The Great Vs. Resolution: The Fantastic Four

Welcome back to Vs Resolution, the blog series in which I try to build and play a mono-deck for all 57 affiliations in Vs. System by the end of the year. If you need a quick refresher on the rules:

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.

Today, I will be discussing my Fantastic Four Modern Age deck.

There are many routes one can go down with Marvel’s First Family. However, the rules of this challenge helps to limit these options. I can’t go back and do Fantastic Fun since the deck must be Modern Age since that’s the most recent format that Fantastic Four has been featured in. Human Torch abuse won’t work since that requires off-team cards like Punisher or Random.

Fortunately, I had already decided to build a different deck when this affiliation came to mind. An unwritten rule of this Vs. Resolution is that a deck should be as thematic as possible. What could be more thematic for the Fantastic Four than a Family of Four deck? I personally can’t think of any. So, that is the deck I built.

The Fantastic Four

Family of Four

Modern Age

Characters:

1-Drops:

4x Uatu the Watcher, He Who Watches

2-Drops:

4x Human Torch, Matchstick

3-Drops:

4x Invisible Woman, First Lady of the Fantastic Four

3x Thing, Idol o’ Millions

4-Drops:

4x Mr. Fantastic, Flexible Thinker

2x Luke Cage, Paid in Full

5-Drops:

4x Thing, Heavy Hitter

6-Drops:

3x Human Torch, Flame On!

7-Drops:

1x Invisible Woman, Shield of the Four

1x Thing, The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing

8-Drops:

1x Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd

Plot Twists:

4x Force Field Projection

4x Signal Flare

4x It’s Clobberin’ Time

4x Family of Four

2x Mobilize

2x Firewall

2x Stretch Out

2x Clobberin’ Pine

1x Torch and Thing

1x Reed and Sue

Locations:

3x Four Freedoms Plaza

Preferred initiative is odd so you can double up with Surfer. Mulligan condition is Invisible Woman or a way to grab her. Basically, you want to curve on the primary Fantastic Four drops all the way up to turn 7 where you face a choice. If you’re playing a curve opponent, you play Invisible Woman. If you’re playing swarm, you play Thing. Turn 8 you play Surfer who should give you the game. Just for the record, on some turns it is actually better to underdrop to complete your Fantastic Four. One of my preferred turn 6 plays if I missed Mr. Fantastic is a copy of the 2-drop Torch and then the 4-drop Fantastic if I have him. This completes the Four (Invisible Woman should be safe and hidden, Thing was your 5-drop) and gives you access to great search abilities which I find more useful than 6-drop Torch.

This deck is similar to an infamous one by CarlosTheDwarf of Vs. System’s homepage. It’s all about getting out all the members of the Fantastic Four in order to abuse great cards like Four Freedoms and Family of Four. I like to think mine is different enough to stand out, though. I pack about 8 more characters than Carlos’s build (I hate missing my drops so I’m a bit strict about always including enough characters, even with search) and I also included a little bit from every single Fantastic Four members’ array of plot twists. This was purely for theme but they also have their uses.

Thing has Clobberin’ Pine. I haven’t been able to use the card to a massive amount of effect yet but I can see situations where it would. Say that someone is swinging their 5-drop into your 2-drop Human Torch that is still on the field, hoping to get big breakthrough and then team attack your Heavy Hitter. You play Clobberin’ Pine and all of a sudden they better hope they have pumps and you don’t have Family of Four. Plus, the card’s punny name is too hilarious to keep away from.

Mr. Fantastic is packing Stretch Out. I’ve found this card to actually be very useful. 13 defense on turn 4 is insane and most decks can’t make up the ground. Even turn Critical Thinker into a 9/5 on turn 4 is useful if you have initiative.

Human Torch’s Firewall is basic but very helpful. Lets you swing about on spot up the curve which is very nice. If you draw and play both then you are definitely sitting pretty with a blanket -4 defense on your opponent.

Force Field Projection. There is a reason that it is the only character-stamped card I’m packing four of. It is perhaps the absolute nastiest card in the deck next to a maxed out Family of Four and Four Freedoms Plaza. Completely negating an opponent’s attack is just sick and wrong. I personally hate the card just because it has been used so often against me and I know the feeling of pain it causes to see an opponent drop it. When I use it, it makes the opponent squirm and say “lame”. It is often the primary reason I can win with this deck. The card is just sick and wrong.

I guess I should talk about Reed and Sue/Thing and Torch as well. They’re just in there because I had two open spots and wanted to stay thematic. They aren’t very useful cards but the flavor is worth it. Plus, Reed and Sue saved my bacon in one game by stopping breakthrough by an attack on Luke Cage. Would’ve died if I hadn’t drawn it. Both are only moderately useful but I like the theme.

I have played with this deck about three times on MWS. I believe I won twice and lost once. I know one loss was to a very nice JLA/Team Superman deck and I believe I squeaked out a victory against IG Concealed but I can’t quite remember if I won that or just almost won it. The deck is absolutely beautiful if you can get all the Fantastic Four out on turn 5 like it is designed to do. The deck is the Fantastic Four in its purest form, it’s surprisingly solid considering it is a theme deck, and the deck is just plain fun to play. It is a strong and easy to play deck full of flavor. I now understand why it is one of CarlosTheDwarf’s favorite decks.

I’ve decided to add another piece of fun to this whole bit. I’m now going to rate the Vs. affiliations I play. These will be purely arbitary numbers but these are just my thoughts at things like how well these affiliations play and how much fun I find the teams’ themes. I’ll also be putting all the affiliations against each other in a “leaderboard” of which affiliations I like most and which I like the least. Scales are one to ten.

Fantastic Four (Modern) Ratings

Deck Strength: 7 (Nice and powerful when it runs, falters when it doesn’t, all it takes is a few KO effects and your entire game plan dies)

Deck Theme: 10 (What could be more thematic for the F4 than having all four on the board at once?)

Ease of Use: 9 (Anyone could run this deck and that makes it nice. You don’t need to know its ins and outs other than “Play the Fantastic Four primary members”)

Fun Factor: 9 (There is little cooler than getting out all of the Fantastic Four and wiping out the opponent with them)

Overall: 8.5 (I really like the Modern Fantastic Four, they’re fun, thematic, and simple to use.)

Vs. System Affiliation Leaderboard:

1. Fantastic Four

And with this article finished, it is time to prepare for the next one. I’ll be going back in time to a set that brought to life one of the most broken cards in Vs. System. In fact, the deck will be based on the affiliation of that character. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to who that is? Find out next time on The Great Vs. Resolution.