S.H.I.E.L.D The Blog division

Agent 13 reporting in after a long over due break. Well Marvel Universe is out and kicking. Due to the over demand and under supplies of the new set the agency was only able to get there hands on 2 boxes for myself. With the frustration of having such a larger set being released and not even being able to get play sets of commons and uncommon there was some disappointment on the game. But after some thoughts I decided to pick myself up and realize I will never be a tier 1 competitor but as long as I enjoy playing the game even if I don’t get that man wins as long as I am having fun sitting down with my friends enjoying this game. I sat down and looked at what I could build and enjoy playing and decided to build an Avengers reservist’s deck based around the new key word Rally. “To rally for a [description] card, reveal the top card of your deck and put it in your hand if it matches that [description]. otherwise put it on the bottom of your deck.” This keyword works really well cycling through your deck for those reservist characters to fill your resource row. UDE didn’t not really give us any amazing searchers in this set like the famous Mobilize or Enemy of my Enemy. So Rally is the way to get cards moving through your deck.

Hello children! Sorry we’ve been gone so long. Man is Marvel Universe awesome or what?! I just can’t get enough of this amazing new set. So after Agent 13 and I cracked all of our packs I threw together a…wait for it…Warbound deck. I realize that pretty much everyone who has seen Hulk wants to build a deck around his awesomeness but we decided to throw one together before all the shenanigans about Hulk began. Well after throwing something together to playtest with the Warbound proceeded to demolish every deck that Agent 13 and I had. What?! It is just ridiculously powerful. Here is a play-by-play of its first match against a BYOT (bring your own team) X-Men deck:

Ok…I win the die roll and choose odds. 13 and I keep our opening hands and draw two. I lay a resource and pass as does 13. Awesome.

me=50 Agent 13=50

Turn 2: 13 lays a resource and sadly passes again. I lay a resource and play the attack happy Miek. With an empty board across the way Miek punches 13 for 4.

me=50 Agent 13=46

Turn 3: I recruit the massive 3 drop Hulk discarding another Hulk 3 drop and 13 recruits a nearly as large Wolverine. Hulk attacks Wolvie with “Now I’m Fighting Dirty” to prevent the stun back and it works. 13 takes 2 breahthrough, 3 stun and 4 additional to the dome from Miek.

me=50 Agent 13=37

Turn 4: 13 Recruits Emma Frost discarding 2 drop Jean Grey. On my build I flip up the Great Arena exhausting my Hulk and his Wolvie and we both take 3 damage in the process. Then I recruit Hulk 4. 13 attempts to attack Hulk with Emma but I play “The STrongest One There Is” stunning my Hulk and KO’ing his Emma.

me=43 Agent 13=34

Turn 5: I top deck Mobilize. Use the Great Arena to lock down his Wolverine exhausting my soon to be replaced 4 drop hulk and we both take 4 because of it. I Mobilize for 5 drop Hulk, playing him with the boost to stun Wolverine and 13 takes 3 more. 13 recruits Psylocke, places her behind the stunned Wolverine and then plays a “Children of the Atom” to recover his Wolverine. After some deliberation I send Miek in to get beat up by Wolverine and then remove him from the game to make Hulk always cause breakthrough. I then send Hulk into Wolverine. 13 activates Psylocke making my Hulk vulnerable so I play a “Righteous Anger” to try again. The second attack is bricked by a timely “Turnabout” and “Duck and Cover”. Wow Wolverine is a dude!

me=32 Agent 13=27

Turn 6: With it being 13’s initiative I was kinda worried about his 3 characters to my one but when he under dropped Iceman I knew the game was mine. I Great Arena’d his Psylocke, smacking us both for five and then played Hulk 6 drop with the boost to make him an 18/18. 13 had no way to stun my ginormous Hulk with just Wolverine and his 4 drop Iceman and when I showed him another Righteous Anger in my hand he scooped.

Crazy huh? And that was a deck we just threw together in about 15 minutes. The power level is insane.

So I decided to take it to our local hobby league this past Wednesday to see how it would do. After a couple of trades netting me playsets of both Righteous Anger and Trouble with Dinosaurs the deck was set and continued to dominate. It lost its very first game to a mirror match against Mr. “I’m-all-Noobish” himself who simply had more Hulk Smashes than I did. In our two subsequent rematches my Great Arena locked down his Hulks and I won both. Then the Green King lost to our good friend from tier2tutor Omar and an awesome Shield build. Man that match made me regret trading him 2 Nick Fury’s. And after defeating a pretty awesome Kree deck the Sakaar’son lost to The Brave and the Blog’s Josh and one heck of a Red Skull deck. Those sneaky Crime Lords squeaked out a victory but I can’t wait for the rematch. Luckily I will get to find out soon since Josh, Omar and I will be meeting tonight before attending the “official” release event for Marvel Universe at Edgeworld in Costa Mesa. Currently the Warbound have won 10 games and lost 3. Far and away the best start of any deck I have ever made with or without net decking. Pretty stoked! (more…)

Hey kids Agent 44 here.  Sorry for the lull in posting but its been a busy time around here.  Little miss Agent 44 is moving so that’s taking up some time AND more importantly I picked up 4 boxes of MUN on Saturday that I’m slowly opening.  So stoked right now! Any ways Agent 13 (who S.H.I.E.L.D. somehow messed up and gave some good-looking girl that number to also) is heading over to my war-room this evening to see if we can make some decently competitive decks out of the new stuff so we’ll get back to you on that.  So until I get some more free time good luck with your packs and I hope you don’t have any “trouble with dinosaurs”!!!!   AHAHAHAHAHA!

Hey kids Agent 44 here with a post Hobby League update. Oh and by the way, we were mentioned on the mothership so if you are one of our new legion of fans then welcome. I hope I don’t disappoint…on to the action!

Well we only had 5 players but fun was had nonetheless. Unfortunately we whiffed on ordering prize support this month so the action was all for fun and bragging rights. I started by playing Chris (I think) who forgot to read the memo and brought a golden age legend to our silver legend tournament. But have no fear Beast Boy was up to the challenge! I have beaten Chris and this deck before thanks to one young Tamaranian lady and she did the trick again. With Chris stalling out with numerous Spidermen on the board thanks to a constantly revealed Scarlet Spider my alien princess made it to recovery and stunned his board. Yes!! 1-0 for Beast Boy!

My excitement was not very long lived as I faced Ludin next. He was running an amazing Spiderman/Wolverine legend deck that absolutely destroyed me on both initiatives. We played twice and all I remember is that the wrath of Darkhawk is strong. Oh yeah and be scared when there is an unstunnable Wolverine(the 6-drop from Marvel Team-Up that can’t be stunned while you control Spiderman) with Admantium claws and lots of Berserker Rage. Vicious!

Next up was fellow Realm crew team member Josh from The Brave and the Blog. His Lex Luthor legend was pretty sweet. The premise is basically Injustice Gang hand burn and worked surprisingly well. I had never played a deck like that before and was eager try. After splitting our two games I would really rather not have to play that deck again. The amount of burn possible is crazy and the Joker kept all my plot twists in my hand too. Nicely done Josh! Oh and a big shout out to little miss Agent 44 who provided the amazing scotch-a-roos that gave all of us a sugar overdose! So as the night wound down we talked a little strategy for Edgeworld’s marquee event Friday. Here’s what I came up with: (more…)

Hello there. Agent 44 here with another update for anybody out here in cyberspace wanting to hear about a little VS.

So the Realms hosted its weekly hobby league with our very own “super flavor format” this past Wednesday. I had a great time playing with my pet deck which is the Teen Titans TV show deck. The idea is to only use characters that have appeared in the cartoon and to this extent I have been pretty successful. For both our tournament at the Realms and Edgeworld’s BYOT (Bring Your Own Team) event my character base remained relatively the same. With a curve of Speedy @ 1, Robin/Terra @ 2, Beast Boy/Cyborg @ 3, Terra @ 4, Garth @ 5, Beast Boy @ 6, Starfire @ 7 and Raven @ 8 I was having a lot of fun. The Realms format allowed cards from only two sets so DC Origins and Legends did the trick for me. I was fairly confident in my deck even without the use of the handy dandy First Date but luck was not on my side. I finished out of the money again but at least I had fun playing with my favorite team. (more…)

Agent 13 reporting in. I was doing some research on the television insure S.H.I.E.L.D is still being somewhat low key in the new and I came across a very interesting special on the History channels and any comic book fan would be interested in called “Comic Book Superheroes.” Showing a chronicle history and evolution of the superheros. Starting with the first comic book superhero Superman in 1938 and how much a rough start is was for the creation of comic books. The special talked about the struggles the industry had to take on with the government. How Timely Comics became Marvel Comics. How character development was changed to support the readers.

This was a very impressive special and had lot of key speakers and interesting facts about the comic book industry. So flip through the TV guide and look and see when the History channel in playing it again.

Agent 13 signing off.

Agent 44 here checking back in with some new updates.  There are some exciting VS. events in the near future and I must say that I’m pretty stoked. First up:  Hobby League.

Our super flavor format seems to be a pretty awesome idea since our local big time venue Edgeworld is running something similar on Friday.  This should give the Realm crew some time to fine tune our decks.  As of right now I’ve constructed two decks that are legal for both formats and very consistent.  I’m just not sure how powerful they will be.  I’ve found that having a win condition is usually my deck building weakness.  I spend lots of time figuring out the numbers of team-ups and searchers I need for consistency but then I usually end up with a deck that curves perfectly to 6, 7 or 8 but doesn’t really do anything spectacular.  Hopefully this week shall be different. Some practice all day today and we’ll see how I do.  Good luck to all playing both tomorrow and Friday and if by some amazing chance you are reading this and don’t know what VS. is all about then come on down to the Realms Games and Comics tomorrow for a free demonstration and I’ll even give you your first deck for free.  You can’t beat that!  See you soon.

44 out.

Oh…pheewww! Sorry I’m late boss! I swear it won’t happen again…ever…oh man…

Hello. This is Agent 44 reporting in. Sorry it’s taken a little bit of time but I just graduated from the S.H.I.E.L.D. academy so that’s been taking up a little bit of my time. But I’m done now and ready to contribute to the newly created Blog division. So a little bit about me: you already know that I’m a young, perpetually late, recent academy grad but what else…lets see we’re based out of a Brea/Placentia/Fullerton gaming store called the Realms Games and Comics. If you’re in the neighborhood swing by and pick up an issue of Tiny Titans or something to help keep these fine establishments running. Anyways I love comic books and that is a major reason why I LOVE VS! I haven’t been keeping up with the comics lately but I’m trying to get back in the swing of things (much to the dismay of little miss Agent 44 who is getting a little tired of all these money draining hobbies of mine). But anyways about Vs. system. (more…)

Well here is the deck list I played last week at HL. Feel free to let my know what you think and if you have any imput on the deck improvement.

2 drop

4x Mr.Fantastic- Stringbean

3 drop

4x Thing- Idol o’millions

2x Invisible Woman-First Lady of the The Fantastic Four

4 drop

4x Mr. Fantastic- Critical Thinker

2x Human Torch Nova Blast

5 drop

4x Franklin Richards- Child of Cosmos

2x Thing- Heavy Hitter

6 drop

4x Dr. Strange- Ally of the Four

7 drop

2x Hulk- The Fantastic Hulk

2x Thing- The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing

8 drop

1x Silver Surfer- Norrin Radd

Plot Twist

4x Burn Rubber, 4x It’s Clobberin’ Time, 4x Reed and Sue, 4x Torch and Thing, 4x Signal Flare, 3x Stretch Out, 3x Savage Beatdown, 2x Family of Four,  1x Mobilize.

The man concept is to beatdown on initiative and stall on off initiative. I abuse Dr. Strange ability with  Mr. Fantastic to cycle through my deck and gain some extra endurance with Franklin. Then on turn 8 I bring out the Surfer who usually makes alot of people mad.

Sorry for late transmission, this is Agent 13 reporting in. Last week at our hobby league  we were running a Modern Age bring your own set. It was a pretty good turn out of about ten players all bringing some tough competition to the table. I have played vs for the past two years only going to a few different vs event  mostly just playing with friends at the kitchen table until this past month where I have joined the Hobby League. Well this week was my chance to shine. I was playing my Mr. Fantastic/Dr Strange Abuse deck that I put together.(Sorry I don’t have complete details on how each round went)

Round 1 The Gotham ladies 1-0

Round 2 Marvel Knights KO Fest 2-0

Round 3 Revenge Squad front row 2-1

Round 4   Birds of prey Concealed (against agent 44) 3-1

Round 5 World’s Finest 3-2

So i ended 4th place I was very stoked I have never placed before it was a career high for me. I will post my deck list tomorrow

Agent 13 signing off.