Just back from $10K Columbus - for those wondering if you saw me, just try to remember the guy on crutches. (Also, for the record, being on 2mg of hydromorphone does not make it easier to play cards. I went a lame-### 5-5, and at least two of those losses were directly due to very, very stupid mistakes I recognized less than thirty seconds after I made them. One of these was to Adam Prosak, who may have had a way to deal with me attacking his hidden, unreinforced Air-Walker regardless, but was probably quite happy that I didn't simply activate Sewer System to do that.)

For the record, I need to correct a misapprehension: Tim Capes has been referred to, repeatedly, as the originator of Lost In Space, the Society-based Frankie Raye/Phantom Stranger dig-deck. He isn't. Jason Kattides (who went 7-3 with it in his first-ever $10K and made money as an amateur) designed the deck, and Lucas Vetta, Tim, Brash Smith and myself contributed to testing and tuning of the deck - Tim's major contribution was realizing the power of recurring Deadshot and including - and then upping - the count of him. (The original build used Masters of Evil cards to recur Frankie even more often and frequently generated a 15/15 or better Lex Luthor on turn 4, but wasn't as steady and didn't have as much tech power.)

Things I want to say about the deck:

1.) It's good. Tim lost to X-Faces in the quarterfinals, and X-Faces were two of my three losses on the day, but that's mostly because X-Faces doesn't allow any wiggle room for the deck - you absolutely have to be able to use Deadshot on three and recur Mikado and Mosha. That doesn't mean it's an unwinnable or even unfair matchup; just not an easy one, and one you have to play for from turn 2.

2.) It's extremely difficult to play. I've never played a deck that went to time before, ever, and for everybody who complained about having to sit back and watch us play solitaire for ten minutes (which, really, only happens on turns three and four, which is where the game really happens for this deck - the rest of the game for the deck is really quite reasonable in speed terms), believe me, actually playing that deck is the toughest mental VS exercise I've ever had. I wish I'd gotten more practice with it (I only shifted to the deck maybe three days before the event after deciding that a no-win situation against smart Checkmate players meant my deck wasn't competitive enough, which is a pity, because given the Columbus meta it would have rocked house), but if wishes were horses, etc.

3.) It utterly slaughters a lot of the metagame. Faces variants and Mental curve are its worst matchups, and I'd say they're still 50-50.

4.) Previous names for the deck prior to "Lost In Space": Bad Medicine, Lex-Raye Specs, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Strangers With Candy, and Eyeball Soup (Tim's favorite, after someone else remarked that they'd rather poke their own eye out and eat it than play the deck at Columbus).

Thoughts on the Columbus metagame:

- Yeah, a lot of Faces: X-Faces, Skrull-Faces, Chimp-Faces, all of the above plus a little on the side, you name it. The Concealed Faces deck with Vanessa Fisk that Jason Hager ran was my personal favourite.

- A near-total lack of Good Guys. There was still a lot of Checkmate there (although only like, maybe, a fifth of the meta all told, and we were horribly disappointed that of the five of us running the Society deck - which can usually kill Checkmate on three if we get our initiative ninety-five percent of the time - we played maybe two or three Checkmate decks in a combined fifty matches). But GG was just gone.

And finally, I'd like to just say this to everybody who complained to us about the deck (and Jebus but there were a lot of you):

Remember how many times I've said Enemy Of My Enemy needs to be banned? This is why. Teamstamping is officially a joke when your deck can run two Underworld cards, both with an additional UW card requirement (Mephisto and Asmodeus), and use both of them over the course of a single match (which happened at least twice for us at Columbus).

While we're at it: teamstamping is officially a joke when the five top-8 Faces of Evil decks, running about an average of 35 characters, run an average of less than 12 Masters/T-Bolts characters to actually make Faces of Evil, you know, "work" (and when the Chimp Faces builds are down to 3-4 Shadowpact characters counting Detective Chimp - seriously, I wonder what the point of giving him Loyalty-Reveal even was at this point).

Really, at this point, for all the talk about the diversity of the metagame, I've never seen so much sameness in decks. Ninety percent of decks fall into one of these two slots:

1.) Curve decks which toolbox magic-bullet characters at every drop point to an extent that most curve decks now feel painfully generic
2.) Off-curve decks which use multiple methods of both flooding the field with free weenies (in addition to resource points, which seem almost redundant at this point) and multiple methods of giving all of said characters +1 ATK multiple times (Faces being the simplest and most effective but far from the only way to do it).

The game is still challenging, but now it's gone from "challenging and understandable to a new player" to "practically impenetrable for a new player to the tournament scene." I'm hearing Yu-Gi-Oh players who quit it in favor of VS start to comment on how the game feels more like Yu-Gi-Oh now, and that bugs me a lot.

That deck was one of the most exhausting decks to play with in my history of playing.

Jason had a good one with this one. I myself only went 5-5 with this deck.(Due to not playtesting nearly enough with the deck after the final few revisions) But kudos to Tim And Jay for making the deck what it was. Quite the interesting monster.

I also had suggested Count Frankula as a name for the deck which I would suggest is the worst deck name I have ever named in the history of the game but it garned a small laugh.

Long strange(r) day. Props to tim and Jay completly.

Also props to Lukas and Chris for playtesting the heck out of this deck with me and the rest.

Lost in Space. Very cool deck to play with.

yea i agree that you shouldn't play the deck if you are as big of idiot as chdb. You might have 10 minute recruit steps and not finish games ever.

Also, you can be like Prosak, and complain about "slow play" when the deck makes forty interactions in one turn and you do them as fast as posssible. Also, remember to ##### after you've won - and I mean RIGHT after you win the match - because nothing says "class" quite like that does.

were you planning on finishing your games ever? I was also irate because you took literally 28 of the 30 minutes before time and I was behind the entire game. Thankfully I found more correct plays in my 2 minutes than you did in 28.

I like playing Vs. I didn't play much of it round 1. I liked playing the banana way more.

Against Checkmate, Squadron rush and Good Guys - which we figured were the most important matchups (incorrectly, but) - we found it usually takes anywhere from five minutes (setting up for the turn three Deadshot on Ahmed, with a Meltdown on the Cloak where necessary) to twenty-five, because removing Ahmed or forcing a very early Spire-out of him, or removing Shayera and Booster/Shape and Lady Lark, really hurts those decks and makes the win much easier. Other curve decks like Mental and Heralds where the higher drops tend to be more important were probably going to run to time, but that seemed acceptable given our metagame predictions.

And if you don't like the deck, well, sorry, but there's going to be more of it. Lots more. The Frankie/Ivy/Light/Stranger engine is a ludicrously powerful way to dig through your deck and there's other things you can do with it than just lots of Sinister Citadel counters, and other players are going to start abusing it, and not just in Silver. This was just the first hit. (You'll note that banning Enemy - which I've advocated for months now - kills the deck stone dead.)

I can't believe somebody who took friggin' Ivy League to PCSF now has the gall to complain that another deck isn't fun to play against.

i have been saying nearly the same as you for a while now but beyond that, i have had to experince a number of decks using the frankie, ivy, stranger, light interactions to dig and find there answers, they are cool decks but around turns 3-5 depending on initiive they can honestly take 10 min during the build step, wich can suck for time limits.

Simply put, this deck is bad for VS. If somebody wanted to, they could make a deck with this engine-type that does literally nothing except stall until time and make sure you have more endurance than the opponent does. Its essentially a loophole in the "don't slowplay" rule, which is clearly not something to get excited about.

There is no doubt that I am intruigued by the deck, but the sad fact is that it shows a side of VS competetive play that was not meant to be seen. And I'm already sick of looking it.

I am not suggesting that this "loophole" was intended to be exploited by the deck's creators, but I am suggesting that sometimes certain things should not be tampered with.

Chdb - good for u man . u guys found a deck u liked and worked . dont pay any attention to the people giving u crap on it.Im sure the basic deck engine will be even more abused soon enough .


"I can't believe somebody who took friggin' Ivy League to PCSF now has the gall to complain that another deck isn't fun to play against."

tottaly agree here man.

if this is a thread about the deck, i'd be interested to hear how it actually works, not just a history of the deck name =)

sounds equal amounts good, inovative and horrible to play against. not necessarily a bad thing though

Seriously, some of us are too busy drinking and whoring to know what's going on. (Although the pissy-wars between Baldy and that Trouser Loather are really entertaining.)

True seemed to be alot of drinking for a Vs tournment. Actually heard one guy say kill me already so I can get another drink> WTF.

You guys should settle your 2000 yr old grudge by each writing a tournamentg report. The one who writes the best one wins VSRealms.

....oh....
i was going to suggest a ritual knife-fight to the death.... but, yeah... tourney report's cool, i guess.

First, a decklist to refresh:

1x Haywire (0)
4x Frankie Raye (1)
2x Mr. Mxyzptlk (1)
1x Mikado and Mosha
1x Jaime Reyes
4x Poison Ivy (2)
4x Deadshot, Floyd Lawton
1x Leech
4x Dr. Light, Master of Holograms
2x Lex Luthor (4)
1x Floronic Man (5)
1x Scarecrow, Fearmonger
1x Darkseid (5)
1x Mephisto, Soulstealer
1x Gorilla Grodd
1x Asmodeus
4x Phantom Stranger

4x Sinister Citadel
3x Slaughter Swamp
1x Soul World
1x Phantom Zone
1x Sewer System

4x Enemy of My Enemy
4x Straight To The Grave
4x The Ring Has Chosen
3x Meltdown
1x Reality Gem

First, mulligans are crucial for the deck. My own personal set of mulligan conditions were as follows. I would mull if I did not see one of the following, by preference:

1.) Ivy or a means to get Ivy on 2 (Slaughter Swamp/Soul World and Straight to the Grave).
2.) Frankie, Dr. Light, at least one card costing 4 or greater, and at least one tutor.
3.) Frankie, Deadshot, and Dr. Light.
4.) Frankie, the Stranger, and Slaughter Swamp or Soul World.

Tim probably has a much more detailed mulligan condition list, but this was mine. Generally with a mulligan you'll meet at least one of these.

The deck's ideal drop pattern is as follows:

Turn 1: Frankie, discard Stranger (or other high-cost card) for two cards. If no Frankie (or no 4-card to discard for her), then nothing, unless you have a different 1-drop (preferably Mxy) AND Ivy in hand, in which case play them so you can Ivy on 2.

Turn 2: Ivy. With the mulligan condition, you generally hit Ivy more often than not, but sometimes, who knows. You should usually either have somebody on the field already (turn 1 1-drop) or can put somebody else on the field (Haywire or Frankie alternate cost). When you've got someone on the field, KO them. (If you're going to KO Frankie and have a Stranger in the discard, exhaust both Frankie and Ivy first for the recursion, obviously.) Fetch Slaughter Swamp if you don't have it or Soul World already in your row; if you do, fetch a Sinister Citadel. If you KOed Frankie, it's probably a good idea to recur her with Slaughter Swamp and replay her at alternate cost to dig through your deck some more.

If no Ivy, Deadshot or Frankie for cards.

Turn 3: Dr. Light. You'll just about always hit Light thanks to eight tutors capable of finding him, plus Frankie-digging. Recur Frankie with Slaughter Swamp, dig for cards, fill your KO pile. If you haven't put Deadshot in your KO pile yet, do so (it should be fairly easy with twelve tutors for him). Recur Deadshot with Dr. Light. KO Frankie again with Ivy for Citadel #2. During combat, use Deadshot on their 3-drop (or if the 2-drop is key, like for example Sage in the Mental deck, their 2).

Turn 4: Lex Luthor. Use Slaughter Swamp before Lex to recur something, then play Lex to straighten it and get an additional use out of Swamp. This is the point where the deck engine seriously kicks in and is your last really, really involved turn, because now you start revealing Sinister Citadels and KOing characters to put counters on Lex, making him big and beefy. If you have Haywire (and didn't need to play him on 2 for Ivy), this is almost always when you want to play him. This turn is probably the most difficult turn of the game for the deck because you have options for KOing characters (Ivy, Citadel) and exhausting characters (recurring Stranger, pumping Lex during the combat phase) and it gets very tricky keeping track of everything you're doing and will have to do. And remember to recur Deadshot to KO another low-drop.

The rest of the game is actually pretty straightforward from here: play the 5 and 6 that are most appropriate/advantageous to you (Scarecrow and Grodd are the primaries, but all the others have their reasons for being in the deck as well), add counters, add counters, add counters, brickwall and beat, et cetera. Most decks simply can't handle it.