The Great Vs. Resolution Reborn #23: Skrulls and Doom

This is a first for my Vs. Resolution: Two decks in one article. Why? Because we have another first for the Vs. Resolution: Two decks that are absolutely horrible. Yup, it’s true. The Skrulls and Dr. Doom have more in common than just being featured in the Heralds of Galactus set. They’re also nigh impossible to play when fit into the terms of The Great Vs. Resolution.

Due to this simple fact, I’m putting both of these affiliation together into a single article. This way I don’t have to spend as much time rambling about two bad decks. Plus it’s a cheap way to make absolutely certain that I get my two affiliations in for the week which is always a good thing.

We’ll start with the Skrulls. They’re at their absolute best in a deck combined with the Inhumans and Franklin Richards who will then be able to move the Skrull characters into the hidden area. The question is whether the Skrulls can Embrace Change and try and win matches on their own. (Heh, I make a comic reference)

Random Thoughts: Anti-Matter Syndicate

I’m probably treading old ground with these thoughts but I really don’t mind. It gives me something to think about while procrastinating on my college work.

A recent post over on VSRealms recently sparked a thought in my head.  What would be the best way to abuse Sinister Syndicate’s Jackal? Further more, what would be the best way to further abuse him with Fisk Towers? The first thing I thought was what team has a particularly powerful 3-drop as well as a powerful 1-drop and that was when I remembered these guys…

So, basically the idea of this deck is simple, play standard SinSyn/Anti-Green Lantern swarm on the beginning turns while hoping to get odd initiatives. On turn 4, you drop Jackal. Now, hopefully you’ve got yourself some defensive pumps (Cover Fire + Acro Dodge FTW?). Have Jackal survive into recovery and then activate him to drop in a free Xallarap. Turn 5 you play MTU Carnage with Boost, get a free Anti-Green Lantern, recruit an AGL, KO a resource for a Spider-Hunt. Presuming you enter turn 5 with Jackal and a single AGL, you end up with three 8/4s, two 13/9s, and a 10/6 for a total of 60 points of attack. Methinks that’s enough to win games. If not, throw in some Alien Symbiotes and Sinestro Rings for more pumpy goodness.

I haven’t gotten around to actually building this deck since I literally came up with it twenty minutes ago while coming up with something to do that wasn’t school related. However, it seems to have some amount of potential. I may never actually build this but it was certainly a fun thought exercise.

And now I need to hit the books…

Where You Least Expect It: Experimental LiveBlog

Once upon a time there was a young blogger who had just gotten out from dinner at Applebee’s. He and his mother went to Target to pick up some cayenne pepper. Sadly, they did not find any. While walking out, something caught the corner of his eye: A green foil wrapper with an image of Spider-Man pulling his mask down. Doing a double-take, the blogger turned around and walked back into the card section of the store. Laying in the “$1 Packs” box was a booster of Vs. System’s Web of Spider-Man set. A quick dig revealed another MSM pack as well as a single pack of Marvel Origins. A quick conversation with his mom (he hadn’t brought his wallet…) and he was able to get all three packs, the mother being awesome enough to break a $20 for $3 in cards. With a skip in his step, the blogger returned home.

I just love it when a blog topic throws itself at me. I was honestly incredibly surprised to find these three boosters at my local store. These things haven’t been in stores for over three years! When I first saw Spidey, I figured it was a Marvel Masterpieces booster seeing as how they have Savage Beatdown and the MMK Spider-Man as two of their pack styles. However, the green forced me to check again.

So, I’m using this little find as an excuse to try something new. I am going to open up each pack and blog out its contents on here. I’ll start with the Green Goblin pack, followed by Spidey, followed by Origins. Each time I open a pack, I’ll take a pic and edit it into this post. Sure, it really isn’t THAT exciting but who here has walked into a supermarket and walked out with Vs. recently? Exactly.

With that, to Goblin!

The Great Vs. Resolution Reborn #22: Manhunters

That’s it. I’m back on the wagon with a single goal: Complete my Resolution. There will likely be no jank decks posted on here while I’m shooting for this goal. I’ll be putting up roughly two articles a week which will get me done with the Resolution in the year required by the skin of my teeth.

There will also be a very small change to the rules of Resolution and that is that playtesting is no longer a requirement. There are certain decks you can look at and just go “Yeah, that’s how that one works”. That’ll also lighten my workload quite a bit since I can just build established decks and post my thoughts. Yes, it’s cheap but it’ll help me get this done.

Just as a reminder, here’s the list of decks I need to build by the end of the year:

The Great Vs. Resolution To-Do List

Marvel (18):
X-Men
Brotherhood
Doom
Sentinels
Skrull
Negative Zone
Spider-Friends
Marvel Knights
Crime Lords
Underworld
X-Statix
Avengers
Masters of Evil
Kang Council
Thunderbolts
Heralds of Galactus
SHIELD
Warbound

DC (13):
Darkseid’s Elite
Green Lantern
Manhunters
Justice League of America
Justice League International
Injustice Gang
Secret Society
JSA
Shadowpact
Villains United
Checkmate
Legionnaires
Birds of Prey

Total Decks Remaining: 31

Total Weeks Remaining:16

A few of those decks I’m going to purposefully avoid building for a short time, specifically X-Men and Brotherhood since MEV comes out soon and I want to see what support they get. However, pretty much everything else is fair game. Oh, and speaking of MEV, they don’t count for this Resolution because they’re entering the year so late. Yes, I know. It’s cheap. But I need to hedge my bets. If I turn out to have time to build them, I will. If not, then we’re sticking with the above list.

For those who need a refresher on the rules of the Resolution…

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.”

Off the top of my head, I know a few decks that will likely break those rules a bit but that’s not to big of a deal. Again, I want to get this done. I’m putting on blinders and just running forwards. Hopefully I’ll hit Juggernaut levels of speed and become unstoppable *fingers crossed*.

Enough babbling about that. It’s time to actually do this thing. This week’s deck is based around the Manhunters. I don’t know much about the Manhunters other than they were the “space police” previous to the Green Lanterns, went rogue, have a tendency to have sleeper agents, appear to have Borg-ish tendencies, and like to overwhelm the opponent with tons of robots. With that knowledge, here is my take on the Manhunters.

Amanda Waller, The Herald’s Herald of Heralding Heraldry

blahblahWelcomeBackblahblahTryingAgainblahblahResolutionInHiatusblahblahNewBannerblahblahRebornblahblah

I believe that’s all of that out of the way. The reason for the return THIS time around is incredibly simple. Once upon a time I decided I’d be going to college. I needed a laptop. I recently got said laptop. I installed MWS on it and then realized I had no decks. The options were then a fun duo: Do I zip up a folder of all the decks on my desktop and e-mail it to myself (or put it on a flash drive and run up and down stairs moving them) or do I just build new decks?

For someone such as myself, the choice was clear. It was new deckbuilding time. And it seems to me, at least, that my little hiatus has brought out that janky side of me again. For awhile I was getting *shudder* competitive. Instead, I’m now building team-up decks that run only 8 of one group of chars, Insanity, and, the deck concept featured in this post, making a simple stall deck needlessly complicated.

It all started with two simple, unrelated at the time questions that molded together: How can I abuse Amanda Waller and how can I play the 11-drop Silver Surfer? The answer after the break.

Spider-Girl, Spider-Girl, Does something that no one else does…

I have a new pet card and it is Spider-Girl. Sadly, I haven’t quite figured out a good way to build a deck around her power. Honestly, I’m surprised this card hasn’t seen more play since her effect is dang good.

At first glance, she seems to simply be Only Human on a stick. That’s an incredibly powerful effect in and of itself. Put Underground Movement in your deck to send her hidden and you can kick back while negating the biggest effect an opponent has each turn. Combine it with the 5-drop Spider-Man, Secret Avenger and you can take out two of them for the cost of 3 endurance and a character card. Good stuff.

That’s not the fun part, though. There’s something very important that is missing in Spider-Girl’s wording that IS present on Only Human or Spidey and that is the word “opposing”. That’s right. Spider-Man’s daughter can Only Human your own characters!

“But Kaleesh,” You ask with a confused look, “Why in the world would I want to strip my own character’s of their powers? That’s hardly a good thing.”

Oh really? Here’s a quick look at some of my favorite Silver Age characters that are better without text boxes:

A Clash of Worlds: A Barely Legible Match Report

Once upon a time I was on MWS. I waited for a game and just as I was about to give up, a player appeared. When the room opened, he asked if SA would work. “Of course,” I said. I’d been hoping for him to say Silver Age since I’d just gotten done building a new Silver Age jank deck that went something like this…

This isn’t justice…

Silver Age/Legend

Marvel Knights/Punisher

Characters:
4x Dagger, Lightbringer

4x Punisher, Suicide Run

4x Punisher, Secret Avenger
3x Echo, Masterless Samurai

4x Punisher, Guns Blazing
1x Elektra, Masterless Assassin

2x Punisher, Captain America
1x Captain America, Loyal Patriot

2x Dr. Strange – Illuminati

1x Punisher, Angel of Death

Plot Twists:
4x Mobilize
4x Wild Ride
4x A Clash Of Worlds
3x Carrying The Torch
3x Defensive Formation
2x Sniper Shot

Locations:
3x New Baxter Building

Equipment:
4x Desert Eagle
4x M60s
3x Mind Gem – Infinity Gem

As you can see, the basic idea is simply to clone Punisher. Why? Because I felt like it.

Now, what sort of deck do you think good ol’ Punisher encountered? I’ll let the match report fill you in.

Arkham Non-Adjacent Customs

I’ve actually had the follow five cards sitting on my computer for awhile now but never bothered posting them. Since I’m still in the playtesting phase for the various decks I’m considering putting on here, I figured I might as well post these cards as a sort of “I’m still here” to show that I’m not abandoning the return two days after announcing it.

The Arkham Inmates’ currently have two strong themes: Insanity and Non-Adjacent. Insanity is something I still haven’t gotten around to building but non-adjacent Arkham has always been a favorite concept of mine. The original version using only cards from DWF was… rough. Then Hush, Silent And Deadly came around and made the deck incredibly feasible. However, it’s still got some weak spots in the curve. Particularly, spots five and six where the current options are a bland 10/10 on 5 and… absolutely nothing on 6. These customs are meant to fix those things by building off of the 4-drop Hush. See if you can spot the theme of the cards. It shouldn’t be hard.

I’m back… I’m back in the saddle again.

“Ridin’ hiiiiiiiiiiiigh.”

Sorry. Been playing Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.

Anyways, that’s right. KaleeshWarrior is back! And the crowd goes mild! *crickets chirp*

What is the status of the Doctor Who set? I dunno. What is the status of the Vs. Resolution? Honestly, I don’t know. Will this attempted resurgence stick or will I fall back into obscurity? Once again, I can’t say I’m certain this means a full return. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.

So, what’s on the menu if I’m currently unsure of the Resolution’s status? A return to old form where I just build the decks I feel like. For example, the deck that brought me back onto MWS is a Silver Age BYOT Underworld Thanos Legend deck. What possessed me to build such a thing? I was walking at our local 4-H fair and for some strange reason, I remembered the Gift For Death MUN card and decided I was going to build a deck with it. I have no idea why that thought struck me but it did. After that, things snowballed. I’ve built a BYOTGK Batman Super-Mega Legend deck where Bats is the main drop for every turn from 3 until 8. I’ve also revived my old Avengers Rally deck and am going to be toying with that.

In other interesting news, a card store actually opened near me! I got so excited when I found that out. I made a visit only to find it closed but a peek through the window revealed comic books galore. Certainly a lock for Versus, right? *buzzer* I went back when it was open to find the place swamped with Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh singles/boxes but no Versus in sight. Sadly, I didn’t think to ask at the time if they didn’t perhaps have some stashed away somewhere. Oh well. Good news is I’m likely to go back since they hold Guitar Hero tournaments every week and I’m likely going to attend at least one so I can ask then. Gotta hold out hope.

Finally, in some totally off-topic news, if you have a Facebook account with the Pieces of Flair application, I compel you to search “Punisher” and “Gambit”. Tell me if you recognize some of the art on the top hits for the searches. If only I could figure out some way to make it clear those images are from a card game…

Anyways, that’s all for now in this random update. I gotta go build me some MUN-only decks for the upcoming MWS tournament. Wish me luck on this blog revival .

Hiatus

Hey ya’ll. Just figured it was time I threw something up here. As you can see, it’s been over two weeks since my last post. I guess I should probably drop an update bomb.

Basically, out of nowhere, I lost interest in MWS. I still play Vs. with my brothers (thanks for the new card, gday!) but I haven’t played online in about as long as I haven’t updated here. It just isn’t appealing to me right now. As such, my Resolution and original deck ideas have subsided as well. I dunno what’s gonna happen with this site. Hopefully I get bitten by the bug again and make a big ol’ return. As of right now, however, it looks like it’ll be awhile before any new updates. Sorry guys. Just not feeling it .

Thanks,

Alex/KaleeshWarrior/Grievous