So on friday we are having an Insanity Tournement, but we are turning the insanity keyword off, meaning that you could play Certifiable, but it wont do anything.

So I had my heart set on my beloved Doom/Inhumans that was wrecking house. Seriously, free stunning/bouncing/exhausting. It had lots of neat little tricks in it that I was loving, like Doom double time theifing and maybe a third with Siphon energy, which against insanity, is fun.

Talia bringing in a Crime doctor, Comissioner Gordon, Doctor sun and Boris. Boris is the Funnest though, because I have a LOT of random tech cards, because well I can get them with Boris and Attilan.

But we had a MASSIVe 19 1/2 gaming marathon on sunday night. Ha! Gaming, just VS to be perfetcly honest. If you have been reading my blog before, you will know about my horrendous luck whenever I play anywhere I get shite draws, and all sunday night, it was crapping out on me. Like I would draw Blackbolt(8), Sub Mariner(7) Invisible Woman(7) and Omnipotence, which is an incredibly fast mulligan. Then I would draw Pathetic Attempt, Siphon Energy, Doomstadt and Latveria. It was like this all night, and as much as I would like to think that I was getting all of my bad luck out of the way, I just don’t trust myself.

So, I set about making a deck, but I don’t want to spoil my secret so I will wait until saturday before revealing it.

So, over the past fortnight we recruited a new player. So, since he has a very limited amount of cards, I set about making him a deck. A simple curve X-Men deck is what we created. Nothing too complicating as to screw him with some complicating rules and plays, just a lot of aggro, defence and recovery.

It has been playing the nuts. I mean it is working like nobodies business, and he enjoys it. Which is the main thing right? It works similar to his X-Men deck, which happens to be Modern punks and is good.

Then, we built my cousin RD52169 an insanity deck. It is a concealed beats deck of no particular team. he enjoys it and it annoys me. To say it is a concealed beats deck my deck has about a 50-50 chance against it after about 7-8 games.

Well, I have to give you my list now dont I?

1. Aunt May, Golden Oldie
2. Black Cat, Master Theif
3. Black Cat, Nine Lives
4. Blade, Nightstalker
5. Dusk, Cassie St. Commons
6. Hornet, Eddie McDonough
7. Jessica Drew <> Spider-Woman, Venom Blast
8. Shanna the She-Devil, Shanna O’Hara Plunder
9. Dagger, Tandy Bowen
10. Darkhawk, Chris Powell
11. Luke Cage, Neighborhood Watch
12. Mattie Franklin, Reserve Webhead
13. Ricochet, Johnny Gallo
14. Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
15. Toxin, Patrick Mulligan
16. Black Cat, Felicia Hardy
17. Puma, Thomas Fireheart
18. Spider-Man, Peter Parker
19. Spider-Man, The Amazing Bag-Man
20. Spider-Man, The Sensational Spider-Man
21. Spider-Man, Zombie
22. Daredevil, The Man Without Fear
23. Michael Collins <> Deathlok, Schizophrenic Cyborg
24. Phil Ulrich <> Green Goblin, Lunatic Laugh
25. Venom, Lethal Protector
26. White Tiger, Hector Ayala
27. Daredevil, New Kingpin
28. Man-Thing, Theodore Sallis
29. Scarlet Spider, Ben Reilly
30. Wolverine, Canucklehead
31. Spider-Man, Stark’s Protege
32. Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man
33. AN 8 DROP
34. Ego Gem, Infinity Gem * Unique
35. Mind Gem, Infinity Gem * Unique
36. Unstable Molecules
37. Avalon Space Station
38. Daily Bugle
39. Slaughter Swamp
40. Soul World
41. Acrobatic Dodge
42. Against All Odds
43. Alley - Oop!
44. Burn Rubber
45. Call in a Favour
46. Crowd Control
47. Girft Wrapped
48. Hero’s Best Friend
49. Heroes of Two Worlds
50. Indebted
51. Mobilize
52. Shape Change
53. Shrink
54. Siphon Energy
55. Spider Senses
56. Spider-Signal
57. Sticky Situation
58. Tragic Loss
59. Trail by Sword
60. Twist of Fate

So, this is my list, and so far I am finding that Mattie franklin, is the NUTS. If I can draw into a Daily Bugle, she is simply amazing.

So, I have one spare slot. An 8 drop, now of course, the cosmic Spider-Man would be my best bet, but the problem is…I don’t own, nor have access to any. So at the moment I am running Hyperion, and am ditching my cards before he hit play to the Amazing Spider-Man. I want something that has a greater level of oomf, but I am not sure what as of yet.

So, Rob has just decided that he wants to back out of the tournement and just write a report. I like, no I love reports but that is just a weenie ass idea. Therefore tonight I get to work on a JLA deck and as many others I can sent his way.

Urgh, all night. All night making VS decks on the realms with a beer in my hand? Can you think of anything worse, I mean Eliza Dushku may as well walk in…i’m in for one hell of a rough night.

So, looking through some cards, I noticed that 4 is the cost of auto KOing/Bouncing characters.

Hush, Silent and Deadly
Divinity, Vampiric General
Punisher, Guns Blazing
Morg, Corrupt Destroyer
Silver Sable, World’s Deadliest Mercenary

Hush, Silent and Deadly

Of Course, this guy is hella easy to set up. All you have to do is go with the Non-Adjacent theme of arkham, and combine it with the exhaustion theme they had way back when, and you have yourself a lean mean KOing machine. Of course, this guy is a pain. I don’t play golden age, so this guy is kind of lame with the exhaustion theme that they had. So unless I was to go punks/legend/insanity, this guy is dead to me in silver. I know there are some reasonable team-up options for him in silver, Underworld, Hellfire Club but they just don’t interest me at all.

Divinity, Vampiric General

This chick is fantastic. An oversized 4 cost character that Auto-KOes? Sweet. Sadly, there is a but with her as she has to KO resources or characters to keep here around. So, should I choose to go with resources what are my options. I can stay with Doom, and just try to go nuts with 4 or less resources. I can go with Brotherhood and try to use the Next Brotherhood and Magneto to go nuts with the KOing of the characters. The Sinister Syndicate could also use her to their advantage with small amount of resources.

If I was to go with KOing characters, I could go with Secret Society, as they have numerous ways to get free characters, namely Deadshot and Ivy. Or, I could stick with Doom. Ultron will help me to fuel my KOing to the end of the game.

Punisher, Guns Blazing

I love this guy, but to be perfectly honest he is massively overplayed, and it annoys me to see how much he is played. So, I am going to give this guy a miss.

Morg, Corrupt Destroyer

Morg, isn’t actually as difficult to set up as I thought it would be. Between Silver Surfer/Pacification, getting the cosmic counters isn’t going to be that difficult. Kindred spirits/Mobilize will sort your curve out, and since he is a 9/5 you dont have to worry about him not being able to stun your opponents characters. The only problem is, is that he is susceptible to being stunned by smaller characters, and to be perfectly honest, my cousing plays Heralds almost as much as I play inhumans and I am a little bored with them

Silver Sable, World’s Deadliest Mercenary

My girl. I LOVE this chick. When I pulled my first Silver Sablinova foil I fell in love with her. When I found out she would be in MTU, I got all excited, and with good reason. She has team-up options with any team that has enough low costing characters, or with characters that search for a team-up. Just about every team can be used for her, but some more than others. Injustice Gang are an awesome team-up, because they love to have cards in their opponents hand for mass pumps and burn, and they also have a slew of low costing characters available to them. Underworld have got recovery effects, low costing characters and most importantly a hidden board.

So, after looking at these, the most interesting one is Divinity for me.

Divinity has plenty of ways to be built, but I think this is the way it will work the best.

Divinity.dec Lordoflimbo Edition

Characters - 26
4x Black Cat, Nine Lives
4x Dr. Sivana, Mad Scientist
4x Dr. Doom, Richards’s Rival
3x Dr. Psycho, Demented Dwarf
4x Divinity, Vampiric General
4x Ultron Ultron 11, Army
2x Deathstroke the Terminator, Killing Machine
1x Gorilla Grodd, Psionic Simian

Plot Twists - 17
4x Forbidden Loyatlies, Team-Up
4x Truth and Justice, Team Up
4x Forced Conscription
4x Master Plan
1x Cannibal Tech

Locations - 7
4x Dr. Fates Tower
2x New Baxter Building
1x Gorilla City

Equipments - 10
2x Mind Gem
4x Helm of Nabu
2x Cloak of Nabu
2x Amulet of Nabu

This doesn’t feck around. Fate up divinity so she can go on a rampant killing spree. Using Secret society to help fill the KO’ed pile.

I am a little unsure as to whether to go with all Dr. Fates Towers or whether to use some Jaime Reyes, because he can get me the cards I need, because Dr. Fate’s Tower will only get me one equipment, but to be perfectly honest Sivana/Black Cat is usually enough to get me through the deck to get my cards.

You really want to team up early, but I wouldnt mulligan for one since both of the 2 drops in the deck help to get you through the deck to the team-ups, even Doom can get you your team-up.

You may have noticed that there is a single copy of Cannibal tech, this is not to fill the extra slot. This is because I have played the deck and had a team-up and Master Plan, and had nothing I really wanted to search for, so I figured that fetching a cannibal tech is the best option.

Even though this deck has no character search, it does have a lot of digging in the form of the 2 drops, all the equipments and Forced Conscription. You may be asking yourself? Why no Call In a Favour? Why no Straight to the Grave? Well.

Silver age Random Punks.

Well there you go, SA Punks Divinity.dec Lordoflimbo Edition.

For discussion, you can go here.

So, these were supposed to be going up over the past few weeks, but sadly I was foiled by the Save and Publish buttons so I am condensing them into one large post.

So I got back on sunday and within 48 hours had had two MAJOR VS sessions including one new recruit. Good times.

So in a fortnight we have a Golden Age Insanity tournement, but the Insanity keyword is being switched off. Banned list DOES NOT APPLY.

So I am a little stuck for ideas as to what to build. So far I have:

Doom/Inhumans Haywire, Suicidal Lover Lockjaw, Inhumans Best Friend Amadeus Arkham, Insance Architect Alpha Primitives, Army Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom Doctor Sun, Creator of Project: Mind Crime Doctor, Bradford Thorne San,The Alienated One Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose Black Cat, Nine Lives Rama-Tut, Pharaoh from the 30th Century The Joker, Out of His Mind Crystal, Elementelle Dr. Doom, Richards Rival Technarx, Cyborg General Iron Man, Illuminati Pacifier Robot, Army Human Torch, Sparky Triton, Aquatic Ambassador Samantha Parrington <> Valkrie, Chooser of The Slain Dr. Doom, Diabolical Genius Divinity, Vampiric General Titania, Mary MacPherran Talia, Daughter of Madness Karnak, The Shatterer Dr. Doom, Power-Hungry Kang, Non-Unique * Destiny Warrior Dreadnought Tank, Arsenal of Doom Dr. Doom, Victor Von Doom Quicksilver, Terrigenesis Rebirth Madeline Pryor, Goblyn Queen Holocaust, Nemesis Invisible Woman, Flame On! Sub-Mariner, Ally of Doom Black Bolt, Devastating Decree Reality Gem Mind Gem Ego Gem Power Gem Attilan New Baxter Building Doomstadt Doomstadt, Castle Doom Latverian Embassy Great Refuge Construction Site Blue Area of the Moon Enemy of My Enemy Call In a favour Pathetic Attempt Omnipotence Savage Beatdown For the Glory of Doom!, Team-Up Extended Family, Team-Up It’s Slobberin’ Time! The Outside World Time Thief Exploiting the Flaw Slaughter Swamp Avalon Space Station

My plan with this deck is similar to my silver insanity deck of using the first 3 turns to get Attilan online and then search for any card I need at any given moment. My silver version has been working absolutely amazingly, so I am thinking that this one should do just as good. I am figuring that Time Thief is going to be fantastic in this format as picking and nuking up to two (Siphon Energy) very important cards, Amulet of Nabu/Reign of Terror/Birthing Chamber/Characters.

Brotherhood/Syndicate Rush No Build Yet

Using the 4 or less resources theme of B’hood and the SinSyn, and the large characters from SinSyn/B’hood combined with the Contract could help to kill early, real early.

Infinity Gauntlet Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster Ape X, Xina Harvey Bullock, Bishop Jaime Reyes <> Blue Beetle, High-Tech Hero Ted Kord <> Blue Beetle, Heir of the Scarab Amadeus Arkham, Architect of Insanity Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards Pip the Troll, Protector of the Space Gem San, The Alienated One Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose Kate Corrigan, Folklore Consultant Sidney Leach, Human Metal Detector Black Cat, Nine Lives Dr. Sivana, Mad Scientist Black Panther, King of Wakanda Beast, Feline Geneticist Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Elite Quentino, Raul Quentino Dark Firestorm, Mockery The Creeper, Jack Ryder Vic Stone <> Cyborg, Human Machine Kang, Non-Unique * Master of Time Moondragon, Protector of the Mind Gem Punisher, Guns Blazing Darkseid, Apokoliptian Oppressor John Henry Irons <> Steel, Steel-Drivin’ Man Lex Luthor, Metropolis Mogul Mr. Fantastic, Stretch Mr. Sinister, Visionary Geneticist Mr. Fantastic, Dimensional Explorer Meltdown Salvage Tech Upgrade Cannibal Tech Enemy of My Enemy Millenium Beatdown Finishing Move Death Trap Flying Kick Press The Attack Crisis Upon Infinite Earths, Team-Up Act of Defiance, Team-Up Training Day, Team-Up Battle World New Baxter Building Dr. Fate’s Tower Birthing Chamber 31st Century Metropolis, Team-Up Stark Tower, Team-Up Ego Gem Mind Gem Space Gem Time Gem Reality Gem Power Gem Soul Gem Infinity Gauntlet War Wagon Steel Girder

Of course the deck is completely oriented towards the Gauntlet with the other characters trying to support the KOing of the newly stunned characters, still allowing for the other characters to attack.

High Voltage Inspired Deck Haywire, Suicidal Lover Bumblebee, Sonic Sting Chomin, Qwardian Spy Destiny, Irene Adler Electric Eve, Live Wire Gole, Deep Six Hunger Dogs, Army Jubilee, Jubilation Lee Jubilee, Mallrat King Snake, Sir Edmund Dorrance Manhunter Sniper, Army Ratcatcher, Otis Flannegan The Joker <> Red Hood, The Man Who Laughs Thuggee, Army Dazzler, Rock Star Ishmael Gregor <> Sabbac, Malevolent Marvel IQ, Ira Quimby Melissa Gold <> Screaming Mimi, Mimi Schwartz Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose San, Alienated One Pyro, St. John Allerdyce Wylde, Charlie Wylde Dagger, Tandy Bowen Firehawk, Flaming Justice Human Torch, Sparky Mark Moonrider, Forever People Pyro, Hot Topic Scarlet Witch, Magneto’s Daughter Toxin, Patrick Mulligan Zazzala <> Queen Bee, Mistress of the Hive Jester, Jonathan Powers Surprise Attack Death Times Five Fear Skull Focused Blast Heat Vision Insect Swarm Internal Injuries Last Laugh Return Fire! Rigged Explosives Burns at the Touch Cryonic Grenade Die for Darkseid! Trapped in the Sciencells Crisis on Infinite Earths, Team-Up Rann Thanagar Battleworld Genosha Birthing Chamber New Baxter Building Dr. Fates Tower The Alley Evil Lair Volcanic Base Ego Gem Mind Gem Space Gem Advance Hardware Flamethrower Titanium Sword

So, I was looking through my box of X-Men for a Destiny, Future Sight when I recognised a few B’hood cards that burn my opponent directly when I got to thinking whether I could make High Voltage Insane, but it ended up changing quite a fair bit.

Weenie X-Men Beast, Quick Thinker Blink, Exile Domino, Neena Thurman Jubilee, Jubilation Lee Jubilee, Mallrat Multiple Man, Army * MadroX Dazzler, Alison Blaire Shadowcat, Phase Shifter Wild Child, Age of Apocalypse Archangel, Angel Changeling, Kevin Sidney Archangel, Warren Worthington III Lockheed, Saurian Sidekick Bishop, Lucas Bishop Bishop, Age of Apocalypse Cannonball, Blast Field Cyclops, Slim Dazzler, Rock Star Forge, Inventor Extraordinaire Havok, Unstable Son Jean Grey, Telekinetic Fighter Jean Grey, Teen Telepath Sabretooth, Age of Apocalypse Sunfire, Rising Sun Banshee, Sean Cassidy Nightcrawler, Man of the Cloth Sage, Xavier’s Secret Weapon Wolverine, Logan Xorn, Shen Xorn Beast, Bookworm Blackbird Blue, Unique Ego Gem Mind Gem Power Gem Cerebro Danger Room Madripoor Siege Perilous X-Corp: Hong Kong, X-Corp Xavier’s Institute of Higher Learning Birthing Chamber Genosha New Baxter Building Bamf! Battle Tactics Commanding Nature Eye of the Storm Fastball Special X-Treme Maneuvers Time Breach Turnabout X-Men Assemble!, Age of Apocalypse Savage Beatdown Blinding Rage Mega Blast New Mutations Flying Kick Crackshot Burn Rubber Poker Night

Weenie X-Men making with the Weenie-ness.

Curve X-Men Bishop, Lucas Bishop Bishop, Age of Apocalypse Cannonball, Blast Field Gambit, Swamp Rat Jean Grey, Teen Telepath Professor X, Idealistic Dreamer Sunfire, Rising Sun Banshee, Sean Cassidy Beast, Feline Geneticist Iceman, Bobby Drake Wolverine, Logan Sage, Xavier’s Secret Weapon Xorn, Shen Xorn Rogue, Energy Drain Gambit, Remy LeBeau Havok, Critical Mass Iceman, Frosty Professor X, Headmaster Rogue, Power Absorption Iceman, Ice Armor Blink, Age of Apocalypse Cyclops, Fearless Leader Wolverine, James Howlett Wolverine, The Best at What He Does Colossus, Organic Steel Mimic, Exile Rogue, Powerhouse Juggernaut, The Unstoppable Professor X, World’s Most Powerful Telepath Rogue, Anna Marie Professor X, Mental Master Rachel Summers <> Phoenix, Phoenix of the Future Ego Gem Mind Gem Power Gem Soul Gem Med Kit Cerebro Muir Island Harry’s Hideaway X-Corporation Xavier’s Institute of Higher Learning Birthing Chamber Bamf! Children of the Atom Duck and Cover Eye of the Storm Acrobatic Dodge Shrink Against All Odds Turnabout Savage Beatdown Flying Kick From the Shadows X-Men Assemble!, Age of Apocalypse Level 12 Intelligence Call In A Favour Mobilize Pathetic Attempt Omnipotence

The idea is to go nutz with the curve recovery effects attempting to go nuts with the board presence. Hopefully I would be able to go nuts with the stalling a little bit if they have lots of KO effects, as I will be expecting various KO decks at least one Marvel Knights KO deck.

So, these are my current thoughts I am not entirely sure what to put in the SinSyn/B’hood build buyt I have almost just under a week to figure it out with a week to test.

Todays preview is non other than the Sorcerer Supreme himself. Dr. Strange, Secret Avenger.

Dr. Strange, Secret Avenger
Character
Cost 2
2/3
F/R
Avengers/Marvel Knights
Concealed

Reservist

When Dr. Strange comes into play, rally for a card type of your choice. Each time you’re successful, repeat this process with a card type you haven’t chosen yet. (The card types are character, equipment, location and plot twist.)

MUN-010

I am really impressed with how the Illuminati are being handled this time around. Especially as it makes a Crisis Black Bolt possible, not that it would necessarily be amazing, but from a fan-boy perspective it is amazing. From Ben Secks complete list in mondays article it seems as though they are finishing off some of the illuminati’s curves which for some legends involves the low costing characters. Dr. Strange is one such low costing character.

So then, lets take a step back from all the Illuminati shennanigans and look at this card. He’s reservist and he’s concealed so can easily slot his way into Marvel Knights or the Avengers. He has flight and range, which in the current modern age is looking pretty darn sweet, due to to the distinct lack of flight/flight granting abilities.

So, Rally. We have seen one previous rally card Captain America, Secret Avenger which to me indicates Secret Avengers have a rallying theme to them, but too far it may be too early to say. This Rally effect that our sorcerer supreme has is something quite special. I like cards that involve risks, this instantly makes this card appeal to me, and considering all the top of the deck shenanigans that the illuminati have had previously makes this good.

One such card is the Secret Government. Search for a character and get the boost cost relatively free. Even if you don’t combine him with tricks, he still has the potential to net you up to a whopping 4 cards. 100 Ideas is a nice touch with this, because you have cycled through, you may have missed a card when you fail with Dr. Strange, which makes it all the better, because you have advanced knowledge of when you should use 100 ideas.

Superhuman Registration Act. Revealing the top card of your deck makes you Garunteed to net one card, and then it is all how your deck is stacked. This sort of allows you to make an Illmuniati rush, because their search effects put on top of the deck, they have the top of the deck manipulation from past days and with the Superhuman Registration Act a rush deck leading up to a resource KO or hand discard is not unreasonable.

I’m sure your may be like me, now that todays preview is up, Bring on tomorrows preview!

The past week or so has been the last weeks at university. So I now have more time to blog. GTA4 has taken up my entire weekend as well, which is why this is being posted now.

First of all, let me talk about GTA. It’s good. It’s really good, but it’s not amazing. The missions are good, the pay is good, but mad rampages aren’t as mad. Vice city had it right, even now I could spend hours killing everyone in sight, just for fun. This just doesn’t have that fun factor.

Second, the money. The single most pointless thing in the world. Vice City and San Andreas(the game that shall not be named, that was named) both had actual applications for the money. You could buy cars, new houses, sweet upgrades for your cars. This one? Burgers, hot dogs, sodas, chicken, hookers, strippers, taxis and weapons. Weapons and taxis. These are the only ones that are worth having on the game. Sure hookers are a good way of making about $40 if you kill them, but it gets boring. Sure the food is good to replenish your health but kind of shit.

Drink driving is one of the really nice touches. If you go out drinking, the screen goes all wibbly your driving goes all wibbly, and you fall down all the time. The nicest touch of it all though is the police will try to pull you over for drink driving. Anyways, whether or not the 360 has worse graphics the acheivements that you can get are fun and worth getting.

As good as Vice City, not as good as GTA3 though. GTA3 was where it peaked, I will be surprised if we ever see one as good.

So, back to VS. Tonight the Illuminati cards were spoiled, sans article. So far, they have exhaust effects, hand fill and an uncommon search. I am building illuminati, and it has been brought up that a team-up with the infinity watch - iron mans convienient second affiliation- gives anybody a deck with 8 tutors. I was always one for 4 tutors, but 8 is the key. 8 Uncommons are going to be sweet.

So far the illuminati keyverb, keycondensationofalotofnames, whatever seems like the perfect way to handle a ”team” like the illuminati, and I am impressed. Maybe we will get some actual legend cards to go along with the illuminati theme. I NEED to make a Black Bolt legend deck.

What I am finding intersting is that when this comes out we will at least have a 3,4,5 of Iron Man, which is a wierd distributon for a legend curve, not unlike ghost riders 3,5,6,8. So hopefully we will get a 2 or a 7 cost Iron Man to go with the 5 and 6. Though the equipment to go on the Iron Man could be a little silly on a 7 drop Iron Man, so I am thinking that it may not happen for us.

100 Ideas. 100 more ways that Family of Four can get even better. Sigh. I am not lucking forward to this, so hopefully we will get some more out of combat stuns/exhausts for characters with a cost of 3 or less.

What I want most out of this set it bizarre though. I really, really want a few c/uc generics. Prefereably a search card, even if it is along the lines of a Vicarious Living card, something that says something along the lines of:

To play Discard a Character Card.

Search your deck for a character card with cost less than the card you discarded that shares a printed affiliation with that character card.

I ask this because I know when I started the game, I couldn’t win games because I didn’t have the search capabilities of some of the other players. We also need a Flying Kick card in modern, even if is just an homage to Flying Kick, like Roundhouse Kick or something silly.

I hope I can pull all the C/UC’s I need from the 2 boxes I have on order, mostly because I don’t think I can afford more than 2 boxes of it.

Right so this is my very first article and I would like to thank Joe (lordoflimbo) for giving me the opportunity to write for his blog, and I hope you all enjoy it.

It was not a difficult to decide what I would write about in this first article as I have one thing on my mind and it just excites me sooooo much. Ever since the release of DCL I saw league of Assassins (LOA) and knew instantly that I needed to abuse their location theme…

My first idea was to team LOA with Inhumans as they also have a location them, however when I found a major problem… LOA like to replace locations Inhumans like face up resources, the two themes did not seem to click. Checkmate (shudder) was an option, but not one I was willing to consider, just like Joe, I am also a member of the “checkmate hate” simply because I find that one character (that I will not dignify by saying his name) simply spoils the game in my opinion.

Well I put this project to one side whilst I worked on my Unofficial UK Nationals BYOS deck (Inhumans / Heralds of Galactus) Then it struck me!!!

LEAGUE OF ASSASSINS / HERALDS OF GALACTUS!!!

Heralds of Galactus have a lot of locations a fair amount of search and draw effects and some characters with some nice abilities too.

I tried to build the deck, but I couldn’t find any 1-drop characters or enough locations that would be useful for this deck (or what I wanted to do with it). Therefore I decided to throw in some Inhumans in the form of Lockjaw and San, and also some of there locations Atilan and Blue Area of the Moon. These cards are really really nice (search for any card and no stun-backs = thank you very much).

A Key Note: Inhumans are not a major theme in this deck, so if I have face down resources or don’t get Atilan at all, it really does not matter.

So now I have a finished formula of:

LEAGUE OF ASSASSINS / HERALDS OF GALACTUS / INHUMANS!!!

So, Here is the moment you have all been waiting for… The Decklist and how to play it:

Characters (32)

1 Drops

x4 Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend

2 Drops

x2 Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways

x4 San, The Alienated One

3 Drops

x2 Crystal, Elementelle

x4 The Mad Dog, Rabid Killer

4 Drops

x2 Terrax, The Tamer

x4 Merlin, Direct Hit Man

5 Drops

x1 Red Shift, Rift Walker

x1 Silver Surfer, Righteous Protector

x1 Cassandra Cain, Daughter of Shiva

6 Drops

x1 Terrax, Harbinger of Ruin

x1 David Cain, World Class Assassin

x1 Nyssa Raatko, Daughter of the Demon

7 Drops

x1 Silver Surfer, Last Zenn-Lavian

x1 Galactus, The Maker

8 Drops

x1 Tyrant, The Original Herald

9 Drops

x1 Galactus, Devourer of Worlds

Locations (17)

x2 Attilan

x2 Elemental Converters

x1 Worldship

x1 The Kyln

x1 Soul World

x1 Negative Zone

x1 Blue Area of the moon

x2 Lazarus Pit

x1 Mountain Stronghold

x1 Flying Fortress

x4 Metropolis Reborn

Plot Twists (12)

x2 Creation of a Herald

x4 Kindred Spirits

x1 Power Struggle

x4 The Demon’s Head

x1 Demonfang

Equipment (4)

x2 Mind Gem

x1 Reality Gem

x1 Power Gem

Total Cards = 65

So the general idea is to stun and bounce your opponent’s board.

The ideal play is as follows:

Turn 1

Lockjaw – if you hit him, fetch San, if you don’t, who cares it does not matter

Turn 2

San – If you hit him fetch Attilan, if you don’t, who cares it does not matter

OR

Silver Surfer – If you hit him fetch Elemental converters or Metropolis Reborn or Merlin, Direct Hit Man, whichever suits you more at the time.

Turn 3

Mad Dog – KO your opponents 2 drop

Turn 4

Merlyn – But do not use his ability this turn unless you have Worldship in your resource row

Turn 5

Silver Surfer – Remove his counter, Use Merlyn’s ability then attack your opponent’s 4 drop. Now you have KO’d your opponent’s 2 drop, bounced their 3 and 4 drops, while you still have a full board.

Turn 6

Nyssa Raatko – Only play her based on how many locations you can exhaust, you are looking to KO characters with her, not recover your own!

Terrax - If for some reason their 4 drop is still around

David Cain – Is nice and can do a lot of damage

Turn 7

You now have a choice; you can either Stall, or Try to win. If you have the initiative play Galactus and win (half your opponents endurance and beat them up)

Or

You can play Silver Surfer and Play Galactus (9-drop) on turn 8 and win

Do not be afraid of replacing locations that you may consider important, Attilan is not that great as a lot of the time it doesn’t work, Elemental Converters is nice but not a necessity, and the others can be easily replaced too.

There is a lot of search to ensure that you get the locations in your resource row and hit the characters that you need to.

Well after testing this deck a few times I decided it was time to release it to the public and went playing a few friendly games at my hobby league.

The best thing about this deck is the look that people give me when I tell them what it is, they just look really confused it’s hilarious!

I then asked Joe for his opinion of the deck (as he is a good deck builder and I have the utmost respect for his ability in the game). He asked if he could play as the deck so he could get a feel for it and understand it better. So he used this deck and I used his Dr. Doom deck (link here).

Joe won the game, and then my most proud moment came… He said that this deck was “Amazing”. He told me that he not only liked it because it consisted of out of combat stuns, but it was “tricksy” too. There was so much you can do with the deck, it is just real fun to play.

I am not trying to say the deck is perfect, I got beat by darkseid in a close game with Dave (bungo_underhill) as he just brick-walled all of my attacks so I could not bounce his characters. However the deck is quite good and really fun to play.

It may need some work but for now I would definitely check it out!!!

Rob ‘RD52169′  Elstone.

I had notes on my drafting experience, but there was a little mishap with a jug of water, and now… all I remember is that I went 2-1.

I went in to the draft with wanting to try something new. I had never played revenge squad, ever so I decided to go with them. I managed to pull almost a FULL curve of revenge squad, with Terra, Lil Sis and Gypsy, Illusionary Operative as filling in. Even this wasn’t forced, this was by choice. Lil Sis proved to be the winner of my two games, stopping Pyrogen and allowing Brainiac 12 to not get the stunback to allow a brickwall with a powerup. Her being off team didn’t matter as well, due to the power of a surprise Hostile Takeover. I won’t lie, I never really thought that Hostile Takeover was that good until I felt the power of it.

So, in the end I finish in 3rd place. Behind Dave ‘Bungo_Underhill’ Pyrah(1st), and Felix Hughes(2nd)
. Which makes me happy, as Dave is Dave and Felix is the national champion.

I got a chance to test my Golden Dr. Doom Legend deck against Felix’s Manhunter legend deck. Safe to say 4 attacks with a 26/9 will win against, pretty much any formation. Even with no flight, I managed to beat him down to a pulp. This makes me happy, but only temporarily as it lost to a Silver Age League of Assassins/Heralds of Galactus deck.

In other news, we should be getting a new guest writer over here. Yes, all the way from Rotherham (oooooh) my ever so lazy cousin. Rob ‘RD52169′ Elstone, he has finally gotten something written for me to put up here, now all I need to do is work out how the multiple editors thing works.

So, tonight we are drafting. I love to draft, mostly because I am not too bad at it.

We are drafting the funnest, and worst set to draft. DC’s worlds finest is a blast to draft, because in my experince if you see an insanity card you are picking it, whether you want to or not. Not only that, but it is a real challenge due to the chronic lack of 5 drops.

So, I have been thinking about the tactics and draft strategies that I can employ. Last time I drafted Worlds Finest, I drafted an outsiders/arkham inmates deck. This…wasn’t the best way to go about it. This time, I am going to narrow my thoughts down a little before I go into it, do a little research. So, off I go to the DocXmobile.

By looking at random punks I can give myself a reasonable idea of what is to come, and what may be a reasonable strategy.

My first thought is to try to go with Arkham Inmates/Gotham Knights as they both have uncommon search cards, and the Hook-Up to draw a lot of cards.

One that I would like to go with, is a Birds of a Feather style tactic. Drafting concealed characters with the pumps that rely on costs of resources.

Worlds Worstest/Insiders would be a nice tactic to go with. Draft a few of these then any really nice characters that come my way.

Arkham non adjacent could also be pretty nice, as they are all over statted, and there are reasonable support for them. Another nice thing about these are that there is little stunback in DWF which would make for interesting attacks.

Tonight I care not for my position, but I wan’t to draft a fun deck, and have reasonable notes for a draft report.

With this being the last week before the legend tournement, this may be the first and last time I get to test for it.

I have just got around to watching the Special Extended versions of the lord of the rings movies, and boy. It is worth it, now I have seen this, I doubt I can watch the regular movies again.

This week has been very interesting.

Shield, so far from the few cards we have seen are not messing about. Powerlevel is high. The true extent of their power we cannot know yet, but from what we have seen we have reason to be excited.

My brother in Jank, Soshi Kenpachi came up with a work of True Beauty. The League of Extraorinary Wood Rats.

Tek Upgrade:

Turn 1 Squirrel Girl+SHIELD Agent. She swings, they’ve lost 3 Endurance. Turn 2: 2 Novice Assassins, flip the Multiverse. A Crackshot from the resource row lets your SHIELD agent take down their 2 drop, and 4 goes to your opponent’s face(7 total lost) Turn 3: Nick drops in, played by himself, not David Hasselhoff. He puts two more assassins into play. A crackshot on squirrel girl takes down their 3 drop. 4 assassins swing in for 16 Damage.(23 Total Lost without adding in stun damage) Turn 4: However you pull it off, 4 assassins drop. 3 take out their 4 drop, Nick takes their 3 out, and you swing to 25 to the face. That’s game. And you only ever had 5 ATK printed on the board.

Now, as he says draw power is where it all lies.

In silver this is easily accomplished. I know Rian Fike is wanting to make it modern legal, for worlds. This is where the predicament lies.

For draw power I would suggest two main cards. Birthing Chamber (du’h), and Genosha.

Wait. What?

Correct, Genosha. I have been playing around with it in my Novice Assasins Go! deck, and for turn 5 it is a nice play. Sack a resource to potentially get the characters you need or some more Teen Titans Go!

I have already twisted a few builds for League of Extraordinary Wood Rats, and this is the one I am currently going with.

3x Lazarus Pit, Non-Unique * Death’s Door
2x Mountain Stronghold, Non-Unique
1x Metropolis Reborn, Non-Unique * Team-Up
3x Truth and Justice, Team-Up
1x Espionage, Non-Unique
3x Helicarrier
3x Genosha
4x Birthing Chamber
2x The Demon’s Head
4x Finishing Move

16x Novice Assassins
8x SHIELD Agents
4x Squirrel Girl
4x Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD

Not amazing. But a decent shell. I am very, very very excite about MUN. 2 Boxes preordered, which is turning out to be a better investment the more I think about it.

So, i’m here looking at my wall cards. I have bounty hunt, Sabretooth AoA, Steel Girder and Titania….

Yeah, Titania, Big Bad Bully.

So, my mind got to work.

I went through some teams. The first one, was doom. Shock Horror. I considered just slipping her into a Doomed Earth Build and going nuts with the attack. This seemed attractive, but it didn’t excite me. I also thought that Doom Guards could work, but again it didnt excite me.

So I shifted away from doom. I went to an army team. Sentinels. No, wouldnt work.

X-Men, they have enough one to three characters that a decent rush deck could be made in random punks but I think that the best rusch deck with X-Men has to be super troopers.

I was also looking at the Revenge Squad for all their front row bonus’s, when my brain had one of the rare sparks when it all clicks.

The one team I hate the most, the one team I wished had never been summoned from hell. Checkmate.

Surveillance Pawns, not only are they Army Characters, they also have concealed. I love this on army characters, the ability to have a massive board of 2/1’s is something I really like.

So, building the Bully.

4x Titania, Big Bad Bully
2x Dr. Doom, Richards Rival
Xx Surveillance Pawn, Army
4x Vicarious Living

I am leaving the X until I figure out how many more cards I choose to go with under the character heading.

So, for a draw engine I have to alter my regular engine, due to high amount of concealed characters. The ego gem/mind gems may not be the best way to approach this situation. So after birthing chamber, new baxter building, brother eye I have a few other considerations. Laser watch is a given and another equipment I am considering is the Framistadt. On my off initiative Reinforcement for her and attack on my initiative.

1x Brother Eye
4x Laser Watch
2x Framistadt
2x Poker Night
2x Robotic Offensive
3x Vicarious Living
4x Millenium
4x Lost in Translation
3x Secret Checkmate HQ

This leaves me with 31 non-characters. Which at current leaves me with 22 Surveillance Pawns.

So, then my current list of the build is:

4x Titania, Big Bad Bully
2x Dr. Doom, Richards Rival
22x Surveillance Pawn, Army

3x Birthing Chamber
2x New Baxter Building
2x Arsenal of Doom
1x Brother Eye
4x Laser Watch
2x Framistadt
2x Poker Night
2x Robotic Offensive
3x Vicarious Living
4x Millenium
4x Lost in Translation
3x Secret Checkmate HQ

I will goldfish this over the next few days, and get back to you with how it goes.