I actually like Underwold/SF use the Evasion characters let him exhaust out your board, like he would normally and respond normally like you would. then play Spider sense tingling on the UW guys and evade the SF guys, then play Undead Legions ooooh no exhausty anymore...this would of course be with the Sandman AE

Yeah, you know it. But, your opponent would smash your face if that's all you did.

Ahhh... back from the Darkmoon Faire. TIme to talk Syndicate again!

I never said that Syndicate was the best deck in the format. I said it would be the best if Gift Wrapped and Hawkeye didn't exist.

Kree seems like it would be a good deck in the Modern Age; as Press can be absolutely absurd on turns five and six. Unfortunately, it's just too slow to deal with Syndicate in the first four turns. Considering that the Syndicate 1- and 2-drops are just as big or bigger than the Kree 2-and 3-drops, respectively, you don't actually gain any advantage with the Press mechanic in the early turns. Kree decks don't become truly imposing until they can Press out a character like Galen Kor on five; or Shatterax on six (with Yon-Rogg in there somewhere to help deal with big drops).

Besides that, Kree loses a lot not being able to team up with a power team like Checkmate or Villains United. I've seen a couple of decks like Inhumans/Kree and Wild Pack/Kree that aren't bad. However, they aren't anything extraordinary either. Mono-Kree is probably the best Kree variant in Modern Age, and even it isn't all that good.

I think I've given more than enough explanation why Electro is a key 2-drop in the deck. Aside from the rationale of wanting to have a diversity of 2-drops so you can effectively underdrop on turns where you control the initiative, Electro's 5 ATK is just too good to ignore. Your only reason for disliking Electro is because of the burn that you take when he's attacked. Considering that this will almost never be more than 6 END in any given game, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Imagine if you were playing Reservist TNB. Would you pay 6 END to find a copy of The New Brotherhood from your deck? I know I ceratainly would. This is basically the situation with Electro - you get a permanent +2 ATK boost in exchange for some endurance. Obviously, the boost only affects one character, so the TNB analogy isn't perfectly accurate. Still, I think that 6 END for a permanent +2 ATK on a character is a great trade. If you feel differently, then more power to you. However, I think you'll find that the decks that play Electro are generally more powerful and more effective than those that don't.

Spooky - As always your arguments are great and I really like your build of syndicate but I've been playing the deck a bunch and I've found that the real thing that beats this deck is when your opponent drops as many characters as you. When all of your characters get stunned each turn it is almost impossible to force through enough damage to get the turn 5 kill. And after turn 5 it's almost impossible for syndicate to win. So how do you think this problem could be solved in modern. I have been wracking my brain but I just can't think of a reliable way of maintaining board presence against a deck like Modern Moleoids with Doomed earth.
thanks for your help
-Mike-

Kree w/ Poker Nights also gives it problems, I've found. Hard to push through damage against lots of bodies and plenty of reinforcement.

I meant to say decent at best no decent to best. Your making a huge argument for this deck when you know its not up there with the top decks. You know its not going to be a big hit at the PC and you know that kree is better than the deck. Just because this deck beats kreee doesn't mean its good when it can't handle anything else in the format. Kree on the other hand can handle the stall decks that you talk about.

Syndicate burns their self in MA to be any where near competitive.

Spooky, why do you only have 13 1d in your deck? My Syndicate Deck plays 20 1d (7 different kinds) and I still have a hard time drawing them consistantly. Also why no Legacy of Evil, or Big Leagues (especially since you deck is pure mono)?

I personally think that if there was a way to make syndicate more consistant then it could be tier 1.

20 1 drops in MA so you play of each 1 drop ?

I was meant he only plays:

1-drops (13)
3 Fusion
4 Lizard
1 Razorfist
3 Slyde
2 Vulture

While I play something like this:

1-drops (21)
3 Fusion
4 Lizard
3 Razorfist
3 Slyde
3 Vulture
2 Doppleganger
2 Frank Drake

I just dont understand why he plays so few 1d.

1/3 of ur deck is one drops what does the rest of ur deck look like ?

Ninja: I honestly don't think that Syndicate can beat Moloids/Doomed Earth. I haven't played the matchup much, but I concede that the Moloids characters can maintain far better board presence. The Syndicate will have a tough time in any off-curve matchup where the other deck can put more characters in play. For example, I don't think that Syndicate could beat Faces of Evil, since Hard Sound Construct give Faces a distinct advantage. Fortunately, Faces isn't Modern Age legal. I suppose the question, then, is how effective moloids will be in Modern against the other top Tier decks. If you expect to see a fair share of Moloids, then Syndicate probably isn't a very good call.


Hoops: Kree with Poker Night could be a problem, but I don't anticipate that Poker Night will make much of a showing in Kree decks. In order to beat heavy defense decks like Heralds and Spider-Friends, Kree needs to play a lot of attack pumps. When you add in the searchers (Mobilize and Stargate) and utility cards (Penal Colony) that Kree also needs to play, I doubt that there will be a lot of room for tech.


Westender: The 1- and 2-drop counts fall back to "redundancy" once again. You obviously want more of your better characters at each drop. But the only real "4-of" at one or two is Lizard. If you increase other character counts to three or four, then you run the risk of drawing multiples when you really need to have different characters to fully utilize all of your resources. Also, I'm not as big of a fan of playing off-team characters like Frank Drake and Doppelganger. I think they can close you off to playing cards like Mobilize and Big Leagues; or even effectively fulfilling Vulture's Loyalty. Also, playing Doppelganger can open you up to taking big hits on defense that might lose a game for you. Obviously, you can simply bounce Frank Drake to avoid big attacks. Still, I think that even as far as 1-drops go, you want to obtain some modicum of board control. I'm not sure if my counts at one and two are optimal, but I think that twenty 1-drops runs you the risk of running into these kinds of issues.

As for Legacy of Evil, I have to admit that I like the card; and that it seems like a good fit in the deck. However, our testing with the card revealed a couple of inconsistencies. First, it is conditional on having more characters in play than resources. Generally, this isn't an issue. However, against another aggressive deck, or against a good control deck, Legacy can become a dead card. This situation arose a bit too much for my taste in playtesting.

Secondly, and more importantly, we found that there were three scenarios that would almost always occur when you played Legacy of Evil:
1) You draw two attack pumps (this is the optimal scenario);
2) You draw an attack pump and a character card;
3) You draw two character cards.

Scenario one is what you would almost always want to happen. However, it usually only happened one time out of five. Scenario two happened about two times out of five; with scenario three happening the other two times out of five. Four out of five times, you were as well off or better off having an attack pump instead of Legacy of Evil. So, it simply made sense to replace Legacy of Evil with more attack pumps. Since hand advantage is generally a non-issue in this deck (thanks to Lizard), the extra pumps will almost always benefit you more.


D-Block: Dude, you switch issues more than a politician. First, we're on Electro; now we're on whether Syndicate is a Tier One deck. You've already admitted that you've never played with or against a "good" Syndicate deck, so how can you make the judgment that they aren't competitive?!? I've got multiple PC and 10K Top 8'ers on my team saying that Syndicate is a strong contender. I've discussed our strategies and thoughts on the deck in this very thread. I've discussed specific cards in the deck, and why the do or do not merit inclusion. I've given every possible reason that the Syndicate rush deck is good; and even discussed the reasons why it is bad; and discussed ALL of them in detail.

If you aren't going to actually take the time to look into my suggestions to see if they are, in fact, correct, then I'm not going to argue with you anymore. I have solid testing results to back my claims; you have completely unsubstantiated opinions. I am comfortable with knowing which of those will prevail in the long run.

Finally, I am not trying to convince you or anyone else to play this deck at the PC or any other Modern Age event. In fact, I am almost 99% sure that I won't be playing this deck at the Pro Circuit. I was simply offering my suggestions for improving the deck based on my personal testing results. If other players like them and want to use them in their own decks, fantastic. If they want to belittle my suggestions and play Kree at the Pro Circuit, then I hope that I get to play one of them in the first round.

Not sure about that assessment. In my testing, Poker Night is proving essential for Kree to win against decks like Syndicate and Skrulls that want to win on 5. So far Poker Night seems to be the best way to help get to 6 against those decks. 7 drop Ronan wrecks all the stall decks I've built, and stall decks in general struggle to deal with the massive number of bodies that Kree can accumulate against a deck that isn't attacking aggressively.

Interesting. I guess I hadn't really considered it because all of the Kree variants that I've tested with tend to get crushed by EVERYTHING. They aren't fast enough to deal with Syndicate or Skrull; and they don't have the late game to deal with endurance gain, recovery effects, all of the powerful defensive tricks in Modern Age, and (most importantly) Adam Warlock.

Of course, none of my builds had Ronan the Accuser, Supreme Public Accuser. I can see how he could be a beating against stall decks.

OK so im switching between how good syn sin is and the effectiveness of electro thats fine and dandy. I didn't say that the builds i've tested against were bad i just said the might not be the optimal build. I've also misunderstood your point. I thought you was trying to make syndicate so better than what it was. Your team is highly accomplished in the VS world thats cool that doesn't mean you guys have the best syndicate build. Us going back and forth like this is pointless with out DWF being released off curve decks might be completely unplayable if they make another card like flame trap. I haven't had a chance to put your deck through testing yet so my apologizes on that. But when i sent the deck over to the ppl i play tested with they didn't like the build so just wait and I should be able to test your build this weekend.

I need to do some more testing against Syndicate, using a build closer to yours, but for me Kree does well against Skrulls. This is the current build of the Kree deck in my gauntlet. Ronan was a recent addition after it wrecked my Heralds/Inhumans stall at a local tournament. Poker Night I've been playing in there for months, along with Uni-Power for the Skrulls match-up.

Characters - 30
---------------
4x Lockjaw, Inhuman's Best Friend
4x San, The Alienated One
4x Dr. Minerva, Starforce
3x Lieutenant Kona Lor, Lunatic Legion
2x Captain Att-Lass, Starforce
2x Commander Dylon Cir, Lunatic Legion
2x Colonel Yon-Rogg, Commander of the Helion
2x Mar-Vell <> Captain Marvel, Soldier of the Empire
2x Admiral Galen Kor, Lunatic Legion
1x Ultimus, Starforce
1x Ronan the Accuser, Starforce
1x Shatterax, Starforce
1x Bron Char, Lunatic Legion
1x Korath the Pursuer, Starforce
1x Ronan the Accuser, Supreme Public Accuser

Plot Twists - 20
----------------
4x Poker Night
4x Remnant Fleet
4x The Uni-Power
4x Live Kree . . . or Die!
3x The Lunatic Legion

Locations - 10
--------------
4x Stargate
2x Penal Colony
1x Soul World
3x Hala

I confess I haven't tested it against anything using Adam Warlock.