I don't know....

I think we are still too new into this format for any real solid answers to come out of it, even at the pro level. We knew Squad was great, but I still read these builds and wonder why some of their best cards are left in a binder instead of being played. I am a major fan of Blue Eagle KO'ing characters, even on the stun back. I really think there is some nice Tech in Squadron that also goes unused, like breaking formations and removing ongoing plot twists!

Not to mention Aida to shut down targeted effects.

I also don't think people really utilized the new Brotherhood cards to their fullest, nor the combinations of BH and Avengers. Playing against golden Squadron builds... ones that can use even higher powered cards than the modern builds... a solid BH/Avengers fares well. So why did it not happen here?

I think its hiliarious that after one major tournament people are already assuming that avengers are dea, x-men are not competitive, morlocks are teh suck blah blah bah.

Until someone comes around in a tournament and wins with x-beats and then everyone is like oh my gawd x-men roxs.

Squadron and faces of x won for a couple of reasons:

1. they were both familiar decks...squad has had proven success for some time now and faces of x is a modified faces of evil(which up until this tournament many players said was teh suck...which preoves my point even more)

2. Many people in anticipation of rush brought rush decks to handle it, statiscally speaking if a majority of people are playing rush decks then a a majority of the top 8 will be rush decks.

3. of course they are both very solid builds, no doubt, and very EASY to play. Squad was my second deck and faces came shortly after. A monkey (ape x?) could play these decks with a decent degree of success, assuming it could get a decent grip on the rules(and not fling poo across the table)

Of course I'm not putting anyone down who played these decks but they are fast, powerful and easy to play. Despite that hellfire club anf some crazy x-mental deck found its way into the top 8. A fluke? I dont think so.

Bottom line is avengers has a lot going for it, consistency and power first and foremost. I'm sure many players had decent success with avengers and as time goes on more and more strategies will surface. Lets wait more than one tournament before we declare avengers dead.

Many people are playing a certain kind of deck in MMA this PC. To me, it means one thing. These are the decks that are good enough to compete at the top level.

WIth more than 1 month of play-testing, all possible combination SHOULD have taken into account. Taking Squadron Supreme, faces or Avengers as a standard, anything that do not have maybe 50% chance of winning would be scrapped off. So, it comes down to these few decks and mainly faces and Squadron are the dominating ones.

Some cards are not added because of the limitation that players have. All of us try to build a deck of 60 cards to ensure the best probability in drawing the cards we want. SS wins the game on turn 5. So, there is a need to have characters early on. However, the number of characters must not be too abundant as this is also a no-hand strategy. Blue Eagle is not in the deck because Golden Archer fits the bill better. AIDA is not in because the PTs selections are already very packed and AIDA can only be used during your recruit step.

Just my 2 cents.

Ryu, you said it perfectly, man.

People too often jump on whatever bandwagon is ahead, based on a SINGLE performance, before those bandwagons have proven that they will outlast all the others.

The same thing happens in sports: the media always hypes about the team that's currently "hot." Even in the middle of a football game, you'll hear announcers make a general statement based on one breakthrough play.

We'll see over the next couple of tourneys which are really the major contenders. I'm not ready to throw in the Morlocks towel yet.

xfaces loses to war of attrition pretty much over and over again. I lost my match-up against xfaces with my avengers build due to 2 odd factors: 1) having drawn merely 1 combat pump the whole game. 2) my opponent going in to turn 6 with a single character left in play is able to play 3 ( count them: 3!) hard sound constructs and replinishes his entrire field, and is able to swarm me on turn 6, using shocker to take out my panther due to my lack of controling another character of equal cost.

I was able to war of attrition 3 of his faces of evil, and destroy his field, but triple hard sound constructs was simply too much for me.

But then again, I don't run a reservists build so much as other folks do any way.

So is a Brotherhood deck using Prismatic shield and Shake rattle and roll/War of Attrition the way to go? I say Brotherhood cause you dont need to play as many reservists as avengers ending up having more card slots.

There's no reason to play an avenger's based deck in the current format. Wonderman seemed pretty worthless at Atlanta, as either both 4s and 5s stunned the previous turn or the opponent was ready with a Mob Mentality. Hawkeye is still solid against Squad but it pretty bad against Xfaces unless they miss Mob + Brave new world.

If you want to run curve aggro, run Brotherhood splashing Panther and Hawkeye. My team ran prismatic shields to help us get to turn 6 and then would run over the squad / faces players with a 30 power Delgado and a 20 power Polaris or Scanner.

Thanks for the many different replies. It now seems that Avengers are not surviving well on their own.

maddfez--Brotherhood + Avengers.... I have not tried that out but I think the basic play style is still the beatdown with some consistency. I think I will play Natasha in this build to take out more characters, esp against Squadron. Then again, I might not.

Yveslap--Agree partially. You do not have to fuel the Wonder guy. Then again, with a lower count of characters, it is less consistent. Pure Brotherhood build with Hawkeye as a tech sounds good to me. Stopping Viper for X-Faces and Shape or Joystick and Ape in SS build.

Anyway, I am still unwilling to give up on Avengers. I still feel that they have a rather good chance of winning in this format. I am even thinking of adding System Failure and Shrinks as tech against X-Faces and Squadron but that will take out 6-8 slots which may be vital. Furthermore, I need to introduce Beast into this game now. SS are also playing Insect Swarm to counter the likes of BP and Viper... This could spell more trouble to me.

War of Attritrion is your best bet.
________
Lesbian Teen
________
CHILD NEXIUM

If you are playing Squadron, you will blow Rocket Central off.
If you are playing Avengers, you will blow your Mansion off.
If you are playing Faces, you are dumb.
If you are playing Brotherhood, sounds good since you don't really have any ongoing PTs or Locations. Blast even better.
If you are playing Morlocks, Mob Mentality will be gone, but I think thats fine.

BTW, what do you think of Ruins of Avalon? Is that a good card in Brotherhood build?

Edit: Forgotten... -_-'

I wonder about Meltdown.
KO Equipment, Replace a face down resource, or Gain 2 endurance.

KO Thunderjet/Image Inducer/Framistat/Blackbird Blue, Draw a card, or do something likely useless.

I think it would help the most against Faces since they seem to rely a great deal on Blackbird Blue. And every little bit help against Squad. And in other match-ups its a cantrip.

I feel Faces relies on Faces of Evil more. System Failure seems to be sure in. Worth considering. Thanks.

Meltdown is MMK though, doesn't help in modern. System Failure will be a dead draw in most matchups, since I think more people will run Squad than Faces.

YOu shouldn't give up on them, they are far from dead. The matchup with Squad isnt nearly as bad as people think and is still fairly initiative dependent.

As for Faces. Its a great deck and got me alot of wins in GA this year. But, it is easily teched against if known. Also, the Avengers player has other tools to fight Faces. If you look at the thread on VS paradise when the Australians were testing it for PC LA, the thing that really gave them trouble was when Avengers played Natasha and Quicksilver over Panther and DAne. You can really make things uncomfortable for them with those two out. Remember, Faces isnt great at stunbacks b/c their ongoing pumps only work on attack. In addition, the only have four turns to get Brave New World AND Mob MEntality in their row to null Hawkeye. Thats not going to happen as much as they would like I think. Also, System Failure wrecks Faces. Period. It is also good in the mirror against Panther. Its really a meta call but if you figure to see alot of Faces, run it for sure.

We tried Natasha and found we never got her power off unless we team attacked with her and Panther. We ran 2 Danes to fill up our two drop slot, as the 3 def was sometimes relevant.

The deck is pretty much just beats, with a goal of winning on 6 (sometimes 5). Against Squad and Xfaces, your goal is really to survive until your turn 6 initiative using Hawkeye and Polaris and then come back for the win with Harry + Polaris + Panther + 30 pts in attack pumps. Squad is not too rough if you hit Hawkeye and they stumble anywhere or don't have multiple potions. I went 4-0 at the PC vs Squad (2-0 against the FTN build) and my team went ~7-2 on the day.