Thanks to those of you who have followed me through the months.  As of this posting I’ve dutifully put up just over thirty articles in just over thirty weeks (7 months).  In all I had over 6,000 hits, which comes out to over 200 views per article.  That’s still small time, but it was reason enough for me to keep writing.  I hope those of you checking in on me will continue to do so over at Steve’s site.

Speaking of which, I already put up my first article there entitled “Bee-Dazzled“.  Ridiculous, I know, but check it out anyway.

Peace out,
Vs. Corps!

A business lives or dies based on its location.  Growing up I had always wished that Manana, the closest town to where I live, had a McDonalds.  Given that the town is off the beaten path with only a population of around ten, my dreams never came to fruition.  I wasn’t bitter though because I understood economics, at least at a base level.

Well, a form of location economics applies to Vs. as well.  We’ve seen how powerful Ahmed and friends can be with the appropriate locations, but before them there was another team that focused on locations… League of Assassins.  They had the first real location search with The Demon’s Head, but there really weren’t that great of locations to search out at the time.  The team had Flying Fortress, but compare that to Brother Eye.  They also had The Demon’s Head, but compare that to Ahmed.  They even had Mountain Stronghold, but Checkmate got both Connie Webb and Brother I Satellite.  All in all, Checkmate was a huge upgrade on the old location theme.

The new League of Assassins come out of the DC Legends set and are a significant improvement over their predecessors.  They still have all their decent old cards, but now there are also a ton of generic locations that can help them out.  This is what’s available in Modern Age:

Team (or Ra’s) Stamped:

• Harsh Judgement
• The Demon’s Head
• Tower of Babel
• Demonfang
• Divide and Conquer
• Flying Fortress
• Mountain Stronghold

Tower of Babel is a bit redundant because the five drop Ra’s al Ghul does something very similar, but we’ll keep it on the back burner in case we have space for it.  Divide and Conquer is reliant on our opponents running good locations (similar to Espionage), so it’s more of a tech card, but so very often it will be a wasted slot.  I think we’ll omit it for now.  I’ve always been more of a fan of playing my own game than reacting to my opponent’s.  When you focus too much on tech cards, you switch gears from “trying to win” to “trying to survive”.  That’s just my play style though (and probably why I do so badly at constructed!).

Available Locations:

• Coast City
• Research Facility
• Unstable Ground
• Birthing Chamber
• Construction Site
• Lazarus Pit, Death’s Door
• Plague Zone
• Stryker’s Island
• The Demon’s Quarters
• Evil Lair
• Espionage
• Alias Investigations
• Asgard

Yes it’s true, the new Marvel Universe set has given League of Assassins some fantastic “MUN”ition.  Mainly Alias Investigations and Asgard.  Alias Investigations should be dynamo in a deck that’s mostly locations and characters because it can really help us hit our curve.  Asgard on the other hand, seems like a good card to get back characters that accidentally get put into the row with replacement effects like Merlyn’s.  For instance, If a character gets put into the row with something like Merlyn’s effect, then replaced with Research Facility, Asgard can rescue him/her.

Since many League of Assassins cards replace locations, I though using Unstable Ground in this deck would be a cool idea.  Many of your other locations you want to keep around all game, so it’s nice to have this card to blow to effects like Meryln’s, Talia’s, David Cain’s, Demonfang’s, etc.

Construction Site, while appearing as useful as Research Facility, isn’t very useful when half your characters already replace face-up locations.  There will be a couple of times that you row a plot twist and want to play it, but the only vital plot twist in this location-heavy deck will probably The Demon’s Head, which replaces itself.  Besides, the loss of the Nyssa six drop in this format means that we don’t need the ENTIRE row to be locations, just most of it.

Speaking of losses in this format, the League did lose a couple good cards to Silver Age.  Negative Zone from the Heralds set was awesome for hidden character tech, but it was replaced by Plague Zone (one Zone for another).  Seibo’s Garden was also a location that bit the dust, but it wasn’t game changing enough to shed tears over.

Nyssa was a painful loss for the league, but now we can play her seven drop version, who is awesome on the “D”.

Here’s a quick rundown of other cards we lost to Silver Age tagged with Modern Age cards that essentially fulfill the same slots:

• Soul World is replaced by Asgard
• The Kyln is similar in function to the new Lazarus Pit
• The Substructure is the same as Research Facility
• Battleworld/Rann/Thanagar are all similar to Tarnax but +1anything is pretty tame.

Alright, here’s a list I came up with after much thought:

4 Hassim, Loyal Retainer
3 Shadow Assassin, Army
4 Ubu, Ra’s al Ghul Bodyguard
2 The Mad Dog, Rabid Killer
4 Merlyn, Direct Hit Man
2 Talia, Heir Apparent
4 Ra’s al Ghul, Demon’s Head Rising
2 David Cain, World Class Assassin
1 Lady Shiva, Master Assassin
1 Nyssa Raatko, Maiden of Death
1 Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head

4 The Demon’s Head
4 Demonfang

4 Mountain Stronghold
4 Unstable Ground
3 Flying Fortress
3 Lazarus Pit, Death’s Door
2 Stryker’s Island
2 Alias Investigations
2 Research Facility
2 Asgard
1 The Demon’s Quarters
1 Plague Zone

While some location counts are a little low, the high amount of replacement effects mean that you should be cycling through your deck pretty darn fast.  Use your replacement effects first on Unstable Ground, then on anything you have duplicates of.  This burn combined with David Cain’s burn, means you should out-damage any other curve deck that tries to match you drop for drop.

This deck also has a lot of combat tricks with Stryker’s Island, Demonfang, and Flying Fortress.  Add this to the out of combat tricks of Merlyn and The Demon’s Quarters and you should be able to exert a decent element of control.  Speaking of Stryker’s Island, it should always be three or four attack with the range of costs in this deck, and that’s pretty darn good for an every-turn pump.

Lady Shiva is obviously amazing on the offense, while Nyssa can force your opponent to go through her multiple times on the defense.

It’s also worth noting that this deck is one card away from being a Ra’s al Ghul legend deck.  If there are any modern legend tournaments coming up, you wouldn’t have to change much to make this deck a viable and fun option.

Let me know what you guys think.  What changes would you make?  Should Coast City have made the cut to combo with Nyssa and Ra’s?  Did I have too much Sudafed to even remain coherent this week?  Look forward to hearing the constructive comments!

Afterthoughts:

How would a Golden Age deck with the old Merlyn and Thunderbolts Mountain work?  It could go off earlier than Sensei did in the previous Deep Green incarnation.  Deep Green 2.0 coming to a theatre near you!  Just Kidding, I’ll leave that one up to you guys!

If you don’t know what I’m talking about you have to go to www.iamletired.com  It’s an old site, but still a classic.  It sort of reflects my week… everything went to poop.  I got some huge sinus infection from mold in the vents at our school (from one of the science teacher’s lessons) and it all but incapacitated me.  I was still able to work, but when I went home I hit my bed like a sack of (insert generic heavy blunt object)’s.  Therefore, you got nothing out of me.  I am le sorry.

It also brings me to something I heard on The Ring Has Chosen (episode 59 I believe), where the Lost Hemisphere guys were lamenting the end of the Vs. blog.  They had some good points (there’s a reason they’re the best blog), but their biggest and best idea was consolidation.  There are many of us that only put up content weekly (less than that when mold strikes).  If were to combine a couple blogs here and there we would double the content and relieve deadline stress off each other.  Sounded like fabulous advice to me, so I’m throwing myself to the masses.  If anyone out there wants to combine blogs I would be a big proponent.  I’ve been begging for guest writers from day one, but this is a step farther in a very right direction.  If you’re interested, reply to this thread or drop me an e-mail at scottkthompson@maktoob.com!

Don’t worry though, I’ll still try to bring weekly content even if I have to remain a solo act.  I am already putting the finishing touches on this Wednesday’s article so you better get your tickets early

See you then!

PS: To the Lost Hemisphere guys… Summer of Love rocks.  You make me waste my valuable prep hours reading your articles because I simply can’t wait until I get home.  You definitely deserve another Blog of the Month title!

Anyway, screw cheap competitive decks.  I want to use my rares.  I want to find the most competitive deck that ONLY uses rares.  Maybe this has already been done, but I’ve not seen it yet so I figured I’d give it a shot.  For the sake of my valuable time,  I decided to limit myself to Silver Age.

With the current abundance of legends cards (most of which are rare) you wouldn’t think it would be too hard to build an all rare deck, but it was kind of a challenge.  First of all, I couldn’t decide which team to focus on.  Here are some builds that are on the cutting room floor.

• JLA was my first choice because I love the JLA.  I was going to make a Flash legend deck that finished with Barry Allen on six.  The deck could also have run the Batman three drop, the Wonder Woman four drop, and the Superman five drop because they’re all freakin’ amazing!
• Fantastic Four builds are often reknowned for their high amounts of rares, unfortunately, they don’t have a rare Sue before turn seven.  This makes Force Field Projection (one of their sweetest cards) a no go.  One way around this is to use Carrying the torch to make someone else Sue early on in the game, so this build is still possible.
• Marvel Knights has almost two characters at every drop that are concealed and rare.  Throw in some Wild Rides, Savage Beatdowns, and Blinding Rages and you practically have MKKO.

I know there are many more viable options out there <cough> X-MEN <cough>, but I decided to stop searching when I remembered a conversation I had on the ride home from Gen Con with Eric Madden.  We were both talking about the best way to build a Captain America legend.  It didn’t take long to figure out that most of his good cards were rare, but also flat out amazing.  There was also the fact that I actually had them all since I’m only three cards short of having everything from MUN.  It was decided…

Captain America’s rare legend cards are all very defensive.  It makes sense for the cards of a shield-wielding hero to be defensive, but it sure doesn’t give you many options when building a deck.  I was essentially pigeon-holed into stall.

First of all, a digression.  I want to compare Captain America’s Shield to the Batarang…

As you can see, though both are incredibly symbolic weapons of their namesakes, Batarang sucks hard while Captain’s Shield rocks.  Why would you underdrop just to use the Batarang once?  The Shield’s only weakness when compared to the Batarang is in the choice of who exhausts.  This can often be played around by leaving only one non-stunned character on your opponent’s side, then using the Shield.  The fact that Captain can still use his shield if he’s already exhausted is also another big hit in the ‘pro’ column.  What were the designers of the Batarang thinking?

Anyway, onto the deck construction.  When searching rare Avengers characters there aren’t too many options.  After eliminating ones that are obviously not stall related, you’re left with an oddly large number of Spider-Men and Captains.  This is perfect when so many stall cards target those two characters specifically.  Here’s a list I came up with:

4 Spider-Man, New New Avenger
4 Dr. Strange, Secret Avenger
4 Hawkeye, Loud Mouth
3 Punisher, Secret Avenger
4 Captain America, Champion License
3 Spider-Man, Secret Avenger
1 Wolverine, Secret Avenger
2 Captain America, Living Legend
2 Spider-Man, Stark’s Protege
1 The Sentry, Mighty Avenger

4 Captain America’s Shield

4 Mobilize
3 Avengers Reassembled
3 Gift Wrapped
4 Big Leagues
4 Against All Odds
4 Charging Star
3 Steely Resolve
3 Level 12 Intelligence

As you can see there’s a ton of defensive pumps rocking this deck.  Between exhaustion effects, fat butts from defensive pumps, and the effects of the two Captains, you should be able to smash your opponents late game pretty easily.  I’m curious what you guys can come up with for an all rare deck.  Can anyone think of a deck that costs more than this that is equally competitive (or more so!).  Thanks for reading guys!

Vs. had a decent showing, though it was well hid by Upperdeck in the far corner of the room under a lone banner.  It was a Mega-Weekend so they had a Silver and Modern Age tournament along with various side events.  Since we arrived late Wednesday night with little time to prepare for the Silver Age event, we decided to skip it.  This was a bummer to me because I had some Spider-Friends shenanigans I wanted to test out in the Silver Age environment.  Modern Age never excites me as much because of its limited card pool.

Anywho… on Friday they had a Super Crossover Sealed event which the four of us thought sounded incredibly fun.  Since we hadn’t done anything Vs.-related Thursday we decided to give it a go.  Below are the packs I cracked:

MOR
Blob, Fred Dukes
Robot Enforcer, Army
Wild Sentinel, Army
Doom Guards, Army
Psylocke, Betsy Braddock
Black Tom, Thomas Cassidy
Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner
Bishop, Lucas Bishop
Dragon Man, Experimental Monster
Medical Attention
Marvel Team-Up
Surprise Attack
The Power Cosmic
Base of Operations

DOR
Azrael, Jean Paul Valley
Mr. Freeze, Dr. Victor Fries
Spoiler, Stephanie Brown
Thuggee, Army
Ratcatcher, Otis Flannegan
Professor Hugo Strange, Psycho-Analyst
Terra, Tara Markov
Ra’s Al Ghul, Master Swordsman
Dick Grayson Nightwing, Titan Leader
Charaxes, Drury Walker
Dinah Laurel Lance Black Canary, Canary Cry
Teen Titans Go!
Mountain Stronghold
Lazarus Pit

MVL
Stryfe, X-Cutioner
Valeria Richards, Child of Light and Darkness
Multiple Man, Army
Ant-Man, King of the Hill
Black Tom, Callous Opportunist
Psylocke, Second Skin
Unus, Angelo Unuscione
Storm, Elemental Goddess
Crystal, Inhuman Elemental
Eureka!
Devastating Blow
Commanding Nature
Dealing with the Devil, Team-Up
Dark Alley

DCL
Big Barda, Furious Fatale
Catwoman, Cat O’ Nine Tails
Deathstroke the Terminator, Killing Machine
Argent, Toni Monetti
Mark Desmond Blockbuster, Mindless Brute
Firestorm, Ronnie Raymond
Gorilla Grodd, Grodd Awful
Owlman, Earth 3
Follow the Leader
Teen Titans Go!
Reform the League
Break You
Mightiest Heroes
Coast City

MUN
Cloak, Secret Avenger
Talisman, Elizabeth Twoyoungmen
Eric O’Grady Ant Man, Fugitive At Large
Hiroim, The Shamed
Drax the Destroyer, Titan Slayer
Speedball Penance, Painmonger
Red Skull, Johann Schmidt
Lady Deathstrike, Opportunistic Killer
Secret Government
Flattened
Losing the Argument
Liberating Number 42
Righteous Anger
Atlantis Attacks!.

I’m no expert, but here’s what I slapped together…

Draft Deck:
Speedball <> Penance, Painmonger
Argent, Toni Monette
Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner
Bishop, Lucas Bishop
Unus, Angelo Unuscione
Owlman, Earth 3
Crystal, Inhuman Elemental
Charaxes Drury Walker
Dinah Laurel Lance <> Black Canary, Canary Cry
Firestorm, Ronnie Raymond
Gorilla Grodd, Grodd Awful
Lady Deathstrike, Opportunistic Killer
Dick Grayson <> Nightwing, Titan Leader
Red Skull, Johann Shmidt
Dragon Man, Experimental Monster
Storm, Elemental Goddess
Ra’s Al Ghul, Master Swordsman
Mark Desmond <> Blockbuster, Mindless Brute
Teen Titans Go!
Teen Titans Go!
Dealing with the Devil, Team-Up
Break You
Commanding Nature
Atlantis Attacks!
Devastating Blow
Reform the League
Mightiest Heroes
Mountain Stronghold
Base of Operations
Coast City

Some card choices explained…

Many of the lower drops have activated abilities that could be used in conjunction with Teen Titans Go.  Dick Grayson and Mark Desmond also work great with Teen Titans Go, the latter getting two stuns in on turn seven without fear of stunning back.

Red Skull is one of the best defensive five drops in the game, and Dragon man is fantastic in this format because he’s always up against a Fantastic Four character!

Ra’s replacement effect is a great way to get more pumps late game and I also luck-sacked my way into a Mountain Stronghold so I practically had to run him.  More than once I left him wide open for a big attack, only to flip the location to give him reinforcement!

I hope you did a double take when you saw that I ran Dealing with the Devil in an event that requires no teaming up, but I had good reason.  Since you can pitch Dealing with the Devil to draw a card, it essentially let me run a 29 card deck.  A 29 card deck with two character search cards is incredibly consistent and I highly recommend it!

Atlantis attacks combos incredibly nicely with Mightiest Heroes or Base of Operations.  Speaking of Base of Operations, it’s an incredibly useful card in the sealed environment.  It’s the equivalent of drawing three cards and pitching one during the draw phase.  It was another reason my deck was very consistent.  As a side note, this card was an MVP in my crappy deck for the Marvel Trading Card Game on the DS!

The rest of the deck is attack pumps, one of which (Reform the League) filled my KO’d pile up for Mark Desmond.  Incidentally, Desmond only didn’t have ten cards in the KO’d pile once all tournament, so I’m pretty happy I ran him.  Though to be serious, my only other choice was Stryfe *shudder*.

Normally when I take game notes during a match it’s in the constructed environment.  That’s pretty easy to do because when you play agains a Family of Four deck you know that Mr. Fantastic is the four drop, Sue is the three drop, etc.  This makes it very easy to recall matches.  Super Sealed is quite a bit different.  My opponent could be running any random cards from five different sets.  Therefore, I took very brief outlines of the games so that I wouldn’t go insane from all the note taking!  Here’s kind of how the day went…

Round 1 Vs. Mathew Harris

I took the fewest notes for my first couple of rounds because I didn’t even think about writing about them until round three!  I know that I curved to seven, but Matt missed his seven drop.  Other than that it was a pretty uneventful game that pretty much came down to who drew more generic pumps.  I had the edge because I had won the die roll and got odds.  The final score was 3 to -10. (1-0)

Round 2 Vs. Eric Madden

Those of you who have read past tourney reports of mine have heard about the “Madden curse”.  It’s not the John Madden one that dooms featured football players for the rest of their careers.  Rather, it’s just that I get stuck playing one of the Maddens at every tournament I’ve ever played in that they’ve been present at (which is quite a few).  To make it worse, I usually lose to them, and this time was no exception.  Eric had a pretty rockin’ sealed deck, but I thought I had him beat.  I got odds again, and on seven I brought him down to -5 while I was still at 10.  Somehow, though, I he had enough pumps to get me down to -5 as well and the game went to turn eight.  He had another high drop to recruit but only had Argent, so I scooped.  Eric later went on to win the tournament without a single loss, so I don’t really feel too bad about losing to his stellar deck. (1-1)

Round 3 Vs. Alex Lloyd

Alex Lloyd is better known as Orange Soda Man (OSM) on Vs. Realms.  He’s a pretty cool cat who joined our team for random board games between matches.  I got odds this match and things were going back and forth for both of us until turn six when Alex had to underdrop Shiva, Sandra Woosan.  She’s a good underdrop when you have odds, but she was a textless 9/9 at this point in the match.  He did get in some good damage on turn six because he used No Man’s Land to exhaust my six drop and just focused on my lower drops.  When turn seven came I had Mark Desmond, Teen Titans Go, and ten cards in the KO’d pile.  This meant that I could throw my five and seven drop into his seven drop and ready my seven drop.  I then threw that same seven drop into his Shiva (whose text was now online, but to little effect).  The rest of my board attacked to the face for the win. (2-1)

Round 4 Vs. Reid Cox

This game we both missed drops but I think Reid’s was a little more crucial than mine.  I got odds and we both curved to five and I missed on six.  I had Dragon Man to fill in the void, which is pretty decent, especially when your five drop was the incredibly defensive Red Skull (the endurance loss that Red Skull shelled out was more than Dragon Man’s low defense hurt me).  Reid missed on seven and I recruited Blockbuster again.  I only had nine cards in my KO’d when Reid asked for a count, but when Mark Desmond attacked I was able to flip up a Reform the League for that last card.  With Dragon man able to take down his six drop with no pumps and Blockbuster able to attack his now-alone five drop, the game was essentially over and Reid scooped. (3-1)

Round 5 Vs. John Hall

I actually didn’t get odds this time…   John and I both had Base of Operations going from turn two on, but even with its help John never played a plot twist all game!  He never did miss a drop at least so I guess that’s something.  I, on the other hand, missed my three drop, but had Argent on turn two.  She was a 4/4 on turn three so I never felt like I missed a three drop.  Our drops traded blows back and forth, but in the end, John’s lack of plots killed him because I had drawn into quite a few! (4-1)

Round 6 Vs. Jared Steglich

Jared had three one drops on the field after turn two so I thought I was going up against a rush deck, but he later explained he’d drawn all three of the one drops in his deck!  From turn three on we both curved out, but he had Psylocke, Second Skin on five against my Dragon Man; and John Henry Irons, Working Man against my Ra’s Al Ghul.  This may not seem that bad for Jared, but Argent could put a counter on Dragon Man, my hidden Owlman made Dragon Man an extra +1/+1, and Reform the League was face up.  This meant that Dragon Man could be a 12/12 at a moment’s notice.  Similarly, Ra’s could quickly be a 15/15.  It’s also worth noting that Argent was protected by Ra’s with a Coast City in my row, so no attack was safe for John Henry, and Psylocke couldn’t even attack unless she teamed with John!  This stonewall allowed me to go into turn seven with a very healthy board. (5-1)

There you have it!  I got second place behind the undefeated Eric.  We walked away with a complete foil set, a complete non-foil set, and a box of Marvel Universe.  Like I warned, it was hard to remember a lot of details, but I tried to jot down key moments of each match for your scrutiny!  Hope you enjoyed the read.  Please submit any changes you would have made to the draft deck.

Speaking of Gen Con, I picked up cases of the Batman and X-Men starters for five bucks each.  That’s 40 little twenty six card decks that I can use to teach my classes that wonderfully “math-related” game we all love so much!  I also picked up a simple math game that’s pretty similar to Uno for my lower math class called “Straw”.  We played Straw between all our tournament matches because there were always games going twenty minutes past time.  We even got Orange Soda Man from Vs. Realms in on the fun!

Join me next time when I unveil my Super Crossover Sealed report.  It’ll be on your screens Wednesday 8/27 when I should be caught up with everything else going on in my life.  Look forward to talking to you next week!

Xander’s new command position in the series is reflected in his ability to deploy slayers like nobody’s business.  The slayers themselves make each other stronger as they go down fighting.  These two cards are somewhat similar to running Aquaman, Arthur Curry with Sea Creatures.  Then again, Xander is also very similar to Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. in that they can both net you three two drops on turn four.  Xander’s lower stats are made up for with the Slayer’s built in stat booster.

Speaking of slayers, these are the real deal.  Faith has a suedo-Arkham theme in that she wants no one around her.  Buffy on the other hand, lends support to those around her, making her a great defensive play on seven.  Faith is a reservist because up to this point in the comic she’s only been tapped once by Giles for a mission.  She’s definitely seen as a rogue in the ranks of the good guys, so I tried to reflect that.  There will definitely be more cards reflecting the Buffy/Faith relationship; including a Finishing Move-like card.

If you’ve been following the run so far, you’d know that a rift has started to form between Giles and Buffy.  She’s starting to see just how far Giles will go for the good of humanity, no matter what the cost (think of the season 5 finale where he kills innocent little Ben to stop Glory).  As a result, Giles and Buffy have kind of been working together while simultaneously not talking about their plans with each other.  I’ll be interested to see how that turns out!

Finally, what is an Essential Collection without an alternate win condition?  Willow provides a Captain Marvel type win.  With Captain Marvel, Champion of Magic, you just have to survive to turn eight with 25 endurance.  With Willow, you have to survive with seven Magic plot twists face-up in your resource row.

I’d show you more, but my scanner stopped working.  I’ve finished cards for Andrew, Dracula, and Dawn, but I have to get images on them before I post them.  Let me know if any of these cards should have any changes made to them.  Once I release the second wave of these cards I’ll start up a tab for them so that you won’t have to look back through buried articles to see them.

See you all at Gen Con!