Yes. I still look forward to someone claiming that as 'tech' when all it is is a reflection of the difficulty of getting hold of Enemys.

Like has been said Secret Origins is an ok substitute for Enemy... however you will need to add a 5-drop / 2-drop...

As for Flamethrower, you could just not run them... the deck is better with them but you can still do ok without them, though it does get harder against decks like Doom+Compressor. Just use these spots to add the 2/5 drops.

However Enemy is a big help, and is already worth more than Beatdown where I live, (I'm happy to have 7). However I strongly recommend you get at least a couple for the deck.

Cheers,
Shaun

EDIT: The truth is Secret Origins was the tutor for this deck before MXM came out... though while strong the deck wasn't quite tier 1 back then (Enemy / Black Panther / Electric Eve, were all a huge boost for the deck).

After seeing the list and wanting to play the latest "best deck" (partly just to know how to play against it), i decided to play it at a local tournament. Alot of the cards do not fit my style of play, and i did have a chance to get some testing in, and here's my list:

4 Ape-X
3 Bart Allen as Impulse
3 Electric Eve
2 Tommy (could be king snake)
2 ratcatcher
2 mikado and mosha
1 micro chip

2 black panther
1 speed demon

1 luke cage
1 fiero
3 golden archer

1 daredevil 5
1 sunder

4 enemy of my enemy
4 wild ride
4 flying kick
4 megablast
4 trial by fire
4 suprise attack

4 advanced hardware
2 flamethrower
1 war wagon
1 mindtrap mechanism
1 thunder jet

so the changes are from the decks at minneapolis (or auckland?):

-1 flamethrower
-1 t-jet
-2 chomin
-1 black panther
-3 king snake
-4 die for darkseid
-3 insect swarm
-1 golden archer
-1 firestar
-2 secret origins

i guess i'll go through 1 by 1

-1 flamethrower
I found that i was drawing these too often in the early game. you still want the option to search for a second one if you draw the first, so 2 is a must.

-1 t-jet
it adds damage but is not central to the deck. in squadron emptying your hand is vital, and if thiis card were vital, it would have been included X4

-2 chomin
i see the synergy with king snake, but the inclusion of trial by fire allows you to abuse having an extra attacker going into the 3rd or 4th turn. tommy allows you to have that extra character, whereas chomin's ability might not be useful if your draw wasn't too hot. if your draw is insane he's great to put them under 0

-1 black panther
he got replaced by another wild ride

-3 king snake
i think bart allen as impulse is stronger

-4 die for darkseid
trial by fire allowed this deck to jockey for board position on turn 3 or 4. by generating more stuns more of your burn guys will survive into the longer game, and by having more evasion, you can keep a few extra characters around to take advantage of trial

-3 insect swarm
this card seemed a little weak. it lets you get more equipment with xina, and burn an extra time with archer, but seemed really horrible if you draw too many early on.

-1 golden archer
i added a luke cage to tutor for, so something had to go, i wasn't too happy about this change

-1 firestar
2 5 drops were added to allow a smoother transition into a later game if the early game didnt' pan out appropriately.

-2 secret origins
E.O.M.E. is just about my favorite card ever printed, and an excellent tutor

as for the includions i didn't mention:

speed demon is your best 5 drop. him, xina, and flamethrower make him 20 points of damage by his lonesome. that in conjunction with the "while attacking" pumps make him ridiculous powerful

luke cage is simply the highest power wild ride target i could find at 4 cost. also, having a concealed character to serve back seems pretty good if the board requires it.

the mindtrap mechanism is there so you can abuse your concealed/evasion characters, and potentially steal the initiative with black panther and luke cage.

bart allen is insane. you can lead with him, then xina/hardware for a 5 attack + 3 burn, or 6 pts in burn and a stunback (usually). When the board is open you can attack twice, and if you get war wagon on the third turn and they have an average draw, you can KO both their characters. granted king snake definitely will deal 4 or 6 bonus points of damage, but i think if you test it you'll find bart dealing alot more damage than that over the course of the game.

daredevil is there mostly to keep abusing wild ride and allows for a larget concealed attack on the 5 turn.

sunder is there so you can go toe-to-toe with a 6 drop should the game go that far. firestar does deal 5 damage on or off initiative, but sunder has 4 more power, and if you don't have the pump, firestar is really useless against an enemy 6 drop. firestar doesn't always guarantee a stunback, whereas sunder almost always does. and with the greater focus on board position than the previous build, you'll be stunning their 4 or 5 drop, which kinda generates the extra damage firestar would have done in his place, but without the versatility the high power grants.

war wagon, if played on evens, with the trail by fires, allows you to just hands down win some games when your opponents don't have a 1 drop. and if you are on odds, using it and bart allen you can stun 2 of their characters (with your many other weenies/pumps) then KO both.

Shaun works in a patent office, and when I brought this deck in, I woke up after Auckland 10k in a hospital with TFH carved into my chest.

- hence his middle name being 'Einstein'

How did you do? I find your list very weird and has no focus, a deck without focus will lose to one that does.

take a read of my article, and get an understanding of why we choose the card we did, maybe then you can change card more to this deck's focus...or just change some more card and make the deck your own.

at the tournament i went 2-1 and missed the top 2 cut (extremely poor turnout). the only game i lost in tournament or on the side was when i completely missed any sort of 4 or 5 drop, AND my opponent had double cover fire to stop my war wagon from KO'ing his 4 drop.

wierd with no focus? :(

i don't see the changes as having no focus. from what i gathered from the article the deck was designed with the intention of reaching critical mass on turn 4 or 5 by means of many cards which deal endurance loss on or off initiative. The changes i made put a few characters in the deck which do not contribuete to the optimal draws, but do provide a net to fall back on if the draw wouldn't reach critical.

some of the cards do not fit the kill fast theme, but rather are able to play out in a conventional manner. luke cage, daredevil, and the mindtrap mechanism on black panther allow you to go concealed if the initiative and board allows it to be advantageous, and take advantage of 4 resource points with an appropriately costed character Usually my mulligan condition is whether i have access to a 1 drop, and secondly whether i have an advanced hardware or xina. Having a strong first 3 turns is critical, and it starts with turn 1. But after that, you need the deck to pan out into a complete draw or you will run out of gas and come to a halt. b/c you are not mulliganing for a curvacious hand like avengers is, having 8 tutors, plus the drops themselves fill out your draw as the game goes on. w/o luke and daredevil wild ride could ONLY get your 3, a 1, and stun 1 drops with m&m. by adding drops at 4 and 5 now you can improve alot of draws as you proceed to the mid and late game, and don't need to rely on reaching critical mass with cards which deal an average of 3.423562625 damage apiece.

although the archetype aspires to deal 50 quickly with cards averaging 3.5 or 4.2 damage, you don't have to *think inside the box* of cards that directly translate into damage. curve based decks seem to get to 50 points by turn 6 or 7 without even trying. luke, daredevil, sunder, etc... are not direct damage but they still translate into damage.

i don't see this deck as lacking focus, but rather attempting to be more versatile in it's play, rather that forcing 50 points of mostly direct damage to yield the win. by adding only a handful of characters and pumps it can consistently survive the transition to mid and later (although not late) game.

i think i may have trailed off a little, and multiple distractions kept me from making it more focused (the response that is)

I think your post is fine, and i can see where you are coming from but as you said, your deck is trying to be versatile, and being more versatile means less focus.

take glock for example, why don't they have Oa? By your example they should play it because then they have the chance to win earlier if your opponents stumble. They don't because the focus is getting to the late game and drawing cards like that will only hinder that.

If you put in cards to slow HV down, then you will get to turn 6 more often and you don't want to. If you can kill on turn 5, then all the better. Occasionally you will go to turn 6, and occasionally glock will lose before the late game...it happens.

Also, i am not attacking you dude, i think that it is good you are exploring options because options are good. It is just my 2cents and if you don't like it, please ignore me.

sry i responded to it as if was one of the put downs that constantly occur on gaming forums, thanks for the clarification

Haha, I was reading through this and noticing the people mentioning AGL.

Teching against AGL... there were only two in the field at Auckland.

I played one of them.

High Voltage getting Mikado and Mosha is nightmare enough for AGL.

So, here's a very silly question...

Can Black Panther be recruited in the hidden area, search out a flamethrower, and, in turn, be equipped with it?

no because equipment cannot be equipped/recruited/attached to hidden characters unless the equipment specfically says so like medallion of power...mindtap mechanicism

Not only that, but the Flamethrower would be shuffled with the rest of your deck if you tried---the equipment you search for never goes into your hand, so if it can't be equipped to Black Panther, it never leaves your deck.

Okay, cool. That's what I thought. I wanted to make sure there wasn't something I was missing that would come as a great surprise in Boston.

Nice addition with jester.