My original plan as hinted at in the previous post was to run an Outsiders/Titans build someone somewhere affectionately labeled Emo Kids.  The deck was a blast to play, spamming out upwards of three characters a turn and not letting the opponent recover anyone.  The only complicated thing was that with so many one and two drops you had to be careful not to recruit someone you already had out.  Obviously clone saga rules would help out in this respect.  I was all set to play this deck when I remembered that our good friend from Tier 2 Tutor, Omar was going to play a Torch and Thing deck and I didn’t want all my weenies being burned to a crisp.  I realize having this unfair advantage may not be the most sporting in nature but I’d like to win every once in a while so I moved on.  My next build centered around my favorite hero of all time: Christian Bale…I mean Batman!    With a bit of support I could drop Bats at 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8  with lots of negation and other good stuff.  Unfortunately this deck suffered from a problem I frequently deal with: although my deck was consistent and effective, it had no real win condition.  Just dropping a bigger character wasn’t always enough to win especially if the opponent had something bigger so I went back to the drawing board.  As unimaginative as I am I decided to use that same skeleton from my last decklist post and run with it.  I present Cloned Super Bat He-B!tches (the name could use a little work but I didn’t want to just call it World’s Finest):

Characters

3x Tim Drake^Robin, Titan in Command

3x Krypto, Earth’s Best Friend

4x Barbara Gordon^Oracle, Hacker Elite

1x Batman, Problem Solver

3x Superman, Last Son of Krypton

2x Batman, Twilight Vigilante

1x Superman, Metropolis Marvel

1x Wonder Woman, Deflection Diva

1x Superman, Man of Tomorrow

1x Kate Kane^Batwoman, Katherine the Younger

1x Pyrogen, Supermen of America

2x Batman, Cape and Cowl

1x Barbara Gordon^Oracle, Inside Information

1x Kara Zor-El^Supergirl, Female Fury

1x Batman, Dark Knight Returned

1x Superman, Bulletproof

2x Superman/Batman Robot, Supa-Mecha-Bat

Plot Twists

4x The Hook-Up, Team-Up

4x Impervious

4x Bat Got Your Tongue?

4x Bat-Signal

4x Flying High

3x Have a Blast!

1x Uncertain Legacy

1x For the Man Who Has Everything

1x Heroes of Two Worlds

1x At Their Finest

1x From the Darkness

1x Mobilize

Locations

2x City of Tomorrow, Team-Up

There you go!  Thats the list I will be playing tomorrow at our local Hobby League.  Despite my own lack of creativity I think it will do well.  I realize that for those who I have played frequently this deck will not be too much of a stretch from what I usually play but I think it may still surprise.  As far as playing the deck goes I don’t think World’s Finest needs much instruction but my deck is a bit different.  I’ve found that the 5 drop is usually my toolbox spot.  Assuming I haven’t lost yet I can usually tell what my opponent is playing and then get the character that best addresses the situation.  Probably my favorite play is throwing out the Super/Bat Robot as a 10/10 invulnerable beatstick.  Good times! 

Well thats all for tonight everyone.  Good luck in the Clone Wars (HAHA bad Star Wars reference)!  Keep on keeping on and hopefully you’ll read me soon.

P.S.:  To anyone reading this (all 3 of you) I could use a little assistance figuring out how to put pretty pictures all over my work.  Thanks for the help!!

            So a little Hobby League update for those interested.  We recently held our tri-city championship for the Brea/Placentia/Fullerton area.  For whatever reason we decided to run the championship as Silver Age even though none of the paper work said to do so.  Anyways on to the participants.  Being the current champion at the time I showed up with a build I am very familiar with and is very solid.  The Brave and the Blog’s Josh has dubbed it the “World’s Finest Ladies” but I prefer the much more vulgar “Super Bat B!tches!”  More on that later…my four challengers included the aforementioned Josh running an Alpha Flight destroying Thunderbolts/Radioactive Man abuse deck; Tier 2 Tutor’s Omar and an infuriating SHIELD burn deck; the Blog divisions Agent 13’s little brother Matt and a surprisingly consistent Fatal Five Future Foes build; and the infamous Pat Yapjoco who always dominates with some janky combination. And thus the tournament began:

            My first game was against Omar and the SHIELD burn craziness.  I curved near perfectly but I had no hidden hate to stop the 3-drop Wolverine from pounding me in the face turn after turn.  Wolvie combined with the burn of the Agents was too much for my ladies to handle. 0-1

            Next up was Agent 13’s little brother Matt.  Matt and his decks have a disturbing tendency to fail in tournament play but not today.  His Fatal Five baddies succeeded in slamming my face even though we made it to 8.  Not a good start.  0-2

            I was hoping to turn my luck around going into game 3 but facing Pat is always tough.  You could take 60 random cards from your collection, give them to Pat and he’d still beat your constructed decks at least 6 times out of 10.  Either way his constructed deck was devastating and the game was a blur.  I managed to stall till 9 but failed to find Superman for my finisher and Galactus gobbled up all my endurance.  Bummer. 0-3

            Last game of the night.  Here I was the former city champion without a single win and I was facing an always tough opponent in Josh and Radioactive Man.  Sadly for Josh Rad Man stayed hidden in his deck and a timely “Flying High” sealed my only win for me.  A rough tournament to say the least but congrats to all of you who pounded my face into the turf.  It’s too bad I can’t use my city champs playmat anymore.  Now I’m sure all of you want a deck list for my under-performing creation so here you go:

World’s Finest Ladies (or Super Bat B!tches)

4x Maggie Sawyer

4x Huntress, Vicious Vigilante

3x Catwoman, Feline Fatale

2x Natasha Irons ^ Steel, Unlikely Alloy

1x Huntress, Harsh Mistress

4x Power Girl ^Nightwing, Kandorian Vigilante

4x Kara Zor-El^Flamebird, Kandorian Vigilante

4x Dinah Laurel Lance, Cry in the Dark

3x Lady Shiva, Jade Canary

2x Batman, Dark Knight Returned

1x Superman, Bulletproof

4x Future Friends

4x Soaring to New Heights

4x Bat-Signal

4x Impervious

4x No Retreat, No Surrender

4x The Hook-Up

1x For the Man Who Has Everything

3x City of Tomorrow

This is the basic skeleton of the deck I used.  I originally created it for my girlfriend who wanted to play with a “girly” deck.  With the World’s Finest set being my favorite I figured I could easily through this concoction together.  The deck is not too complicated making it great for beginners but is still powerful enough to win a few games.  There are also many cards that can be switched out to make the deck more competitive and complex.  For the city champs I took out the “Future Friends” and “Soaring…” and put in 4 “Bat Got Your Tongues”, 2 “Have a Blasts”, and 2 “Flying Highs.”  These additions were simple and effective despite my losses.  Either way I hope this deck gives you some ideas when trying to throw a little theme into your deck building time.

               Either way, thanks for reading and good luck in all the tournaments unless of course you’re playing me.  Coming up soon:  my quest to find my best clone saga build.  Here’s a hint: (hopefully)

All of the Realms crew has been having one heck of a time playing with all the different builds of Marvel Universe stuff.  Josh has thrown together a Crime Lords/Red Skull legend, T-Bolts Rad Man abuse, and an Illuminati build while Omar has one shifty SHIELD deck that he has tried a million different tricks with.  Ludin got into the mix throwing dwon a fun Negative Zone build that I still want to play against.  That leaves the good guys to Agent 13 and I.  My Alpha Flight/Gotham Knights build has already been posted on here and has enjoyed decent success with a few tweaks (it’s apparently powerful since quite a few others have posted similar deck ideas but we all know I built it first!) Anyways I then tried a Secret Avengers build but since that was Agent 13′s deck of choice I loaned him the cards he needed and decided to go a different route.  Being the DC fan that I am and an even bigger Teen Titans fan I decided to throw the Titans together with the Young Avengers for some team attacking awesomeness.  With a little help from Omar the deck works out pretty well.

Unfortunately I must retire for the evening but I thought I would provide all of our numerous readers an update.  This way at least you know that we’re not dead…More stuff maybe even deck lists to come.  And if you’re in the area we’d love you to come down to The Realms in Brea for Hobby League Wednesday at 5.  The format is Bring Your Own Team and if you don’t have a deck someone will have one for you.  Keep on keeping on everybody. Goodnight!

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!

I’m also really stoked about a team that made its debut in Marvel Universe: Alpha Flight. Although I may not be as outspoken (or popular) as some of the others who have demanded this team’s inclusion in our beloved game I am nonetheless a fan of all the team’s incarnations. As stoked as I was to see the team included I was saddened to find that they are a very small and underdeveloped team. Their theme of plot twist abuse is simply amazing however and I immediately began thinking of teams to pair them with. Since I only use the good guy teams my mind quickly stumbled upon the Gotham Knights. This team struck me for two reasons. First Alpha Flight doesn’t have a designated searcher and who doesn’t have 4 copies of the Bat-Signal, one of the best searchers in the game in my humble opinion. And number two who wouldn’t want to get double use out of Bat Got Your Tongue? So with the Hook-up providing both a team-up and a way to pitch extra characters for even more plot twists I threw together a (hopefully) decent deck. So without further ado I present Alpha Flight Knights:

Characters:

4x Alfred Pennyworth

3x Talisman

2x Gypsy

3x Barbara Gordon ^ Oracle

2x Julia Carpenter ^ Arachne

4x John Walker ^ U.S. Agent

3x Sasquatch

2x Weapon Omega

1x Batman, Cape and Cowl

1x Beta Ray Bill

1x Barbara Gordon ^ Oracle

1x Batman, Dark Knight Returned

Total: 27

Plot Twists:

4x Bat Got Your Tongue

4x The Hook-Up

4x Alpha Flight Reborn

4x Bat-Signal

4x Crackshot

4x Straight to the Grave

4x Combat Reflexes

2x Invasion Plans

2x Omega Flight

1x Mobilize

Total: 33

What do you think? I still need a card or two to finish it off and I have yet to playtest it but I am excited. I love everything from Canadia so hopefully their heroes won’t let me down. Thanks for reading my ramblings and until next time, keep on keeping on and buy some Marvel Universe, eh!

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:

I’m going cheap folks. That’s right…I’m using the Teen Supremes and Superman/Batman robot combo that Rallying Cry put up on the mothership for everyone to see. I was hoping that not too many people would read the Deranged Bears post but it’s too late now. I am using a slightly different build however. I’m not running Tanya or the Fate suit. In their place I added Combat Reflexes, Home Surgery and some JLA for Battle Tactics (or Training or whatever). Pretty much any draw from that deck can win on turn 5; a good draw on turn 4; and a superhuman God draw on 3 and this is with either initiative. So now you know what I’ll be playing tomorrow. Hopefully I don’t get crushed in all the mirror matches I’m gonna face now that you know my secret plans! Oh and I realize that the combo is super cheap and not thematic but boy do I want that t-shirt even if it’s too big for me to wear out fashionably.

Well that’s all for now fanboys and girls. Thanks for reading and good luck in whatever event you play in next (unless you’re playing against me!!!).

P.S.: I can’t seem to work the picture thingy majigger on this website. This probably has something to do with me being computer illiterate. Hopefully Agent 13 can help me out in the future…

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.

After my failure on Wednesday I decided to tweak my deck ever so slightly. With the Edgeworld format being Golden Age I could use any Teen Titan card created which was great for me. So Josh, Omar and I met up at Realms to fine tune our decks for the evening. Josh’s original build of the New Gods left quite a bit to be desired so he tried to build something a little more aggressive. I challenged Omar and found that my few tweaks allowed me to mill through huge quantities of my deck with Lorena Marquez and the USS Argus digging and Solar Towers and Terra 4 replacing said Argusses. This is when we found that Omar’s Darkseid deck was no where near legal so in a half hour we threw together a Gotham Knights build that I had been messing around with earlier. It ended up working well for Omar who ended the tourney in 4^th with a shiny new clash of worlds to show for it. A 3-2 record (with a bye) by yours truly netted me a slightly less impressive 5^th and a Superman/Batman Robot to complete my play set. Oh and Josh finished somewhere near the bottom but that’s ok since the prophecy was fulfilled at least once. All in all a fun night for everyone and I even learned Marvel Ultimate Battles because Mr. Pro Player Omar made Top 4 so we had to wait around for him for hours GOSH! Anyways MUB is not VS but it can be fun and the art is pretty sweet (even the ones stolen from VS cards).

So on to this week where our format at the realms is Silver Legends. I bet you can guess what team I gonna play…yep the Titans. We’ll see if Beast Boy can step up to the challenge. And Friday is the big marquee event at Edgeworld for the super nifty Batman t-shirt. I’ve been dreaming about that little piece of nerdy cloth-like heaven ever since I laid eyes on it so I think I’ll be playing some deck that can win on 4. Hopefully that nets me my highest finish ever. Hopefully….

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.

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.