It's been a while since I've done a Tech Upgrade and it's been a very full couple of months. I've been looking for a new job (still have the old one, but need one that doesn't suck up all my time) and have a newborn baby (hence my new focus on having some extra time). So, trying to set proper priorities, job searching and family time took precedence over writing articles for VSRealms.

However, I've gotten a little free time recently and will try to keep at least a semi-regular schedule of articles. The first on the block is the deconstruction of a deck I promised in my previous installment of Tech Upgrade .

Right now there are three big decks in the scene: Common Enemy, Teen Titans and Curve Sentinels. Common Enemy seems to be the new New/Big/Medium Brotherhood with everyone and their brother buying up Boris and Reign of Terror on eBay. Common Enemy was all over the place at Wizard World: Texas and I imagine there will be a large percentage of Common Enemy decks at GenCon Socal. Curve Sentinels are new on the scene and were run by En-Kur, that big, sexy man to a second place finish (and the strategy for the deck was covered before Wizard World so everyone knew the jank he was running!

Which leaves us with Teen Titans. Not only have the Titans been a solid team since the DOR release but Rob Leander, our own VS_Master, piloted them to take the top prize at the Wizard World: Texas $10k. Since that deck was the last big money winner, it has the pleasure of getting deconstructed and analyzed.

(Continued in next post)

First off, let's look at the deck list

Characters
3x Dawn Granger <> Dove, Agent of Order
3x Hank Hall * Hawk, Agent of Chaos
4x Tim Drake <> Robin, Young Detective
2x Beast Boy, Garfield Logan
4x Roy Harper <> Arsenal, Sharpshooter
4x Terra, Tara Markov
3x Red Star, Leonid Kovar
4x Garth <> Tempest, Atlantean Sorcerer
2x Connor Kent <> Superboy, Tactile Telekinetic
1x Koriand'r <> Starfire, Alien Princess

Plot Twists
4x Teen Titans Go!
3x Finishing Move
3x Foiled
3x Press the Attack
3x Savage Beatdown
2x Heroic Sacrifice
2x Overload

Locations
3x Tamaran
3x Titans Tower
3x USS Argus
2x Optitron


First off, let's go through the character curve.

An ideal curve has you dropping Dawn Granger turn 1 and Hank Hall on turn 2. They make each other bigger (giving you the equivalent of a 2 and a 3 drop) and can do some early damage. Hit early and hit often! If you don't play the Dove on turn 1, you'll want to play Tim Drake on turn 2. His team attack stun redirect will make your Teen Titans Go!s more efficient ("You do not want to stun my Roy Harper. You want to stun my powered up Red Star instead.") Turn 3 you want to have Roy Harper as your drop, but you have a lot of options at this drop. If you didn't pull a Roy, you can play Beast Boy as a flying replacement. If you didn't get a Roy or a Beast Boy, you can always play Hawk or Dove with Boost to get both in play (If you're going to spend 3 resources to bring Hawk and Dove in on the same turn, ALWAYS use boost even if you have both of them in hand. You thin your deck by 1 card and now you have a power up for the character you just retrieved). Your 4 drop depends on whether you've been able to drop any locations or not. If you have (and especially if you've gotten a USS Argus) you want to play Terra. She can pick up that rock and throw it at her opponent's weenies and auto-stunning your opponent's characters is always a good thing. If you haven't drawn her, Red Star is your backup. He's got good stats, range, he can do some insta-burn in later turns and in team attacks he is a great target for stun re-directs from Tim Drake (assuming you powered Red Star up).

Turn 5, there's no other sane choice than to drop Garth. His KO pile recursion is tremendous and re-playing Foiled!, Teen Titans Go!, Heroic Sacrifice, Savage Beatdown or Overload is a huge upside for a small price ("3 endurance! What a deal I have for you!"). Plus he's got good stats and Range so he can hang out in the support row and do some heavy lifting as well. Of course, if you don't have Garth, you could play Red Star and use his effect, but you really want to play Garth. It's what all the cool kids are doing. In fact, you probably want to consider playing Red Star and spending a resource point on Optitron to go searching for Garth so you can play him on turn 6 (he's that good. . . and, besides, you can spend that extra resource point on Red Star to burn for 5). But you probably want to skip all that and just play him when he's meant to be played. Better all around.

Turn 6 (if you get that far and haven't started using Roy yet) is a choice between Koriand'r and Connor Kent. Against any equipment deck Connor is the hands down favorite. Bye, bye Fantasticars, Goblin Gliders, Personal Force Fields, Sonic Guns, etc. If you've got a lot of Titans characters in your KO pile, Starfire's eye beams will zap any character foolish enough to hang out in the support row.

So, now that you know the curve, what resources do you use to get up that curve? The four locations are pretty straightforward. Optitron is a moderately expensive tutor. You miss the curve this turn so you can hit the curve next turn. Some of the time it's a good trade (with Roy Harper, Terra or Garth) but generally this is the first card Terra picks up and throws at your opponent. Tamaran is great for that last minute surprise power up. There's nothing more frustrating than to do the math, know you have enough to pound through and your opponent flips a Tamaran to foil your plans. And there's nothing better than to flip Tamaran and power up to have your guys get away to fight another day. As an added benefit to Tamaran, if you reveal a Titans character, it makes your Koriand'r effect that much more powerful. On to Titans Tower. Depending on what you have in your hand, Titans Tower can be either a under-powered power up or a Super Savage Beatdown, it all depends on what you want to discard from your hand (and with Garth around, it doesn't matter what you discard, you can always get it back for a small fee). Your small guys can curve jump their ATK and take down characters one, two or even three drops ahead of them.

Last, but definitely not least is USS Argus. This card's downside (preventing you from drawing) is a large price to pay but it's worth it to be able to look at the top four cards of your deck and grab one. Selective drawing is huge as it lets you to cycle through your deck faster and smooths out your curve so you don't have to resort to using Optitron. There are two caveats to using Argus, though: 1) don't play Argus unless you can use Terra to blow it up. This way you can effectively side step the "no drawing" restriction of Argus. 2) Do not, I repeat, DO NOT DRAW WHEN YOU HAVE ARGUS IN PLAY in a tournament environment. If you draw cards into your hand while you have Argus in play you will get a game loss. Once the cards are in your hand there's no way to know which cards were drawn and which were in your hand. Make sure you don't lose a match because of a dumb mental error.

Now, onto the Plot Twists. Foiled is good in this deck since it doesn't mind playing at the shallow end of the pool. And with Garth, you've got as many Foileds as your opponent has Common Enemys or Total Anarchys or The New Brotherhoods or Clone Sagas or. . . well, you get the idea. Teen Titans Go is the star of this deck. There are so many things you can do when you ready up your team attackers. Perhaps the most famous is team attacking with Roy Harper and some other folks, play Teen Titans Go, pump Roy with the other team attackers, use Roy's effect to stun the defender, then ready all the attackers at resolution because the defender isn't a defender anymore (per rule 602.4b and 602.3, respectively). An especially cool thing you can do is effectively make Roy invulnerable to Overload if you have Tim Drake in play (since you can move the Stun onto someone else). Another play is to ready one of your team attackers to use Finishing Move on the character you (hopefully) just stunned. The downside of using Teen Titans Go is the characters you ready can't do breakthrough. But you're generally doing enough stun damage to make mincemeat of their endurance totals anyway (at least until DSM becomes legal and Invulnerability as a keyword starts making itself known on the field).

So the Titans are good on attack, but what about defense? And why didn't you mention the Savage Beatdown up there? Patience my young padawan. Here's the coup de grace. Heroic Sacrifice lets you take those attackers who were going after Garth and have Dawn Granger step up to take the hit instead. It's the Tim Drake Jedi Mind Trick, but on defense. But wouldn't it be better if you didn't have to stun anyone at all? Well, now you can with the simple Savage Beatdown + Overload combo when they're attacking you. If they're attacking with a single guy, you're good to go. If they're team attacking, it's likely they won't have enough to stun you and you'll be able to stun two characters in the attack. This generally works for 3 drops and lower, but you could always use Garth to grab the Savage Beatdown again and make it a threat for 4 and 5 drops as well. The trick is a variation on the "Nasty Surprise + Overload" trick folks used to use, but lets you use those Savage Beats on offense if you really need to.

Now, I'm sure there are some other tricks in the deck that I haven't seen, but if you're wanting to play Titans, that's a good start. It's more complicated and combo-driven than Common Enemy or TNB, but with a little patience it's a hell of a deck.

In my next Tech Upgrade, I'll delve into Common Enemy and see if the old dog learned new tricks in Web of Spider-Man.

I love the titans they are probaly one of the best treams in vs at this point, and very reliable they have some of the best combos out there.

I do not think Uss Argus needs Terra in play. If you wait till five you do not lose a card until 7, and I do not care then since I have been using Garth to be an Extra Card. In fact I think that it is a Good move to use Red Star instead. With New Teen Titans and Tamaran it is Easy to power up. With teen Titans go that is killer.

You can definitely use argus without terra, but be careful with it. You can run out of cards easily. But with roy as another source to get rid of the argus, most of the time, you should be fine. Often, I will KO argus with roy or terra, then pay 3 with garth, so i can get an extra card next turn too.

USS argus is probably the most dangerous card in all of VS. I don't say that lightly, well it and the new Lex Luthor because it stops you from doing a natural and good thing in the game. And if you lapse in concentration Argus can lose you the game. I have to disagree with Docx about optitron being Terra's first target - I believe it to be the argus. Getting rid of the argus as soon as you can is a good thing for the titans player a majority of the time. Getting it off the field after one use means you A. drew 3 cards that turn with some selectivity B. can draw like normal next turn C. stunned an opponent's 3 drop D. minimized the chances that you accidentally draw E. Minimize the chances of getting globally dominated outta the game if they manage to ko all your guys (not to mention a timely have a blast can deny the next turn's card drawing entirely). The benfit is great from Argus- so great that the negative price needs to be avoided at all costs.

There's definitely something magical about playing Titans when everything comes together. I would suggest that anyone that is planning on playing this deck spends some significant amount of time testing the mirror, as it is one of the most complicated and involved mirror matches in VS at present.

Also bear in mind that it has the potential to be a very versatile deck depending on which way one chooses to build it. All the tools are there in Titans to disrupt most strategies - it is very much the deck for you if you have a clear view on what the metagame constitutes at any given time. Equally, if you find yourself metagaming in the wrong direction, it can very quickly become horrible.

Using Argus without Terra/Roy = Death via Global Domination. If you don't already have a Foiled down you are screwed.

aka "Yata-lock"

Sorry for a Yugioh reference, but I am still trying to figure out a way to send my USS Argus to my opponent's resource row then flip up Global Domination. It requires a Brotherhood/Titans teamup. Oh well, until they release a "Reverse Relocation" card, there will be no Yata-lock in VS.

If we never live to see such a lock, I think we will all be fine.

problem is,how much uss argus is important in the titans deck ??

does optitron much more useful than uss argus ??

optitron is a card that do not want to ever use, but is great for the instances where you need it.

Argus will almost never be a bad card, if you don't have Terra Argus will find her. If you do, you get huge card/board advantage.

Argus > Optitron

I've played against both a Titans and Brave & the Bold decks. Both of them are very strong. I should have beaten the Titans deck with my Syndicate, but I screwed up my attack step such that my opponent was able to use Circle Defense to stop my critical attack. I can say that Green Goblin is Garth's nemesis. Neither Tim Drake nor Heroic Sacrifice can save you from an instant KO.

Carny's right on there. Optitron's a bit of a crapshoot tutor since you're weakening yourself one turn, so it needs to produce even more results for a later turn. If it didn't require the TT character discard, it'd be awesome draw fodder for the Titans Tower. How it is, the best 'direct' use would be to have it fuel a BH/TT Titans Station super-slam engine.

Anyhow, to the deck. Something I'd consider using in this deck over some of the other plot twists is Shape-Change. With a lot of middle-cost cards, it's going to be about as effective as Acrobatic Dodge most of the time, and the milling combo it provides with Garth and Tamaran is really nice. Between those cards and the USS Argus, there's a lot of likelihood you can mine through your entire deck to pull exactly what you'd like. It also makes Garth's power even more ridiculous; more things to choose from in the KO'd pile means more power.

I stand corrected by WarMachine about Terra's first target. Argus should be first on the block with Optitron taking second place. Argus is a big double-edged sword and getting rid of it before it hoses you is a big time.

I'd still prefer not to play Argus unless I have either Roy or Terra to get rid of it. Maybe that's just me.