MEV Previews: John Proudstar, War & The Red Rider

War. What is it good for?

Well, for Apocalypse, it means a savage Horseman who will pound anyone who stands in Apocalypse’s way into the ground. Several characters have played the role of War. On the lesser known side, you have Abraham Kieros, a mutant capable of creating explosions, and Gazer, one who photosynthesized radiation into energy blasts. On the better known side, you have Deathbird, Hulk and, in an alternate reality, Cable.

However, the War that I will be previewing is the War from Earth-1100. This War is John Proudstar or Thunderbird. In his reality, he fought alongside his brother as part of the X-Men. However, one day his brother died and John left the team. He was picked up by Apocalypse who turned him into War but Proudstar was able to escape and was picked up by the Timebroker to join the Exiles. There he defeated The Hulk in one reality in order to save that planet’s Canada and was able to wound Galactus by planting a bomb in his armor while in a reality where Skrulls ruled Earth. However, he was injured by the bomb’s explosion and the Exiles were forced to put him into stasis until they could find a way to help him.

Now, what do we know about Thunderbird in Vs. System? He tends to have big stats that is counteracted by a drawback. This version of Proudstar is no different.

(PSST! Those who are just here to see the card will still want to look ahead so they can see The Red Rider. Just figured I’d let you know)

MEV Preview: Cajun Charm

I love Gambit. When I first saw the old X-Men cartoon on FOX Kids in the morning and saw some guy with a staff tossing explosive cards, I instantly knew I’d found an awesome dude. Throw in the accent and personality and you got a cool dude.

What’s that? You’re here for the preview and the preview alone? Right… right… Let me indulge just a bit more.

Easy question: What do you know about Gambit in Vs.? Correct answer: He likes stunning people. From the old 2, 4, and 5-drop Gambits which could pitch a card to stun a 3-drop to the NEW 2-drop who can stun anyone if the opponent has the same amount of character inplay and stunned as that guy’s cost to the Traitor reviewed yesterday on Darkseid Revenge that can stun any cost of character on any initiative provided you can pitch their cost randomly. Seriously, Gambit REALLY likes stunning guys.

Preview? Just a second more.

Gambit in Vs. thus far has been all about his aggressive explosiveness but that’s not all there is to this guy. Ol’ Remy is a smooth talking Cajun who could talk his way out of any problem that comes his way. So how do you combine Gambit’s ability to stun people with his charming demeanor? Why, with that preview you came here for.

That’s right! The amazing VS. design team has figured out a way to make the best defense a great offense in the most literal sense of the word. If you want more thoughts, hit the jump. Yeah, all seven of you who actually come for the article. The rest of you can go now.

The Great Vs. Resolution #29: Injustice Gang

I love the odd team themes, the ones that go completely against what you would normally want to do in a game. Both incarnations of the Squadron Supreme fit the bill with one wanting an empty hand and the second wanting to deal no breakthrough. The loner themes of Hellboy, Warbound, Hellfire Club, X-Statix, and others are amongst my favorite decks of all time.

However, there may be no stranger team theme than Injustice Gang handflood. What sort of lunatic would you have to be to just hand your opponent tons of options? Normally, it’d be suicide. With the Injustice Gang, though, you can turn that flood of cards into a source of strength.

My real love affair with IG was with the JLA version of the team. Sadly, I can’t use that version due to the requirements of the Resolution stating I need to stay in the most “modern” format which, for the Gang, is Modern. Will the new IG stand up to the old one? Doesn’t this sound a lot like my last post?

Careful What You Wish For…

Characters:
4x The Penguin, Gentleman of Crime

4x Captain Boomerang, George Harkness
2x Johnny Quick, Earth 3

4x Lex Luthor, Megalomaniac
1x Power Ring, Earth 3

3x Felix Faust, Soulless Mystic
1x The Joker, Headline Stealer

3x Circe, Evil Enchantress

1x The Joker, Killer Smile
1x Abra Kadabra, Magical Rogue

1x Lex Luthor – Sinister Scientist

1x Vandal Savage, Cro-Magnon Man

Plot Twists:
4x Criminal Mastermind
4x Power Siphon
4x All Too Easy
4x Secret Files
4x Mobilize
3x Injustice for All
3x Blind Sided
3x Break You

Locations:
3x Injustice Gang Satellite

Equipment:
2x Laughing Gas

The Great Vs. Resolution #28: Crime Lords

And the train just keeps on rollin’. I haven’t had the chance to play on MWS recently due to the primary Darkseid server being down which generally means no one even bothers with it since the only alternative is the armpit that is MWSgames.net.

So, instead of doing Crisis decks like I’d originally intended, I’m stuck with decks I’ve played a lot of. I’ve been running a Crime Lords deck that is at least similar to the one below since MUN came out. I was a big fan of the Lords way back when but how is their newest incarnation?

Red Masque of Death

Crime Lords

Modern Age

Characters:
3x The Hand, Army – Hydra

3x Sin, Synthia Schmidi – Raid

4x Red Skull, Alexsander Lukin – Raid
3x Silver Samurai, Kenuichio Harada – Hydra

4x Master Man, Max Lohmer – Raid
2x Kingpin, War Profiteer – Hydra

3x Red Skull, Johann Shmidt – Hydra
1x Head Case, Sean Madigan – A.I.M.

3x Baron Strucker, Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker – Hydra

2x Red Skull, Master of Creation

Plot Twists:
4x Radically Advanced
4x Acts Of Vengeance
4x Mobilize
4x Code White
4x Nasty Surprise
3x New King In Town
2x Burn Rubber
2x Call in a Favor

Equipment:
3x Cosmic Cube
2x Death Warrant

Basically, the only way I could figure out how to do the Crime Lords and even hope to fit into the Resolution guidelines was by going Red Skull legend. To help you see why Skull was the only option, here’s the rules I’ve set for myself.

The Great Vs. Resolution Guidelines:

“All characters must share a printed affiliation, at least 50% of non-character cards must be team or character-stamped, remaining cards must be from the same universe as the affiliation for the deck, deck must be in as recent of a format as possible.”

If you go with an army version of Crime Lords, I wouldn’t have the card draw since Birthing Chamber is DC. Direct attack isn’t any good since Crime Lords don’t have enough pumps to make the 50% team/char-stamped non-characters requirement. The only particularly good choice that had any chance (and, even then, only fit by a nose) was Skull legend.

The Great Vs. Resolution #27: X-Statix

Brutal Honesty: I haven’t really put much thought into this post. I mostly just want to get my second Resolution post for the week down so I don’t fall behind. I hope nobody hates me for it.

Because I’m being fast this week, I chose a team with a really obvious theme that everybody already knows well. X-Statix are the original loner team and were one of my favorites back when I was limited to MOR-MAV on Marvel Trading Card Game for the DS. Sure, loner has been done better since then but they’re still the original and worth glancing at.

I Walk Alone

X-Statix

Golden Age

Characters;
4x Phat-William Reilly

4x Vivisector-Myles Alfred

4x Orphan-Guy Smith
1x Plazm-Protoplasmic Protagonist

3x U-Go-Girl-Tragic Teleporter
2x The Spike-Angry Young Mutant

2x Battering Ram-Short-Lived Strongman
1x Vivisector-Lunatic Lycanthrope
1x Henrietta Hunter-X-Celebrity

2x Zeitgeist-Axel Cluney

2x Anarchist-Man of the People

1x Galactus-Devourer Of Worlds

Plot Twists
4x Dead Weight
4x Spin Doctoring
4x Mobilize
3x Mutant of the Year
3x Star of the Show
3x Call in a Favor

Locations
3x X-Statix Café
3x X-Statix HQ
2x Kang Kross-roads
2x The Hill
2x Shaw Industries

The Great Vs. Resolution #26: Sentinels

Wow. It’s been criminally long since my last post. But I’m here now and should be here tomorrow and Saturday (Friday is school day).

Last week I promised a “blast from the past” and the tease of whether or not they’re as good as they used to be. No one bit on guessing who it was but the title of this article should give it away.

Yes, the Sentinels. Those big purple robots who enjoy nothing more than stomping on all those confounded, evil, criminal mutants who are running around. If those mutants could just be normal, none of this would have had to happen. The Sentinels never would have been invented and the purple robots wouldn’t have run rampant over the Vs. tournament scene way back when.

But how good are the Sentinels now? How much has been lost in the years due to the gains of others? Let’s take a look in what could be one of the quickest Vs. Resolution articles yet.

The Great Vs. Resolution #25: Secret Society

It’s Thursday night. I’ve eaten dinner. My school work for the week is done. I’m bored. There’s no one on MWS. My brothers aren’t home to annoy for a game. Basic cable isn’t airing anything good at the moment (CSI premieres in a few hours but that’ll likely suck). It is because of this stark wasteland of anything else to do that I sit down in front of my computer with Project 86’s rock songs blaring out of its speakers to write out this blog post. A blog post, not a forum post. Eat your heart out Kariggi. 😛

It’s about time that I post my Secret Society build. I actually find the Secret Society utterly hilarious. Where else can you find a team that is composed of a wrathful dark god, an insane megalomaniac, a psychic monkey, an expert assassin, a man with a freeze ray, an unstoppable monster who adapts to anything that could kill it, and a woman obsessed with botany? I honestly got laughed at by a friend in chat when I explained the team to her while I was playing on MWS at the same time.

Anyways, SecSoc and their KO Pile manipulation has always been interesting to me so how about a glance at my build?

Kinda like a gasoline covered, flaming rubber ball

In a recent blog post, I talked about what decks I’ve been playing in Modern. For the record, I am aware that I just linked to a post just two posts lower than this one. I’m crazy like that… Anyways, in that post I mentioned that there was a deck I’d been running that I greatly enjoyed but wasn’t quite ready to reveal at that point. I’m ready now. Meet the craziness that is Outsiders/SHIELD.

Bounce And Burn But Not Necessarily In That Order

Outsiders/SHIELD

Modern Age

Characters:
1x  Life Model Decoy, More Human Than Human

12x  S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents, Army – Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
3x  Speedball <> Penance, Painmonger
2x  Squirrel Girl, Doreen Green
1x  Blizzard, Frosty Friend
1x  Hank Pym <> Yellowjacket, Initiative Instructor
2x  Owen Mercer <> Captain Boomerang Jr. – Prodigal Son
2x  Halo – Gabrielle Doe
2x  Technocrat – Geoffrey Barron
1x  Faust – Sebastian Faust

2x  Wylde – Charlie Wylde
1x  Katana – Tatsu Yamashiro
1x  Bullseye, Lester
1x  Jessica Drew <> Spider-Woman, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Hydra

2x  Wolverine, Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Hydra
2x  Kimiyo Hoshi <> Dr. Light – Sunburst

Plot Twists:
3x  Secret War, Team-Up
3x  Truth and Justice – Team-Up
4x  Recruiting Drive
4x  Booze Elementals
3x  Batman and the Outsiders

Locations:
4x  Birthing Chamber
3x  S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier

The idea here is devastatingly simple. You use Outsiders crazy good bounce effects like Owen Mercer, Recruiting Drive, and Booze Elementals along with their great team attack cards and then combine them with the SHIELD Agents burning capabilities. Trust me, it’s better than it looks.

The Great Vs. Resolution Reborn #24: Warbound

You may remember months back I built a certain deck based around Hulk for this Resolution. This Marvel Defenders deck immediately took the #1 spot of my favorite Resolution affiliations and has remained there since my fifth TGVsR post. I liked that deck because of the flavor. It was all about Hulk standing alone and smashing characters while his team gave him help from the sidelines.

Fast forward to after the release of Marvel Universe. Lo and behold, there’s another team based around Hulk being on his own with his friends helping from the back. However, the Warbound are different from the Defenders in more ways than one. First, the non-Hulk characters’ effects hit off being stunned and straight up leaving the game rather than just being exhausted. Secondly, there’s more than two Hulks to use. Finally, there’s a second deck style than the straight angry “Hulk Smash!” deck. That second deck type is what some like to call Hulk Control but I like to call King Hulk, the Hulk who’s intelligent and capable of coming up with rational plans that can take down even the toughest opponents no matter what they throw at him.

What I’m Playing Now: Modern Age

This post is mostly just to prove I’m still alive and to keep a new post up here at least three times a week. College work is slowly starting to get more and more time-consuming so I have a feeling I’m mostly going to be posting my two Resolution articles plus one quickie like this each week. Hopefully no one minds.

Right now I have a couple of decks I’ve been toying with on MWS. I figured that that is worth dedicating a blog article to so that be what I’m doing. Yay me :).

For this article we’ll be doing Modern Age, the most strict of the standard formats. I recently built three new decks for my online use which have really brought me some enjoyment. First is a team-up with a strategy so contradictory to comic lore it isn’t even amusing:

Yeah, I stole this image off some poor person’s Flickr but it was what got the point across best. Anyways, it’s a Double Agent deck based around abusing 4-drop Captain America with 5-drop Red Skull to redirect attacks to whoever can give out the most burn. It runs Hand Ninjas on 1 and a full set of Code White so even when one of the two leaders gets stunned, they can pop right back. Turn 6 is incredibly fun since you can do all sorts of nastiness with the various drops. You can run Thing, Conscientious Objector if you still have your 3-drop. You flip Coast City naming Captain America who should be protected by the 3-drop and put Thing in front of Red Skull. Your opponent then HAS to hit Thing because the 3-drop is just going to be redirected over there anyways. Option two is Baron Strucker for what should be an obvious reason in getting two burns on the opponent if he defends with reinforcement from Red Skull (cool idea I just got: Strucker with his claw in front of Skull, 12 burn plus if you use it while defending with reinforcement you recover immediately but still get the “start of recovery” trigger off the claw. Combo that with Coast City to force an opponent into Strucker… Dayum. That’s a deck in itself…). Finally, Ares swinging into the opposing 6-drop for a mutual stun nets at least 18 endurance. In all, the deck is nasty and will only get better with further tweaking.

Next is the redhead who just. won’t. die.