had the initiative.
Vs Teen Titans
Now here was a difficult match up. Again, I alternated the odd initiative. If the Titans got even a handful of their crazy comboliciousness happening then they would dominate SS. Tim Drake + Red Star + Tamaran + Teen Titans Go! really owned. SS couldn’t reliably bash up the curve because there often wasn’t an “up the curve” target. It’s in this match up that Sadistic Choice or another – perhaps more reliable – kill card could have really helped things out. Electro was obviously a great card in this match up for SS, but it could be hard to keep paying for his ability and a lot of the times TT neutralised him before I could get to the attack step.
Vs Wild Vomit
Once again, SS had difficulty against a deck that utilised a weenie-strategy. I alternated the initiative, but it didn’t play a huge role. If anything, evens helped SS because Electro and Dr Octopus (4) were really useful in these matches. Wild Vomit is renowned for being a great deck when it works and this was the case here. Longshot on turn one was hot and a single Cover Fire could turn the game. That said, an Acrobatic Dodge from SS at certain times could rain on the Purple Robots’ parade too. This was not a good match up, but it was better than the Titans one.
Vs Fearsome Knights
I wanted to throw in this deck because I think it’s awesome. Ben Kries deserves huge props in my opinion. In this match up, things were pretty grim for my Spidey-Villains. Exhausted cops made it almost impossible to get big damage through early and Blind Sided, while good, would need to turn up in multiples to help this match up. If Ben’s deck didn’t cough up a quick team up or a few of the other combo pieces, then there was hope. If there was a team-up and there were a couple of cops down, though, Dr Light closed it out on turn six, making the Hobgoblin strategy look like wet tissue paper. This was probably a worse match up than Titans.
Vs Spider-Clones (Pez Style)
Pez has style. He’s the kind of guy who recovers Aunt May over Black Cat because he wants someone around to make sure Spider-Man (3) is well-fed and looked after. As anyone on the boards would know, Pez loves Spider-Man … not necessarily in a gay way, but if I was Peter Parker I wouldn’t drop the soap just to be safe. The final incarnation of Sinister Beatdown did kind of sock it to his Clones, but this was only in a handful of games. It seemed that he was extraordinarily unlucky at times, while my fortunes seemed to run better than normal. One clear example of this was me drawing Hobgoblin on three successive turns (from turn six onwards), while he drew Solo on three consecutive turns during the same time. He also had terrible luck in getting Spider-Man (3) on turn three. Despite all of this, he competed strongly in many of the games, including one where a big Rejuvenation on the final turn – while not necessarily winning it for me – sealed the game. He also managed to pull some spectacular plays including bashing various guys with an Armoured Aunt May (he asked that I make special mention of that), regularly playing Sticky Situation to effectively negate Doc Ock's Lab activations and Savage Beatdown, and negating my Electro and Green Goblin (5) activations with Nice Try! Pez freely admitted that his aim was to piss me off with these plays, which seemed to be a real strength of the Spider-Friends team … they could really ruin an initiative for a combat-oriented team. In the end, these games were bunches of fun, but it left Pez shaking his head and vowing to create “PFD” – “Pasquale’s Favourite Deck” in which synergy and functionality would ride in the backseat, behind his inner-child.
If I had any final conclusions, they would be that Rejuvenation was probably not the best card for the two slots it occupied and Carnage was at best a 50-50 proposition. The Dodges were a great addition and I don’t think they should be taken out or decreased below three copies under any circumstances.
My next step will be to trial Airborne
Assault and Finishing Move for the two slots taken up by Rejuvenation.
Otherwise I am pretty happy with the deck.
It works pretty well against curve-oriented decks and any deck that plans to make its move on turn seven with big dudes. It mightn’t be a good metagame choice right now with the prevalence of TT, but I think it’ll suit the play styles of people who like more aggressive strategies.
In the end, I am not intending for this article to advocate Sinister Beatdown, but as usual I hope to get you thinking about a new deck. I enjoy seeing new and zany decks and whether you try to build Sinister Beatdown or your own SS deck, or if anything I wrote gave you an idea for something completely different, I’m glad you came along for the ride.
*Bamf* 
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Editor: James Paraha. Monday 2nd November 2004.
