You're welcome. Monday on Metagame there will be two different builds and more analysis. Enjoy!

In my opinion a "good" deck depends largely on what a player wants to get out of the game. If your goal is to win tournaments and money then a good deck is one that wins consistently against most other deck types, or least the ones that will be played at said tournament.

If your goal however is to go some extremely offbeat combo to go off on turn X, then the deck that best does that will be a good deck to you. Similarly if your goal is to battle X-men vs. Brotherhood, or Avengers vs. JLA and so on.

A person gets out of this game exactly what they put into it, so a "good" deck to a person is nothing more than a window to their motivations as a player.

The best decks, the decks that last are versatile. Take Teen Titans probably one if not THE most versatile deck in the game and its been around and has stayed around since the beginning not many decks can claim that. A Deck that focuses on one theme can own other themes but a deck that can change in the middle of the game based on its opponent is something that should never be underestimated...my ultimate goal is the make X-Men a versatile deck like Teen Titans...I believe the tools are there...just need more testing w/ newer cards.

No your wrong darctrunks, Titans will always be the best deck in the game as long as its playable (golden age). It has the only outside of combat stun that will never be seen again. R&D learned its lesson. AGL is not a good deck, the ability to be more consitant with army characters makes it win. Just like vomit, if you can't handle the blow up turns, you can't win. AGL is easily beaten, and you need to do more testing if your losing to it consistantly.

AGL is the new flavor of the month, nothing more. Unless they are making up a large percentage of the meta at a tournament i dont see them being able to stop some of the juggernaut decks like Glock, Avengers (hawkeye), Titans (speedy) and all the Doom stuff always floating around. Bad Press helps but after all your not always going to hit it especially when you force mulligan for chomin.

As much as i really hate to admit it, Titans are still probably the toughest deck in golden format. Nothing is worse then having your whole field stunned before combat by roy on your own INT. I suspect there are probably some good strategies to come around in MXM that may end titans reign though. They sure dont like mob mentality comboed with special delivery.

I don't like AGL for the same reason I don't like Squadron Supreme. I like to take things nice and slow, rather than prematurely blow my load.

In answer to your question, off-initiative stuns (Roy Harper, ginormous low drops, Wonder Man, all these lame new off/def plot twists that take the fun out of attacking) definitely help make a good deck.

A good deck, makes you think you're going to lose, before you win by two points.

EDIT - ...and has Beetle in it.

Good Deck= 1 u win with

And that, folks, is the only definition that matters.

The only thing I have to add to this is 'consistently.'

And when it matters obv.

I think a good deck is one that can compete with pretty much anything youn throw at it.

My Current deck (IG/GK/Sec soc) is very good at beating Common Enemy and Squadron. It will win most of the time against Glock, Childlock, Curve sentinels and Titans. However it mostly loses to Avengers Reservist, Spider-Friends, faces and X-Men (Old school). It will almost definitely lose to AGL, or any other vomit deck

I would still consider this a good deck because in the current metagame in NSW australia its quite compeditive. Its very flashy, Does not rely on completely cheap tricks (Glock, Childlock), and Its always interesting to play.

Good ole Graham, making up words again.

>_<

The best decks are easy to tell. They have a concept. A strong concept is what holds a great deck together. Horrible decks are often just simple beatdown variants, as I'm sure you all are aware. You'll see them at every hobby league and you'll have fun destroying them along the way. Usually just a mirage of characters slapped together whose powers interact with each other poorly or atleast to no particular end.

The key to a good concept is rather difficult to determine. A concept must determine what is needed to defeat the current metagame, so some momentary insight is involve. In order to be considered a good concept in my books is that it forces other people to try and tech against it. Your opponent should be completely unarmed unless he has teched. That's a good concept. Some might say that you have to build something that isn't able to be tech'ed against but I really don't believe that is possible. Everything has a poor matchup. Simple as that.

GLOCK is currently my favorite example of how a concept can become so powerful. I'm sure when the person who invented Glock sat down he saw the potential for lifegain right away. I was working on my own lifegain deck at the time as well when Glock came around and it featured much of the same insights though definetely not quite as refined. Glocks mission is to kill you oh wait... bore you to death until turn 8 when things get considerably more interesting and in its favor. You basically get shoved into the lock late game. It does this well because each play provides the keys to putting the lock in place ie: Great Tutoring abilities, the ability to keep pivotal characters around through many defensive tricks.

Despite what some might say... when Avengers Reservist took the world by storm it too was a powerful concept. The world of VS hadn't seen such raw power through sheer numbers. Avengers mansion flipping 1,2,3,4,5 reservists, playing call down the lightning replacing X then heroes in reserve for 01928310298312098312093812 points of damage was considerable. it housed some of the most effective and accessible attack pumpage in the game. However it forced everyone to play a new type of game scaring away the purple robots, who just couldn't keep up, for a good long time. That forcing people to play a new type of game and bring out new strategies is what defines a good deck.