Our random punks tournament at Game Nightz in Phoenix, AZ was planned to be yesterday(Monday). As you all know, its really hard to ship things on time so like the rest of the world, we were without a Punks kit on punks night.

F it, everyone had their punks deck ready to go, so mise run a punks hobby league amiright?

Of course, I wasn't at HL the week before so I didn't know it was punks. Instead, I had a Syndicate Rush I wanted to try out. Fortunately for me, there were less than a dozen rares, so making the change to Punks was easy. This is what I played:

4 Fusion
4 Razorfist
4 Slyde
2 Vulture (4/1)
2 Vulture (2/1)
1 Basilisk
2 Vermin (the nuts, but only had 2)
1 Electro (5/2, also, awesome, also only had 1)
3 Spider Slayer VX
2 Swarm
3 Hammerhead
2 Doppelganger
//30 dudes

2 The Vault (I wish I had 4, there isn't much card drawing in Punks)
2 Doc Ock's Lab
//4 lands

4 Legacy of Evil (the stone nuts)
3 Flying Kick
4 Trial by Fire
3 No Fear
4 Planet of Symbiotes
4 Air Strike
//22 spells

3 Goblin Gilder
1 Alien Symbiote
//4 equips

Long story short, someones getting obliterated every game, without fail. Unfortunately, sometimes that person is you. Take evens, pray they dont have Mikado and Mosha, and kill them on 4. You deal yourself a ton, but usually it doesn't catch up with you until you run out of gas anyway.

As is, the deck has quite a few uniqueness issues. You need to play lots of 1 drops, because you really want to recruit 1, 1+1, 2+1, 2+1+1, with equipments and Doppelganger thrown in for fun. However, the deck is fairly forgiving. One game, I missed turn 1, was forced to KO a resource to Fusion on 3 to enable Legacy of Evil, played a 1 and a doppelganger on turn 4, yet still managed to kill them.

A JSS style tournament report /sarcasm on

Round 1 - jose w/ig+uw i manaburned for 2 and still killed on 4 bc he didnt play lex till 4
Round 2 - silent assassin w/avengers. hes unreal awesome but he missed hawkeye so thats gg, turn 4 kill.
Round 3 - Rob's bf w/squadsicles. he played eve on 1, ted kord + hardware on 2, manaburned for 3, then golden archer, another turn 4 kill im sweet.
Roudn 4 - alvaro his spiderfriends deck splashed one hawk one dove one ea harry osborn lol. he won city champs so i no hes tuff to beat. I play my best, but spiderman brickwalls an attack on 4, so he doesnt die. but i have fusion aka the nuts and i just sac a land every turn so i have di peoples. he cant kill me b/c he played 4 cards on turn 1 just like me only he didnt have legacy of evils. turn 5 kill.

So yea im sweet i 4-0d with 17 turns. they said they didnt have howard playmat wbut im too cool for ducks anyway

/end sarcastic jss style report

The deck is a blast to play, if you like recruiting a million dudes the fair way. Nothing in this deck is really broken, its just balls to the wall aggressive. Since then, I've thought about what you can do to help the uniqueness issues, and there really isn't much you can do. One idea I've entertained is playing a few off team guys that are awesome in this type of deck - Beetle, Tatooed Man (2 drop EE), Mary Marvel, Ape X, Rem-Ram as 1-ofs, then play 6-8 equipment, of the Image Inducer and Alien Symbiote Variety, to ensure that all of your characters have the Syndicate Affiliation. Air Strike was reasonable, as there are tons of reservists and you will usually have a blank card or two - but it doesn't allow the consistency that we're accustomed to.

a little out of left field, but if the goal is just aggression and burn, maybe die for darkseid? clear a few characters and burn your opponent, then recruit them back...

Only 1 Basilisk? I really like him.

That may have been a case of not having extras of some of the uncommons/commons. As he noted, the original deck list included 12 rares, and pulling them out and replacing them was a last second thing.

How's this deck handle control?

Checkmate/Kree?

The problem with playing Die for Darkseid is that you want to sac. your lands to various effects, so by the time that you're ready to play D4D you run out of land to pay for it.

What's with all the Magic terminology...?

Land. Spell.

Such is life.:sleep:

What's with all the ...s in your question? Seriously.

-I play MTG, Prosak plays MTG. Why wouldn't we employ its very well defined terminology?

die for darkseid is trash - rerecruiting guys doesnt help at all - you want more characters. If I wanted to pay a resource point for a burn effect, I could play advanced hardware

basilisk comes into play tapped, which means hes only good on turn 1, and even then you want to bash right away. Included solely for uniqueness diversity.

This deck does not "handle" anything. You can't beat hate, and you just hope to kill them really fast. I didn't play around Mikado, and I usually barely get there anyway.

When Magic players outnumber Vs players 10 to 1 (at least), you tend to use Magic terminology way more.

Why use any correct terminology at all, for that matter? Your argument for Magic Players > Vs. Players might be true, but jeez, I dunno, this might be a Vs. forum, and so maybe, just maybe, by the smallest of small fractions, it may be a bit odd to some? Perhaps? No, no, I guess your right. I mean, especially given the turn that Vs. has taken to the casual/hobby type players, you know, some of whom might JUST play Vs. Right, right, that DOES sound silly.

Speaking of the ">" argument, seems to me there are more Yugioh players than Magic players, so why not use that terminology. From now on, Enemy of my Enemy will be either a "Trap" card or a "Quick Play" spell card. And Mxy will be a monster card. I will recruit my monsters into my "Monster Card Zone," and my resource row will be my "Spell and Trap Card Zone." Etc.

Also, I lack any shame in knowing that.

Did the joke really go THAT far over your head?

I'm going to have to disagree with this. I for one am running 4 of in my burn deck with Advanced Hardware and Dr fates tower is sick. Tap Ape burn for 3 tap Fates tower move Advanced to another Character KO Ape to D4D then Tap the other Character for another 3. So thats 10 burn turn 2 Never mind all the other New burn stuff. From DLS Busted Knee & MTU Burns to the touch and Surprise Attack. Burn baby Burn. Turn 4 kill here too.Have turn 5 covered with Nuke most off the time Fated up so hes a 17/15.

I agree that he doesn't see much play for long.

Mine handles everything except for burn than it just boils down to the roll.

My place is equal 10 & 10. Where all old Magic players.I hear ya Land, Spells. I was playing Magic friday and I was laying Land face down LOL to funny.

You said there wasn't much to be done about the uniquness issues in SinSyn. I think D4D takes that potential liability and creates an opportunity. Advanced hardware doesn't allow you to attack AND burn, and does nothing for the uniqueness issue you mentioned. I'm not suggesting the addition of D4D solves everything but I think it does address what you admitted might be a weak point, simply not in the way you expected.

It has a threshold cost of 2. If the goal is to take down your opponents endurance a little faster than yours, the potential to do 4,8 or more end loss to them might be worth the possible extra burn you take. It's a call that would need to be made given the situation. The deck also runs Planet of the Symbiyotes (+3ATK) and Airstrike (+2/4ATK), both of which have a threshold cost of 2. As D4D nets you 4 burn I don't really see what the problem is...

The deck is not burn. It banks on board superiority and keeping up the pressure/tempo. Burn may be able to deal a lot of damage, But if you lose board control, your just praying for plot twists. And thats never good.