All the hype of how the killing joke and Mexican hardware store are the “best decks” in the format are nonsense. If 41 people are playing a deck(like jloa) of course its gonna have more good finishes than the deck that only 3 people are playing, no matter how you look at it. Below is a chart lets take a look:


Number of decks that made at least 7-3

Killing Joke – 10
Good Guys – 9
Fate Artifact – 7 (including Fate Squad)
Squadron – 7
Checkmate – 4
G’Lock – 2
Energy burn – 2
Villains United – 1
Injustice Gang hand flood – 1
Avengers reservist – 1
Light and Chimp Show - 1
Total – 45

Number of total decks played from the above 7-3 list

“Killing Joke” – Justice League of Arkham - 41
Squadron variants - 35
“Good Guys” – JLA / JLI Ally - 25
Checkmate Toolbox (inc. “Chess”) - 21
G’Lock - 15
Fate-a-Tron (decks that involve getting all the artifacts) - 9
Avengers reservist – 7
Injustice Gang Hand-Flood - 5
Villains United Toolbox - 3
Burn (High Voltage Style) – 6

Percentages of decks that made it 7-3: (that is percentage of decks from the total number of that deck played, so 24.4% of JLOA decks that were played went 7-3 or better)

Jloa—24.4%
Good guys—25.7%
Fate artifact—no percentage—
Squadron—20%
Checkmate—19%
Glock—13%
Energy burn—33%
Villains united—33%
Injustuice gang hand flood—20%
Avengers reservist—14%


Of course winnings are always variable but if you look at the percentages the dominant decks were not quite as dominant as one would expect. JLOA (I refuse to call it killing joke, its just such a gay name, I would like to strangle the person who created that name as well as the craptacular good guys name) seems dominant as 10 people had 7-3 or better, but 41 people were playing it. From a purely statistical standpoint, good guys, burn, and VU did better. Meanwhile decks that people consider the suck or dead had some strong showings as well. IG hand flood for instance, yeah only 1 person made it 7-3, but only 5 people played it. Same thing with avengers reservist, whos win percentage is a touch better than the overhyoped glock.

Whats the point?

People all over the boards are droning on and on and on about viable SA decks, the reality is this. Play what you want, play what your comfortable playing, you don’t have to play what everyone else is playing. The metagame is literally wide open right now and if your one of the 3 people who want to run villains united at a 200+person tourney you have just as good a chance to do well as the 41 people running teh secret tech.deck

Thoughts??

Hi, I know Im new here and all, think this is one of my first posts, but I 100% agree with you.

Me and my play group ahave been testing for weeks for the 10K in Hamilton, and a few of us (myself included) have been terrified about Shadow-GLOCK and now Kiling Joke. We tried to tech in this and that, but ended up making our decks that we liked and know how to play, run like crap. So i've added one bit of tech to my GLOCK, and thats what im taking, results be dammed.

Im not a pro, I play the game for fun and to spend time with my friends, which is far more important than a cash prize. Although I'd love to make top 64 and walk away with a EA and a t-shirt though :grin:

While I'm with you on the Good Guys thing, and actually with the rest of your post, I think that The Killing Joke is actually a very cool name for that deck.

It's a rare, at least on the money circuit, comics reference used as the nom de guerre for a cool deck. I think the name is a great analog with the play style of the deck itself, and I'm actually pleasantly surprised to see that some of the "pros" have maybe read some of the game's source material.

I realize that we're probably just going to disagree on this, but I love the name. :)

I love the controversial battle for "naming rights" that is ensuing here, and the pros who built the deck look like they are going to lose this one.

The deck has a rather obvious basic strategy. I know at least three different playtesting teams who had been working on discard since the JLA sneaks.

The Donkey Club tuned it to perfection, their build is amazing. They don't concern themselves much with deck names, but they wanted it to be known as Ivy League... which is keen good to follow from Jason's other work with Evil Medical School and New School.

Tim Willoughby christened the deck "Killing Joke" in the metagame coverage early in Day One.

It looks like it's gonna stick to me.

And, it seems rather easy to tech against. It won't dominate Silver... just watch.

8 SoCal players played a very similar Fate Artifact build (no Squadron) and 6 of those 8 made it to Day 2.

It's called "Fartifacts", right? Can we get a list or are you gonna make us wait until the last round again?

(Congratulations my friend. You are now officially better than Billy Zonos.)

tee hee..... Fartifacts..... Wait a minute.... did I just say Tee hee?

I have no idea what it's called.

i didn't decide to run it until Wed/Thur and I finished tweaking mine the night before... (we modified Patrick's broken pre-Equipment errata version) and then I just added in flavor cards like Squee and Jamie Reyes (note the last name).

Here's my decklist:

4 Ape-x-1
4 M&M-1
1 Jamie Reyes-1
1 Mr. Myx-1
4 Tom Thumb-2
1 Shape-2
1 Iron Fist-2
2 Sarge Steel-2
4 Panther-3
2 Punisher-4
2 Franklin Richards-4
1 Moon Knight-4
2 John Henry Irons-5
1 Zatanna-5
1 Dr. Fate-6
- 31 chars -
4 Fate Tower
- 4 locations -
4 Enemy of My Enemy
3 Wild Ride
4 Fate Has Spoken
- 11 plot twists -
1 Mindtap Mechanism
4 Light Armor
4 Helm of Nabu
2 Cloak of Nabu
3 Amulet of Nabu
- 14 equipment -

I wanted to put in 1 Archer and 1 Nuke because my hand always gets emptied. In hindsight... they would have been really good in this deck. One of the Fate-Squad decks I lost to had Nuke at a 17/15 on turn 5... imagine him swinging twice in one turn. The other guys put in Sage-3 as a last minute tech against Arkham Discard and she would have been good in my match against Adam Bernstein.

I'll put up a tourney report when I get more time... Day 1 was mad fun but Day 2 was really exhausting and it was a bit mind numbing at times. 1 or 2 games I could have probably won but everyone says that. I do know that Anand Khare legitimately owned me twice on Day 2... I think I was negative 100 on both matches.

And as for Billy... he really should have made Day 2... GLock just crapped out on him because his deck could have beat every other deck in the format. And I think he would have wrecked on Day 2... Billy is probably a much better Limited player than Constructed (although he won't admit it) and hopefully he'll top 8 in the 10k (he's Pod 1 today).

Thanks. I really was pulling for you. Jamie Reyes FTW! Good times.

The 'Checkmate' designation is overly vague.

The Checkmate/League deck that Ian Vincent is currently playing in the Top 8 was played by him, Dean Sohnle, and (possibly) Olav Rokne and Earl Prusak. Craig Edwards played something vaguely similar. All of the people who played the deck made Day 2, Ian made Top 8, Dean finished up 13th, Earl and Craig finished in the money.

Well, FTN's deck was only played by them and I'm pretty sure at least 4 of them posted a 7-3 or better record. 4 of 9 blows the rest of those out of the water. Their deck got lumped into Squadron, even though it isn't even close to a squadron deck. I'll definetly agree that Ivy League is not as hot as everyone seems to think.

I really want to see the decklist for the glock that went 9-1...plus i'm trying to find a deck that i dont need enemy fo my enemy

Calling our deck Squadron was kinda silly, if anything it's a lot more like high voltage. 9 of us ran it, 7 of us ran the same version (2 ran different versions that we all thought was worse). Of those 7, Vidi was 9-1, Kim and I were 8-2, Leader and Jonesy were 7-3 (I think), Chuck went 6-4 and Peter went 5-5. I'd say those are pretty solid #s. I don't think we had a losing record against much of anything. I think we split w/ TAWC's checkmate deck and had 2 losses to Glock (though that matchup is favorable).

I'm just curious, what makes your deck better than Squadron? This may seem like a very naive question, but from some testing, I found that this deck loses against Squad....maybe it does better against other decks though.