Editor: Keh-Gan Hau. Monday 27th September 2004.
|
You are: Home -> Articles -> Columns -> Slipping on Spandex
Editor: Keh-Gan Hau. Monday 27th September 2004.
|
 The New Black If pink is the new black in Milan (the fact that this is more than likely completely erroneous should be indicative of how little I know about fashion) and Everyone Loves Raymond is the new Seinfeld in terms of prime time viewing, then what can we say about Vs? Is it the new Magic? Maybe it is. I know that many regular visitors to this website have drastically neglected their once favourite card game in recent months. I for one haven’t even played Magic since Nationals. But it probably isn’t. Vs is a Magic clone that arguably improves on various aspects of the original. It’s very, very similar but at the same time a bit different. While it will undoubtedly draw some players away from the other game and will definitely be many gamers’ “second game”, I can’t see it ever replacing Magic in this space-time continuum. One of the most interesting things I’ve noted about the current Vs metagame, however, is how some of the most popular Magic decks have seemingly been reborn in our game. What am I talking about? Well, I’ve heard TNB (or Little Brotherhood) referred to as the Vs equivalent of Magic’s Goblin deck. There’s certainly plenty of similarities there, but I think TNB is really the new White Weenie. You’ve got lots of little guys being pumped by a global effect (not unlike Crusade or Glorious Anthem) and in many cases its trying to retard the resource development of the game (Ka-Boom! instead of Armageddon). If you want a Goblin deck, then I think you should look no further than the Teen Titans. Thinking back to Magic’s Onslaught block, you should be able to see how I’ve come to this conclusion. Both the Junior JLA and Goblins are tricksie little devils. They are packed full of synergy and comboliciousness. They both aim to gain board superiority through the strength of numbers. Anyone who has been stomped by Big Brother can probably see some correlation between that deck and the green fatty decks of MTG (commonly referred to as Stompy). Both aim to have the biggest dudes and crush their opponents with beef. I think Common Enemy is The Rock (with Pernicious Deed), with its powerful control elements and hefty characters. Wild Vomit is Affinity. Rigged Elections is the combo’ing Twiddle Desire. Finally, Ben Kreis’ 10K conquering Fearsome Knights deck (I bet he has a cooler name than that for it) feels a lot like my favourite Magic deck of all time – Squirrel Prison, which aimed to lock down my opponent with the tapping power of the blue enchantment Opposition. But we’re missing an archetype, right? I mean, where’s Suicide Black? Well, I think the answer to that question is that it’s here now in the form of the big cost, big reward team – the Sinister Syndicate (SS). The first thing that struck me about this team was the need for plenty of SS character cards to pay for some of the outstanding powers these guys have. Take Electro for example – “Electro, Maxwell Dillon – 2 (cost), Sinister Syndicate, 2/2. Activate, discard a Sinister Syndicate character card from your hand >>> Stun target character with a cost of 3 or less. Use this power only during your attack step.” The thing that jumps out about this guy is that he is a two-drop that can stun a three-drop with his power alone. That’s unique. There are usually all kinds of restrictions on activated stun powers like Electro’s. Sometimes they are positional, like DC’s Blackfire, who can only stun front row characters. Sometimes they are situational, like DC’s Dr Light, who can stun any character with a cost less than the number of Fearsome Five characters you control. The most common of the situation restrictions is that a character cannot stun someone of equal or greater recruitment cost to themselves. Marvel pretty much established this trend with the likes of Robot Destroyer (five-drop that can stun himself to stun a four or less costed character) and Gambit (four-drop that can discard an X-Men character to stun a three or less costed guy). One of the reasons DC’s Roy Harper – Arsenal is so powerful is because his two powers combined allow him to stun guys bigger than he is and that costs you KO’ing one of your resources. While Electro can only play his power during your Attack Step and he costs a SS character from your hand, the fact he basically wrecks (or at least hinders) two of your opponent’s turns is gold. If you have even initiative, Electro will obviously be able to whack whichever character your opponent drops on turn two and they will know that. If you have odd initiative, your opponent is forced to go after Electro at all costs and if you form up correctly, it should allow you a pretty good counter-attack. The exception to this last bit will be against TNB or Teen Titans, who look to recruit lots of guys and should have enough men to get past this problem. On turn five, you have a souped-up version of Electro in “Green Goblin, Norman Osborn – 5, Sinister Syndicate, 9/9. Activate, discard a Sinister Syndicate character card from your hand >>> KO target unprotected support row character. Its controller loses endurance equal to that character's cost. Use this power only during your attack step.” Damn! KO and the equivalent of stun damage! That looks even better than Lady Shiva at first glance. Of course there are a couple of situational restrictions in that only “unprotected support row” characters are at risk. Well that’s bad news for Garth – Tempest for one. GG gives your opponent all the same headaches Electro does and more. Your opponent can’t hide his important characters without a really big body in front of them. Norman has the added advantage of being spot on with regard to the curve for ATK and DEF, plus the bonuses of flight and range. These two guys are the main reason you’ll want a few extra characters in your deck. Supplementing them is a host of other guys who are aggressively stated and capable of consistently bashing up the curve. Here’s a working decklist … Cindy-Kate v1.0
Going through card by card … Vulture – Having a 2/1 body with wings makes this guy decent, but the fact he can produce big endurance swings is the real gravy here. Goblin Glider, Doc Ock’s Lab and Hammerhead’s text can all help Vulture produce a quick 15 to 20 gap in you and your opponent’s endurance totals. With many decks not running one-drops (and some not even being too concerned with two-drops), this guy can get you off to a flying start and set the scene for Green Goblin, Altered Ego to finish your opponent off (if it gets to turn seven). Electro – I already baked this bun. Hammerhead – While Electro will usually be a much better recruit on two, if you’re recruiting second, have a Vulture already down and your opponent hasn’t produced his first character yet, he’s probably a better way to go. Rhino – This guy is a house with his 7/4 body. He’s a three drop that can take out Sabertooth on base stats alone. That’s not too shabby at all. The four endurance a turn is no sweat and you don’t have to pay it the turn you bring him in anyway. Man-Wolf – When you’re on odds this guy is your next best recruit on turn three, as he’ll have a 6/4 body. He also has a boost for turn five, which has the potential to make him an 11/4. At any rate, he gives you some options in case you miss a drop at any point and if you do recruit him on three the next turn you can always feed him to … Venom, Alien Symbiote – Whether you don’t want to pay Rhino’s cost twice, Electro’s power is no longer relevant or you’re sick of Man-Wolf peeing on your carpet – Venom is your Mr Fix-It. In a game where a turn four 11/7 is as close to broken as you get, a turn four 10/10 seems pretty good too. At 10/10, Venom is still bigger than the average five-drop and you can’t complain about that. Doctor Octopus, Otto Octavius – At 7/7 he’s not bad, but far from stellar. He’s your back up four-drop only because it’s too important a turn to miss your drop. Your other options are Jackal and Kraven, who both have base stats of 6/6 (keeping in mind that Kraven can be a decent 10/6 on attack), or Shocker (7/6). Alternatively, you could boost out two Mysterios, giving you two 4/2’s. I’m not sure if Otto is definitely the right option here, but he just pips Kraven in my book for now. Green Goblin, Norman Osborn – I don’t like repeating myself. Carnage – Don’t EVER recruit this guy on a turn that you don’t have the initiative and preferably only do so on a turn you expect to be the last of the game (hopefully with you victorious). Keep in mind he gives the +2 ATK boost to all characters, including your opponent’s. With certain draws against certain decks, however, this crazy symbiote will offer the potential for a fifth/sixth turn victory. This is not the core strategy of the deck, however, and that’s why only two copies of Carnage are in the list for now. Venom, Eddie Brock – Venom is back at the sixth recruitment level. We’ve come to expect a 12/12 body for six-drops and there are few characters at this level that exceed these figures at all. I for one would have liked flight on this card (I know he doesn’t fly per se, but he does webswing, which is kind of close), which would have made him almost as good as the X-Men’s Rogue. His KO’ing power can be negated by paying eight endurance, but if all goes to plan, that eight endurance should be a very hefty price. Green Goblin, Altered Ego – Finally we have GG back again. For the biggest burn in Vs look no further than this mad bugger. Suicide has never been so easy. This guy should ensure that there is never a turn eight. It’s important to consider, though, that with a 17/11 body (putting him up with Juggernaut in terms of turn seven ATK power), that if you have the odd initiatives, it might be better to attack than burn. It’s also important because if you don’t have the 13 endurance to spend then you can’t use his power. That’s one of the reasons that Vulture is important early on. Goblin Glider – It slices, it dices and it can do a lot more than that. The Glider is good anytime and is the closest thing to Magic’s Cranial Plating in Vs. A + 4 ATK boost, not to mention flight and range, will usually allow a character to bash a ways up the recruitment curve. Furthermore, if played on Vulture early, it can produce frighteningly fast swings in endurance totals. It basically turns Rhino into a Sabertooth … enough said. Savage Beatdown – If I have to explain why this is good in a hyper-aggressive deck then you should pick up a different game. The biggest issue here is that it’ll usually make your guys Overload-bait. I predict that Overload will come back into fashion in a variety of deck sooner rather than later (fear it). Sadistic Choice – This is another one of the great reasons to play SS. While I’m not too excited by some of their other team-specific plot twists, Sadistic Choice is good. Finishing Move is a wonderful card, but it’s difficult to cater for its exhausting requirement. The last thing SS characters want to do is turn sideways to KO some dude … they want to attack. Sure, this card let’s your opponent choose if they want to discard two cards instead of taking the KO, but that’s a huge cost especially around turns three or four when it can result in them losing key late drops. Blind Sided – As long as people aren’t packing Fast Getaway, then Blind Sided is almost always a beating. When you are attacking with offensively-geared characters, this card can produce endurance loses in the double figures. Have a Blast! – I’ve cut these back to three, but I think it’d be foolhardy to have any fewer in almost any competitive deck. If Big Brother is finally dealt a death blow by Unmasked then maybe location hate can ease up a bit (at which point BB will no doubt make a comeback). I tossed up Ka-Boom! for this slot mainly because SS will enjoy keeping the game back a turn or so and that still might be the way to go. Doc Ock’s Lab – Finally we have a card that sums up what suicide SS is all about. Pay some endurance, bash some brains. Sure location hate will get it some times, but who cares? You’ll get at least one use out of it and it didn’t cost you anything to flip. Again, I don’t think you fear Ka-Boom! as much as some decks and I can’t see any reason not to start using the Lab on turn one with Vulture (great synergy there). Just to finish, I’d like to address a couple of cards that I considered for the deck but ultimately didn’t include, excluding some that I’ve already mentioned (Kraven and so on). Surprise Attack – It’s almost a perfect fit and works very well with Green Goblin, Norman Osborn, but ultimately it couldn’t earn its spot. Osborn Industries – It provides better card selection, but ultimately it doesn’t kill your opponent (or you) so I don’t think it doesn’t really fits well into my suicide build. No Fear – The SS is geared to bash up the curve, so you’d think this would be a good fit. Maybe it is, but in playing with the card, I’ve found it languishing unflipped in my resource row too often for my liking. I think at the end of the game you want to ideally have all your resources flipped and no cards in your hand. Win or lose, if that’s the case then at least you didn’t hold anything back … although this could be a foolish and misguided notion. Jet Pack – If I was to include another offensive card then this would be it – 4/1 Vulture is good. In the end I think the deck has enough teeth and this could be too much. It was the last card cut. Airborne Assault – Has potential and I’ll definitely test it. My gut still says this is not as good as what I’ve already got and more would be too much. The same goes for Mega-Blast. Acrobatic Dodge – I wanted to include it, but thought it didn’t fit. Not including it, however, could be the biggest failing of the above deck list. If I ended up cutting Have a Blast! for any reason, I think this would likely be the replacement. Tombstone – He looks good on paper and I got very excited about him initially, but in the end his cost far exceeds his benefits. Vulture is almost always a better recruit. At one stage I still had two Tombstones in the deck, but I thought 40 was too many characters, even in a deck that throws them away. Blackfire – She could be good, but I haven’t tested her out. I think unaffiliated characters need to work extra hard to win a place in the SS deck because of the discarding requirements. She’d be fighting for Carnage’s place. Museum Heist – I don’t like how easily your opponent can disrupt it, especially when you have to have a character ready during recovery to exhaust for it. This deck would benefit from some card drawing, however, but how you get it outside of a deck with Longshot or Oracle in it, I’m not sure. Well, that’s all for now. Hope you all enjoyed this offering and didn’t groan too much at my deck’s name (I’m sure there’s a better one … maybe something to do with Nazis since there’s the SS link). Cheers. Michael Pittman
|
