My life has gotten back to normal for a bit since the WoW open BETA ended yesterday. Trying to squeeze in some testing time, some drafting time, some girlfriend time, some Everwood and other good TV time, and then actually work at the store time, has taken it?s toil on me. We are just over two weeks until the second pro circuit and I still have no clue about what to play. Titans are good of course. They have zero bad match-ups?well maybe Spidey but that team has issues that I can?t even begin to unravel. Sentinels seem good, but like any other curve deck, it has the problem with missing drops. Not so much against a lot of decks but a few match-ups become auto losses with a missed drop. If you told me today that I?d play seven matches a couple of Fridays from now against Common Enemy and I?d tell you right now that the robots would be going to battle for me.
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Herbal shop

It seems that every deck we test beats Common Enemy and yet it is still considered one of the best decks in the metagame. I guess no one knows it is dead yet. I guess Doom didn?t get the memo. Along with it?s megalomaniacal buddy Magneto, a constant fixture in BBH and TNB, who some consider dead also. Neither of these guys can consistently beat Titans. Yet people still play both those decks to some success. I think the fact that CE won Indy makes people forget that it was in the top because of Kibler?s draft skills and not because it was actually the best deck to play. Or maybe people think it is so good because they saw Brian make so many mistakes with CE and yet win the whole thing. It is good, but it can easily be beaten.

So, what to play, what to play. I should probably just play Titans and be done with it. They answer so many of the problems with the one game format, mainly consistency. And as long as Spider-man leaves a sour taste in everyone?s mouth, Titans seems the way to go. Xmen beats it too by the way but no one has the balls to play them. I know I want to, especially since I have the privilege to play with Mr. X-men himself, Warmachine on an almost daily basis. His new build is pretty jazzy but there is just something missing.

What a ridiculous metagame. Or maybe it is great and the fact that there are any number of good decks to play is good for the game. If Supes was legal, I?d play something like that deck from way back when where we tried to lock our opponent out of the game turn seven. The deck looked something like this:

Characters:
4 MSM-022 Vulture-Adrian Toomes
4 MSM-016 Electro-Maxwell Dillon
4 DOR-126 Shimmer-Selinda Flinders
4 MSM-069 Alistair Smythe-Ultimate Spider Slayer
3 MSM-019 Lizard-Dr. Curtis Connors
1 MSM-093 Venom-Alien Symbiote
4 MSM-015 Dr. Octopus-Otto Octavius
4 DOR-124 Neutron-Nat Tryon
2 MSM-017 Green Goblin-Norman Osborn
4 MSM-076 Hobgoblin-Roderick Kingsley
4 DOR-125 Psimon-Dr. Simon Jones

Plot Twists:
4 DOR-127 The Underworld Star
4 DOR-163 Total Anarchy
1 DOR-165 World's Finest
4 MSM-130 Devil's Due
4 MOR-185 Entangle
1 MOR-199 Marvel Team-Up
4 MSM-159 Sinister Six

But what it really needed to make it work was this:

Fanatical Devotion
Plot Twist 5

As an additional cost to play Fanatical Devotion, KO a character you control and discard a card from you hand.
Target a character with a cost equal to or less than the character you KOed. Stun the target character.

I sent a request to Upper Deck for the above card via my super secret inside contact and this is what I got:

General Zod (DSM-068)
Ruler of Pokolistan

Type: Character
Team: Revenge Squad
Rarity: R
Illustrator: Keron Grant Cost: 7
ATK Value: 15
DEF Value: 15
Restriction: 4

Card Text:
KO a Revenge Squad character you control >>> Exhaust target character if its cost is less than or equal to the cost of the character you KO?d this way.

Not quite the plot twist I needed but I can work with it. We have to work with three teams now but that?s OK with all the many team-up cards that are out there. Zod is exactly the card I wanted except for the fact that he keeps me from playing Psimon at seven for the hard lock. I wish he was a five drop. I wonder if the R&D guys thought about the deck I am trying to build when they designed the cards. Probably so?they are pretty crafty.

I need to get busy and build a deck with Hobgoblin and Zod so I can completely cripple my opponent and say, ?Kneel before Zod!!!? This deck will operate in the same way that the above listed deck did, but hopefully a lot less clunky. Help me out here because of this next announcement I am about to make, my time will be a lot more limited.

As you all know, people love me and want to be with me and want me to spend time with them because evidently I am the type of guy that people like to be around because I am cooler than them and that makes them feel cool too. So with that in mind, I have decided to take a recently offered position of male online companion in the upcoming online multiplayer game, World of Warcraft for Typhon, otherwise know as the guy that owns this site. To accommodate his many demands online I will have to cut some of the other activities that I have been participating in. One of those casualties of my crunched time is this column. I am putting it on a temporary hiatus until my mutant gene kicks in and I get Jamie Maddux?s mutant powers.

My new position will be that of assuming the persona of a dwarven hunter by the name of Sutter Bandyleggs on one of the USEAST servers and guiding Typhon in his adventures trying my best to protect him as we explore worlds and grow closer than two men should ever be. I need your help though. I actually need three of you to abandon your current life and be our adventuring companions as we battle the many evils across the land. I need a cleric, a mage, and a warrior?all dwarfs or gnomes. If you are interested, message either Typhon or myself ASAP. We will be playing 8AM to 1PM Central Mon-Fri so keep that in mind. All interested applicants need to be able to commit to that playing time. I am pretty sure Typhon is going to form some kind of Realmworx guild, but these three special someones will be in our personal adventuring group. So act now before the slots fill up.

But there is more?I am going back to school for the 3rd time to finish up my degree and see if I can seduce lots of Freshmen coeds half my age. So, you can see, I have a lot on my plate.

And yes, there is this VS. thing I need to try and concentrate on too. It has made me a bit of money and playing on the pro circuit is supposedly something I have wanted to do my entire adult life, so I best not neglect that.

Anybody remember reading this silliness.

It was one of my very first posts. How funny it is to read now knowing how awful those two decks were. But, I was new to the game and was not sitting on the shoulders of giants like I am now.

As I fade into oblivion or at least into not every week posting something to steal some time from your lives, I want to thank the groovy guys in the big yellow hats that feed me my bananas. If not for Rob, Billy, Patrick, and Carl, I'd still be playing straight FF or some copied deck always a week behind. Along with you guys and the rest of the Realmworx team, you help me confuse and bewilder people into thinking I can actually play this game.

So there it is short and sweet with no real business being on the front page. It is what it is.

Bah! I can't leave you without at least something pro circuit worthy. If you are afraid of Common Enemy but want to play it yourself and you want a little help in the mirror, play this:

UnCommon Enemy

4 Boris
4 She-Thing
4 She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters
1 Purple Man
4 Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius
1 Invisible Woman, Sue Storm
1 Robot Destroyer
1 Thing, Heavy Hitter
3 Iceman, Cool Customer
1 Submariner
1 Thing ? The Ever-Lovin? Blue-Eyed Thing
2 Silver Surfer
1 Dr. Doom, Victor Von Doom
1 A Death in the Family
1 Faces of Doom
1 Total Anarchy
1 Unmasked
3 Mystical Paralysis
3 Have a Blast!
4 It?s Clobberin? Time!
4 Common Enemy
4 Signal Flare
2 Flame Trap
3 Reign of Terror
3 Pleasant Distraction
3 Doomstadt

It beats the crap out of regular Common Enemy.

Or you could just play Sentinels. In the words of my good friend fatalsync, "I'll play it if you play it."

See ya in about two weeks from Anaheim
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Shemale Hardcore

(I told you he was tri-polar. This is the guy who lobbied loud and hard AGAINST Man of Steel being legal in Anaheim.)

The real deal is the ridiculous metagame. How did they do that? Man of Steel would have thrown everything up in the air even more juggler style. Is it good for the game? I say yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

Every day, I am vexed that I cannot get my hands on any delicious Pro Circuit Points. But someday soon... I shall. And then we'll see who invites Doom to the party. ^_^

It's nice that in this game, there are more decks that can win in tourney play than there are in most other TWO games combined. Makes the whole thing more a matter of strategy than rote.

Are you playing WoW for RP or PvP is the main question. And it seems like the damn beta closed a day early, I went to log on last night and it was down and I was sad.

I'm curious what the Spider-Friends deck issues are. Or can they really not be unraveled?

WoW looks really cool, though I did not play the beta. I definitely will be checking it out a week from now. Though 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, I'll check w/ my boss and see if he'll let me work half-days from now on and still pay me my full wage, I'm sure he won't mind :).

But really, best of luck to you in all your future endeavors, I've enjoyed reading your articles even though maybe it didn't always seem that way. See you in Anaheim.

We're playing on the PVP Server. More details about the general RealmWorx Guild later. :) It's my life-long goal to be a professional gamer... and that includes computer games. ;) he he

*******Man of Steel would have thrown everything up in the air even more juggler style. Is it good for the game? I say yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.*********


Yah, superman would have thrown things up in the air. But do you have all the money in the world to get all the cards you need in one week?

Didnt think so. If man of steel was allowed, the man with the money wold have the advantage, and that is not exactly fair.

A friend locally has a real solid SPider Friends deck. I helped him tweak out his card drawing engine a bit, and it is pretty consistent. His build isn't great against the Titans though, as he doesn't run Ricochet. But since he focuses heavily on 5 drop Spidey, Ricochet may just be the card he needs to make it spectacular.

Richard, my friend, you got me wrong. I agree with you, I think they made the right decision. Personally, I would like a tournament with cards that no one has ever seen before... but that's a dream for another day.

The thousand yes fest was for the wide-open metagame that we face, even without Man of Steel. What is your opinion about that? Is it good that there are six viable archetypes and 12 viable alternatives after three full sets?

This is by far the hardest event I have ever had to prepare for. I mean there are at least 8 decks that are a serious threat. Top tier seems to be CE, Titans (all 5 builds of it), nad Big fat Bastion (I refuse to call it curve sentinals).

The fact that this many decks have a chance at the top spot, and no one seems to dominate the field is absolutly astounding. But, this starts to feed into what I have been arguing for the last 6 months. In a few more sets there very well be 24 or more decks that have a chance, and how the hell do you prepare for a formatt like that?

pick your deck, sacrifice a goat to the gods of luck, and go about your merry way? A sidedeck of some kind will be needed at that point just to be able to make a deck that doesent auto-lose to one or three of the decks in the field.

But as things stand now, it is really, really good.

*****Edit****
BTW I agree that MOS should have been played at the PC first. the "pros" should always break in the new set. Seems to be the best way to test them, but make sure there is at least a onth or so lead time so we can get the cards and test the decks.

Who told you about the goat? That was secret tech.

I have my sources. ;)

BTW, never inspect that blinking light near the altar.....it would upset the gods.

I understand your concern, it is going to be a wild wild ride. It looks like they are so good at this that they will not allow the game to be broken any time soon, which means wide open might need to be part of the name:

V-wide-open-S. System. Hmmm...