Hypnotic Charms

I always thought that the 1 drop Black Bolt from Marvel Universe was ripe for abuse. In a Skrulls deck, a Black Bolt and a Quantum Bands can easily turn 2 resource points into a 4 drop-sized beast with flight and range. That's pretty good. It's also nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to what he can do in this deck. One day while googling for something completely unrelated, I ran across a deck that the Italians call "Black Bamboo". I wasn't familiar with a couple of the key cards, so I didn't understand how it worked at first, but it sounded sort of intriguing (thanks to Google Translate), so I put it together and did a little goldfishing. O.M.G. This deck can win consistently on 5 against almost anything, and fairly often on 4. It is simply amazing.

Characters -  30 

[1 - 14]
4x Orb, Drake Shannon (Underworld)
4x Black Bolt, Enemy Within (Inhumans, Skrull)
2x Spider-Man <> The Spider, Earth-15 (Weapon X, Spider-Friends)
1x Alpha Primitives, Army (Negative Zone, Inhumans)
1x Professor X, Mutant Messiah (Starjammers, X-Men)
1x Timebroker, Keeper of the Panoptichron (Exiles, Weapon X)
1x Green Goblin, Insanity Unleashed (Thunderbolts, Sinister Syndicate)
[2 - 2]
1x Viper, Madame Hydra (Hellfire Club, Crime Lords)
1x Mr. Fantastic, Protector of the Power Gem (Infinity, F4)
[3 - 8]
4x Vision, Earth-10101 (Weapon X, Avengers)
1x Blade, Independent Contractor (S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel Knights)
1x Dr. Doom, Richards's Rival (Doom)
1x Sub-Mariner, Protector of the Time Gem (Infinity Watch, Atlantis)
1x Barbara Gordon, Hacker Elite (Birds of Prey, Gotham Knights)
[4 - 2]
1x Ethan Edwards, Visitor from Another World (Skrull, Spider-Friends)
1x Batman, Twilight Vigilante (Gotham Knights, Outsiders)
[5 - 2]
1x Lex Luthor, Metropolis Mogul (Injustice Gang, Revenge Squad)
1x Sunfire, Famine (Marauders, Horsemen of Apocalypse)
[6 - 2]
1x Wolverine, Unleashed (Weapon X, X-Force)
1x Martian Manhunter, Founding Member (JLA, JLI) 

Plot Twists - 20 

[1 - 4]
4x Hypnotic Charms
[2 - 8]
4x We Can Rebuild Him
4x Straight to the Grave
[3 - 4]
4x Enemy of My Enemy
[4 - 4]
4x Pathetic Attempt 

Locations - 10 

[1 - 4]
4x The Dark Dimension
[2 - 6]
4x Tarnax IV
1x Slaughter Swamp
1x Avalon Space Station

I usually take odds with it, because turn 5 is the target kill turn, but it doesn't matter too much. It can win easily on either init, and it can win on an off-init, for that matter. Mulligan for Orb, or for Black Bolt and a way to get Hypnotic Charms.

The basic idea behind the deck is to fill the KO'd pile with characters with different affiliations, with a Hypnotic Charms in your row and a hidden Black Bolt who just keeps getting bigger and bigger. With Charms in your row, he gets every affiliation of every character in the pile, and every new affiliation gives him a +1/+1. How big can he get? Depends on how long the match goes. If it goes to 6, he could easily hit 20/20. Really. Just count the number of distinct affiliations in the deck. There are about 30 of them, and the longer the match goes, the more of them he is going to get.

A recent match against Brotherhood Reservist will illustrate just how explosive this deck can be. On turn 3, the reservists dished out 20 in damage thanks to four characters swinging to the face, each with a +2. Pretty good. Should finish the job on their next init, right? With a field consisting of Orb, Black Bolt, and Barbara Gordon, packing a Tarnax and a Charms in the row, the hidden guys swung back. Thanks to all the cards in the pile put there with Orb and Dark Dimension, Black Bolt was a 13/13 at that point, and quickly took the TNNB guys from 48 down to 37. Then Barbara swung with Tarnax for 18 in damage. This is on a turn 3 off-init, mind you. It's now 26-19. Next turn, more affiliations get dumped in the pile, out comes Ethan Edwards, and another Tarnax goes into the row face down. Five Brotherhood characters stand quaking in their boots. In comes Black Bolt. He's an 18/18. Yep, he's an 8 drop, but he's just clearing space. After Barbara takes out a would be reinforcer, Orb hits with Tarnax number one. He's a 20. Then Ethan Edwards seals the deal. He's a 27 on his own, but the second Tarnax makes him a 47. Forty. Seven. On turn 4. I've seen that much damage done on one turn before, but never on turn 4.

Most incredibly, the deck didn't even get off its best trick, which is to use We Can Rebuild Him to shift a copy of Black Bolt out from the KO'd pile (with Charms on the field and a Vision in the pile, he has the Weapon X affiliation), and then bring him into play during the combat phase with Timebroker. That maneuver can be pulled off fairly often on a turn 5 init. You shift out a Black Bolt with the plot twist, shift out Timebroker manually, and then recruit Ethan Edwards. Attack with the first Black Bolt, bring in the second one (the first one goes away, but who cares) and attack again, attack with Ethan Edwards, then attack with Orb or whoever with Tarnax. The amount of damage this deck can inflict by the end of turn 5 is just insane, and it does it pretty consistently. In a bad game, Black Bolt will be only 12/12 on turn 5. That's a 6 drop. In a good game, he's an 8 or a 9 drop, and he's hidden, so you can attack with him both on- and off-init.

Aside from Black Bolt and Ethan Edwards, there are two key characters, Orb and Vision. Orb lets you draw and cycle through your deck, dumping hidden character cards with two affiliations into the pile as you go, hopefully. Vision is of course used with We Can Rebuild Him to draw more cards, which is hugely important, because this is basically a combo deck, and it needs to draw lots of cards in order to hit all the key combo pieces rapidly. The best opening hands usually contain Orb or Vision.

Most of the other characters are here mainly for their multiple affiliations, but many also serve special purposes. Dr. Doom is for searching out Hypnotic Charms.There is an Underworld character named Mobius you can play who can find it, but I think the deck works fine without him. Alpha Primitives can fix your row, allowing you to drop a Charms or a Tarnax from your hand into your row. Barbara Gordon gives you more draw. Spider-Man can protect Black Bolt from Reign of Terror and other effects that might target him. Sub-Mariner can work with Black Bolt, Professor X, or Mr. Fantastic to get back a key card like Tarnax or Charms from the pile, if all your copies have gotten dumped into it accidentally with Dark Dimension, or if you put one there on purpose with Straight to the Grave. And Lex Luthor can shut down stall decks to give you a chance to attack. Some people also play the 3 drop Spider-Girl, who can shut down Mr. Sinister, but if you have a Tarnax, you can just attack him with someone who has flight in your first attack of the turn and shut him down that way.

Obviously, Hypnotic Charms, along with Black Bolt, is the key to everything. Without it, the deck doesn't work at all. You need to find it ASAP, and then protect it while it is up. That's mainly what the Pathetic Attempts are for, besides protecting Black Bolt. If you play a lot against control decks that pack resource row hate, you may want to trade some location cards for copies of Omnipotence. Most builds of this deck that I've seen play Have a Blast! themselves, but I'm not sure it's needed; perhaps it's for some gnarly match-ups that I haven't tested against yet. Now that I play strictly for fun, I don't worry about teching against specific decks too much.

The tutors are Enemy and Straight to the Grave. Very easy to use Enemy in this deck, because there is so little overlap in affiliations. Straight serves two important purposes. When you are gathering your combo pieces, you can use it to dump the character you need into your pile, for retrieval with one of the location cards or with We Can Rebuild Him. Once you have everything, use it to dump characters with missing affiliations into the pile, to give Black Bolt another +2/+2, and Ethan Edwards and whoever is using Tarnax another +2 in ATK. In the match against TNNB, I did that twice, which resulted in four different characters getting an extra +4 in ATK.

Tarnax IV is obviously the MVP of the locations. Being able to discard a card to give someone +12 ATK or more on turns 4 and 5 is crazy good. I've had a copy in my Skrulls deck for a long time, but it is way better here. Slaughter Swamp and Avalon are obviously for retrieving character cards from the pile. Once Hypnotic Charms is up, though, Dark Dimension is even better at that. You dump the top three cards from your deck into the pile, then select any Underworld card from it. Just be sure you've discarded a copy of Orb first, though, or no one will have the Underworld affiliation. Some builds play another Underworld character or two, which makes it a little easier to get that affiliation into the pile. So far I haven't had any issues with that.

I've seen other decks do more damage in one turn, and I've seen some decks that perhaps win fast more consistently than this one, but I don't know that I've seen another deck that can do so much damage, so quickly, so consistently. In that example I cited earlier, it did over 100 points in damage in six attacks over two turns. That's over 16 in damage per attack. At that rate, three attacks and you're done. Boom! Even if you don't have all the cards to build the deck (I didn't, and I have a huge collection of cards), proxy it up and give it a try. It's an amazing deck, and you have to see it in action to believe it.