So I bounce in and out of the game, play draft and sealed events, and, try to keep up on the current cards. I generally keep my decks in tact from the tourney and play them against each other for fun with some of my friends that do the same.

I'm at a local Crisis draft and ended up drafting a mostly Checkmate team and winning the tourney, going undefeated. This might be my best draft deck yet.

At first I completely understood why I was getting passed so many Checkmate characters..........Maxwell Lord, Harry Stein, Ahmed Samsarra.........are a real liability.

Of course I didn't know about Neutralized Threat going into the draft, having not seen any of the cards.

I passed Maxwell Lord who was in the first pack I opened. My first thought was to avoid Checkmate cards altogether, but, as I looked though the rest of the pack, I saw Elimination Protocol <> OMAC and altough I knew it was probably the wrong card to take, I grabbed it anyways. I'm a sucker for robots and it was common, so I figured I would get at least one more to use it's boost ability.

I ended up with 5 of them. I also got 2 of each Annihilation/Neutralization/Retrieval Protocol, along with Amanda Waller, Connie Webb, and enough low drops to fill out a decent curve.

I also got some pretty decent generic PT's/locations and a few decent team specific cards as well. With all the locations I was reminded of the LOA, which is one of my favorite teams.

Ok, so now we get to the point and title of my thread.

Amanda Waller is awesome and is the sole reason there is no 8 drop for Checkmate. If there were you'd get an 8 drop and an additional 8/7 body on turn 8. I am not to current on the state of the game, but, Checkmate might have the most turn 7 potential in the game.

Amanda Waller with boost 3 on turn 7 dropping Elimination Protocal with boost 2, searching and playing a 2nd Elimination Protocol is how I sealed my victory in more than half of my games. That's a combined 22 atk 21 def amongst 3 characters. I had some wicked deck synergy working

Connie Webb was the perfect card to make sure I got the right Checkmate character when I needed it. I was very lucky to get her. Also, The Calculator (3drop) who was simply abusive when I could pick up Amanda at the end of turn 6 to prepare for the big 7 drop bomb.

So yeah, completely random thoughts. Not sure what won me the day good drafting, luck, clean play...........who knows.

Teams with that kind of rampage rarely seem to be deemed worthy of an 8 drop.

Titans don't get one either, though, since so many of them have out of combat stuns, even though Starfire or Raven, or even Donna Troy are all uber powerful, and could probably make the cut as an 8.

Checkmate certainly seems beefy in the middle of the curve.

What would be a good 8 drop for them?

It's conceivable that Brother Eye will, a la Mogo, get the 8-drop treatment at some later date. Or a Checkmate-affiliated Superman representing him when he was being mind-controlled by Max Lord.

I made a LOA-Checkmate deck and use Ra's Al Ghul as my 8 drop...getting him AND Waller out on 8 is pretty sweet (she's a pretty big 4-drop on her own), especially if you have Sasha Bordeaux giving everyone a nice big pump.

Also, Checkmate doesn't really need an 8-drop with Brother Eye (a.k.a - Green Savage Beatdown) available...and if you happen to team up with LOA you can flip 2 or 3 of them on turn 8 and not have to KO.

I made a LoA/Checkmate deck too ¬_¬

But it sadly was the wrong format for Big Daddy Ra's. If through some peculiar rip in the fabric of the universe Ra's was legal in Silver I'd definitely want a copy.

its a little known fact that titans DO have an 8 drop, it was just misprinting 3 Roy Harper <> Arsenal, so since they ran out of ink, the 8 drop roy was allowed to remain a 3 drop.

SO it sounds like Checkmate is a pretty solid team.

Were these other guys at the shop just completely clueless or what? I mean my deck almost seemed pre-built, it ran so smooth. I know one other guys was taking my left-overs since he has a couple of the knight characters and a few OMAC's.

I was passed the Amanda and most of the OMACs. I opened Connie.

Isnt Allan Scott a king now? hed possibly be powerful enough to be an 8 drop

ROFL!!!!

So true. Sometimes it feels like they accidentally cut off half of the number 8

It helps that almost all the good Checkmate cards are commons.

Alan Scott or Brother Eye are the only possible choices. THe new OMAC could also possibly be one.

Superman controlled by Maxwell Lord as the 8-drop for checkmate.

I like the way whoever said this thinks.

If you remember the Hush storyline, they could make an 8-drop Superman for Arkham Inmates also.

um...

since when to games go to 8??