Editor: Keh-Gan Hau. Wednesday 15th September 2004.
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Editor: Keh-Gan Hau. Wednesday 15th September 2004.
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 TNB – Evolution (none of that X-Men crap)
When the game first came out in April, many were hyped at all the cool looking cards, and interactions between them. The first big deck to make the cut was TNB or what is commonly known now as Little Brother.
It was the top because it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Sabertooth – Feral Rage was broken as an 11/7 for 4 (with the “drawback” of discarding a brotherhood character) which neatly coincided with ‘The New Brotherhood’ game text of requiring 4 resources in your resource row. Add to that Ka-Boom!, Genosha and Foiled (for opposing TNBs) and you could easily drop a 5 drop Magneto or a 5 drop Quicksilver and still get the bonus of +2 to your 5 drops.
The deck mutated into running 4 Not So Fasts for Foileds and a couple for characters, which was a good call, but the problem was that if your opponent’s deck drew 2 or more of Overload or Acrobatic Dodge, then you were still screwed. At this point this was the decklist roughly: 4 Destiny – Irene Adler
This was a basic build which many people had variations on, but from looking at this you get the idea of what the deck did.
For a while it ran Scarlet Witch, which had proven good in drafts, over Quicksilver, and even Sauron as Rogue with flight was really good for beating up the back row. Then people woke up, and went back to the old build. Sauron was WAY too small on Defence and the 4 slot was better taken up by Sabertooth or Blob. Things looked really bad until Gabe Walls won a PCQ with his TNB build which didn’t run Savage Land, but 2 different locations, none of you have heard of before (Avalon Space Station and Lost City). Here’s his decklist: 4 Blob – Fred Dukes
This was a good deck. It had the pumps to save your guys and getting them back with Avalon was always nutty. People started moving away from using the little guys, in favour of running of extra pumps. Acrobatic Dodge was added to the deck to keep your guys around, and the Not So Fasts were taken out because you no longer were using small guys to get large but large guys to get large. If you were smart you could play around Overload and you’d be fine, and they’d be left hoping you’d pump just once more. It got to the point that opposing TNB decks would have to Savage Beatdown your guy just so they could Overload him. Two good cards for one was fine, and the deck mutated into “Big Brother”: 4 Toad – Mortimer Toynbee
Changing this deck to fit the metagame is not hard at all. Adding a couple of Flame Traps and Total Anarchy for a weenie filed, or Shape Changes for a field of BB and FF makes this deck highly adaptive and it’s not too difficult to play. Overload is bad and there’s a lot a location hate out there, but your worst enemy is missing drops. I wouldn’t show either half of the combo too early as Ka-Boom! is starting to make a resurgence, and being aware that the even initiatives vs Doom and Common Enemy are the ones you want to take, because you want to be bashing the turn Apocalpyse comes down, are just a few things you learn testing the deck.   If you are planning on playing this deck TEST IT. As with any deck in almost any TCG if you don’t test it and only have a vague idea of how to play it, you’re going to fall flat on your face. Learn the nuances of the deck and you should take away a top 8 spot at the least.
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