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.
Initiatives don’t really matter. I’m personally a bit more of an “odds” type of guy but anything really works. Mulligan condition is… well… anything. Preferably a 1-drop or 2-drop from each team plus a team-up but the deck doesn’t really require any key pieces due to the power of Birthing Chamber, Booze, and Recruiting.

Now, normally, I break decks down with turn-by-turn drops. This deck doesn’t work that way. Instead, I’m just going to point out the various bits of synergy in the deck.

Squirrel Girl + Owen Mercer:

Redundancy is grand in this case. With both of these characters on the board, an opponent has to make two attacks in order to ensure they don’t bounce a burning SHIELD Agents. What’s even better is if you can force them to hit Squirrel Girl first then she bounces back and can do the double recruit again next turn. It’s truly a beautiful play.

Squirrel Girl with Free Agent + Life Model Decoy + Kimiyo Hoshi

That right there on turn 4 says “If I have even one character still left from last round, I get to freebie stun your 4-drop”. You can’t tell me that isn’t good.

Speedball + SHIELD Agents + Bounce Effects

This guy right here wins games. Imagine for just a moment that it’s turn 5. You’ve just set your resource. You have Penance in play and a SHIELD Agent. You use Penance to burn for 3. Use Booze Elementals to return to hand. Play Squirrel Girl with an Army char to bring total burn to 5. Sub in Penance for Army char and burn up to 8. Flip SHIELD Helicarrier and a SHIELD Agent, Penance, and Squirrel Girl to hand. Recruit Squirrel with Army again for 10 burn, sub in Penance for 3 more to hit 13. Use Recruiting Drive to bounce Penance and search for… Wylde and Owen Mercer. Recruit both, sub in Penance for Squirrel Girl and burn up to 16.

That’s a third of an opponent’s life in one turn and I’ve done EVEN MORE DAMAGE. I believe my highest was 21 or so. Penance + SHIELD Agents is crazy good and you can technically do it just with SHIELD. However, SHIELD doesn’t have the amazing hand manipulation bounce cards that the Outsiders have. Because of this, the team-up really gets things cooking.

In conclusion, this could be my best jank deck yet. I first thought of the idea after playing with a straight Outsiders team attack build (better than it sounds) and put it together. It could use some tweaking (I think I could get away with pitching the Batman and Outsiders plots for more bounce/burn) but it seems to run quite well. I almost beat TheDerangedBear’s Spider-Friends/Illuminati build with it but I ran out of gas on turn 6 when he pummeled me with Human Torch. He was down to 6 endurance at that point. Just one SHIELD Agent + Penance would have won the game.

Could the deck be more teched out with stuff like Death of the Dream? Yes. Could it use work? Yes. Should you go try it out when you next get the chance? In my opinion, yes. This really is a fun deck that no one seems to be playing right now despite it’s potential.

On an unrelated note, I got another preview! Woo! And this next set looks incredible. Runaways, Space Pirates, and I believe I at least like every single Legend that’s listed (in order of my liking: Gambit, Deadpool, Cyclops, Cable, Mr. Sinister, Multiple Man, Mystique).  This set feels like it’s going to be absolutely incredible and I can’t wait for the preview seasons to officially start. Keep an eye on the blogosphere because it’s about to go crazy once again.