Adrian Macro  -  The Kang Council (Kang Legend)

6 x Kang’s Guards
4 x Kang – Rama Tut
3 x Kang – Kang Cobra
2 x Kang – Kang Ransom
3 x Kang – Master of Time
2 x Kang – Earth Mesozoic – 24
1 x Baltag
2 x Kang – Ultimate Kang
2 x Kang – The Conquerer
2 x Amenhotep
2 x Tempus
2 x Kang – Lord of Limbo
1 x Kang – Immortus

4 x Nasty Surprise
4 x The Time Keepers
4 x One-Two Punch
3 x Spheres of Solitude
3 x Game of the Galaxy
3 x Finishing Move
1 x Tech Upgrade
1 x Tag Team
2 x Psyche-Globe
4 x Kang Cross Roads
2 x Force Field Belt

James Warrener  -  The Illuminati (Mr. Fantastic Legend)

4 x Black Bolt – Enemy Within
4 x Professor X – Mutant Benefactor
4 x Mr. Fantastic – Protector of the Power Gem
2 x Dr. Strange – Secret Avenger
3 x Sub-Mariner – Protector of the Time Gem
1 x Professor X – Protector of the Mind Gem
1 x Black Bolt – Protector of the Space Gem
2 x Iron-Man – Mighty Avenger
2 x Dr. Strange – Protector of the Soul Gem
2 x Mr. Fantastic – Haunted Genius
1 x Iron-Man – Protector of the Reality Gem
1 x Sub-Mariner – Avenging Son
2 x Mr Fantastic – Illuminati
1 x Dr. Strange – Ally of the Four

4 x Cosmic Radiation
3 x The Infinity Gauntlet
2 x Pathetic Attempt
4 x Siphon Energy
3 x Realm of the Mind
4 x The 100 Ideas
2 x The Elekta Situation
4 x Secret Government
3 x Forced Allegiance
1 x Clandestine Operations
1 x Cover Fire

Ben Waghorn  -  We are The Warbound (Hulk Legend)

3 x Elloe Kaifi
2 x Rick Jones
4 x Miek
4 x Hulk, Exile
2 x Hiroim
4 x Hulk, Greenscar
2 x The Captain
2 x Brood
4 x Hulk, Gladiator
3 x Hulk, The Green King
1 x Caiera
2 x Hulk, Sakaar’son
1 x Hercules
1 x Hulk, Worldbreaker

4 x Imperial Dreadnaught
2 x Asgard
1 x The Great Arena

3 x Nasty Surprise
3 x No Retreat, No Surrender
2 x Fight or Die
3 x Hulk Red
3 x Warbound to the End
1 x Grudge Match
2 x Trouble with Dinosaurs
4 x Savage Beatdown
Wayne Hepworth  -  The Injustice/Arkham Gang (Joker Legend)

3 x Penguin – Gentleman of Crime
2 x Catwoman – Cat o’ Nine Tails
3 x Hugo Strange – Psycho Analyst
2 x Owen Mercer <> Captain Boomerang JR – Digger’s Son
4 x Lex Luthor – Nefarious Philanthropist
1 x Joker – Jokers Wild
4 x Joker – Headline Stealer
3 x Scarecrow – Psycho Psyciatrist
1 x Circe – Evil Enchantress
3 x Joker – Killer Smile
2 x Joker – Permenant Vacation
1 x Two Face – Split Personality
2 x Joker – Emperor Joker

2 x Blind Sided
2 x Have a Blast
2 x Pathetic Attempt
4 x Gang up
4 x Criminal Mastermind
4 x Power Siphon
4 x All Too Easy
4 x Secret Files
2 x Death Trap
2 x Clash of Worlds
1 x Acrobatic Dodge
Tommy Gibson  -  Hellboy Avenges with Sinister Aid from Batman (Hellboy Legend)

1 Uatu the Watcher, He who Watches
2 Iron Fist, Secret Avenger
2 Green Goblin, Insanity Unleashed
2 Sidney Leach, Human Metal Detector
2 Echo<>Ronin, Secret Avenger
2 Captain America, The Patriot Secret Avenger
2 Barbara Gordon<>Oracle, Hacker Elite
3 Professor Bruttenholm, Father
1 The Mad Dog, Rabid Killer
4 Hellboy, Anang Un Rama
1 The Captain, Can’t Remember his Name
1 Abe Sapien, Icthyo Sapien
1 Batman, Justices Shadow
1 Black Panther, Secret Avenger
1 Colonel America, Zombie
2 Invisible Woman, Secret Avenger
1 Deathstroke the Terminator, Killing Machine
1 Hercules, Secret Avenger

3 BPRD Signal Device

2 Avengers Forever
4 Break off the Horns
2 From the Shadows
4 Heroic Effort
4 Mega Blast
3 Pancakes
2 Pathetic Attempt
2 Secret Avengers
2 Thou art no Thor!
2 Trouble with Dinosaurs

Anthony o’Reilly – “Not Enough Gun”

2 Connie Webb, Knight
3 Black Thorn,
4 Punisher, Suicide Run
4 Ahmed Samsarra, White King
1 Sarge Steel, Knight
4 Punisher, Guns Blazing
1 Captain America, Loyal Patriot
1 Annihilation Protocol<>OMAC Robot
3 Huntress, Reluctant Queen
1 Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man
1 Punisher, Angel of Death
1 Sasha Bordeaux, Autonomous Prototype
1 Ghost Rider, Danny Ketch

4 Brother Eye
1 Quentin Carnival
1 Avalon Space Station
1 Slaughter Swamp
1 Brother Eye
1 Satellite HQ
1 Leslie Thompsons Clinic
1 New Baxter Building
2 Dr.Fates Tower
3 Checkmate Safe House

3 Enemy of my Enemy
1 Wild Ride
4 Cover Fire

1 Knight Armor
3 M60′s
2 Helm of Nabu
2 Cloak of Nabu
1 Amulet of Nabu

MUN BOOSTER DRAFT – Friday Night
Graham Beadle 3-0
James Warrener 2-1 (-1)
Wayne Hepworth 2-1 (-5)
Tommy Gibson 1-2 (+3)
Amy Chizlett 1-2 (+1)
Cameron Beadle 0-3

GOLDEN AGE LEGEND – Saturday
Anthony O’Reilly 4-1 (+5)
Ben Waghorn 4-1 (+1)
Graham Beadle 3-2 (+5)
Tommy Gibson 3-2 (+4)
James Warrener 3-2 (+2)
Amy Chizlett 2-3 (+3)
Adrian Macro 2-3 (+2, +11)
Cameron Beadle 2-3 (+2, +10)
Wayne Hepworth 2-3 (+2, +8)

MVL BOOSTER DRAFT- Saturday
Anthony O’Reilly 3-0
Cameron Beadle 2-1 (+5)
Graham Beadle 2-1 (-1)
Ben Waghorn 2-1 (-3)
Tommy Gibson 1-2 (+1,-3)
Amy Chizlett 1-2 (+1,-5)
James Warrener 1-2 (-1)
Wayne Hepworth 0-3

SILVER AGE – Sunday
Graham Beadle 4-0
Anthony O’Reilly 3-1
Amy Chizlett 2-2 (+6)
Tommy Gibson 2-2 (-1, +7)
Ben Waghorn 2-2 (-1, -2)
James Warrener 2-2 (-3)
Cameron Beadle 1-3
Adrian Macro 0-4

MUN BOOSTER DRAFT – Sunday
Graham Beadle 3-0
Anthony O’Reilly 2-1 (+1)
Ben Wagghorn 2-1 (-1, +5)
Tommy Gibson 2-1 (-1, +3)
James Warrener 1-2 (+1)
Amy Chizlett 1-2 (-1)
Adrian MAcro 1-2 (-3)
Cameron Beadle 0-3

Anyway enough with the waffling, I’m guessing you all want to see the card……

When the previews were initially announced the character I wanted to review more than any was Mr. Sinister.

After the initial disappointment of not getting a character card to review it dawned on me…why am I upset, this card is WAY cooler!

Here are the thoughts of UK National Champ, Felix Hughes on the card…….

X-Gene Decoded
by Felix Hughes

1. Nick Fury – Off the Grid. Using Nick you get to check out the top few cards of your opponents deck and remove one of your choice. As well as getting rid of an important character this also lets you time your decoding. Plus I’m sure spies like Decoding things.

6. There aren’t so many cards that let you stack your opponent’s deck. Winslow Scott <> Toyman is the only one I can think of right now, but that seems like another fun thing to try.

Wow! This effect certainly seems like it will nerf a fair number of combo decks. I know my Jean Grey/Cable deck would be very sad if Mr. Sinister stole it’s bodyslide. I guess the existing effect this reminds me the most of is Time Thief. Neither Sinister nor Doom/Kang’s Legend card cause your opponent to lose card advantage or board presence and neither do they push you further ahead in the endurance race but what they do achieve is denying your opponent future options and this advantage though much more subtle could prove killer in a control vs control match-up. Unlike Time Theif and similar effects like Atrophos and Pan however it is pretty much down to fate which cards (if any) you remove with X-Gene Decoded. There certainly aren’t that many ways in Vs to stack your opponents deck so it will be difficult to hit want you most want to with this card, but Riddler has shown us that even random disruption can still prove powerful. Plus we already know there is a shiftable hidden one drop with another useful (non-activated) effect that can be used to pay the cost. Removing an opponents chance of drawing Savage Beatdown, Mobilize or Pathetic Attempt certainly seems good on paper I’ll be interested to see how Mr. Sinister decks put it to use. I certainly feel sorry for all those people with Attilan decks…

X-Gene Decoded

by Graham Beadle

What I’m liking best about this card is its potential in Golden Age to make some interesting team ups with unfashionable teams. Felix hit the nail on the head when he mentioned New Gods and Manhunters. I’m already coming up with some janky lists based around these ideas which hopefully should get an airing over the next few days, when work allows me to get near the PC. The Source and X-Gene Decoded in the same deck should cause nightmares in the late game for any deck that relies heavily on resource row support.

I love control decks as long as they don’t take the form of a stall variant so immediately I’m liking the idea of a Gotham/Marauders. Nuke what you can with X-Gene Decoded, nerf what they have left with BGYT, Fizzles etc. Throw Carrying the torch into the mix and the supporting cast gets to play the role of either Sinister or The Dark Knight.

To be honest with the card definitely fitting into the ‘passive aggressive’ category, whoever the Marauders team up with to utilise this card it’s going to make for interesting play. Some players might find the ‘no immediate effect’ nature of the card frustrating, but good things come to those who wait, especially if you’ve sent your opponents search into limbo…..where it’ll meet up with all the stuff I need that my junk mail filter has vetoed.
It’s a shame that we haven’t got a Claudine Renko version of Mr. (Miss) Sinister to go with this card, but that’s just the fanboy in me talking.

Putting some ideas together (again, at work!) I came up with a deck list that was very leader heavy, in fact, its really all leaders! All the characters are leaders, so I got all the plot twists that aid leaders too, anyway, without further ado, I present the A/SS deck list:

3 x Funky Flashman – Salesman Supreme
4 x Wasp – Janet Van Dyne-Pym
1 x The Wizard – William Zard
4 x Dr. Sivana – Thaddeus Bodog Sivanna
1 x Patriot – Elijah Bradley, Young Avenger
4 x Iron Man – Mighty Avenger
1 x Lex Luthor – Criminal Genius
4 x Sub Mariner – Namor
1 x Darkseid – Heart of Darkness
3 x Gorilla Grodd – Simian Mastermind
1 x Captain America – Super Soldier
2 x Ultra-Humanite – Evolutionary Antecedent

4 x Code White
4 x Lead by Example
4 x Leadership Challenge
4 x Mysterious Benefactor
4 x Switching Sides
4 x With Prejudice
4 x Safe house no. 23 – Team Up
2 x Slaughter Swamp
1 x Quadromobile

Ok, I know what your thinking, Iron Man – Mighty Avenger in ANOTHER deck? Well yes, I must admit that card has become a bit of a favourite recently, featuring in many decks of mine, but don’t worry! If you want to make up this deck WITHOUT using the new Iron Man, just chuck in the old one instead! Apart from that, Captain America and Lex Luthor are the only rares, and you only need one of each, and they are available from the collectors tin set, so the deck is quite cheap to put together. Anyway, let’s look at some of the cards in this deck list.

The deck is pretty easy to play turn-by-turn, the best character for the turn, is the character you have the most of in the deck, although the off characters aren’t too bad, the ones you really don’t want to miss are Dr. Sivanna and Iron Man, as these two characters should help you maintain a pretty healthy board throughout the game, especially when coupled up with the code whites!

The search card is Mysterious Benefactor, which searches for a leader character (in this deck, any character) by exhausting a secret society, which I felt was better than an enemy or two, although missing early Secret Society characters may be disadvantageous, but so far playing this deck, I’ve not managed to missed drops past three (yet!)

Later on in the game, you should be playing Grodd, who is a very cheeky monkey! When adding in switching sides to the mix, you can end up stealing quite a nice bunch of characters, although you need to KO a character to gain a character with lower cost with Grodd, just remember, your opponent is losing a character! Now all you need to do is avoid those pesky Pathetic Attempts!

Attack pumps are mostly in the form of leader specific plot twists, although With Prejudice has also been thrown into the mix. I think this has to be one of the best attack pumps for the society, as it is a pump for the turn, which could give a potential +4 ATK! Leadership challenge and Lead by example both pump ATK and DEF, but can only go up to a potential +3/+3.
Anyway, I hope you like the idea of the deck, it’s yet another janky golden-age deck, but it’s quite an interesting deck to play, well, I’ve enjoyed playing it! From here I’m back to my list of random deck ideas, including:

Financial Crisis on Infinite Earths – Iron Man, Lex Luthor Double Legend
Captain Americas Shield Super Stall
Gorilla Grodd Speed Force

But for the moment I’m just going to try and get my Legionnaires deck to work a bit better, but look out for more articles about Janky random decks soon!

Having covered both Modern and Silver Age sets for Bring Your Own Set tournaments, there is only Golden Age left. In some ways this is bad for me as there are even more sets for me to think about. On the other hand, there are generally fewer viable decks from those sets, making life a little bit easier. Rather than go through each set entirely I am going to pick out a few ideas and maybe a team or 2 that may be worth thinking about. As before I’m going to start with DC and with the oldest set.

DC Origins has some pretty good basic cards. There are some nice combat tricks in Mega-Blast and Shapechange, as well as some more specialised cards like Total Anarchy and Have a Blast. However when it comes to competing with some of the more recent sets there is only really one deck I would look at, and those are the Titans. You can either run them straight, or build some kind of Brave and the Bold deck, but whichever way you approach it having the ability to stun out of combat, dodge attacks and team-attack your opponent into oblivion is always going to be competitive. They may not be quite as consistent at hitting particular characters as some decks, but a generally off-curve strategy lets them deal with this quite well, and never forget that they were consistent enough to compete with Sentinels back in the day. Unfortunately as I’ve never actually played with Titans I don’t have a list I can give you.

This is not to say the other teams having nothing to offer. The Gotham Knights have some negation and a few nice characters like Cassandra Cain. Arkham have excellent board control tools. The League of Assassins gives you Tower of Babel. However I think that all of these teams have been improved in their later iterations, giving you access to all their good points and with a significantly high average power level. Only the Titans have managed to stay on top.

Man of Steel was the next DC outing. While it is tempting to just move straight on to Green Lanterns, I should say a few things first. This set was a deliberate attempt to power the game down a little after what we had seen in the two Origins Sets, and in that regard it was a great success. There are some cool and fun cards here for sure. The Source, Takion as Highfather, Kandor, Lex Luthor and Kanto all give us some very powerful effects. The problem is that the characters required to use them are all a little bland. I think the deck most likely to succeed would be some kind of New Gods build. They have some great cards but struggle firstly to keep cosmic counters on their quite small characters, and secondly to fuel the hefty discard cost on many of their most effective cards. It is another deck I haven’t really played with, but that is true of most of the early DC sets.

At least until they released Green Lantern. Some of my friends are big Green Lantern fans so that was one incentive. It is also true that this set was a real departure from what had gone before with all sorts of innovations that I really liked. Unfortunately a lot of the more powerful decks that were possible from that set were hit quite hard by the banning on Doctor Light. This makes life hard for both the swarm deck and stall decks that relied on the Doctor to keep their utility characters around and slowly build up a dominating board position. However it certainly doesn’t invalidate such decks. The Grinning Demon himself is quite a fan of Green Lantern decks in this format. My main focus when the set came out was the Emerald Enemies. The resource destroying deck was a lot of fun to play around with. This is a sample build based on what I used to play (It’s a long time ago now, so some of my numbers are probably a bit off).

Smash!

3 The Shark

3 Henry King Jr <> Brainwave

3 Sonar

4 Tattooed Man

3 Hector Hammond

1 Major Disaster

4 Doctor Polaris

4 Invisible Destroyer

4 Goldface

3 Mywerdden (however it’s spelled)

4 Major Force

3 Fatality

4 Prison Planet

3 Empire of Tears

4 Golden Death

4 Femme Fatality

4 Emerald Rebirth/The Ring has Chosen

4 Any other combat trick (I always keep changing my mind but No Man Escapes the Manhunters is always good. You could also try Damsel in Distress for more board control. ).

About as simple a deck as you can make. Big characters, and then one final turn of massive characters tearing straight through your opponents. Being able to negate reinforcement on your biggest attack is usually the key to winning with a deck like this.

However the one deck I keep returning to from this set are the Manhunters. They were somewhat invalidated at the time, largely as far as I could tell by the combination of Chopping Block/Kyle Raynor KOing their vital turn 3 solider or guardsman. If you could actually keep those guys around you could just about keep up with GLEE decks, only your guys were all bigger, and around turn 6 you ended up outnumbering them. Once again this deck has changed around as time has passed, but it is still a definite favourite of mine. If I were going to give it a try I’d opt for:

8 Manhunter Infiltrator

10 Manhunter Soldier

4 Manhunter Guardsman (sometimes 6 defence is really handy)

4 Manhunter Engineer

4 Sleeper Agent

6 Manhunter Excavator

4 Manhunter Giant

4 Lanterns in Love.

4 No Man Escapes the Manhunters

4 Plans within Plans

4 Birthing Chamber

4 Qwardian Pincer

Just build up your board and them swarm on turn 6 or 7 (initiative dependent) with as many guys as you can manage. Lots of fun. It may well struggle a bit though, as finishing moves and the like are all pretty excellent in the format, and losing your guy on turn 3 makes life very very difficult.

I think that Green Lantern is a set of real un-mined potential when it comes to Bring Your Own Set. There are all sorts of useful effects in there, and if you can deal with the somewhat small characters (generally throughout the set the characters tend not to have ATK and DEF as high as we are seeing in more recent sets), I definitely think you could have a winner.

And that brings us to the last DC Golden Age set. Justice League has some obvious pedigree. Good Guys (JLA and JLI teamed up). was the only deck to place 2 versions in the top 8 at the UK Nationals, so there has to be something good going on there. In more general terms though, although the set has some excellent tools (Justice League Satellite and Air Strike); a lot of the more useful tricks are team-stamped so you don’t have quite the same flexibility you may have with another set. Those teams are quite powerful though.

The Good guys deserve our first attention. A short curve of powerful characters, lots of consistency enablers and great combat tricks make this a fine choice. I would take a look at the various lists around from the nationals for ideas, but the core is the same. Blue Beetle finding Nth Metals, Hawkgirl, Hawkman and then Fire for the finish. Add in plenty of power up tricks, Bwa Ha Ha, Kooey Kooey Kooey and a couple of combat tricks and you are set to go. One benefit of playing this sort of deck is that games tend to be quite fast, and while it has a few tricks it certainly isn’t as complicated as some of the other decks, leading to a slightly easier day at the actual tournament.

Of course you need to leave it to the Villains to have the actual complicated decks. I’ve not seen a Secret Society deck using only Justice league, and I’ve never used them myself meaning I have no advice on these guys at all. They like the KO’d pile….Injustice Gang decks on the other hand are rather popular with local players so I’ve seen plenty of those. There are two incredibly obvious ways to go with the Gang. The most common is the Hand-Filling burning deck. One of the reasons I don’t like this deck so much is that it really does build itself more or less. For example:

4 IQ, 4 Captain Boomerang

4 Lex Luthor, 3 Cronos

4 Joker, 2 Mirror Master

4 Scarecrow, 1 Abra Cadabra

3 Ocean Master? None of the 6 cost guys are great. I’d end up with one of each I imagine.

1 Libra, 1 Prometheus

4 Criminal Mastermind

3 Injustice Gang Satellite

4 Power Siphon

4 All Too Easy

4 Secret Files

Some other cards….Probably Secret Origins, Hronmeers Curse and a trick or two.

On the other hand the Injustice Gang army deck is much more fun. I also think that it is a little more flexible in that it can shift from aggressive to defensive very quickly. Generally though it plays quite a slow game, building up lots and lots of little guys and then unleashing a few end game surprises.

5 Infernal Minions

8 Creeping Doom

5 Insectoid Troops

4 Zzassla

4 Shadow Thief

4 Doctor Light, 1 Circe

4 Tattooed Man

1 Manhunter Conqueror

1 The General

1 Libra

2 Starro

4 Criminal Mastermind

4 Infestation

4 Secret Files

3 Royal Egg Chamber

3 Hard Light Storage Tank

2 World War III

The real key to the deck is Doctor Light’s ability to lock down opposing characters very effectively. With that in action it is often very possible to get to the late game at which point instead of locking people down you just take them all over. The deck tends to deal with curve based decks extremely well, and any hidden decks run the risk of being infested to death by about turn 4. Even Ahmed needs to fear World War III. Of course if anybody is actually packing Flame Trap or similar things are going to be bad, but that is the kind of card that is often too situational in BYOS, so you shouldn’t let that scare you. Of all the DC golden age decks, this is the one I think has the most potential, and it’s a lot of fun too.

But now that brings us to the end of DC, which means we are back in the Mighty World of Marvel. There are some pretty cool things going on here as well.

Marvel Origins is where the game started off. As a result it has one of the best generic plot twist line-ups around, as the cards here formed the basis for pretty much everything else to come. Flying Kick, Savage Beatdown, Acrobatic Dodge, Flame Trap, Finishing Move, Nasty Surprise, Blindsided are all still fine cards. Even more impressively, it manages to throw out some fine decks ready to take on all that follow.

The first of these are the original bag guys of VS, even before the Sentinels appeared – The Brotherhood. As a team they are all about dealing damage, which is something that should never be underestimated. They have a couple of key cards for their deck styles. The first is The New Brotherhood. Giving all your characters +2 ATK is extremely powerful, even with the resource restriction. Being able to have more than 1 in play is devastating. Granted some of your characters are a little small without it, but getting a 15 ATK Sabertooth on turn 4 is always effective. You play a very aggressive short curve, Genoshas, ATK pumps, Surprise Attacks, and just tear into your opponent faster than they can react. The second key card is Lost City. Combined with Avalon Space Station, it is not difficult to repel almost any attack. getting a defensive +6ATK, +6 DEF is quite good. Especially when you can use it to attack as well. Savage Land plays nice back up letting your little guys stay relevant as the game moves on. I was playing against a Lost City deck recently, and it reminded me just how powerful that card can be. The only concern you have with this deck is consistency. You have no search and only a little draw/filtering available. Like the Sinister Syndicate, it is a little bit of a gamble, though with the Brotherhood it’s more of an Each way deal than the Syndicate’s Double or Nothing approach.

The other big deck is Common Enemy, the team-up of Doom and the Fantastic 4. Another famous old-school deck, you combine Doom’s Boris, Reign of Terror and Mystical Paralysis for control and the Fantastic Four’s Signal Flare, Clobbering Time and big characters for combat. It’s always been a very potent combination. However like a lot of early decks, it also suffers from consistency issues, though in this case the problem is making sure you hit Dr Doom in time. A lot of the deck’s space is dedicated to him, so it needs to dedicate even more to finding him. It’s still a good choice but not quite as dominating as once it was.

The X Men suffer the problem of being just too diverse. They can do a dozen different things (Discard, recovery, readying, resource replacing, exhausting, controlling flight, team attacking, swarming, copying, clearing the table, equipment search, non-stunning). Unfortunately they only have a couple of cards doing each one and they tend to be a little small. This is one team that would really benefit from some searching to let them find the right character from their extensive toolbox. Unfortunately we have to accept that this is not the case. You can certainly make a deck, and some games everything will come out just right and it will look spectacular. Other times you will just fall flat on your face.

Which is almost exactly the same thing as can said for Web of Spiderman. This set is the one that I think does not have any real chance, and that is for several reasons. For one thing, the set supports 7 teams, but only in the sense that is has two full teams, and then lots of legacy cards for the teams from Marvel Origins. The two teams included (Spiderfriends and Syndicate) don’t really have any synergy for teaming-up, and aren’t especially effective on their own. You also lack all sorts of other things you may need like basic ATK tricks. There are some fine cards to be had such as the Spectacular Spiderman, but not really the support to make them usable within this framework.

But now we get to Marvel Knights. The first set I really bought (I think 3 boxes at the time), and the set with some of my favourite teams. Full of ATK tricks and teaming up options, this set gives you some pretty impressive toys. Unfortunately you have to use some relatively small characters to get to play with them. Still, there are some nice things you can try.

The very first MKKO deck appears here. It’s not quite as good as the Modern Age version from Marvel Legends, but it still has some game.

1 Microchip

4 Mikado and Mosha

4 Iron Fist

4 Hannibal King

4 Elektra (there’s a hole here that you probably need to fill from outside your team. Try Crime Lords)

4 Luke Cage

1 Yelena Belova

4 Daredevil, 1 Elektra

1 Black Widow

1 Spiderman

4 Wild Ride

4 Crime and Punishment

4 Head Shot

4 Judge, Jury and Executioner

3 Swan Dive

4 Quick Kill

Almost the same model as decks I have played in the past. However the real strength from the Marvel Knights comes from 3 cards. Wild Ride, Dagger, Midnight Sons. This little lot allows you to add search to any team that needs it, such as X-Statix, it lets you use the fantastic dual loyalty characters, and it makes the set extremely difficult to classify on team basis when the Knights can do what they like. I have played around with the concepts but there are lots you can try. Don’t forget other powerful Team-Ups like Hypnotic Charms that will also let you cheat a little. Being able to add the Crime Lords Elektra or Deathwatch to a deck can only be a good thing.

There are two specific decks I will mention however. The first is The Underworld. They are a long favourite of mine, and I managed to make a deck that was surprisingly consistent and reliable, even taking on much more recent opponents:

4 Shelob

4 Nekra, 4 Werewolf by Night, 4 Steel Wind, 4 Zodiac

4 Centurious, 4 Anton Hellgate

4 Zarathos, 4 Mephisto

2 Blackheart, 2 Asmodeus

4 Gravesite, 4 Wake the Dead, 4 Strength of the Grave, 4 Black Magic, 4 Mist Form (this last card I keep changing)

This deck is easy (and cheap) to build with no rares. It’s also pretty easy to play. Fill the KO’d pile, repel any attacks you can with Centurious/Strength of the Grave and then win with Mephisto. Surprisingly good, and it lets me relive my comics past with a bunch of mostly 80′s Ghost Rider villains. Oh, and destroying your opponent’s resources with Asmodeus makes stall decks cry which is nice, while Blackheart really does laugh at any kind of off-curve strategy.

The second, of course, is X-Statix. The very first (and best) loner team, they were an instant hit for me after playing them once, and then making sure I could read all their comics. Almost certainly they want to team up with the Marvel Knights to get access to Wild Ride, but in truth X-Statix need nobody but themselves. (And really who would want to work with them?)

4 El Guapo, 3 Phat

4 Vivisector

4 Orphan

4 U-Go Girl

4 Dead Girl

4 Zeitgeist

4 Anarchist

2 Ghost Rider

4 X-Statix HQ

4 X-Statix Cafe

4 Dead Weight

4 Spin Doctoring

4 Mind Over Matter

3 Star of the Show

How’s that for a clean elegant list? Utterly unlike the team of course. Probably the most unusual thing is that I used Dead Girl. I found her much more effective than Battering Ram, and her ability to not die and draw cards (for a small life payment) is actually pretty effective. Plus she’s cuter, and it meant my deck had the full team in it. It does work okay (for a mono X-Statix deck with no search of course). Really though, I mostly included it for Kamiza.

But that brings us to the last Marvel set in the Golden Age Roundup – The Avengers.

If there is a theme to the Avengers set that theme is attacking. Loads and loads of ATK boosting plot twists, about 3 Defence boosting Plot Twists, and many ways of stopping your attackers from getting stunned. Avengers is all about smashing people up. The 3 main decks (Avengers Reservist, Faces of Evil and Squadron Supreme) are all looking to win pretty fast. The set also has some of the most powerful general cards since Marvel Origins. War of Attrition and Null Time Zone are both wonderful additions to a deck. (Though I personally love Null Time Zone so I’m a little biased here). The decks that I mentioned above are all pretty standard now. In fact an Avengers Reservist and a Face of Evil deck both got into the top 8 of the UK Nationals, so there are lists around for those. They are not so hard to build, and neither is the Squadron.

There are a number of unexplored options available. Avengers/Thunderbolts team-ups with Playrooms, Legendary Battles, Quicksilver, Speed Demon, Second Chance and Iron Man <> Cobalt Man are a lot of fun. Just load up on powerful weenies and watch the damage pile up (you’d be impressed at how fast that can be). Also some of the Master’s of Evil characters are excellent (Klaw, Ultron, Executioner), but it is hard to find a deck for them.

Instead though I am going to list a couple of decks that I liked to play around that time (and still today)

The first is Kang! Who doesn’t love Kang? In all the games I played Kang was the one deck the could consistently deal with the Avengers. I’m not sure exactly why but the combination of control tricks and being able to avoid Stun-Backs meant that Kang was usually pretty effective. Provided you get a reasonable draw you can also deal fine with other aggressive decks.

4 Kang (Rama Tut)

8 Macrobots

4 Kang (Kang Ransom), 2 Kang (Kang Cobra)

4 Baltag, 1 Kang (Mesozoic), 1 Kang (Master of Time?)

4 Kang (Ultimate Kang), 2 Kang (Kang the Conqueror)

2 Kang (Lord Kang)

4 Kang (Lord of Limbo?)

2 Kang (Immortus)

4 Null Time Zone

4 Sphere’s of Solitude

4 Psyche Globe

4 Timekeepers

4 Shrink

2 System Failure

Ignore their puny attackers and slowly grind them to death (usually by hiding their big guys and then smashing them in the face).

But I finish with one final deck. It’s absolutely one of my favourite decks I’ve built. I still keep it around (though with a few changes), and it was my second choice for the tournament.

4 Beetle (Mach 1)

4 Melissa Gold as Songbird, 3 Wasp

4 Captain America, 2 Helmut Zemo, 1 Speed Demon

2 Iron Man, 1 Cobalt Man, 2 Karla Sofen, 1 Hawkeye

4 Hawkeye, 1 Scarlet Witch

1 Helmut Zemo, 2 Captain America, 1 Vision

1 Hulk, 1 Beetle (Mach 4)

1 Thor

4 Justice Like Lightning

3 Marvel’s Most Wanted

3 Avengers Assemble

4 Two Worlds

1 Stormfront 1

2 Thunderbolts Plaza

2 Null Time Zone

1 Avengers Disassembled

1 War of Attrition

1 System Failure

1 Chaos Magic

1 Mount Chateris

It’s just a collection of cards that I really like. Most of them are even quite good. (It’s a basic curve deck with a few tricks and some generally big characters. It tries to do well in combat and hopes things turn out okay from there).

And that’s it. My view on Bring Your Own Set.

Until Marvel Evolves.

Things have been very quiet around here in the last two weeks. I’ve just started a new job at Tesco’s, so we had to cancel our Tuesday night tournament, rescheduling it for Saturday. However I have had a lot of time to think about decks. These are the ideas that I’m currently playing around with.

• Assassins Assemble (Avengers/League of Assassins)
  Abusing the combination of the four drop Iron Man sitting behind Ubu. With a combination of the auto recovering of Iron Man, Switching Sides and Thou art no Thor, board advantage should be the name of the game. Add Tower of Babel into the mix and you’ve got something quite potent. I have to credit Tommy Gibson with fifty percent of this idea, as the bare bones of the deck was put together during some drunken ramblings over the course of the first night of the last mini mega-weekend.
•  You’re a Leper (X-Men/Arkham Inmates/Future Foes)
  A hand discard deck, hence the bad joke title. I think I’m building this because my previous hand discard deck (The original Reign of Arkham build, exploiting Justice League of Arkham) had its key card banned just before I got to give it a run out in a major tourney.
  To be honest I’ve got a real thing for the Future Foes in the various decks I’ve built with them (It’s OK to KO, Here’s Sand in your Face) as I genuinely believe when padded out with other affiliations, they’re one of the best teams around. This deck will focus on the ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ discard cards (Chain Lightning, Greater of Two Evils etc) whilst using the ‘discard with breakthrough’ cards from AI and X-Men. Pop the 5-drop Professor X and his additional discard into the mix and you’ve got a viable, albeit inconsistent build.
• Friendly Neighbourhood Doom (Spiderman/Doom Stall)
  OK, nothing original about this idea. Just something I’ve always wanted to have a crack at. Only owning two Gift Wrapped is a bit of a killer but this’ll be the last chance for these guys to be top dogs re the stall thing, ‘cause I reckon on Cyclops taking over as king of stall once MEV hits the shelves.
• New Birds
  After playing a few games with this I’ve made a few alterations to the build listed in my Blatant Plagiarism article. Will discuss the changes in my next tourney report.

BOOTY CALL

After James showing us his ARSe (Avengers/Revenge Squad Exchange) in his last article, we thought it was only fair that we post something for the American readers of the Blog. James will be ‘mooning’ us all today by showing us his ASS (Avengers/Secret Society) off in public!

MINI MEGA-WEEKEND

The date is all set for the next mini mega weekend. We’ll be running the event over the 7^th to 9^th of November. Format and venues are as follows:
7^th November: MUN Draft (7.00pm, my house)
8^th November: Golden Age Legend (registration 11.00-11.30, Style and Winch)
8^th November: MUN Draft (after GA Legend event, Style and Winch)
9^th November: Silver Age (registration 12.00, Style and Winch)

Should be a fun weekend once again, if you need addresses for either of the venues, please email me at grinningdemon@blueyonder.co.uk

MEV PREVIEWS
I have to say that I am impressed by the cards that have been previewed so far from MEV. There does feel like what we’re  experiencing a bit of a power creep, but this may not be so evident once we get to see all the supporting cast of characters, it may just be we’re getting to see all the ‘good stuff’.

I haven’t received my preview card as of yet but I’m pleased that none of the cards I requested have been reviewed as of yet, which bodes well for getting a card that gets the fan boy juices going as well as the VS juices. I’m hoping for Mr.Sinister but we’ll just have to wait and see.
So far my favourite card to be aired is the Strong Guy, Guido that gains counters in response to activated effects. He could be an absolute brute in some decks, especially those with good backup effects. Plus it’s great art on the card. Also, if you’re not reading Peter David writing X-Factor, you should be. It is the best of the current X-Titles, although Astonishing X-Men is good with Warren Ellis writing it.

GAME ‘08

Unfortunately for me I won’t be able to attend the tournament up in Manchester at the start of November. With the mini mega the following week and BotV up in Loughborough the week after that, I reckon my wife would probably divorce me if I went to the Manchester event as well!

OK, just if you didn’t know about me, I’m the kind of person who makes up some quick janky decks around some sometimes very bad premises (yes, that’s right, I’m from the UK!). Anyway, that is kind of how this latest deck got made.

With a bit of a boring day at work, my mind wondered of to VS-system land, and for some reason my mind got turned towards an Avengers/Revenge Squad team-up. The Revenge Squad have a great plot twist in Fatal Weakness, but it has a big downside in stunning two of your characters. Of course, this is where my thoughts turn to the Avengers and in particular Iron Man – Mighty Avenger. The combination is pretty obvious, slap Iron Man in between the two characters then when they get stunned, hey presto, they will auto recover at the start of the recovery phase, with counters!

At this point I started to think about other ways the two teams are similar, and I came up with the idea of board presence, especially as in the last few sets both teams were given ways in which to steal opposing characters. After adding this thieving element into the mix the theoretical deck really started coming together, so after finishing work I set about making the deck, and this is the decklist I put together:

2 x Dagger – Secret Avenger

2 x Iron Fist – Secret Avenger

2 x Winslow Schott <> Toyman – Child’s Play

3 x Mr. Mxyzptlk – Fifth Dimension Imp

2 x Natasha Irons <> Starlight – Everyman Project

2 x Dr. Strange – Secret Avenger

2 x Echo <> Ronin – Secret Avenger

1 x Captain America – The Patriot. Secret Avenger

4 x Satanus – Colin Thornton

1 x Patriot – Elijah Bradley . Young Avenger

1 x Professor Emil Hamilton <> Ruin – Power Suit

4 x Iron Man – Mighty Avenger

1 x Lex Luthor – Master Manipulator

1 x Wolverine – Secret Avenger

2 x Lex Luthor – Power Armour

2 x Birthing Chamber

4 x Enemy of my Enemy

4 x Dimensional Deal (team up)

4 x Code White

4 x Switching Sides

3 x Atlantis Attacks

3 x Fatal Weakness

2 x Toy Soldiers

2 x Hidden Agenda

2 x System Failure

Some of the cards in this decklist are either bad or regional meta-game choices, system failure is probably a bad play against most decks, a attack pump is probably preferable, also the character list could be changed around a little bit. Oh, and I only had 3 fatal weaknesses, I would probably like a fourth.

Ok, so this is how this pile is meant to work, it looks for a turn four turn around by this point you want to have at least Satanus and Iron man on the field, more characters would help though, a copy of fatal weakness, oh and probably a team-up (dimensional deal). I normally attack the opposing 2 drop, with Iron Man, hopefully not stunning back, but you can use code white if he does. Now, if your feeling lucky, you can plough Satanus into any 1 drop left on the field, but your going to need him unstunned when you play your copy of fatal weakness, which will KO the opposing 4 drop (or whatever character is looking the most menacing) and because of Satanus’ effect, you will take control of their two drop, now, they should only have their 3 drop left, where you will have over a full board!

From that point on, you can basically continue on, taking opposing characters by using switching sides, and with a heavy board advantage you can use birthing chamber and toy soldiers to good effect, and a late game Captain America can give a lot of guys a plus one counter! I put wolverine in as a later game hidden hate card, and Lex Luthor to stop your opponent from playing a 7 drop, that way, they are more likely to re-play a 2 drop, which can be easily stolen!

Anyway, that’s the idea, not really too complex, though it can get a bit hectic if people try chaining in the middle of all that! And remember, the decklist given above is just a guide, if you were to copy it, I would make sure to add in your own little bit of flavour! Oh, and as this deck ‘exchanges’ characters, I named it the Avengers/Revenge Squad Exchange or just ARSe for short!

The players and decks were as follows:
Cameron Beadle – “Its OK to KO” (Future Foes/SS)
Graham Beadle – “Reign of Arkham” (Doom/AI)
Amy Chizlett – Spidey semi-stall
Tommy Gibson – Secret Society
Michael Hart – Avengers
Wayne Heporth – TNB
Adrian Macro – Kang Council
Donovan Macro – Avengers
Rob Mills – Spidey stall
Andrew Palmer – Skrull Wolverine Abuse
Perry Smith – Teen Titans/Legionnaires
Ben Waghorn – Warbound Hulk
James Warrener – “ARSe” (Avengers/Revenge Squad exchange”

The top match ups for round 1 saw Amy pitted against Bens Jolly Green Giant, with her 5-drop Spidey being a key to her victory. We also saw a play error by Tommy hand Waynes TNB a win. Attacking with Black Manta whilst on 5 END, he attempted to play Anger and Hate, thinking there was another copy in his KO’d pile, only to find there wasn’t. Tommy went to 0 with Wayne still in the mid teens. If it had gone to the next turn it wouldn’t have been close as TG had both the initiative and board advantage. My game against Andy saw him not making a single attack in the whole game, due to a combination of Mad Hatter, Mystical Paralysis and multiple Reign of Terrors.

Amy Chizlett bt Ben Waghorn
Rob Mills bt Cameron Beadle
David Moakes bt Michael Hart
Wayne Hepworth bt Tommy Gibson
James Warrener bt Adrian Macro
Graham Beadle bt Andrew Palmer
Perry Smith bt Donovan Macro

In Round 2 Waynes Brotherhood were too quick for Amy’s stalling spiders. Andy achieved some massive swings with Wolverine in his lightning quick victory against Donovan (40ATK 3-drop Wolverine…ouch). Adrian took me hellishly close in his first ever VS event. With serious board advantage, turn 8 was looking grim for me until I drew into an Enemy of my Enemy, allowing the search out of my 8-drop Doom. With two attack steps and Two-Face exhausting ALL his characters (4x4drops and an 8-drop), I was able to reduce him to -5 for the win.

James Warrener bt Rob Mills
Wayne Hepworth bt Amy Chizlett
Graham Beadle bt Adrian Macro
David Moakes bt Perry Smith
Andrew Palmer bt Donovan Macro
Tommy Gibson bt Ben Waghorn
Cameron Beadle bt Michael Hart

Round 3 saw me maintain my unbeaten record with victory over Wayne. No real satisfaction though as both decks underperformed. James interesting ARSe secured a victory over David, and the other remaining unbeaten record,  with some real funky moves, stealing characters and getting out of combat stuns. I have to say I loved the premise of his deck which is real jank but good nonetheless. Would really like to see a Blog on it….so if you’re reading this James get typing. 6 year old Cam caused an upset with victory over Tommy’s Secret Society. Amy won the mirror match against Rob. The inter-sibling rivalry was won by Adrian with Kang seeing off his long standing foe..The Avengers.

Graham Beadle bt Wayne Hepworth
James Warrener bt David Moakes
Cameron Beadle bt Tommy Gibson
Amy Chizlett bt Rob Mills
Andrew Palmer bt Perry Smith
Adrian Macro bt Donovan Macro
Ben Waghorn bt Michael Hart

Round 4 saw the two remaining unbeaten players going head to head. Unfortunately for James his deck crapped out and once behind there was no coming back. Ben looked to turn his tournament around after a bad start with Hulk getting into Smash mode against Rob. Tommys’ surprising bad form continued though with defeat against Perry. Michael would’ve been pleased, I’m sure, to get his first victory under his belt. David scraped home against Cameron with a turn 7 win pulling him back from the dead in the match, facilitated mainly by multiple Path of Destructions on his Doomsday.

Graham Beadle bt James Warrener
David Moakes bt Cameron Beadle
Amy Chizlett bt Andrew Palmer
Wayne Hepworth bt Adrian Macro
Perry Smith bt Tommy Gibson
Ben Waghorn bt Rob Mills
Michael Hart bt Donovan Macro

Top Table for the last round saw an epic match between Amy and Myself. Over recent weeks Amy has seriously justified her meteoric rise up the rankings with hellishly consistent results. Tonight was no different with a turn 9 win courtesy of the 5-drop Spidey and 6-drop Daredevil. I made a mistake on turn 8 that may, or may not have influenced the game, but the match was by far my most enjoyable of the evening, despite me notching one in the loss column. The battle for third place between James and Wayne resulted in what I consider a surprise result considering what James deck sets out to do, Wayne bagged the win, and third place. In other matches the two youngest players duel for a mid table place and a 3-2 record with little Cam coming out on top. Rob ensured that the other youngster, Donovan finished on a goose egg…0 wins.

Amy Chizlett bt Graham Beadle
Wayne Hepworth bt James Warrener
Ben Waghorn bt David Moakes
Cameron Beadle bt Perry Smith
Andrew Palmer bt Tommy Gibson
Michael Hart bt Adrian Macro
Rob Mills bt Donovan Macro

So the final standings were as follows:
Amy Chizlett 4-1 (+7)
Graham Beadle 4-1 (+5)
Wayne Hepworth 4-1 (+1)
James Warrener 3-2 (+3)
David Moakes 3-2 (+1)
Ben Waghorn 3-2 (-1, +13)
Andrew Palmer 3-2 (-1, +7)
Cameron Beadle 3-2 (-5)
Rob Mills 2-3 (+5)
Perry Smith 2-3 (-3, -5)
Michael Hart 2-3 (-3, -7)
Tommy Gibson 1-4 (+5)
Adrian Macro 1-4 (+3)
Donovan Macro 0-5 (-5)

CAM WATCH: A strong performance from my six year old protege, bagging three wins including a good win against the experienced Tommy. It could easily have been 4-1 for him as well, his game against Dave saw him leading 31-5 going in to turn 7, but unfortunately Dave dropped Doomsday with the initiative and a hatful of Path of Destructions in hand.
It was however his best performance to date, the evening played with very few mistakes as his grasp of the deck improved. His wins were dominant, particularly against Michael, and considering there was only two other players under sixteen in the field he was deserving of the praise received from the other players when his eigth place finish was announced.

I have a number of the decklists from the tournament. I’m hoping to post these tomorrow!

Even better news is that The British Initiative will be getting our very own preview card, according to the message from TBS on Vs Realms today.

I’m thinking that we’ll put multiple reviews up of the card from the various writers on site.

Seeing what is on the list, I’d love to get Mr.Sinister, but would also be happy with any of the Exiles or Marauders.

Good Times!

Well, for those who managed to make their way through my last entry, it’s time to move on to the Silver Age sets (and for those that didn’t I’m taking a look at the Bring Your Own Set format and trying to come up with a bunch of ideas for decks that people may want to try).

The Silver Age sets are: Heralds of Galactus, Marvel Team-Up, Crisis and Legion of Superheroes. There is an awful lot of potential here, as this is the period when VS was really hitting its stride with interesting sets full of cool and powerful cards, as well as Legion of Superheroes. There are several effective decks from this format. As before I’m going to start with DC. The difference is that this time I actually have an idea what I’m talking about, having tried some of these and having seen the others in action.

The first set to think about is Legion of Superheroes. This has a reputation for being a little underpowered, but we must remember that is also the set that brings us Mobilise, and that extra consistency can really help decks in this format. Also there can be some quite surprising tricks you can pull.

One team has made quite an impact already, and that is Darkseid. They bring a powerful focused strategy that just happens to mess with several of the other effective decks in the format, as well as some powerful cards of their own. I’ve played with these guys quite a bit. A sample decklist:

4 Speed Queen, 4 Dark Lantern

4 Dark Firestorm, 1 Lashina, 3 Dark Thanagarian

4 Darkseid, 1 Stompa

1 Darkseid, 3 Dark Superboy

1 Darkseid, 1 Dark Kryptonian, 1 Orion

1 Darkseid, 1 Kara Zor-El

1 Darkseid

4 Created from Hate, 4 Mobilise, 2 No Match for Darkseid, 1 Ancient Evils, 3 Unravel Reality, 4 Omega Effect

3 Ancient Throne, 3 Dark Matter Drain, 3 Furnace of Apokalips, 2 Apokolips

You play a control game, sitting back, burning away while wiping out your opponents resource row. It’s a pretty effective strategy and plays havoc with anybody looking to use locations or ongoing plot twists. I do think that this deck needs a little tuning – it struggles a bit more than I would like against aggressive decks, and sometimes that 6 ATK on Darkseid on 4 just isn’t enough. It is a lot of fun though, and I’d be pretty happy trying something like this. Although other Darkseid decks will likely be a little different, I think the basic model and game plan will be similar.

Compared to the power of Darkseid, the other bad guys in this set really do look pretty unimpressive. (Then again who wouldn’t against the power of Darkseid?). The future foes do bring one great option though. Interestingly it isn’t the discard one. We tried long and hard to get that deck to work, and just couldn’t get anything with consistency or reliability, or even the simple option of winning games. Almost in desperation we switched strategy and tried the other side of the team – the Fatal Five.

4 Emerald Eye

4 Emerald Empress, 3 Computo <> Mr Venge

4 Tharok, 3 Brainiac

4 Mano, 1 Anybody really – so long as they cost 4 resource points and can attack people.

4 Validus, 1 Computo

2 Persuader, 1 Mordru

4 Mobilise, 4 Fatal Five-Hundred, 4 For Khundia, 4 Busted Knee, 4 (It’s a card that drops opposing characters defence and gives you flight). 4 Lost in Translation. Any other cards that boost ATK. Chain Lightning would be fine, even if they never discard.

This deck is for those that like their games short, so plenty of time between rounds. The plan is pretty simple. You ignore the board (mostly), and just smash the smallest un-reinforcable guy that you can as often as possible, after busting their knee a few times. It’s usually over one way or another by about turn 5. It can be surprisingly hard to beat as well, as you just can’t get your small characters out of the way that easily. Yes, your opponent can just build up overwhelming numbers, but I have won on turn 4 before now, when those numbers really don’t matter.

The Good Guys in this set are a little less obvious, other than they both have a focus on team-attacking and off-curve strategies. I have played around with the Substitute Titans. They are fun, and they have some cool effects. They also didn’t win that much. This is absolutely partly down to the deck I built which was just a bit of fun, but I find it difficult to make a cohesive deck with them. They would have to build a kind of generally ‘Good Cards’ deck, but with cards that aren’t quite as good as ones other teams may have access to.

I am intrigued by the potential of a Darkseid/Titans team-up though, using all the substitute characters. With cards like Curse of Darkness and that one with a picture of Beastboy that lets you hide a character for a turn you can keep a lot of key guys around, and then build up to something cool (I especially like Dark Raven and a Flash to just stun all of your opponent’s characters). This is just a crazy idea though, and not something I have necessarily thought through.

And then finally for the Legion, you get the namesake team. They are pretty similar to the Titans, but somewhat more focused. I think their best approach is definitely a swarm using loads of cosmic counters and cards like Science Police HQ to get damage in fast, and finish games with Terra Obscura (which is actually a really good card if you can play it). I’m not sure how effective it would be, as the Legion decks I have taken on (teamed with Titans or not) always seem a little fragile, but they can pull wins out of nowhere sometimes, and any time you drop to 5 endurance or less the game gets a lot more tense.

To be honest though I don’t expect one of the Legion teams to be winning the whole thing. That same cannot be said of the other Silver Age DC set however. Crisis is a pretty powerful set and brings some of the more well-known decks for this format, those being anything featuring Ahmed Samsara. Being able to search for locations in a set with some of the more powerful ones seen so far (Brother Eye Satellite, Brother Eye, Checkmate Safe-House, Rock of Eternity, Science Spire, Doctor Fate’s Tower) is a big advantage. The fact that he also helps increase the consistency of your deck makes it well worth the risk of losing due to the King rule. The fact that many decks won’t be able to deal with hidden characters reliably makes this even less likely. When you consider that the Fate Artefacts are also available as well as powerful plot twists like Blinding Rage, Transmutation and Removed from Continuity you get an idea of the powerful decks you can create.

Although Checkmate alone is a viable deck they have typically joined forces with either the Villains United or the Justice Society. The Villains team-up usually involves equipping many Fate Artefacts to your biggest characters (like Bizzaro) and then grinding your opponent to death. There are a lot of lists for this sort of deck around. The JSA team-up based on the Rock of Eternity uses lots of Back-up characters like Adrian Chase and Surveillance Pawns who now get to use their abilities and still attack, which can lead to a lot of damage very quickly. The deck has a bit of a combo feel to me as you work to set up the ideal board situation, which is once case where Ahmed excels. There are plenty of lists around if this kind of thing takes your fancy.

However if you don’t want to involve yourself in the shadowy world of superhuman espionage, then there are some other options. The JSA are an interesting choice. The deck isn’t the most reliable with no search (though the HQ works pretty well), but you have characters that get very very large very quickly, especially when fighting up the curve. Atom Smasher, the two Mr Terrifics, Wildcat, and others can easily generate a board advantage. The only problem I think you may find is that they did get a lot of very very powerful legacy characters (Power Girl, Stripe and Starman) and without those the deck may not quite so effective as the ones I have played against. I still think it is a pretty good choice however as it can just flatten curve decks with a reasonable draw.

Finally for Crisis I have to mention the Shadowpact, as they are certainly my favourite team from the set. They have some great cards available to them, and can in theory pack a few cards to deal with pretty much anything they might come up against. On the other hand they do tend so suffer a bit against really aggressive decks (especially ones with direct endurance loss) so I’m not sure they will be the best choice. Above all though, it is one deck where you can just end up defeating yourself by paying slightly more endurance than you need. The most famous of these decks is the Blackbriar Thorn deck where you play Blackbriar (probably with a Fate Artefact or 2), and then as many magical cards as you can to make him abnormally large. That can work pretty well, and in fact the very first Blackbriar deck lists should be fine for this format. I always preferred a curve deck I built myself (that I keep tweaking).I find that if I am very practiced with the deck then it works remarkably well, but without that practice I lose a lot more than I win. With that in mind I probably won’t be playing them at Maidstone, but I’ve put a list down below anyway. It does work – honest. (Though it was built to fit the whole team and all my shiny cards at the time, and I may tune it now).

4 Madame Xanadu, 1 Nightshade

4 Ragman, 1 Blue Devil, 1 Blackbriar Thorn

4 Detective Chimp, 3 Rose Psychic

4 June Moon, 1 Witchfire, 1 Doctor Occult, 1 Nightshade

2 Black Alice, 1 Blue Devil, 1 Nightmaster

1 June Moon, 2 Zatanna

1 Shazam, 2 Phantom Stranger

2 Chimp Detective Agency, 2 Oblivion Bar

4 Divination, 3 The Conclave, 1 Conjuration, 1 Transmutation, 4 Abjuration, 4 Mystical Conduit, 1 Mystical Binding, 1 Spectral Slaughter, 2 Removed from Continuity

I’ve never made the Blackbriar deck, but any attempt would look something like:

4 Madame Xanadu, 3 Nightmaster

4 Blackbriar Thorn, 4 Manitou Dawn

4 Detective Chimp, 3 Zatana

2 Nightshade, 1 June Moon

1 June Moon

4 Chimp Detective Agency, 3 Dr Fate’s Tower

2 Cloak of Nabu, 1 Helm of Nabu, 1 Amulet of Nabu

4 Divination, 3 Mystical Conduit, 3 Abjuration, 3 The Conclave, 2 Transmutation, 3 Magical Lobotomy, 4 Collecting Souls, 1 Fate Has Spoken

I think that the DC Silver Age sets bring a few interesting things to the format. Unfortunately, although Darkseid can be quite effective the rest of the teams in Legion of Superheroes are really overshadowed by Crisis. Checkmate and whoever their allies happen to be that day are reknowned as a powerful deck, and Crisis brings with it plenty of excellent general support cards as well. It would be nice to see some of the lesser known teams from the sets do well; it’s hard to see beyond the power of green real estate.

Thankfully that is not the case with Marvel, and it’s now time to take a look at what they can bring to the table, starting with Marvel Team-Up. As you may expect with the name, this set is very friendly to crossing over teams, and that means that the number of potential decks is increased quite considerably. The benefits for this can be pretty good, given the various dual-loyalty characters and plot twists that rely on you playing a Team-Up. There can also be benefits for staying on team, and the set includes some excellent general cards like Against All Odds and Big Leagues that reward you for this. I must say that I really like this set a lot, and I think you can certainly make some effective decks. I actually think that this set gives you lots of flexibility with deck building, so the decks I do include are certainly only one possibility when it comes to playing with them.

I’m going to start with my favourite team here – The Defenders. I read a few of the comics when I was little, and they have some of my favourite characters so I will always have a soft spot for them. They also have quite a lot of powerful cards, able to play a very effective short curve aggressive game, or an equally effective slower game. In either case I do find that the deck tends to build itself pretty easily. I tend to prefer the slower game, so that is what my deck is focused on:

4 Wong

4 Beast, 4 Tania Belinski

4 Hellcat, 3 Hawkeye

3 Nova, 3 Samantha Parrington

1 Hulk, 2 Brunhilde, 1 Devil Slayer, 1 Doctor Strange

2 Sub Mariner, 1 Silver Surfer, 1 Quasar

1 Hulk

1 Doctor Strange

3 Sanctum Sanctorum

4 B Team, 4 Big Leagues, 4 Defenders Defend, 3 The Order, 3 One Man Rampage, 3 Crimson Bands of Cytorrak

As decks go it’s pretty simple. You make a huge attack on turn 7 or so. It does work well. I just tend to find that it struggles somewhat if you have the even initiative. The Crimson Bands and Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange are there the help deal with that problem. I think this is a pretty good example of the slower versions of Defenders decks. More aggressive decks are certainly possibly, losing some of the more expensive and specialised characters for more Samantha Parringtons and Devil Slayers and the defensive plot twists for more ATK pumps such as Banished to the Abyss and Imperious Rex, though I have not tried this style of deck myself.

A more challenging deck to build is the Underworld. They have a number of themes: Lots of cards based on the KO’d pile, lots of recovery and other board controlling tricks, endurance gain based on their own stunned characters (who get to stay in play rather more than usual) and a few hidden character tricks. The problem is working all of these into some kind of cohesive deck, and it’s really quite difficult. Cards like Meatmarket and Satana look powerful, but in the context of Marvel Team-Up actually maximising their effectiveness is rather more difficult than I would like (and I have tried). They aren’t especially aggressive, and don’t have many of the traditional control elements. I have managed to build one mono-Underworld deck that works quite well, based on two of their wacky specialised cards – Netherworld Gift and Undead Legions:

4 Shathra, 4 Black Rose

4 Umar, 3 Queen Lillith

2 Morlun, 1 Mordred the Mystic, 1 Cthon, 1 Blackheart, 2 Nastirh

2 Thanos, 3 Illyana Rasputin, 1 Mephisto

1 Mephisto, 1 Dweller in Darkness, 1 Madeleine Prior

1 Shuma Goroth, 1 Dormammu

4 Death’s Embrace, 4 In Limbo, 4 Netherworld Gift, 4 Dark Bargain, 4 Against All Odds, 3 Undead Legions

4 Dark Dimension

You are just trying to build up to a powerful Undead Legions turn where you summon a bunch of characters (hence the variety) and reanimate them for a dominant series of attacks. Again though, aggressive decks can do a lot of damage early on which makes life quite hard, and while you are building up you tend not to do too much until then. Overall I think the Underworld in this set are at their most effective teaming up.

The Spiderfriends are a very straight-forwards team. You stall the game until you have the cards to dominate it. Unfortunately the set doesn’t really contain any especially dominating cards for you to stall too, but with all the control over attacks you have, you should at least be heavily favoured in the late game. Spiderman, Gift Wrapped, Mattie Franklin, Sentry, Blade all serve to stop your opponent being able to do much of anything, while ESU keeps your hand flowing. I’ve built Spiderfriends decks, but usually with Golden Age cards, and while they can be very strong, they are also dull to play, and I do feel that without a powerful late game available you will lose slightly too many games due to not actually being able to deal any damage. An easy deck to make though:

4 Aunt May

4 Black Cat, 4 Blade

4 Mattie Franklin, 3 Darkhawk

4 Sensational Spiderman, 2 Symbiote

3 Deathlok, 1 Phil Urich, 1 Venom

3 Daredevil

2 Spiderman

1 Sentry

3 ESU

4 Indebted, 4 Against All Odds, 4 Big Leagues, 4 Spider Signal, 4 Gift Wrapped, 3 Trial by Jury

The final full team in the set are the Sinister Syndicate. For me these are one of the Dark Horse teams available. They have the potential to play a very aggressive game (I had a draft deck once that scored a couple of turn 4 wins) but it all comes with a price, and for the Syndicate that price is their own endurance total. They may win but their own score is going to be pretty precarious. To me they are a gamble. I certainly think that they can win BUT they need to get lucky. They will need the right initiative against the right decks. They will need to always have the right ATK boost to get over and unexpected defensive tricks, and they will need to avoid any of the cards that can really hurt their primarily off-curve strategy. It sounds like a tall order, but you always need a bit of luck to win a tournament. This is the only deck I really don’t have much idea how to build. We tried a number of times, but it was never quite consistent enough and would often lose when it drew one trick too few, or when the endurance loss from its own cards was just enough to finish it off. Then again some games it just ran over whatever was in its way. A gamble for someone who’s feeling lucky. After all, winning 9 games on the day has a chance to win. It just has to be the right 9 games.

The problem with deciding what to do with a set like Marvel Team-Up though, is in the name. Each of the deck ideas above is using a mono-team, and that immediately precludes some of the more powerful cards in the set. While it would take far too long, even for me, to think about every deck that you could make, I will mention just a few cards that are worth thinking about.

Dual Loyalty characters are one of the biggest draws to a team-up, but some of them are definitely more effective than others. Moon Knight (Spiderfriends/Defenders) really enables the idea of a Defenders win on turn 5/6 with multiple attacks taking down characters and then your opponent. He’s probably the most effective of these characters. Demogoblin and Hellstorm are both very good characters but I’m not sure how well they would fit into their respective teams. For me dual loyalty characters should be something you focus your deck around like Moon Knight, and I’m not sure either of them are quite worthy of that which is a shame. Of the two I think Goblin is the one more worth investigating in a deck that uses the endurance gain and recovery tricks of the Underworld to support the Syndicate Rush, with Demogoblin topping out your team and keeping your opponent from getting ahead. Deadpool is in the same situation. His ability is very powerful, but building a deck to recruit him and make the most of him is actually pretty difficult. The final entry, Aloysius Kravinoff, is perfectly good, but to me he just isn’t that interesting.

One advantage of building decks with these characters is that is also gives you access to the various plot twists that require team-ups. Strange Love is probably the best of these, but Soul Survivor is pretty good as well, when you get to attack more than once a turn with the same character.

Before I move on, there is one team that has so far been noticeable by its absence, and that is the Wild Pack. They are intended as a supplemental team for anyone that needs them, bringing a few very specialised effects with them such as Paladin and Battlestar. For me though, if you are using this team, then the whole focus of the deck really should be getting Silver Sable in play and swinging. She has one of the trickiest recruit restrictions in the set, but one of the best effects. Effectively a Punisher that doesn’t need any equipment and active Sable against most curve decks should spell the end of the game. With that in mind, I present a combination of my favourite teams in this set:

4 Wong, 2 Powell

4 Chen, 4 Tania Belinski,

4 Hellcat, 3 Man-eater

4 Silver Sable, 4 Samantha Parrington,

1 Sandman

1 Silver Surfer, 1 Quasar

1 Hulk

4 Secret Defenders, 1 Stealthcraft, 4 B Team, 4 Big Leagues, 3 Imperious Rex, 3 One-Man Rampage, 3 Defenders Defend, 3 Banished to the Abyss, 2 Soul Survivor

Make Silver Sable big and then clear the table again and again. I’ve never had a chance to build this deck, but I really like the idea of it though I’m not sure how easy it will actually be to get Silver Sable into play. If you do then the game should go quite well from that point onwards.

I think that Marvel Team-Up was one of the more under-represented sets in the UK Nationals. I certainly didn’t play against anything from this set, which seems a little odd to me as there are some perfectly effective decks available.  Granted they all have some weaknesses, but that is true of most decks in the format. I think the lack of information on standard tournament archetypes (as a result of the environment when the set was released) probably has some impact as well. If you are going to use Marvel Team-Up you’ll have to do quite a lot of the work yourself, but the potential is a deck that nobody is ready to deal with.

The final Marvel set that Silver Age adds brings with it Galactus, only this time you get to actually play some characters before turn 6. Heralds of Galactus has two very powerful teams for the format, and along with them brings the Inhumans who can almost rival Ahmed in their ability to enable another team. Huge characters, Mighty plot twists, cosmic stall. Who could want for more?

So of course the first decks I must talk about ignore all of this cool stuff. Kree are one of the most effective decks for Bring Your Own Set. For those that have not seen them in action the Kree are capable of playing out a lot of characters each and every turn. (Typically on turn 6 they will play 2,2,3,4,5 cost characters to go along with whatever else they already have in play). They have plenty of cards that support this strategy and give them bonuses for it, as well as some incidental resource row disruption. Needless to say they are very dangerous. I don’t have a list for these guys (I’ve never really played them), but there should be a few around if you feel inclined.

Instead I will mention the most successful deck I built from this set: DOOM! (and his moloid friends). The legions of the Moleman are a very powerful Silver Age deck, and they translate very well into Bring Your Own Set. A typical swarm deck with a universal ATK boost, a little search, and the ability to rebuild quite effectively they can win a lot of games and certainly give the Kree a hard time, along with anybody looking to run a curve. The deck I built:

12 Moloid

4 Klaw (could be more Moloids to be honest)

4 Moleman

4 Elite Doom Guards

4 Dr Doom (Richards Rival)

4 Elite Doombot Corp

4 Mr Fantastic

4 Divinity

4 Doomed Earth

4 Unthinkable

4 Arsenal of Doom

4 Army’s of Doom

4 Doom Needs Only Doom

It is of course vulnerable to the typical anti-swarm tactics, but if you don’t have those, then you are going to be in trouble.

It seems odd that the set in which you would imagine stalling out to Galactus is really dominated by two different off-curve strategies, but that doesn’t mean that the big man doesn’t have anything to offer. The typical set-up seems to be running Galactus alongside the Inhumans. The extra consistency provided by cards like Attilan, and I imagine the ability of the Inhumans to stall the game would be a good fit. The thing is that I have never actually seen one of these decks in action, so I have no real idea how it will play out or what cards go into it. My instinct is that in a similar way to Spiderman, the deck will be quite powerful until your opponent starts to break through when it can all go wrong. This is especially the case as those Cosmic Counters start to disappear and you may need to expend resources charging characters back up. That said having the ability to run cards like Soul World and Adam Warlock can be pretty impressive. I’d be interested in seeing what else other people might have to say about this team-up.

I have seen mono decks for both the Inhumans and the Heralds however, so I feel a little better talking about those. Galactus waits for a while, controlling the board and then turning up to win. Nice and simple really. You use exhaustion effects, board control and endurance gain to grind the game out. The search in team is excellent, so your plan should be ultra-consistent (Kindred Spirits and Creation of a Herald are both rather potent). No deck list though I’m afraid. It is another deck I have seen but not played with much.

One team I have had a bit of fun with however would be the Inhumans. Quicksilver decks aside, the Inhumans are typically used to support another team. Attilan is one of the primary reasons, but they bring a few more consistency enabling cards with them. Most of the decks I have seen though, would use the Inhumans early characters (Lockjaw, San, Crystal) to give you access to all their cool effects, and then switch to another team later one, with Karnak making a few cameo appearances. I have played quite a lot with Curve Inhumans decks, and I’m just going to mention my favourite one now:

4 Lockjaw

4 San

4 Jolen

4 Nahrees, 2 Dewoz

3 Black Bolt, 2 Karnak

2 Medusa, 1 Dinu

1 Gorgon, 1 Invisible Woman

1 Black Bolt

4 Great Refuge, 3 Attilan, 2 Substructure, 2 Blue Area of the Moon, 2 Himalayan Enclave,

4 Wake the Ancestors, 2 Terragenesis, 4 Exploiting the Flaw, 2 Final Decree, 4 Royal Guard, 2 Recovery Card

This is actually a Hidden character stall deck, which was something I found incredibly fascinating at the time. You bog your opponent down by stopping any of his characters from ever being able to ready, and then win (usually with the Invisible Woman) in a sort of combo with Exploiting the Flaw letting you do lots of damage. The deck is a little too brittle to take to a tournament and expect to win, but it is a lot of fun. Attilan lets you stack all sorts of other interesting cards if you choose, such as Galactus or similar.

It is also possible to make a much more aggressive Inhumans deck, more akin to Injustice Gang decks. It’s quite effective, though not quite as much fun. I had a try at that as well.

4 Lockjaw

4 San, 1 Black Bolt

4 Tonaja, 1 Jolen

4 Nahrees, Dewoz

3 Karnak, 1 Black Bolt

1 Dinu, 1 Maximus

1 Invisible Woman

4 Great Refuge, 2 Attilan, 3 Blue Area of the Moon, 1 Battleworld, 1 Himalayan Enclave

4 Royal Guard, 4 Slobbering Time, 4 Uni-Power, 4 Exploiting the Flaw, 8 other Combat tricks.

Although the character line-up is similar, this deck is all about attacking and keeping your guys around. In the 8 free slots (I was using cards from other sets) Cosmic Order or Wake the Ancestors could both work out for you, keeping their offence to a minimum, but there are plenty of other options.

Of course if the aggressive approach is more to your liking then you could always add the Skrulls to the mix. Inhuman/Skrull team-ups have been very effective at big tournaments and there is no reason they cannot be so again (other than missing Enemy of My Enemy perhaps). Plus you get the bonus of being up-to-date with continuity. The deck would likely play similar to the one above, with some ATK boosting Team-Ups, the Ultra aggressive Skrull characters, and their own combat tricks. As far as I recall (it isn’t a deck that has ever appealed to me), the original builds of the deck were primarily legal for this format, so it shouldn’t take too much tweaking to make them fit.

Herald’s of Galactus seems to offer a lot of options, for both long or short games. It includes one of the best single-character ways to win (the big man himself), but also some of the more powerful swarm strategies, and these can all in theory be backed up by the consistency of the Inhumans (who would have thought that a bunch of isolationist super-people would be at their best in a Team-Up?). If anything ,the problem with this set is that it is so flexible and broad (single-minded strategies like Kree notwithstanding), that tuning your deck can be difficult, but that is a pretty nice problem to have.

SPECIAL BONUS SECTION! WITH NAZI GORILLAS!

So far I have talked quite a lot about Superheroes, but Silver Age also brings a not-quite Super Hero. The Hellboy starter gave us two cool decks full of interesting cards that work really nicely together. I’ve played a bit with the cards, though I’m no expert, so I’ll just stick to what I know. Firstly you get to play with Flying Kick and Nasty Surprise, and that is very nice. I think of the two teams the BPRD make the stronger single team. They have a pretty focused plan (Make Hellboy big and smash things with him) and all the right cards in the set to support that plan. Loner style decks run a few specific risks: Their lone guy being removed some how, Their lone guy being locked out of the game (really only likely from some sort of stall deck which are probably your worst opponent, but also the least likely in BYOS), or a swarm overwhelming your endurance. The BPRD can deal with all of that. BOOM!

I don’t think that the Thule Society are quite so easy to build, primarily because they are not so focused as the BPRD. A mixture of Project Ragnarok, and Army Curve and odd hidden characters do not make a team sadly. If they are going to make an effective appearance I think it would have to be in some deck designed to trigger Project Ragnarok, and the best way to do that would be to team-up (It gives you more guys to KO for one thing), as well as Wake the Devil to set things up quicker. Winning on turn 6-7 is perfectly acceptable for this format. I’d probably try to build some kind of swarm, using cheaper characters to reinforce and protect your endurance before switching mid-game somewhere into more of a loner strategy (this makes good sense for any deck looking to KO it’s own characters). Unfortunately I only own 1 Hellboy set, so I won’t be making this (more Huge Annoying Tentacles would be nice, not to mention Project Ragnarok), but I would love to see one in action.

So that’s Silver Age done with for now. If anybody has managed to read everything, then there’s just one step left to go, and that’s Golden Age!