I am having trouble putting together a good GL mono deck. I have been working on it since I started playing but have had no real luck. It will win every so often but it is not at all very competetive. Can anyone advise me as to what I might be doing wrong. Here is the deck:

1drops:
none

2drops:
4x Kyle Rayner
2x Tomar Tu

3drops:
4x Hal Jordan
1x Tomar Re

4 Drops:
2x Ch'p
2x Oliver Queen
1x Abin Sur

5 Drops:
3x Guy Gardner
1x Katma Tui

6drops:
4x Sinestro

7drops:
2x Alan Scott

8drop:
Mogo

Locations:
4x Oa
2x Willworld

Plot Twists
4x Mega Blast
3x Jack Hammer
4x The Ring has Chosen
4x Breaking Ground
4x Cover Fire
1x Battle of Wills
1x Reign of Acorns

Equipment
3x Catcher's Mitt
2x Light Armor
1x Chopping Block

That is it. Any advice would be appreciated b/c I just don't know what is wrong with it.

Is battle of wills the one where you exhaust to recover a character with less willpower?, What most people i've played like to do is do the Sinestro on 6, Guy Gardner from JLA on 7 (gives a defender +X defense where X is the willpower) and Mogo on 8. Everything worked to that end, it was an annoying deck, and still can be.

Battle of wills is the one that says you cannot be stunned while attacking by someone with a lower willpower than the attacker. I thought about running the Guy at 7. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I was running him at 5. What would be a good replacement 5 drop if I took him out?

try rot lop fan at 4 he is hidden and allows you to hit the hidden area. also gnort ain't bad at one. uppercut is also a tad bit better than jackhammer.

I think he ran Katma Tui, the one that you can exhaust to others to gain endurance, its good for off init stuff basically giving her Invulnerability, and if I remember correctly, she has a pretty beefy defense.

Also are you running 4 of the Hals from DGL or 4 of the Hals from DCL, I know the new Hal doesn't have Willpower, but his effect more than makes up for it, especially considering the old one had a blank text box.

Another suggestion, since you probably want to brickwall and annoy the crap out of your opponent, you should look into cover fire, as everyone has Flight and range in GL.

I only have one Katma Tui just in case. I prefer to have odds in this deck which is why I have Guy at 5. He has a big attack which only gets bigger when he is attacking.

As far as 3 drops go I do have the old DGL Hal vs. the new one. I had 3 of the new one and did not like it too well so I have traded all but one of them away at this point.

I have the cover fires in the deck as well. This was a recent addition along with the catcher's mitts to help out defensively.


The 4th spot is still really iffy for me. I am not certain what would be good there. I will look at the Rot Lop Fan card and see if he fits since the ones I have now have low defenses and I prefer turn 4 to be off initiative.

I think you need to have a clearer idea of whether you want an offensive or a defensive style of deck, and then build your deck to fit those goals. GLs tend to be on the defensive side, with recovery, reinforcment, and life gain abilities, and these are the abilities that have been most effective in the past. The best combo for the GLs is Sinestro on 6, Guy on 7, and Mogo on 8. This is a hugely defensive strategy, with each character's defense being 17, 16, and 30 respectively. Cover Fire will be your biggest ally in the defensive style deck, and it only gets stronger with the more GLs you have on the field, so the deck used to try to get many smaller characters on the field before curving on turns 5-8 (Katma, Sinestro, Guy, Mogo). The more characters you had on the field the easier it was to recover characters with Lanterns in Love and Guardians Reborn, and recovering characters only helped you keep more characters on the field. Dr. Light used to be the greatest way you keep the small GLs on the field, but since is banning, the deck has limped on. I'll include a current deck list of what I use.

You may choose not to want a defensive style of play in favor of more attacking. In which case cards like Cover Fire, Reign of Acorns, Catcher's Mitt, and Mogo might not be the right cards for the deck. Oa can be a huge boost, you might try to take a greater advantage of it by adding in cards that increase willpower (GL Ring, 4 drop John Stewart from JLA set, Mogo location) If you played John Stewart on 4, and Guy on 5, and powered up Guy when he attacked, his attack would be at 15. Activate Oa on that and his attack is 19 on turn 5! If he had a GL ring on him, his ATK would be 23. (And the gl rings are good because of the transferability, they stay on the field a long time) If you chose this style, Bodikka might be a choice for an additional 6 drop. Her on offensive turns, Sinestro on Defensive ones.

I think your problem is that the deck doesn't have a clear idea of what it wants to do each game, A specific goal of how to win. In Vs. the decks that win often win in the same way each time they play. That's why searching for cards is so important. If you choose one of the styles of play and add cards that support that style, your deck should see some improvement.

Good luck, sorry the advice wasn't more specific to your deck.


Partial Deck List

The main goals of this deck are:

1-to recover and hide Black Hand and/or G'Nort with Luna Maximoff
2-Use Tomar Tu, 4-drop Kyle, and Coast City to make my opponent attack who I want him to
3-Use Catcher's mitt on characters protected by Tomar, Kyle and Coast.
4-Make it to turn 6, and make Sinestro difficult to hit.
5-After they stun the character protecting Sinestro, recover that character to make them go thru him again. They take major stuns.

1
Luna Maximoff x2
G'Nort x3
Salakk x1
2
Tomar Tu x2
Black Hand x3
Kyle Rayner x1
Olapet x2
3
Oliver Queen x1
Kyle Rayner x3
4
Katma Tui x3
Kyle Rayner x1 (DCL-testing for recovery effect)
5
Sinestro x3
6
Guy Gardner x2
7
Mogo x1
8


Ring Has Chosen x4
Cover Fire x4
Guardians Reborn x4
Lanterns in Love x4
Breaking Ground x1
Reign of Acorns x3

Coast City x3
Book of Oa

Catcher's Mitt x3

That is awesome advice. Thanks alot for that. I will definitely look into tweeking my deck in this manner. I never thought about the recovery effects when Sinestro is brought into play. That is really neat.

The trick that is really fun is when they actually attack and stun Sinestro. Then on their next atk, respond with a recover of Sinestro, and they will be stunning back and have not seen it coming. Then, if they have any atks left, they now have to go after him again. As soon as Sinestro enters play, if your opponent knows anything about this game, they will put a huge mental bulls-eye on Sinestro, and it's your job to make them miss or have to atk elsewhere, meaning:

(1) PROTECT HIM-Coast City, Kyle
(2) INCREASE HIS DEF- Cover Fire, Guy, Helping Hand
(3) RECOVER HIM- Guardians Reborn, Lanterns in Love
(4) HIDE HIM- Krona, Charles McNider <> Dr. Mid-Nite.

Before the JLA set was released allowing the Sinestro, Guy, Mogo combo, the combo of choice was often Sinestro and Krona. Krona would move Sinestro to the hidden area, meaning your opponent would stun back on all of his attacks.

If you want something more attack focused for GL think about this:

Turn 1 either Gnort or Arisa
Turn 2 Kyle Or Hope
Turn 3 Old DGL Hal Jordan
Turn 4 John Stewart

From There play All those Juicy Power Up Effects to raise Hals WP to Huge lvls thanks to John. Then use Oa (and Maybe Arisa is shes still out) to get your Attack huge. What More, New Era one Oa for another, I have Personally Gotten Hal to about 70 or So attack on turn 4, you may want to play Blindsided, just throwing it out there. Its Fragile but something else if it goes off.

I cant say I disagree with everyones strategy, however, unless Im mistaken, in regards to playing a defensive GL deck, I chose to have Gnort as my 1 drop, his bonus is really helpful and with cards like cover fire, its really great to have an additional player on the field. Second charecter I felt was neglected to mention and I found him really helpful is the 3 drop Kreon. His ability to replace locations makes him a serious threat to most decks. My 4 drop is Green Arrow, his payment power to get rid of the lowbie seems to come in handy. Nothing better than a double whammy. Katma tui, Sinestro, Guy Gardner and Mogo are the rest of my choices that most on this thread seem to agree with. Get Katma Tui online, shes only like .25 each or something like that. Just my 2 cents!

The reason I set up my deck the way it was is because I was told that I wanted to have the initiative on odds and not on evens so I set it up that way. I have all the cards that you guys advised. After thinking about it I like the Katma Tui idea. The only cards I need are the Gnorts since I don't have them at all. But, I can get them for .10 cents off strikezone like I have done most of my rares.

It sounds like it is best to run an almost weenie like deck up until 5 and try to hit all the drops from that point on. Is this correct.

I also like the idea of New Era coupled with OA. I never thought of that. I normally save the OA's if I have several and blow them up at the end of the game which is normally around turn 7 just because Alan Scott has a willpower of 9. I was able to use 3 OA's once which acually won me the game.

I think playing a boosted Olapet on 3 is your best play since it help makes cover fire ridiclous.

1 drops
4x Gnort
4x Salaak
1x Aarisa

Plot Twist should be
Emerald Dawn
Ring has Choosen
Cover fire
Helping hand
Rain of Acorns
Lanterns in Love
Breaking Ground

Equipment
Chopping block
Catchers mitt

Location
Book of OA
Birthing Chamber
OA

Do you prefer Book of Oa over Willworld?

you could play both