BYOS Modern: Final MK Deck List

Firstly, Kamiza commented on my blog! How awesome is that?

Second, I finalized my deck list for the Team Marvel vs. DC BYOS Modern tournament (mouthful of a format…). I playtested my Ghost Rider deck, got some comments from two of my favorite people to play against online (who have rhyming names, coincidence or something else?), and made the alterations that takes this deck from “playable” to “ZOMG! It might win some games!” Interestingly enough, it looks moderately similar to the MKKO deck Kamiza mentioned although mine doesn’t KO so much as it just pumps the heck out of everything that moves.

Oh, downside is I can no longer call it a Ghost Rider deck since I’m now packing only 4 Ghost Rider cards. Sad, but a necessary change. If I ever get involved in a Legends tournie, though, I think I know what I’m running.

BYOS Modern: Make Mine Marvel, also more brainstorming ideas

The more I’ve thought about this MWS tournament, the more I’ve realized that Marvel is where its at for me.

All the DC sets just don’t appeal to me outside of the fact that they have some nice utility. World’s Finest, IG-Hidden, and JLA are all good, well-known decks which means I don’t want to get anywhere near them simply because that’s the way I work. Outside of those decks, however, there isn’t anything particularly powerful in BYOS Modern. Revenge Squad Front Row needs Mobilize or else you’re entire deck falls to luck. Outsiders Team Attack need access to at least Reset but preferably a team-up with X-Men or the Titans while Outsiders Up-Curve has no search in this format. About the only deck that I like the idea of running in this format would be Injustice Gang handfill which just feels so standard. Sure, Marvel doesn’t have much it can respond with but I still don’t like the idea of using handfill.

That leaves me with just Marvel which has way more access to good stuff IMO. Anything from MTU is cool (outside of mono-Spider-Friends, blech), and MVL has access to the almighty Mobilize. Just lots of goodness in those two sets with cards that aren’t often used. Sure, I’m likely to get smacked by DC’s negation tricks but I’d prefer to run a fun deck that I’ve personally built than just try and win by avoiding the tough choices caused by the metagame.

Also, I promised some brainstorm ideas for decks so…

Spider-Friends/Underworld (10/10 healing Morbius is nice. Also, lots of search, draw, and answers. Oh, and Pathetic Attempt in Trial By Jury)

Marvel Defenders (Hulk Smash!, Deck merely loses Flying Kick in transfer to BYOS)

SinSyn Chameleon Hax (Drop Chameleon on 2, Use Chameleon’s effect on Kravinoff/Deadpool/Demogoblin, flip team-up, recruit dual loyalty character on 5.)

MA Common Enemy (abuse Force Field Projection + Mystical Paralysis to make opponent’s swear)

Brotherhood Juggs/Magneto (Sheer beatiness that doesn’t rely on plot twists or too heavily on targeting)

Phoenix and Her Clone’s Alternate Future Son (Use Bodyslide to abuse Jean Grey’s 5-drop and 8-drop.)

Those are what I can list off the top of my head at the moment. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. At the moment, I think I’m going to play my Ghost Rider deck but I haven’t fully decided on that yet. Any comments or other ideas are always taken into consideration so feel free to leave your thoughts.

BYOS Modern: Ghost Rider

Well, this sorta sucks. I just realized my Team Superman deck requires Superman/Batman Robot which isn’t legal in BYOS. Back to the drawing board for a possible DC deck, I guess.

This is my current Ghost Rider Legend deck list. The original had Flying Kick in it, which I traded out for Bring The Pain. I’m heavily leaning towards this since I’m not expecting people to expect it. Sure, now those MWSers that read the blog will know of it but the main ones that have commented are on the Marvel side of the event anyways so I’m not too incredibly worried.

No Jellybeans This Time

Marvel Knights: Ghost Rider

Modern Age: BYOS: Legend

Characters:

4x Dagger, Lightbringer

4x Punisher, Suicide Run
2x Blade, Vampire Slayer

4x Ghost Rider, The Devil’s Rider
2x Spider-Man, Webhead

3x Wolverine, Covert Predator
2x Daredevil, Hornhead

3x Vengeance, Spirit of Vengeance

3x Ghost Rider, Spirit of Vengeance

1x Punisher, Angel of Death

Plot Twists:
4x Wild Ride
4x Mobilize
4x Rigged Explosives
4x Chain of Vengeance
4x Bring the Pain
3x Defensive Formation
2x Anguish of the Innocent

Equipment:

4x Brass Grill
3x Wheels of Vengeance

You want even initiatives because then you can choose who burns where on your primary turn, which is the sixth. However, this deck does just fine running on odds. Ghost Rider, Spirit of Vengeance needs the Wheels of Vengeance to really make the most of the turn in that situation but its all still doable.

BYOS Modern Thoughts

So, I just got a PM on TCGplayer about an upcoming tournament using MWS. The format is Team BYOS Modern in which one side has all Marvel decks, the other all DC, and then they duke it out with each user facing all of the players on the other team. The side with the most total victories at the end gets prizes (here being boosters from any of the current MA sets). If you are interested in playing, you can download MWS here and then all you gotta do is send Wiiman (the TO) a PM either there at TCGplayer or on the Realms.

Currently, I haven’t decided my team or my deck. There’s lots of goodness on both the DC and Marvel sides. On one hand, Marvel has my deadly Ghost Rider legend, Hulk Defenders, or Family of Four decks that can all be finetuned for some true goofiness.

DC, on the other hand, has my utterly annoying Team Superman “No” deck although it needs to be tweaked towards BYOS since its currently got a lot of non-DWF search in it. DC’s also got Secret Society, Injustice Gang handfill, and JLA.

I’m really waffling back and forth right now. I’d like to play something completely different than the average deck so I’m leaning towards Superman “No” or Ghost Rider but can’t decide which for the life of me. In fact, perhaps I’ll post both lists on this site in order to get my readers’ opinions… Yeah. I like that idea. All comment from any of you are much appreciated. Am I overlooking any particularly interesting decks for this format? I’m open to suggestions since I’m hoping to make this the first tournament I’ve completed online and want to make it fun.

The Great Vs. Resolution #15: Kree

Alright. Today’s post is going to be short and sweet for one simple reason. This is the Kree. Everyone knows what the Kree do. I would have liked to have gone with their “face-down” theme rather than their Press theme but I didn’t because Kree’s face-down-ers just don’t have enough support and Darkseid does it so much better. Instead, I just did your standard mono-Kree Press build. My thoughts after the deck list.

Power Kreep

Kree

Silver Age

Characters:
4x Sintariis - High Kronamaster

4x Dr. Minerva - Starforce
4x Lieutenant Kona Lor - Lunatic Legion

4x Mar-Vell <> Captain Marvel - Soldier of the Empire
4x Commander Dylon Cir - Lunatic Legion

4x Admiral Galen Kor - Lunatic Legion
3x Ultimus - Starforce

4x Shatterax - Starforce
1x Korath the Pursuer - Starforce

1x Supremor - Starforce

Plot Twists:
4x Live Kree . . . or Die!
4x The Lunatic Legion
4x Mobilize
2x Remnant Fleet
1x Strategic Retreat

Locations:
4x Penal Colony
4x Hala
4x Stargate

Two Sets Early, A Legend Is Built.

If by some chance you haven’t seen the announcement about Marvel Evolution, its right over here. Kinda bums me out that there won’t be a DC set but this set looks great. For the record, this set will NOT refeature the X-Men and Brotherhood affiliations but will instead be focusing on other mutant teams like the Marauders, X-Force, and X-Factor. That was my only worry about the set and the UDE crew on the Realms dispelled those fears.

The biggest news to me, though, is the announced legends. Cyclops is one of my favorites from childhood watching the X-Men cartoon every Saturday morning. I’m not a particular fan of him anymore but for nostalgia’s sake, I like seeing him as a legend. Deadpool is just cool any way you cut him and he could bring some incredibly quirky cards to the legend scene. Finally, Gambit! My favorite mutie is already getting legend treatment! If they make a card that you can throw at an opponent to do some sort of burn damage, I would be so incredibly pleased.

Anyways, in honor of the announcement, I decided to build a legend deck. However, Gambit and Deadpool only have 2 cards each in Silver Age. That forced me to go with option C. Mr. “I shoot laser beams from my eyes” himself.

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, RUBY! [/guitarhero]

X-Men, Cyclops Legend

Silver Age

Characters:
4x  Lockheed-Saurian Sidekick

4x  Dazzler-Rock Star

4x  Cyclops-Optic Blast
4x  Cyclops, Age of Apocalypse

4x  Bishop-XSE Commando
2x  Havok-Critical Mass

3x  Cyclops-Blue Leader
1x  Cyclops, Fearless Leader

3x  Iceman-Deep Freeze

1x  Rogue-Anna Marie

Plot Twists
4x  Mobilize
4x  Magnetic Force
4x  The Evil Eye
4x  Feel The Burn
4x  Chill Out!
4x  Turnabout
3x  Children of the Atom
3x  Heroes of Two Worlds

Basically you just want to curve out and burn with the power of Cyc and the energy cards (also cool, Dazzler still being around on turn 5 and team attacking with two guys adjacent to Blue Leader Cyclops for 7 burn). Magnetic Force and The Evil Eye are useful off-initiative when you can exhaust a defender. Chill Out! is an incredible card (unless you’re facing a team of all-hidden characters *shakes fist at Marvel Knights*) and Feel The Burn is a great attack pump that gives you free burn.

The only real weakness of this deck is it requires you to run the Loyalty-Reveal HoA Cyclops. Basically you have to look at him as a legend +1/+1 combat pump for Cyc. The only way you could possibly play him is if you had two in your hand and you’d still be better off with the other 3-drop Summers. Whenever I play Heroes of Two Worlds, its the HoA Cyc that always gets removed.

Gosh, I really can’t wait for Marvel Evolution now. So many great legends already announced. Can’t wait.

Doctor Who: The Remaining Companions (and dog)

It’s that time again when all my British readers and a couple American ones get their Time/Space on as I post another batch of Doctor Who cards.

This week I’m dropping the remaining characters that fit the Doctor’s Companion version theme, a little dog that I just had to preview with his master, and the first card of the set to specifically reference the Companions. Now, Alonsy!

Sarah Jane Smith is currently the only companion from the older Doctor Who serials to make it onto the new series. She primarily interacts with the Tenth Doctor in this series so I made her fit into his theme of removing the cards rather than KOing the removed ones like the Ninth Doctor. She has decent stats and her effect helps fix your draws while you never have to worry about that card later becoming useful since you can just use the Tenth Doctor to return it to your hand. She also has a boost effect that gives her a +1/+1 counter but who’s primary purpose is to let you play the following card.

Puzzle Pieces #1: Not the Sonic Gun! Anything but that!

In an attempt to get content onto this site for the day without kicking my younger brother off the only computer in the house with my Kree decklist on it, I’m going to go ahead and start a new semi-regular column. Hopefully this one sticks around longer than Game of the Galaxy (which I’ll get back to eventually).

Puzzle Pieces is all about putting together a bunch of random cards in order to do something fun and/or stupid. It’s all about random jankiness and all that other cool stuff.

So, we’re going to start out Puzzle Pieces with what is probably my absolute favorite jank combo. I would call it “Growing Man” but there’s already a character named that so it’d be confusing. Instead I shall call it “Weight of the World Crushing Your Head”. I love it in ways that are difficult to comprehend. This puzzle has 4 major cards that go into it and I’ll be listing them starting… now.

Josten is the central component to this combo (and the reason this combo and article have their respective names). He gets pretty big just by himself, going from 2/2 to 3/3 to 4/4 to 6/6 on and on. None of the other Thunderbolts characters I can think of have +1/+ counters as a power> However, there is an on-team way to speed Atlas’s growth.

The Great Vs. Resolution #14: Kre— Secret Six? WTF?

I swear, I wanted to write an article about a Silver Age Marvel deck. Really, I did. But, you see, I sorta got distracted and went on a deckbuilding frenzy and built this one incredibly fun deck that I started playing instead of my Kree deck and I really wasn’t enjoying the Kree much since they were way too powerful and…

Anyways, I’m going to open this article by running through the Vs. Resolution rules. Why? Well, for one thing there might be new readers who haven’t been around since my last rundown which was WAY back during my Future Foes article two months ago. Second, because its gonna be important to this article.

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.”

Why is that important? Simple. For the intents of this article, the guidelines look more like this…

“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.”

That’s right! Rules be damned! Secret Six are too good for some silly rules. The deck is still primarily Secret Six but in order for this deck to run, it needs another affiliation that is from the Marvel universe. Normally I wouldn’t bend the rules like this but, come on, how can’t you make concessions for these guys and their sweet alternate win condition?

Doctor Who: Rose Tyler

Bah! I know I promised a Vs. Resolution post today but I tweaked the deck for this week so that’ll be delayed by a day or three. Instead, I’ll be posting this Doctor Who expansion post that should’ve been up last week but due to WordPress’s dashboard change, I saved it as a draft instead of posting it. Still just as good, though.

For the record, I haven’t worked on many cards for this lately. Seems like I might be running out of steam. However, I do have the TARDIS Crew 95% done so at the very least I can post all of those.

Rose Tyler is the Doctor’s first companion in the new series. She’s featured in both Seasons One and Two before leaving the show. She also leaves behind a big old wound on the Doctor’s heart.

See, The Doctor is always traveling around with a female companion of some sorts in order to keep himself from getting lonely. At least, that’s the in-universe reason. The real reason would be because the show needs more than a single constant character and you might as well make that character female.

Anyways, Rose Tyler has two incarnations in this set along with a support card or two. First, we’ll get the party started with an early version of Rose.

Sadly, it seem WordPress has eaten my text. Still mostly readable, though, so I won’t babble it in here. First, you’ll notice Rose is a support character. This is the nature of most non-Doctor characters in the set. They mostly exist to just help out our favorite Time Lord. Rose has two powers, one is a free card draw in exchange for KOing a removed card. This is in the same vein as the Ninth Doctor’s abilities so it fits thematically since this is from when Rose first met the Eccleston version of The Doctor. Her other power is tied into her flavor text. If you have The Doctor inplay, you can make Rose run away in exchange for a Puppet Master style exhaust.

Now, how do you make sure you hit Rose on turn 2? Easy. You bring her mum.