After reading stubarne's "Pygmies in a Pinata" article, it hit me: A simple idea that would combine the Sentinels with another team, capable of doing massive damage in the midgame. The damage would be done in a way that your opponent would never expect and has never been done before (or as far as I know, has never been published) .

And thus, the genesis of the Flame Thrower deck.

"Stretch's Purple Flamethrower"

4 MOR-015 Longshot-Rebel Freedom Fighter
4 MOR-056 Mr. Fantastic-Stretch
20 MOR-145 Wild Sentinel-Army
1 MOR-137 Bastion-Leader of Operation: Zero Tolerance

4 MOR-069 Cosmic Radiation
4 MOR-152 Reconstruction Program
3 MOR-153 Search and Destroy
4 MOR-174 Advanced Hardware
4 MOR-183 Cover Fire
4 MOR-199 Marvel Team-Up
4 MOR-203 Night Vision

2 MOR-030 Cerebro
2 MOR-038 Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters

Continued...



Image Copyright Marvel Characters Ltd.

This deck likes odd initiative. On your initial draw, always mulligan for Longshot unless you have at least 2 of the other mandatory cards in your opening draw. The mandatory cards are a Marvel Team-Up, Stretch, and an Advanced Hardware, you need all of these by turn 5. On turns 1-4, you use Longshot to search for the cards you need to setup your combo, usually calling Wild Sentinel and the next card you need. Lay as many Wild Sentinels down as you can every turn, and do your best to keep them on the field. That means that you normally don't team attack when it's not your initiative if you already have a stunned character unless there is no alternative.

So, with any luck, your side of the field should look like this at the end of turn 4:

Field:
Longshot
6-9 Wild Sentinels

Resource Row:
Marvel Team-Up
1 or more Cosmic Radiation

In Hand:
Stretch
1 or more Advanced Hardware
1 or more Cosmic Radiation

That's nice, but how does it work?

On Turn 5, you recruit Stretch and as many Advanced Hardwares as you can. Flip the Team-Up and call FF and Sentinels. Now your combo is in place and we're ready throw flames!

Use Stretch, equipped with an Advanced Hardware, to attack the largest character you think you can stun. All you're doing here is protecting against the counter-attack. Once the attack is declared, there are only two possible outcomes to worry about: either Stretch will be stunned or he won't. Either way, it's time to light up the Flame Thrower and start the massive burn. After the attack becomes legal, exhaust Stretch and immediately use his ability, paying 2 endurance to move the Advanced Hardware to one of your Wild Sentinels and then activate it for 3 burn. Continue doing this until all of your Wilds are exhausted. If you had the maximum number (9) of Wilds out, then you just did 27 direct damage at a cost of 18 Endurance. If you only have one Advanced Hardware out, you want to end with it on Stretch to protect against Overload.

Now you have to make a decision, as this is where it becomes important whether or not Stretch will be stunned in the attack: If he is going to stun, you want to flip or play a Cosmic Radiation now, readying all your Wild Sentinels and Stretch. Stretch's attack has still not resolved, so start your move-burn chain all over again, ending with the Advanced Hardware back to the now ready Stretch and burn for another 3. This time you'ved burned for 30 direct damage at a cost of 20.

At this point, you've just put a gap of 19 endurance between you and your opponent and forced him to go for the win on this turn since he's in negative endurance, -7 to 12. Hopefully, you've stunned one of his larger attackers with Stretch and he'll have to pull off something big to hit you back. If you were able to play more than one Advanced Hardware, the gap will be larger since you're saving the some of the cost of moving it around.

If you have another Cosmic, go ahead and play it now, putting another 6 endurance gap between you and your opponent, -25 to 0. Thanks to Evltom for pointing out my slight math error here

If Stretch would not be stunned as a result of the attack, you have a choice whether or not to burn again after you play the first Cosmic Radiation. Depending on what your opponent has on his side of the field and what defensive cards you have, you may want to ready all your Wild Sentinels so that they can reinforce, then set off the rest of your burn at the end of your opponent's attack step or in response to an attack on Stretch. If you're lucky enough to have 2 or more Cosmics, set off as many burns as possible while still being able to ready your characters at the end of your attack step. The more burn you can set off during your attack, the greater pressure you're putting on your opponent to do more damage during their attack step.

Bastion is your ace in the hole for Turn 6 in case you can't end it on Turn 5 with burn. You should have enough Wild Sentinels in hand to pump him substantially and avoid stunning, then go for kill. Remember set off your burn and then move the Advanced Hardware from Stretch to Bastion if Stretch is going to get stunned in an attack.

Weaknesses:

As with any army deck, the worst matchup is Doom. Flame Trap and Reign of Terror absolutely ruin this deck if done on Turn 4. However, since this deck does not rely on the 1 drops to attack, it is feasible to win against Doom. If you can force Boris to look for something other than Flame Trap before your opponent figures out what you're doing, you might have a chance. You could also survive single Reign of Terror on Turn 4, but it would still be bad news in multiples. You also need to be careful about what you're placing in the resource row and what you're holding in hand against Doom.

Scarlet Witch can also ruin this deck, and is another big reason that you always want to select odd iniative, so that you can chain your flame combo to her recruit if you see her coming out.

In conclusion...

DC may open up some interesting possibilities for this deck, it could also present some interesting new challenges. Right now, it looks like Stretch might find some friends in the GCPD. The Purple might turn Blue so he can Fizzle out the Flame Traps and end the Reign of Terror. However it turns out, this is an incredibly fun deck to play and an absolute riot when it goes off big. So, if you have the time, light up your own version of the Flame Thrower and burninate the country side.

It has definitely been done before, but not with the Sentinels.

Why Sentinels? Seems like GCPD may be able to do this better with Clocktower.

Notice the last paragraph?

in your deck...i would run press the attacks (this way you can do some burn without paying the 2 lp to switch the equipment to a new character.....also, I would add a personal forcefield for some protection...and depending on how the deck was working, maybe even consider fantasticars to beef up your swarm.

This is more of template for discussion. :) It's a fun deck to play, but it's certainly not reliable enough to run as a staple deck, at least not yet.

Fantasticar would be useless, the goal is to end the game on Turn 5, and you aren't attacking most of the time. You also want to keep the card pool to as few different cards as possible.

Anyway, from this point, I'm going to sit back and let you guys pick it apart and come up with your own versions. Let me know how you do. My current damage record with the version above is 82 on turn 5.

Outstanding stuff, mad fun. I really like the picture too... burn baby burn.

There's way too much going on in this deck to make Longshot useful.

That depends on what you consider "useful". I got my 60 card draw combo because of Longshot/Night Vision almost exactly half of the time at Origins. It is not consistent enought to win big, but it serves the purpose it has in a deck like this... it gets enough army to swarm and it gets through the deck to make sure the team-up comes up.

This version is a little bit "loose" the GCPD version I've been experimenting with is a lot tighter since the PD don't need as much defense. However, even with the this version you will usually do enough deck cycling to be able to call your draws by turn 5.

As I said though, this isn't a tournament deck, it's a fun deck to play. There is nothing sweeter than watching your opponent's face when you play that 3rd Cosmic Radiation.

thats why I said fantasticar depending on how the deck played out. I figured that you just tried to stall til turn 5 so you could have as many wild sentinals out as possible. attacking could have its uses though...i mean, if each sentinal has a 4/4 boost, and some have 3 from the hardware...whats stopping them?

and longshot makes some sense....if you are calling sentinals and mr. fantastic to help you get to that mr fantastic a little quicker....but the deck would probably flow a little better without it being so random. I mean, imagine if you called fantastic and sentinals....and fantastic comes up with no sentinals, you may have just screwed yourself for the rest of the game.

plus, if you are going for turn 5 kill you dont need the bastion and a ton of sentinals in your hand....just play with some extra sentinals instead. I would also play with an early f4 character and signal flare, so you can search for fantastic if you dont get him. I would play with either a lv 1 invisible girl for some early turn stall or even a franklin richards, just to get an f4 characters out there...who knows, maybe you will get some use out of him.

I have played against this deck a few times with Fatal. When it works.. game over. I also argue against Longshot. I like (in GCPD version) Barbara Gordon and Clocktower. Maybe Wayne's Manor to stall that extra bit.....

As soon as you hit 1 endurance or lower, you can no longer pay endurance to move the equipment. Due to you not having the endurance to pay anymore.

You're right, my math for the last part is a little bit off, I'll fix it.

OK fixed, thanks for pointing that out.

I had seen a similar deck a while back and tryed it out but my environment was full of Doom/Trap so the deck hardly ever worked for me.

I have a variant of it with the Gothan Knights because their army is a bit better and they get Fizzel. You really won't need Cover Fire anymore and there's nothing wrong with World's Finest. ^_<

I need to take my after waking up nap but once I get up, eat sumffin, take my after eating nap I might bring my lazy self up to write down the deck list.

Nap, Nap now