We've acquired several new regular players recently, but none of them have the cards to build decent decks yet. In order to maintain their interest in the game until they reach that point, I've been building extra decks each week so that I have plenty to loan out. So far it hasn't been a problem to do that, but as I look ahead to the Build a Legend tournament next month, I can foresee problems coming up with enough competitive decks for everyone. My problem is, too many of my decks rely on Mobilize and Enemy of My Enemy for consistency, and I only have two play sets of each (one for me, one for my son).

Anyway, while trying to think of good deck possibilities that didn't require either, I remembered Secret Origins. I bought a playset when I first started the game, but never found a suitable deck to use them in. Has anyone ever had a deck they worked well in? I would assume that if such a deck existed, it would be one that was equally at home going on or off curve, and played lots of 1 drops. (E.g., it would be equally happy dropping a 5 on 5 or a 4 and a 1.) Maybe something that played lots of army characters, such as (the potentially legendary) Multiple Man?

A deck with lots of boost or alternative ways to get bigger work really well. Against a curve deck though, you always need to hit your curve on your initiative, but on theirs, you can miss and see what they drop. Funny thing is, if they miss, so do you, but it evens out that way.

Vicarious Living is nice, but again, also limited because if you have a drop, why not just play it? Do you have Straight to the Grave?

Secret Origins isn't bad, but I think the best decks are the ones that can do both. JSA seems to do that well. They attack up the curve, but their on curve characters aren't too shabby either. In that type of build, you would at least put 1 character at every drop up to 7. Heavy low curve, light high curve. T-spheres evens things up and you have yourself a relatively easy and cheap deck to play.

Army decks don't fare too well with Secret Origins unless you play another army deck.

Another way to cheat is to play your normal rush or short curve deck. Use Secret Origins when you can, but at later drops, play utility chars that do something other than becoming a 6 drop for example. Phantom Stranger can be used as a power up for JSA, Scandal is used as a plot twist searcher and so forth.

Or build a strong curve with card draw and secret origins. Most of the time, they won't need it, but if they do, they at least have something to do on those turns. Also, strangely enough, with enough substitute characters, I thought they counted as 'recruiting' and if so, then playing a short curve deck (up to 5) in a heavy substitute silver age, that still may be ok.

Also, decks like Morlocks have cheap search cards. All depends on what deck you are building. With Legends reprinting Signal Flare and Wild Ride, those search cards are cheap and easy to get.

Good point about Straight to the Grave. I somehow forgot about that card in this connection. Duh.

I don't think I made myself clear. My thinking here was that, on a turn 5 initiative, if you don't have a 5, you could use Secret Origins to go get a 4 and then recruit a 4 drop and a 1 drop instead of a 5 drop. If you were playing an X-Men/Multiple Man deck, for example, that might work fine as the 1 drop would be exhausted for Fastball Special along with something else, and the 4 drop could attack.

Your point about substitute characters reminded me that another thing I might be able to do for one deck would be to use Titans of Tomorrow as a tutor, maybe for something like a Darkseid deck. I could use 4 copies of Created from Hate and 4 copies of Titans of Tomorrow, where I would usually use Mobilize.

The Morlocks search card is great, but unless I'm building something like a Legend deck around Storm, which probably isn't feasible, I don't see them as viable.

A big part of my problem is that almost all the Build A Legend ideas that I have are things like Punisher and Juggernaut and Wolverine and they are mostly mono-team decks. Some of these teams have good team-stamped tutors, such as Wild Ride, and others don't. So I was just trying to figure out if there was a deck archetype for which Secret Origins was a suitable substitute for Mobilize/Enemy. Straight to the Grave is probably a better bet, though, and I do have two playsets of it.

I have a Ghost Rider deck that is very viable, and does not run Mobilize or Enemy:

Characters:
2 MXM-069 Tommy ~ Runaway
3 MXM-045 Artie ~ Arthur Maddicks
3 MXM-056 Leech ~ Inhibitor
3 MTU-002 Black Cat ~ Nine Lives
1 MTU-014 Night Thrasher ~ Dwayne Michael Taylor
4 MVL-114 Ghost Rider, The Devil's Rider
1 MXM-053 Healer ~ Life Giver
2 MXM-064 Storm ~ Leader of the Morlocks
1 MXM-057 Marrow ~ Gene Nation
1 MVL-115 Ghost Rider, Spirit of Vengeance

Plot Twists:
4 MXM-072 Bum's Rush
3 MVL-150 Wild Ride
4 MXM-076 Retribution
3 MXM-078 Shrapnel Blast
4 MVL-145 Neighborhood Watch, Team-Up
3 MXM-075 Neutralized
4 MXM-071 Bloodhound
3 MVL-142 Chains of Vengeance

Locations:
3 MXM-080 The Alley

Equipment:
1 MTU-211 Ego Gem ~ Unique - Infinity Gem
4 MVL-138 Wheels of Vengeance
3 MHG-178 Mind Gem ~ Infinity Gem

60 Total Cards

Its a modified version of the deck in progress from this thread:
http://www.vsrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54143

Interesting idea. I'll have to check when I get home to see if I have all the cards for that. Not sure if I have all the Wheels of Vengeance and some of the MXM plot twists. Thanks.

I played Secret Origins in my AGL deck because Xallarap or Faust were must hits on 3 and/or 4.

It is an easy deck to play also and you can probably get rid of all the rares and it will still be playable.

You can also go with some of the Xmen teams, all their searches were uncommons (Sovereign, Join the Club etc etc).

try out any member of the fantastic four signal flare is great .

While they are rare they aren't EOME or Mobilize

Indebted (good legends card)
and the Underword one hmmm Deaths Embrace.

Yes, I know Signal Flare is good for F4. As I said, I'm building multiple decks for the format, and I'm trying to find tutors that will let me build decent decks with teams like Brotherhood and X-Men that have no good team-stamped tutors like Signal Flare, Wild Ride, or Bat Signal. Thanks, though.

Kariggi: Yea, one of my decks for the format is a Doom/Spidey deck that uses Indebted. Underworld doesn't have any Legends candidates of its own, unfortunately, and none of the decks I've got it mind are suitable team-up candidates.

While the ideas are good, the best thing you can do is allow proxy Enemys and Mobilizes in your Hobby League. It's the best thing we ever did. Print out color copies of the art or just use cards that are similar in cost and effect as the proxies. (I tend to use Psyche Globe and Gathering the Watch as my proxies, since they cost 3, are search cards, and are pretty obvious proxies in the decks since I'm not using Kang or Infinty Watch characters.)

Our standard rule is that you announce that your ARE using proxies, and what the cards are, prior to playing each match so your opponent is aware prior to the game starting what cards to look for.

X-men have Time Breach, not quite EOME again but...
Brotherhood has Soveriegn Superior, probably useless with the current line up though.

You might want to look for strong draw or cycle engines for those teams, its always been a weekness of the X-men, but that is because the folks at UDE obviously hate them and never want X-men to have a teir 1 deck, and please stop talking to me about X-mental even me playing my decks can beat that collection of characters that aren't the ones I want to play when I play X-men, hmmm they've improved them, but I'll bet the Brotherhood still got better cards when the formats shake out.

Sucks to where an X and not be Wolverine.

HomerJ: All our Hobby League tournaments are sanctioned, so I don't think proxies are an option. If not for that, it would be a great idea. We did have one tournament once where we allowed proxies, but that one wasn't sanctioned.

Funny you should mention Time Breach, Kariggi. During my lunch break today I was sketching out a Legends deck that uses it. Not sure I have 4 of them, though.

You know X-men and Brotherhood both got locations in their starter decks that I believe reveal the top card to look for a character, its not exactly search, but if you're tight it might help.

X-men is 4+
BH is 4-
I believe, and with no discard if I recall correctly.

I always thought Weapon of Choice was interesting, as long as your choices were split at what to play at the drop, Plus I think its the lowest cost generic searcher (as a 2 Drop)

Unfortunately its also Golden only now.