I posted this on our team boards a bit earlier this morning, but decided to post it here for a few reasons. Mostly, I just dont like playing or playing against degenerate decks. Also, the deck idea is fairly easy to come up with so I didnt feel like it was worth 'keeping a secret.' Because I dont really re-read anything I put on our team forums, youll see a bit more grammatical errors from me than you would normally see. Obviously I havent playtested this deck at all, but barring Have a Blast or Removed From Continuity effects from the opponent, I dont see how it loses.

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After talking with Shane a bit, I decided to call down about the ridiculousness of the combo.

This is a mock decklist as an example. Im sure the deck can be refined
provide greater consistency (adding Power and Wealth for instance, cuz
the deck certainly doesnt need infy equipment searchers etc), but IMO
this current incarnation would 'go off' probably 90% of the time or
more assuming no Finishing Move effects from your opponent.
3 Ape X
2 Artie
4 The Calculator
5 Alpha Primatives
4 Beelte @ Armorsmith
4 Jaime Reyes
4 Empath
4 Mordred the Mystic
30

4 Join Us or Die
4 Enemy of my Enemy
4 31st Century Metropolis
4 Baddest of the Bad
4 Teamwork
4 Mind Gem
2 Coercion
2 Crime Spree
2 The Alley
30

Mulligan for Join Us Or Die and nothing else. It is the only card in
the deck you cannot tutor for, so make sure you have it. Make sure
that you always have three resources face down, or have the combo
piece already in the row.

Turns 1-2, do what you want, but make sure you arent discarding any cards.
Turn 3, Play Beetle Armorsmith fetching The Caclulator. Play
Calculator. Flip 31st Century Metropolis teaming up Masters of Evil and Villains United.
Turn 4, play Empath or Mordred the Mystic. It doesnt really matter
what happens to the other two guys so long as you keep your 4 drop.
Turn 5, play the 4-drop you didnt play. Make sure you have 3 cards in
your hand in addition to a Mind Gem. Activate 31st Century Metropolis
to give Empath VU and MoE. Put the Mind Gem on Empath. Flip Join Us or
Die stunning Empath and recovering him. Choose to KO him to turn Join
Us or Die face down, but he cant KO so he stays in play and Join Us or
Die is turned face down. Mind Gem triggers and returns to your hand.
You lose 4 endurance per iteration, but continue this process until
you have some combination of the following in your hand:

1 Alpha Primitive

and one of the following:

1 Crime Spree
1 The Alley
1 Coercion

Also make sure you dont discard a Morlocks character to Mind Gem
unless it is extra.

Use the Primitive to put the card into your resource row. Then
continue the Mind Gem process until you get another Primitive and
another one of the combo pieces. After you have all those cards in
your row. Flip the Alley, Flip the Coercion revealing a Morlocks
character, and flip Crime Spree, paying 1 resource to give Empath
Invulnerability until end of turn. Now continue the Empath/Join Us Or
Die loop enough times to recoup for all of the damage you have already
lost from Mind Gemming, then loop it another Million times for insurance.

Because we havent seen all the cards for MTU yet, it is possible there
are other cards that do the same thing as Mordred but are plot twists
or something. There was a card previewed on VS Paradise that did
something similar, but also says the character cant be recovered.
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I think the easiest fix to all this is by errating the new Underworld effects to say "stunned characters you control cannot be ko'd by effects your opponents control" like The Alley.

Thats just for you Dave ;)

This is hilarious. It plays off of the combo that used to use the LoA Laz Pit's to keep him around, but I like it any way.

Funny decks are always the best :)

Man...you guys are fast. I was going to start exploring how stupid Empath was going to get after I had seen the full spoiler, but now...:(

So this is what vs has come to huh. Every set that drops expect a broken combo with it? Its getting harder and harder all the time to defend you guys UDE.

ntz, the source, and time thief. it stops this deck that will never work.

Empath = blizzowned. GG Losing him doesn't kill any significant decks except for these two decks abuseing his effect. Hellfire has a great replacement already in this set.

Empath. "You may KO him. If you do." Problem solved.

-Mike

ok this is all u have to do to beat this deck. since it has no real way to kill u, it will just win on endurance, play galactus 9.

The Newer 5 drop superman can give Invulnerability for turn to help avoid the stun damage.

The Alley can kill you. Though. I totally agree with the Empath Errata. I just think they will choose not to errata and just ban him. Like they have done everything else.

Just because its disruptable or beatable doesn't mean its not degenerate. You could beat Frankie Ray abuse. Doesn't mean it wasn't degenerate.

I dont think you read the explaination. You burn them for a infinite amount of Damage via The Alley, thus you kill them on turn five. The Source, Null Time Zone, and Time Thief dont see too much constructed play because they are too reactive. You need two Time Theifs to be effective against this deck, and the deck is Silver legal so it doesnt have to worry about The Source. Null Time Zone on turn five would be a problem though.

I am not denying the deck cant be stopped. Light Show etc could be stopped, but it just wasnt any fun doing it. A deck like this forces you to play near dead cards in some matchups, just to have a chance against it. Thus I think a errata of one of the combo pieces should occur.

True, but he costs 5 resources. It also means that you would have to find someway to recover Empath and Mordred to keep them alive until turn six, and also live until turn six. Crime Spree seems much easier IMO.

Yeah, this isn't really the new card's fault. The fault with this lies with something older and poorly worded.

Empath is ... troublesome. I fully support errata on him. He's being used in a way that wasn't intended. It really SHOULD be "If you do...".

They haven't chosen to ban everything else. It just depends on how they intended Empath to work. If they wanted you to be able to cheat his cost and prevent him from KO'ing he'll be banned. If they didn't, then he'll get an errata.

And no Galactus/NTZ whatever doesn't fix the problem. It just side steps it. Sure you beat the deck but the degenerate interaction is still there which is the real problem.

-Mike

EDIT: for remembering The Alley.

Their theme is keeping guys alive to make an undead swarm. This would ruin their whole team.