New Migga City

This deck is a work in progress, but it is based on a cool build of this traditional powerhouse that my new Italian friend Luca shared with me recently. What distinguishes it from other Migga builds I've seen is the use of Aunt May. A very clever addition to the deck. Really wish I could say I thought of it myself. I'm calling this variant of the deck New Migga City because of the inclusion of Aunt May, which I think makes an already strong deck even stronger.

Characters - 30
[1 - 10]
4x Aunt May, Golden Oldie (Spider-Friends)
4x Mystique, Raven (Brotherhood)
2x Harley Quinn, Dr. Harley Quinzel (Arkham)
[2 - 10]
4x Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose (Arkham, Injustice Gang)
4x Mad Hatter, Jervis Tetch (Arkham)
2x The Penguin, Crime's Early Bird (Arkham)
[3 - 2]
2x Juggernaut, Champion of Cyttorak (Brotherhood)
[4 - 5]
3x Blob, Fred Dukes (Brotherhood)
1x Rogue, Southern Belle (Brotherhood)
1x Hush, Silent and Deadly (Arkham)
[5 - 4]
1x Spider-Man, Secret Avenger (Spider Friends, Avengers)
1x Matt Hagen <> Clayface, Mud Pack (Arkham)
1x Mr. Sinister, Visionary Geneticist
1x Lex Luthor, Metropolis Mogul (Injustice Gang, Revenge Squad)
[6 - 1]
1x Human Torch, Herald

Plot Twists - 12
[2 - 4]
4x Straight to the Grave
[3 - 4]
4x Enemy of my Enemy
[4 - 4]
4x Pathetic Attempt

Locations - 13
[1 - 3]
3x Lost City
[2 - 10]
4x Avalon Space Station
3x 31st Century Metropolis, Team-Up
2x Soul World
1x Empire State University

Equipment - 3

[0 - 3]
3x Nth Metal

 Aunt May is the optimal play on turn 1, but she can be played for free on any turn where you need her. Her purpose is to fetch you a copy of Mystique (aka "Spider-Man"), who can be a power-up for any character on your field, then be sacrificed for Poison Ivy to get a location. I am torn between playing three copies or four. At some point you run out of Mystiques in your deck, and you have all your locations, and then she's not so good. Early on, though, she's gold, so you want to draw her and play her early and often. Mystique, on the other hand, you don't want to draw at all. You want to get her with Aunt May. It's OK to recruit her on 1, especially if you have your team-up already. Once you have teamed up Arkham and Brotherhood, Harley Quinn is just as good as Mystique, since she can power up anyone on the field. Together, Mystique and Harley make this deck incredibly strong on both offense and defense. It's not unusual to be able to give a single character +12/+12 or even +15/+15 for one attack.

The key to this deck is Poison Ivy, and she's your mulligan condition, her or a way to get her (e.g. Straight + Avalon). Even if you draw all your locations, you still want to be able to replace spent copies of Avalon with Ivy, so she is potentially valuable even late in the match. The Mad Hatter is also a 2 drop, but you never want to play him on 2. You want to play him on 3 and pay 1 resource point to steal the opposing 2 drop, attack with it, then sacrifice it to Ivy. The Penquin should be considered a plot twist. You never want to recruit him. When you discard him as a cost, you can remove him from the game and return an Arkham character to your hand. Once you are teamed up, he is the perfect discard for Avalon, as you can get back three characters in exchange for your one discard. I am still trying to decide whether to play two copies or three of him.

On a turn 3 where Hatter is not a good play (such as when your opponent missed his 2 drop), you can recruit Juggernaut instead. He's a big body, especially with an Nth Metal on him, and a copy of Lost City in your row. He can be an especially good play on 3 if you aren't teamed up yet and need to try to preserve your field. 

The best play on turn 4 is usually Blob. This deck wants to win on 5, and he can really help you to preserve your field on this turn. Put everyone else in back, so they have to go through Blob to get to you, then throw all your power-ups into him for defense. It's pretty common to have four +3/+3 power-ups to give him, and that means they have to go through an 18/21 wall, i.e., an 8 drop. Rogue is a tech card to be used mainly against combo decks and stall decks that do multiple activations per turn. Hush is not quite as big a body as Blob, but when he stuns an exhausted attacker, they get KO'd. You can also play Anne-Marie Cortez in this slot.

Turn 5 is where you want to win, and you have several choices here. The Spider-Man is primarily a tech card, but he's also someone you can search for with Aunt May when you run out of Mystiques, and with 31st Century Metropolis in your row, you can give him the Brotherhood and Arkham affiliations for the turn. Mr. Sinister and Lex are also tech cards who shut down certain decks, and as with Spidey you can give them the proper affiliations for the turn. Clayface is good only because you can discard him for Avalon on turn 4, then come back on 5 and recruit him from your KO'd pile.

If you failed to win on turn 5, or you are on evens, on turn 6 you can either play a 5 and an Aunt May, or the lone 6 drop in the deck. Human Torch is yet another tech card. He's good against burn decks, in particular.

There are only three different plot twists used in the deck. The two tutors are Enemy and Straight. Enemy can search for all but two characters in the deck, and Straight can get the other two. Straight also gives you more chances of hitting your critical turn 2 Ivy. Pathetic Attempt is mainly for protecting your row from Have a Blast! and Death of the Dream, although your opponent can get around it with Dream if they target their own resource with the main effect, and one of yours with the secondary one.

This deck is all about locations, of course, starting with Lost City. This is the one you have to have, or the deck simply doesn't work. You can get by without the others for a turn or two if you have one of these and a big-bodied Brotherhood character like Juggernaut or Blob on the field. This is the card you generally need to protect with Pathetic Attempt.

The next most important location is Avalon Space Station. Part of what makes this deck so good is that, once teamed up, you can discard almost any character card to get two cards back with Avalon (generally Mystique or Harley), then use Ivy to go get another copy of Avalon. If you had two copies of Penquin in hand, you could actually get six cards in exchange for two on a single turn.

The other key location is the team-up, 31st Century Metropolis. It not only lets you team up Arkham and Brotherhood; it also lets you give those affiliations to one other character per turn. You can use it on a character stolen with Hatter, or on a 5 or 6 drop, or even on an Arkham character, if they decide to Have a Blast! your team-up. It's really the perfect team-up for the deck, although I am thinking about replacing one copy with the original Metropolis.

Soul World and Slaughter Swamp are both good in this deck. I went with Soul World because of the card advantage. Especially late in the game, your hand can get pretty depleted from all the discards for power-ups, so being able to get back a card without discarding can easily be worth 4 endurance. Empire State University is a card I'm experimenting with right now, and the jury is out. In theory, being able to get one card with Aunt May, then exhaust her to get another with ESU, then sacrifice her to Ivy to get a location, is really good. But there's a bit of a timing problem, because you usually have to sacrifice Aunt May to go search for it, so then you have to wait until the next turn to get the effect. This may end up going for another Soul World or a Slaughter Swamp.

One card I've always played in any Lost City deck is Nth Metal. It's just too good to leave out, in my opinion. It's a reusable power up, and thanks to Lost City it turns Juggernaut into a 9/9 and Blob into a 9/12. I'm playing three copies now but want to get to four. That experimental ESU may give way to the fourth.

Before Luca shared his build with me, I merely liked Migga City. I actually preferred playing my Brotherhood of Justice deck, which is based on ukyo's. Now it's my favorite Lost City deck, and I'm having a lot of fun tweaking it, trying to get the build just right. So once again I raise my glass and toast the Italians for their Vs. System ingenuity. But I draw the line at drinking Italian Chianti. You'll have to settle for being toasted with Kentucky bourbon, my friends.