Skrulls / Inhumans

I started playing Vs. when Infinite Crisis was the current set, so Heralds of Galactus was the first set I got to play with when it was brand new. I built pretty much everything you could build out of that set. Heralds/Inhumans stall, Syndicate rush, Kree press, Doomed Earth. The deck I think I ended up playing most out of that set, though, was Skrull/Inhumans. I loved that deck, and everyone I played against hated it, because it was so darned good.

It's not so great now, of course. There are plenty of newer and shinier decks that hit harder and faster than it ever did. But there was a time when it was one of the best Modern Age decks around, and it is still fun to play once in a while. If I were building it from scratch now, I would probably build it very differently, with different attack pumps and with Enemy as one of the tutors. As it is, I kind of prefer to keep this deck pretty close to how it was when I played it back in the day. When Vs. was alive and well, The Ben Seck was a cult hero, and I was learning to love the game.

Characters - 31
[1 - 4]
4x Lockjaw, Inhuman's Best Friend (Inhumans)
[2 - 8]
4x Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth (Inhumans, Fantastic Four)
4x Warskrull, Skrull Infiltrator (Skrull)
[3 - 8]
4x Captain America, Skrull Impostor (Skrull, Marvel Knights)
3x Wolverine, Skrunucklehead (Skrull, X-Men)
1x Tonaja, The Responsible One (Inhumans)
[4 - 5]
4x Ethan Edwards, Visitor from Another World (Skrull, Spider-Friends)
1x Nahrees, The Negative One (Inhumans)
[5 - 4]
2x Paibok, The Power Skrull (Skrull)
1x Karnak, The Shatterer (Inhumans)
1x Elektra, Pawn of the Gorgon - Hydra (Crime Lords, Skrull)
[6 - 2]
1x Super Skrull, Kl'rt (Skrull)
1x Quicksilver, Terrigenesis Rebirth (Inhumans)

Plot Twists - 20
[1 - 8]
4x Flying Kick
4x Interstellar Offensive
[2 - 12]
4x Act of Defiance, Team-Up
4x Extended Family, Team-Up
4x Skreeeeee!

Locations - 9
[2 - 9]
4x The Great Refuge (terraform)
3x Cosmic Tuning Fork
2x Tarnax IV

The basic idea for this deck is to get Franklin out on 2 and get him a cosmic counter. On 3 you want Captain America, who you want to move into the hidden area. You then team up Skrulls and Inhumans, and from that turn onward you can generally attack with everyone in your field from the hidden area without them getting stunned back. Because they are all hidden, you generally get to attack with everyone on every turn, preserving your entire field and obliterating theirs. Doesn't always work that way, but that's the idea. So the key pieces are Franklin, Cap and a team-up. The mulligan condition is Franklin or a way to get him (Lockjaw, Great Refuge plus another location), because Cap does you no good if you don't have Franklin.

The only play on turn 1 is Lockjaw. Use him to get Franklin if you don't have him yet. He can also be useful on later turns, once you've teamed up, so I generally save him if I already have Franklin. For example, suppose you got Franklin on 2 and Wolverine on 3, but you don't have Cap. On 4 you can play Lockjaw to search for Cap. Play Extended Family and discard to give Wolverine a counter, and then you essentially have a 1, 2, 3 and a 5.

On 2 your only play is Franklin. You want to recruit him and protect him. Never attack with him if there's any possibility of a stun back. You need him to get a cosmic on every turn so he can move other characters into the hidden area. Warskrull is technically a 2 drop but he's really a plot twist, or a location like X-Corp: Amsterdam. You stick him in your row and then use him to fetch Act of Defiance.

The ideal play on 3 is Cap, but it's not the end of the world if you miss him. You can play Wolverine instead, or Tonaja in a pinch. Wolverine is OK by himself on 3, but comes into his own once he gets a cosmic counter and falls under Cap's protection. After you team up Skrulls and Inhumans, Franklin, Cap, and Wolverine all have the three affiliations needed to attack without stunning back. And Wolverine with a cosmic has 10 ATK, making him a 5 drop for offensive purposes. Tonaja is better than nothing on 3, and you can search for her with Lockjaw or Great Refuge, but if you are playing her in lieu of Cap or Wolverine on 3, you probably won't be winning unless your opponent is also struggling.

The best play on 4 is Ethan Edwards, assuming that you already hit Franklin on 2 and Cap on 3. Once he's teamed up with Inhumans, he has 10 ATK and flight, and he gains 1 ATK for each additional affiliation. Not hard to get him to 12 ATK by playing additional team-ups to give him Fantastic Four and Marvel Knights as well. That would make him a 6 drop. Nahrees is to 4 drops as Tonaja is to 3 drops. A better play on 4 would be Lockjaw and Wolverine or Cap, whoever you didn't play on 3.

The best play on 5 is normally Paibok. He gives everyone in your field +2 ATK while in combat with other characters. If you have Paibok and a couple of copies of Act of Defiance in your row, your 1-3 drops will all have +4 ATK when in combat with larger opposing characters. Cap becomes a 9 when attacking a 4 drop or larger, while Wolverine becomes a 14. Karnak has a cool effect, but it won't help you on 5 unless you have an Extended Family you haven't flipped yet. If you do, though, it can easily be a -8 to -12 DEF for an opposing character. Elektra is one of the newer cards I've put in the deck. Not sure if she'll stick; might go back to a third copy of Paibok. She's a good play on 5 if you are on evens and planning on winning on 6, since she should be able to KO the opposing 5 drop.

This deck can win on 5 with good draws, but more often it will win on 6. I generally take evens with it, because if it has the juice to win on 5, it generally doesn't matter what init you are on, while if it goes to 6 you want to have the init. The exception would be against something like Syndicate Rush, which really, really wants to win on 5, and would love to swing to the face on that turn. Anyway, when you get to 6 you have two choices. Quicksilver is a dandy, because you can attack with him once and then attack with Franklin and use Quicksilver's Free ability to make him the attacker instead. Quicksilver with Paibok and a Flying Kick is an 8 drop who gets to attack twice. Super Skrull is a strong play if you are on odds. Instead of recruiting him and then moving him to the hidden area, leave him visible. He should be a 14/14, so he's going to soak up a lot of damage and stun back the attacker, plus you can activate him to do 6 in burn.

The key plot twists are the team-ups. Act of Defiance gives your smaller characters +1 ATK when swinging up the curve, and it can be searched for with Warskrull. Extended Family can be used to give cosmic counters to characters like Wolverine and Karnak on the turn when they come into play, or it can be used to restore counters that have been lost because your opponent was able to attack into the hidden area.

The other plot twists are attack pumps. Flying Kick is good for giving flight to allow surgical strikes, and it is also really good with Quicksilver. Interstellar Offensive is a poor man's Savage Beatdown in this deck, so long as you aren't swinging to the face. Skreeeeeee! is here mainly as an historical artifact. Back in this deck's heyday, you had to have it to win the mirror match.

The main location is Great Refuge, which aside from Lockjaw is the deck's only tutor. If you are building this deck for Golden Age play, I would replace Skreeeeeee! with Enemy to make the deck more consistent. There are a lot of times when you have Great Refuge or Lockjaw but they can't get you what you need because you aren't teamed up yet.

Cosmic Tuning Fork helps compensate somewhat for the tutoring limitations. It lets you see two extra cards per turn, hopefully allowing you to grab the next character that you need. Along with Elektra, Tarnax IV is the most recent addition to the deck. It's not nearly as good here as it is in my Hypnotic Charms deck, but it's a reusable pump that will generally yield +3 to +5 ATK for the cost of a discard. Basically it turns extra copies of characters from power-ups into attack pumps.

As I said, this deck isn't nearly as good now as it was back in its heyday, but it's still quite a bit better than your typical kitchen table deck, yet it is equally cheap to build. The only rares you really have to have are the four copies of Great Refuge. Karnak can be replaced by Elektra or Paibok; Super Skrull can be replaced by the MUN version or by a 6 drop Inhumans character; and Cosmic Tuning Fork and Tarnax IV are merely nice-to-haves. All the other cards are commons or uncommons. So especially if you are a player who came to the game late and are looking for a fun, reasonably competitive deck that's cheap to build, look no farther. There aren't many decks this good that are this cheap to build.