One hyphenated word for you: Stun-tastic.
With little over a month to go until the UK Championships, it's time to finally whittle my selected deck down to the best I can get it. The format for the tournament is Bring Your Own Set, in which the players pick one of the VS sets that UDE have released, and build a deck solely with cards from that set, so that every card has the same starting digits in the bottom-left corner. (For example, DJL, MXM, MTU etc.) If a card's been reprinted from an earlier set, then the early versions of that card can still be used, which helps greatly with the cheap Savage Beatdowns I purchased.
The deck I'll be playing is The Brotherhood, from the Marvel Legends deck. I won't be posting my deck-listing up until after the event though, just in case someone sees it and decides to tech against it where they wouldn't have otherwise. Thankfully, I shouldn't need to build against Fate Gear too much, as it can't be used in conjunction with Quicksilver or Bizarro World, the two prominent cards for it, but the Fate Gear does come from the Infinite Crisis set, which includes Checkmate, a team commonly found in the Top 8 of previous tournaments.
Playing against a MVL Brotherhood deck last night, I saw how insanely good it could be, especially with Insignificant Threat in the mix. Having raised my lone attacker boosted to 27 ATK with multiple pumps, only to have it stunned as it was one drop lower, was enough for me to concede the game. Hopefully I can conjure some of that magic at the tournament, especially as Pathetic Attempt can't be played, unless someone's crazy enough to run a MCG deck.
Of course, Amit was crazy enough to play Mysterium at the Elite Series and pull it off, so who knows?
After posting my previous build up on the VS Reams Deck Garage, some discussion went into the build, and with help from TheDerangedBear and Doomstat, the deck's evolved to be a bit more competitive. Although TDB suggested removing the Team-Up between Inhumans and Brotherhood, for me, that's an essential part of the deck, as Lockjaw, Inhuman's Best Friend searches for 'Inhumans', and Attilan requires an Inhuman character in play to use its deck-search.
So, the deck as it stands right now:
Characters
3x Lockjaw, Inhuman's Best Friend
2x Luna Maximoff, Only Human
4x Quicksilver, Mercurial Speedster
4x Quicksilver, Inhuman By Marriage
4x Scarlet Witch, Mistress of Magic
4x Crystal, Elementelle
4x Magneto, Mutant Supreme
3x Quicksilver, Speed Demon
2x Quicksilver, Magneto's Son
2x Quicksilver, Terrigenesis Rebirth
1x Magneto, Master of Magnetism
Plot Twists.
4x Savage Beatdown
2x Planet X
3x Avalanched!
4x Big Leagues
3x Justice is Served!
3x New and Improved
Locations.
3x Underground Resistance
3x Attilan
2x Stryker's Island
Planet X can be moved down to just two copies, as Crystal is going to search it out on Turn 3. The second copy is there to be placed on top of the deck by Attilan, and can then replace the first Planet X's +2 ATK effect, without losing the Team-Up for more than an attack.
Attilan's deck-searching is also why The Great Refuge has been taken out, due to Attilan's ability to search for any card, not just a character card.It comes at the cost of needing all my resources face-up, but that should be obtainable seeing as I'll be using ATK pumps like nobody's business, three cards will be Locations, which will stay face-up, and one is an Ongoing Plot Twist, which also works that way. Attilan also offsets the effect of Underground Resistance, by allowing you to pick up a second-in-importance card right back from the bottom of the deck, and put it back on top, ready to be drawn next turn.
I've added in a couple of extra 2-drop Quicksilver cards, to be used as Power-Ups, or to just make hitting Quicksilver that little bit easier at the start of the game. New and Improved works impressively well in this deck, due to the amount of Quicksilvers I'll have bouncing on and off the board, and I've added in Big Leagues for some added +ATK goodness.
Now the deck's looking a lot more ship-shape, and ready to beat off the other legends, even if they have Fate Gear.
Carlos has just announced over at his VS Blog, that the daily articles are being stopped by UDE over at VsSystem.com. Whilst I can appreciate that VS is going down a 'more casual' route, removing all of these feels like a bit of a kick in the teeth. Every day, I'd come back from university, and check the latest entry, from Stu's X-Babies antics, to Kamiza's epic Last Man Standing tournaments.
I suppose, as Carlos put in his blog, that if shutting down the daily articles means VS can have a little more cash lining its pockets to produce new sets, then it's perhaps a necessary measure. I just hope at some point down the line, at least some of the articles can come back.
(When the next Marvel set comes out, I'll gladly do a free article or two on shoe-horning the X-Men in somehow. ;-) )
"Oh no!" I hear you cry. "He's going to go and abuse Quicksilver, Inhuman By Marriage in some new way!" Well, fear not, I aim not to use it in an abusive fashion, if at all. I'm making a Quicksilver legend deck because in the comics, especially in X-Factor, Pietro Maximoff really is a dick, but you can't help but love him as an anti-hero/villain. or at least, I can't.
For those not in the know, Pietro, along with his sister, Wanda, the Scarlet Witch, are the children of one of the greatest villains of all time; Magneto. This wasn't revealed until the siblings were in their late teens, and rather than a happy reunion, this fact has helped to alienate the 'family' on more than one occasion.
Other notable plots involving Quicksilver include the fact he caused the 'House of M' story to occur by convincing Scarlet Witch to alter reality to suit his own wants. He has a daughter, Luna, with the Inhuman called Crystal, and in an attempt to kidnap his daughter, he stole Terrigen crystals from the Inhumans, and ended up using them on de-powered mutants back on Earth. A side effect of this was that the mutant's powers would overload, normally resulting in their death, which led to a number of run-ins with the modern-day X-Factor, until the Terrigen crystals are eventually removed by Rictor.
Anyhows, enough of the background, let's look at the cards available in Silver Age. There's already 'Inhuman By Marriage' as mentioned above. From Marvel Legends, there's Mercurial Speedster, a 2-drop with an automatic breakthrough-enabler, providing your ATK is high enough. Speed Demon provides the opportunity for a double-attack with him each turn, at the cost of a Brotherhood-card discard. From the X-Men Starter pack, there's Magneto's Son, which acts like a second Avalanched!, which can help get rid of a pesky support-row character if your first attempt gets hit by the now ever-present Pathetic Attempt.
Finally, moving away from the Brotherhood alignment, and back to Inhumans, there is Terrigenesis Rebirth, which allows Quicksilver to step in to an attack in place of a character you've already declared an attack with. This is useful for when you've sent in a lower-cost character, just for them to become outstatted due to some Plot Twists your opponent had in their hand, and if used correctly, could feign your opponent into *not* playing ATK/DEF pumps, as they're expecting less of an impact.
Unfortunately, there's no 'proper' legend support for Quicksilver just yet, meaning I'll have to use most, if not all of the character cards available, which means sorting out a team-up between Brotherhood and Inhumans, which, with the help of Crystal, Elementelle shouldn't be too hard. Plus, whaddya know, she was married to Quicksilver once, how handy!
So, to the deck itself:
"My Family's Only Inhuman After All."
Characters.
2x Lockjaw, Inhuman's Best Friend
4x Luna Maximoff, Only Human
3x Quicksilver, Mercurial Speedster
3x Quicksilver, Inhuman By Marriage
4x Scarlet Witch, Mistress of Magic
4x Crystal, Elementelle
4x Magneto, Mutant Supreme
3x Quicksilver, Speed Demon
2x Quicksilver, Magneto's Son
2x Quicksilver, Terrigenesis Rebirth
1x Magneto, Master of Magnetism
Plot Twists.
4x Savage Beatdown
4x Planet X
4x Avalanched!
4x Sibling Support
4x Justice Is Served!
Locations.
2x Asteroid M
2x Wundagore Citadel
2x The Great Refuge
Equipment.
So, that's the deck in a nutshell. Essentially, it plays as a Brotherhood deck, with the Inhuman parts there to crossover and do character-searching with. I realise there's only one 4-drop, which is Magneto, but I'm trying to keep things in the family, and the other viable four-drops from Marvel Legends are Mystique and Sabretooth, neither of whom are related to Quicksilver. Well, yet anyway, it is Marvel after all.
And I told you I wouldn't abuse Inhuman By Marriage.
And not just my undying love for pizza and VS System. Though there is VS love involved in this entry. It's Valentine's Day coming up, and though I may not have someone to spend it with myself, I can celebrate the love of well-known comic-book characters, and so, later in the week, I'll be posting up the "Lover's Decklist", an attempt to shoe-horn in as many romantically-linked characters as possible, with some semblance of playability.
Of course, the X-Men will be the staple building block, and not just because mutants seem unnaturally randy.
Secondly, there's love in the air for music in 2008, just today I have had my senses assaulted by some fine electronica, which combined with other releases set for this year, show that electronic music could be making a big indent into the charts this year, with Hot Chip already leading the way with a UK Top 10 album and single.
So, to entertain you until my next entry on Thursday or Friday, some existing and upcoming highlights of 2008:
(Warning; some of the videos contain flashing images.)
'Bears Are Coming' by Late of The Pier
'Bathroom Gurgle' by Late of The Pier
'Ready For The Floor' by Hot Chip
Until next time, adieu.
