Something Sinister This Way Comes (Little Deck Creations)

So, instead of the idea of a Week or Month dedicated to Little Decks, this will be a continuing series of articles.

I've always loved the Goblin Glider, so when I was pawing through cards looking for idea starters for little decks, I realized I HAD to do Sinister Syndicate. I don't have much Marvel Team-Up, but I had enough to add some real power to this deck. Looking through my old SS cards, it's easy to see why they never went far. Most of them outright suck. However, there's some serious gems.

Goblin Glider is ridiculous in a weenie deck. Flight, range, +4 attack and it usually costs "free." Thank you very much! I'll take one! Vulture, Adrian Toomes? He's a 2/1 with flight for one. You have to reveal as an additional cost, but you gain END for every bit of breakthrough he does. On turn one that's a 4 endurance swing a good lot of the time! And if you put the glider on him? Ridiculous!

Hammerhead, Gangster is a 2 drop, 3/2 that gives +2 attack to your characters while they attack directly. That's insane. Imagine 1 drop, Hammerhead, 2 drop + Toomes + Glider. Attack up into their 2 and 3 with the 1/2... Now swing direct with Hammerhead and Toomes and rock the endurance difference by 19! On turn three! I did just that with my Sinister Little Deck tonight.

Green Goblin, Norman Osborn can straight up KO a character in the support row. It can be played around by protecting that character, but the ability is so strong that even if it doesn't go off it should be because you can just fly over and kill the weenie not worth KO'ing for breakthrough. Then attack up into the character "protected" from Norman with some pumps. Like Spider Slayers. Then KO them with Sadistic Choice anyway. Hehe.

19 Characters

Chameleon, Dmitri Smerdyakov
Basilisk, Basil Elks
Doppleganger, Killer Clone
Razorfist, Sociopathic Mercenary
Tombstone, Lonnie Lincoln
Tinkerer, Phineas Mason
Vulture, Adrian Toomes
Vulture, Aerial Stalker
Electro, Shock Jock
Hammerhead, Gangster
Shriek, Frances Barrison
Silvermane, Silvio Manfredi
Swarm, Fritz Von Meyer
Trapster, Peter Petruski
Albert Malik <> Red Skull, Axis of Evil
Spider-Man Robot, Timespinner
Venom, Mac Gargan
Carnage, Psychopath
Green Goblin, Norman Osborn

1 Equipment

Goblin Glider

1 Location

Doc Ock's Lab

10 Plot Twists

The Contract
Crushing Blow
Flying Kick
Legacy of Evil
No Fear
Sadistic Choice
Sand Trap
Savage Beatdown
Sinister Salvo
Spider Slayers

Chameleon, Doppleganger and Red Skull are the only ways to facilitate The Contract, so I might cut that after I play more games, but so far whenever I've had it, I've had one of them. Carnage is a great game ending option on 5 with a one drop. For the most part my mulligan has just been characters, but hitting Hammerhead on two is usually at least 4 extra damage by turn 4. You lose a lot of endurance off Razorfist, Venom, Carnage, Electro and Doc Ock's Lab, but the way the curve looks I think the deck is supposed to lose if the games goes to six anyway. Hehe. Enjoy your endurance while you have it. Use it. I should probably play more pumps to make up for this, but I kinda like the deck so far.

Are there any stars of the MTU Sinister Syndicate that I'm missing? Leave a comment and let me know!

-Mike Continue reading...

Busy Busy Bee

So, I've been kinda busy with various writing projects most of the week and haven't finished the next part of my article like I wanted too, but that's okay because I'd rather take my time and do it right rather than rush it out.

Sadly I won't make it to Hobby League tomorrow. Couldn't get the BART fare together and probably didn't have a ride home anyway. I don't fancy a 9 mile walk home after 10PM, not that I live in a bad part of town or would even have to walk through a bad part of town... More because I don't want to walk 9 miles anywhere ever! lol

C'est la vie. I did e-bay up some cards though. I guess I could have paid for BART with that money. :( Whoops! Guess I got ahead of myself.

-Mike Continue reading...

Something Old, Something New

So, to get back into VS I've been organizing my cards and while doing so, I decided to get all the proxies out of my old decks. I'm not testing for highly competetive tournaments again (yet) and even if I was these would all be terribly out of date anyway. Going through my box of decks I found a deck I had totally forgotten about.

It was a varient on the Brave & the Bold using Barbara Gordon <> Batgirl, Guardian of Gotham to draw a lot of cards. I had always wanted to make more room in B&B for Utility Belt and once the Man of Steel set came out I had a good reason too. Plus I had always liked Twin Firearms as a one of in Titans on Roy up front. Made stunning 5 drops so much easier.

So, I got the idea of playing B&B Equips and set about making the list you see below. Remember, this is old. Very old. lol

Characters
3x Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend
2x Dawn Granger <> Dove, Agent of Order
2x Mirage, Miriam Delgado
1x Spoiler, Stephanie Brown
1x Hank Hall <> Hawk, Agent of Chaos
4x Barbara Gordon <> Batgirl, Guardian of Gotham
1x Roy Harper <> Arsenal, Sharpshooter
1x Red Star, Leonid Kovar
1x Terra, Tara Markov
4x Vic Stone <> Cyborg, Human Machine
1x Batman, Caped Crusader
4x Garth <> Tempest, Atlantean Sorcerer
1x Dick Grayson <> Nightwing, Defender of Bludhaven
1x Koriand'r <> Starfire, Alien Princess
1x Batman, The Dark Knight
1x Raven, Daughter of Trigon

Equipment
2x Jetpack
3x Utility Belt
1x Twin Firearms

Locations
2x GCPD Headquarters
2x Optitron
2x USS Argus

Plot Twists
2x Bat-Signal
1x Betrayal
3x Dynamic Duo
3x Fizzle
1x Heroic Sacrifice
4x Teen Titans Go!
4x The Brave And The Bold

1x World's Finest

In my evaluation I thought Vic Stone was better on 4 because he auto searched out Utility Belt or Jetpack, either of which made his 6/6 stats relatively decent. Terra was a 1 of because... I had one of her. Not that I had 4 Garth, but that's beyond the point.

It was about as consistent as any Brave and the Bold deck was, back then. I.E. not terribly so. I could usually pull off a good draw with or without the team up, but without the team up it wasn't strong enough to compete with other decks. Still, a Batgirl with a Jetpack on turn 3 was never a disappointment. Stun backs and card draw are always good.

Ideally I always wanted to play Alfred, Mirage/Alfred, Barbara, Cyborg, Garth, Nightwing or Starfire and then a big Batman, but like any Titans deck sometimes it payed to play Roy and boost Hawk/Dove out on 6 and use TTG! to board wipe people. Which works even better with Dynamic Duo and GCPD Headquarters.

The fun thing about the deck was that it had a lot of surprises. People did run Utility Belt in B&B, but usually not 3 of them. So dropping a Utility Belt on Mirage turn 2 wasn't even uncommon for me. Nobody expected Vic Stone and plenty of people forgot about Starfire on 6. And finishing with a Fat Bat was usually met with blank stares and then realization.

I'm not saying the deck was "1337 Tech" or even Tier 1 greatness, but it was very fun and certainly serviceable. I think I could have eventually tweaked it into a very strong contender, but I played it at the last PCQ in CA run by Innovation Gaming, got a lot of terrible draws and then didn't have any tournaments for like eight or ten months.

Thus, it went away as a dust collector in my deck box, only played across a dinner table. Or if you want to get technical a table at Crispy Crust Pizza where my friends and I used to meet every Tuesday to play.

I remember very specifically one of them asked after the PCQ if I would play the deck again at a tournament and I thought about it before saying I definitely felt it had the potential to win, I just probably needed to work on it a bit.

The funniest thing was that in round one of that PCQ I faced something of a mirror match as I remember it. Barbara Gordon, equipments and to my dismay... Flame Trap to compliment HIS Dynamic Duo. I think I posted a tournament report for that event on VS Realms. I know I used to have it on my LiveJournal, but considering I never kept up with the LJ I wiped it about a year ago. Except for one really emo post I made, because if LiveJournal isn't about being emo, I don't know what it's for.

Golden Age may not be the most supported format, but if I'm going to continue playing VS I have to play at home too. So in that spirit, I intend to rebuild the deck using all the new juicy equipment, Titans and Gotham Knights hanging around. And maybe even a more techy multi-team version. However, that'll be next time. Here's one preview though...

Until next time.

-Mike

P.S. What did you expect? Smoke Screen? If we're talking an equipment deck, you have to include Fate Gear!

Continue reading...