Everyone serious is practicing up for PC Indy: The Gencon Strikes Back and trying to find the perfect DC Modern decks. Since I haven't been planning on playing there, I've been focusing on Golden Age decks. With the recent shift in Golden Age I've been thinking about what older decks will become have a better chance to compete in the Overload-free metagame. What follows are the ravings of a madman.

Monday was Draft Club at my place and we were talking about Golden Age decks after I was narrowly defeated because I wasn't able to push through 2 more endurance loss and couldn't punch through the triple threat of Kilowog, Alan Scott and Grayven with my Ganthet and his Green Lantern compadres. Let me take just a minute to say "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, DANNY!!!! GANTHET SHOULD BE A FREAKIN' GREEN LANTERN!"

"If you think that by threatening Danny you can get him to do what you want. . . Well, that's where you're right. But - and I am only saying this because I care - there are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing."

Well, it's a little irritating that I was able to draft three copies of my 7 drop and I can't even take down 6 drops. And he's wearing the Guardian outfit so he should be a Green Lantern and able to team attack with his subordinates.

"Three things. First, if you were able to draft three copies, maybe he's not that good. Life gain and crazy DEF is nice, but without an ATK to take down your opponent's guys, you're kinda hosed. Second, Kilowog's not your typical 6 drop so it's not surprising you weren't able to do much against him. Third, you could have taken that Coast City so he wouldn't have been able to protect Grayven."

At least I did better this week than I did last week. GL/EE is pretty strong in Draft. Manhunters is nice, but if you're not the only one drafting it or if there aren't a full 8 people in the draft, there's a scarcity of cards for you to draw from. Next week maybe I'll try Anti-Matter and see how it does compared to other teams.

"So, you've been talking a lot about GL Draft, but you'd mentioned older Golden Age decks in your intro. You're obviously not going to be talking about how good GL/EE is in Golden Age. What are you going to be trying to pass off as good this time? That X-Men deck you stole from WarMachine and have been passing off as your own ever since?"

I give him props for the original design, but it has changed quite a bit. And the deck is X-Men, but only half so. I'm actually going to go for Heroes United.

"And where did this crazy idea come from?"

Well, I was lamenting that there wasn't a good X-Men deck and one of the guys mentioned FF would be a good compliment. We spent the next half hour discussing which cards would fit into the deck. Here's my recollection of what was talked about.

4 {[card]MOR-018[/card]} Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner
2 {[card]MOR-004[/card]} Bishop, Lucas {[card]MOR-004[/card]} Bishop
2 {[card]MOR-058[/card]} She-{[card]MOR-046[/card]} Hulk, Jennifer Walters
4 {[card]MFF-005[/card]} Luke Cage, Reserve Member
4 {[card]MOR-051[/card]} Invisible Woman, Sue Storm
1 {[card]MOR-065[/card]} Wolverine, New Fantastic Four
1 {[card]MOR-010[/card]} Gambit, Remy Lebeau
3 {[card]MOR-063[/card]} Thing, Heavy Hitter
1 {[card]MOR-045[/card]} Ghost Rider, New Fantastic Four
1 {[card]MSM-107[/card]} Sunfire, Shiro Yoshida
1 {[card]MOR-026[/card]} Storm, Weather Witch
1 {[card]MOR-023[/card]} Rogue, Powerhouse
1 {[card]MOR-046[/card]} Hulk, New Fantastic Four
1 {[card]MMK-017[/card]} Luke Cage, Power Man
2 {[card]MFF-007[/card]} Mr. Fantastic, Leader
1 {[card]MOR-064[/card]} Thing, The Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Thing
1 {[card]MMK-191[/card]} Professor X, Mental Master
1 {[card]MSM-114[/card]} Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd

3 {[card]DOR-163[/card]} Total Anarchy
4 {[card]MOR-214[/card]} Savage Beatdown
4 {[card]MOR-072[/card]} It's Clobberin' Time!
4 {[card]MOR-073[/card]} Signal Flare
4 {[card]MOR-195[/card]} Heroes United
4 {[card]DGL-201[/card]} Millennium
3 {[card]MSM-109[/card]} Bamf!
4 {[card]MOR-031[/card]} Children of the Atom
2 {[card]MSM-113[/card]} Ultimate Sacrifice

"64 cards, eh? Ever heard of playing the minimum number of cards in a deck? Hell, Jonesy rags on you every time you propose a 61 card deck. With this thing at 64 cards, he'll laugh you right out of the tech forum."

Well, I'm having a hard time paring it down and the deck's not in it's complete final form. I like the characters, but it seems like there just aren't enough slots for the plot twists I want.

"Ok, if you like the characters so much, what's the thinking behind them? I notice there are a lot of one offs there."

X-Men have lots and lots of utility characters. Gambit and Sunfire are great anti-weenie characters. Rogue KO's outright. Storm makes your opponents either form up front or forgo their attacks that turn. And Professor X on 9 makes your opponents wonder where their 8 drop went. With a proper character search, you can tune your character curve to match your opponent's strategy.

"So when do you take Bishop over Nightcrawler or vice versa?"

Bishop is great against anyone with range. That means you, G'Nort and Olapet. Without Overload to get in his way, he can start showing his true colors and let the world know what a bad man he his. And the beauty is his ability works when he's an attacker or a defender. If your opponent isn't showing range, Nightcrawler's probably a better bet. Being able to swing in without stunning is almost never a bad thing.

At the three drop the Fantastic Four guys start showing up. While I'd like to run Wolverine, Logan here, his reveal Loyalty is a killer. Luke Cage is the primary drop if you have odd init. He's a 5/3 and draws you a card. He's got game and helps dig through your deck for your team ups and combat pumps. She-Hulk is the best defensive drop, but since the deck's about aggressiveness, you've got more Lukes than Jennifers.

At four, we mix up the teams. Invisible Woman is the primary drop for her defensive ability. With the lack of Overload, the inclination will be for everyone and their second cousin to run massively crazy combat pumps. If all your guys are reinforced naturally, you don't need to worry so much about that and can focus on doing your own damage in return. Wolverine is good for his natural combat pump and his interaction with Nightcrawler. Attack with Nightcrawler, attack bounces. Attack with Wolverine, Wolverine gets really big. Gambit's there to combat the possibility of weenie rushes from TNB, Titans, GL/EE, etc.

At the five drop, you've got Thing, Heavy Hitter as your drop of choice. He's a solid beatstick and one of the most undervalued rares in the game just because his larger version is so popular. Ghost Rider's a solid choice and his ATK bonus is the benefit it was intended to be, not the liability it used to be. Rounding out the choices is Sunfire for his anti-weenie tech.

At six we have a "Pick 'em" situation. Storm puts the breaks on their support row characters attacking. You can also try to get fancy with formations, but I tend to mess myself up when I try to get too fancy. Rogue is a one-shot, one-KO kinda gal and she's really good for taking down whoever's troubling you on the opposite side of the field. With Clobberin' Time to help with her DEF or Bamf! to make it not matter, she's a great pick if you've got the Plot Twists to support her. Hulk's ATK bonus ability will help enforce the discipline needed to save your resource cards until later in the game. And Luke Cage is in here because he's really good and I can't bear to get rid of any of the other six drops. He teams himself up with everyone and has solid stats for a six drop.

At seven, I really like the new Mr. Fantastic. I wish his ability worked on himself, but even without that he's a solid pump for the rest of the team. Thing's here to scare off any weenies who stuck around after Gambit and Sunfire told them to move along. At eight you've got the initiative stealing Surfer and Professor X, though the Professor is really a nine drop.

"Pretty solid characters there. I noticed you're really hating on the weenies aren't you?"

I know UDE wants to promote off-curve strategies and have made some really good facilitators for that. I think many smaller guys will be big in the Golden Age metagame at least through Avengers and likely beyond given those crazy UDE guys and their plans. Besides, I only threw in one-ofs for those slots that I can search out if needed. Not many weenie rush decks run Fizzle and against those that do, I'll just have to draw curve naturally, use Signal Flare to tease out their Fizzles and beat them upside the head with Beatdowns and Clobberin' Times.

"Speaking of Signal Flare, Beatdown and Clobberin' Time, let's talk about the Plot Twists. I see you've got a good mix of FF and X-Men specific cards along with some good generics and your team ups. Total Anarchy for anti-weenie tech. You seem to be really hating on the small guys."

I've been housed by too many GLEE decks recently to not have the hate on for the little guy.

"Understood. Beatdown, obviously. Clobberin' Time for some good FF Beats and it also gives you the defense so your little guys can swing up the curve."

And a Beatdown, Beatdown, Clobberin' Time'd Nightcrawler's a wonderful thing when going against a five or six drop.

"I agree. Signal Flare for character search. It's pretty possible to not be able to play it in the early game because you've only got X-Men guys in your hand, though."

Yeah, it happens, but Signal Flare's soooo much better than Cerebro, it's a no-brainer.

"I hear hitting your drops in the game is kinda good."

That's the rumor.

"Team ups. The natural and Millenium. Why Millenium? You've got to exhaust guys to play it and all it gets you is an extra card."

I am a sucker for drawing cards. I've had this crazy idea of a natural three team deck going on in my head for a long time. Doom, X-Men, FF with Unlikely Allies, Common Enemy and Heroes United all providing card draw so I could get down to some clockwork cards that I needed to pull off some crazy combo. . . perhaps turbo-Alicia or turbo-Franklin. The problem was getting the right characters with the right plot twists. Millenium helps that out with the simple cost of exhausting a guy (which you'll be able to do on defense anyway). In this deck, you've only got FF and X-Men to choose unless you want to team up Marvel Knights on turn six.

"Three team draw craziness. . . you are looney. Ok, so next up are the three X-Men anti-stun cards. Bamf! is pretty good on offense, especially with your small guys and Total Anarchy. Children of the Atom helps maintain board control. And Ultimate Sacrifice can bring back all your guys if your opponent has been able to go crazy against you."

To be honest, I'm not really sold on Ultimate Sacrifice, but I really like the art and threw it in there to see if it's ability would be useful. It's come in handy at times, but not as much as I'd like.

"So, that's the deck. Interesting. You know you just gave away the tech you'll be playing to everyone so they'll know what they're going up against whenever they play you."

Yeah, but I figure the deck will get a little more tweaking through the next month or so and I'll still be able to shake things up with a few cards put in and a few taken out. Hell, look at what Curve Sents does with their 12-16 open card slots. They change the whole deck around. Besides, I'm supposed to be a good player and able to do better than them with a good deck.

"You? A good player? There's a reason you judge."

And there's a reason I undergo personality repression therapy. If you guys have any suggestions for the deck, I'm happy to hear them.

Hopefully next week we'll have a special treat on Tech Upgrade. It's still in testing, but I'm very excited and I hope you guys enjoy it. Until then, take care.

I love the Common Enemy/Heroes United/Unlikely Allies thing - I tried a Fastball Special/Power Nexus/Cosmic Radiation abuse deck with that premise. It didn't test so great, but maybe a curve version would be better.

The Heroes United build above looks like it has a Titans problem. Rogue KO'ing Bastion on turn 6 is a must to survive Curve Sentinels, because a pumped-up unstunned Mags will ruin Children of the Atom on 7 if it doesn't kill you outright. But the deck has beefy characters, which helps against Curve.

Instead of using the sub par recovery cards you could try adding 3/4 Cosmic Radiation and 3/4 Fastball Special (sooo underrated and underused it's not even funny) so you can clear out their board and go all out on their endurance.

My suggestion to clean up your drops would be...

-1 Luke Cage, Power Man (unsearchable and not necessary)
-1 Sunfire/Gambit (you really only need one or the other, not both)
-1 Professor X (he's unneeded and dare I say a 'win more' card; Surfer is just way better)

You won't always be teamed up, so you might want to get rid of an ICT.

-1 It's Clobberin' Time

That gets rid of your 4 extra cards. But if you don't want to do that then really all you need to do is get rid of a few of those Mellenium, since when you have too many cards all they do is take up space. They are the Waboku of Vs.

Cosmic Radiation/Fastball Special is a different deck. In that I'd run 7 drop Professor, 4 drop Rogue, Human Torch, Hotshot, Mimic, etc.

I think I'm gonna have to drop Disco Luke (though I really like him). Not being searchable kinda clinches what I'd been feeling for a while.

Sunfire and Gambit. . . they overlap, but Gambit comes out earlier and Sunfire's more flexible. Having them at different drops means I can be more flexible in how I respond to my opponent. And they're fuel for Children of the Atom.

Professor X. . . I see your point, but I'm always very hesitant to go down to a single drop, especially at 8. If I they have a way to get rid of the Surfer from my deck, it'll really suck for me if I can't finish them out by turn 8. Maybe I should focus more on ending the game sooner. I'd be happier with a solo Surfer if I only had to use him every once in a while.

Clobberin' Times aren't negotiable. They're too good almost all the time. As for Millenium, it's a more like Pot of Greed than Wabouko (though it's only like half a Pot of Greed :-) I am a big fan of cards that let me draw more into my deck.

Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming.

Great article, sence i gave up on x men awhile back, this gives me hope they have a chance at rocking the meta. Well if you dont mind i am going to try this heros united thing out. lol talk about net decking.

Leader is weak all around. You could very well just use 7 drop fantastic and a fantastic car to get the same effect and give everyone flight (which no one has)

However i always thought Kevlar Armor was the best way to go. Heavy Hitter, Hulk and Fantastic all with "no stun" armor. Ouch

Doc I think you should probably cut 2x Millenium. I mean sweet mother of god man thats a lot of team ups. Even Billy Z's solitaire deck only ran 6. I like the deck idea other than that and will be putting it together on Vsed so i can gold-fish it.
nice article sir.
lbx!

agreed truly a sick combo

If you have 64 cards and 4 of them are only there to let you draw another card... Well, that just doesn't make a lot of sense. Would you rather draw the card you wanted in the first place or draw Mellenium, exhaust a guy, and then draw the card you wanted? Card draw is good, but 60 cards is better.

My apologies for not being clear. I want to get down to 60 cards. I want to keep those in after I've gotten to 60 cards. With Millenium, Heroes United and Luke Cage, I've got 12 cards that replace themselves. For Luke, I've got to recruit him to do his thing, so effectively I have four copies of him to use his effect once. Still, I'll have 9 cards that replace themselves in my hand when I play them and still have an effect. Would you like to play with a 51 card deck? I know I'd like to. I just have to figure out what to cut.

To get down to 60 I'd recommend dropping the following...

1x Luke Cage powerman
1x Prof. X
1x Mr. Fantastic
1x children of the atom

these seem to be the most expendable in my eyes.

i have a big feeling that heroes united will make a showing at the san deigo 10k. you could call it, a whale(y) of a feeling. hehe.

fast ball special thats all i have to say.