Psionic Stall

One of the few nice things about the game being dead is that you can do whatever you want. If you want to build a deck that uses banned cards, go ahead. It's not like there are any hobby leagues or tournaments to play in any more (at least not in most places). In that spirit of rebellion, I put together the ultimate stall deck, banned list be damned. It's kind of fun to play, and challenging (if not fun) to play against. I did it more as an exercise than anything else, an attempt to answer the question, "if there were no banned list, how nasty of a stall deck could I make?"

Characters - 34 

[1 - 7]
4x Blizzard, Frosty Friend (Thunderbolts, S.H.I.E.L.D.)
3x Frankie Raye <> Nova, Optimistic Youth (Heralds of Galactus)
[2 - 12]
4x Puppet Master, Philip Masters
4x Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose (Injustice Gang, Arkham Inmates)
1x Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways (Heralds of Galactus)
1x Mimic, Earth-12 (Exiles, Brotherhood)
1x Shimmer, Selinda Flinders (Fearsome Five)
1x Black Thorn, Elizabeth Thorne (Checkmate)
[3 - 4]
4x Dr. Light, Master of Holograms (Emerald Enemies)
[4 - 4]
4x Rogue, Power Absorption (X-Men)
[5 - 2]
1x Sunfire, Shiro Yoshida (X-Men)
1x Mr. Sinister, Visionary Geneticist
[6 - 2]
1x Mimic, Calvin Rankin (Brotherhood)
1x Darkseid, the Omega (Darkseid's Elite, Revenge Squad)
[7 - 1]
1x Koriand'r <> Starfire, X'Hal's Fury (Teen Titans)
[8 - 1]
1x Cyclops, Mutant Messiah (X-Factor, X-Men)
[9 - 1]
1x Onslaught, Psionic Spawn of Xavier and Magneto 

Plot Twists - 12 

[2 - 4]
4x Straight to the Grave
[3 - 4]
4x Enemy of My Enemy
[4 - 4]
4x Press the Attack 

Locations - 15 

[1 - 2]
2x Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
[2 - 9]
2x Battleworld
2x 31st Century Metropolis, Team-up
1x UN Building, Team-Up
2x Avalon Space Station
1x Slaughter Swamp
1x Soul World
[3 - 3]
2x Birthing Chamber
1x X-Corp: Amsterdam, X-Corp
[4 - 1]
1x The Rock of Eternity

Pretty darned nasty. It's based on the old X-Stall and TDC Stall models, but incorporates some cards that didn't exist at the time. The goal of course is to get to turn 9, then obliterate their field with Onslaught, but it often wins before then, because of all the stun and burn damage it can do on turns 7 and 8.

You want evens with this deck if at all possible, for a reason I'll explain shortly. There is no hard and fast mulligan condition for the deck, because there are so many combo pieces it needs in order to work. Generally "you know it when you see it," but I guess basically you want a hand that has two of the first three key characters or a way to get them. 

The first key character is Puppet Master, whom you want to get out as soon as possible, to start disrupting your opponent's initiatives. If you make it to turn 5 in good shape, he will become gradually less important thereafter, but you will have a hard time getting there if you don't have him by turn 4 at the very latest. There is a way to get him a second or even a third activation per turn, and there are multiple characters who can copy his effect. As soon as possible, you want to get to the point where you can exhaust their entire field with some combination of these effects.

Key character number two is Poison Ivy. She can KO another character that you no longer need to go fetch one of the many locations that this deck needs in order to work properly. There are a bare minimum of 2 and preferably 4 locations that you need to hit, and the only way to hit them consistently is to have Ivy fetch them for you. She makes it possible to play 2 copies of these instead of 4, which is a main reason the deck works as well as it does.

Key character number three: Dr. Light, who allows you to dump 1 and 2 drop characters into your KO'd pile and bring them into play for free, one per turn. For example, you can dump Puppet Master or Ivy into your pile with Straight to the Grave on turn 3, and have him bring them into play. Or you can activate Puppet Master, KO him with Ivy to get a location you need, then bring him back for seconds with Dr. Light. Early you use him to bring together your combo pieces; later you use him to bring back toolbox characters.

Key character number four, Blizzard. After a while, your opponent's field will become unwieldy if you have to exhaust them all with Puppet Master-based effects every turn. Starting on your turn 4/5 init, you can make things easier for yourself by making Blizzard's effect your main source of exhaustion, since any characters you exhaust don't ready at the end of the turn. On the following turn, it is then easy to exhaust the remaining characters with Puppet Master effects, and the turn after that you can go back to Blizzard. He is why you want evens, to allow you to start doing this on turn 4 rather than 5. Note that he has substitute, so if there is a Frankie on the field, or an unusable 2 drop Mimic, you can substitute him in and use your Dr. Light activation that turn for something else.

Finally, key character number five is Rogue, who can copy the effects of Puppet Master or Blizzard as needed. Equally important, she has the X-Men affiliation, which enables you to use Xavier's School to get a second activation per turn out of Puppet Master or Blizzard. Later in the game you can sometimes use her to copy other effects as well.

The one other character played in multiples is Frankie Raye, who serves two purposes. First, she is great for allowing you to draw and cycle cards, to get to your combo pieces faster. Second, she is perfect fodder for Ivy, who needs to KO someone every turn in order to fetch locations. Once all the combo pieces are in place to exhaust your opponent's field on every turn, Dr. Light can just bring her back every turn to let you draw more and more cards.

The rest of the 2 drops are toolbox characters. Silver Surfer is great for fetching your higher drops and placing them on top of your deck, and he can also fetch Press the Attack. Mimic can be recruited or brought into play by Dr. Light to copy Puppet Master or Blizzard for a turn; once activated, he becomes fodder for Ivy. Black Thorn can be used to get an extra activation out of Xavier's Institute or Birthing Chamber. Shimmer usually isn't needed, but if your opponent has a way of flooding the field with army characters, for example, she gives you a way to exhaust their entire field; unfortunately, she works only on your init.

The two 5 drops are Sunfire and Mr. Sinister. Sunfire is great against decks like Faces that flood the field with more characters than you can handle with Puppet Master or Blizzard activations. In those cases, you can have Rogue copy his effect if you need to. Mr. Sinister is for shutting down characters who would otherwise shut you down, notably the 5 drop Lex and the 5 drop Scarlet Witch. If you are on odds, you can also use him to shut down an opponent's Mr. Sinister, since the first one recruited wins.

Mimic is the main 6 drop. He can copy the effects of Sunfire, Puppet Master, or Blizzard, as needed. He is essentially Rogue #2. Darkseid is a recent addition to the deck. He serves only one nefarious purpose: if you can get your one copy of Rock of Eternity into your row, and your opponent has a non-team-up plot twist in his row, you can flip Rock just before you recruit Darkseid, and then exchange it for their plot twist. If you do, and they don't have a way to get rid of it, it's probably game over, because they will not launch another attack the rest of the game.

Turn 7 belongs to Starfire, who will often win you the game almost by herself if you make it this far. Figure that the opponent will generally have drops 2-7 on the field at this point in the game, if they are playing curve. If she stuns all of them at the start of the recovery phase, that's 2+3+4+5+6+7=27 points in damage at the end of the turn. And she will probably do another 13-15 on the following turn. That's almost the game right there.

Turn 8 is Cyclops, who can exhaust the biggest opposing character and do 7 or 8 in burn damage in the process. If Mimic and/or Rogue copy his effect, you will probably win the game by the end of the turn, after Starfire stuns their field.

But if you make it to turn 9 (which generally means you missed Starfire on 7), then you can seal the deal with Onslaught. Simply exhaust their field, as you've been doing, then let Onslaught stun their field and attack to the face for the win. 

The deck plays only three plot twists. Enemy's use is obvious. It's key to making sure you hit Dr. Light and Rogue, in particular.  Straight is used in conjunction both with the locations that let you get back characters from the KO'd pile, and with Dr. Light. Press the Attack is sometimes a win-more card, and sometimes a key puzzle piece. On turns when you need one more Puppet Master or Blizzard activation to finish the job, you can use it to ready someone. Also, if you are up against an opposing stall deck that plays Galactus on turn 9, you can use it to get multiple attacks from Onslaught, to compensate for losing all your endurance. In that case, you will want to get Surfer out fairly early to fetch copies of Press, which you can then draw with Birthing Chamber.

The most important locations in the deck are the cards that give and combine affiliations. The primary one is Battleworld, which gives all of your characters the Heroes of Earth affiliation, and all of your opponent's the Villains of Earth affiliation. The latter insures that Onslaught's effect can go off on 9. 31st Century Metropolis is the main team-up card. Once you have Battleworld up, and Rogue on the field, you can use it to combine Heroes and X-Men. The best thing about it is that you can give someone, probably Puppet Master or Blizzard, the X-Men affiliation for the turn, which can be important if your opponent Have a Blast's your Battleworld or your team-up. UN Building is generally not needed unless you have to play Shimmer, and you need to team up Heroes, X-Men, and Fearsome Five. X-Corp Amsterdam just gives you an alternate way of fetching a team-up on turn 4 or later, once Rogue is out. 

Rock of Eternity is used strictly with Darkseid. Birthing Chamber just lets you draw and cycle through your deck once you have four characters or more on the field, and it combos nicely with Surfer and Black Thorn. Xavier's Institute is for getting multiple activations per turn out of Puppet Master, Blizzard, or Surfer, once you have your team-ups in place.

The other locations are all for getting back characters from the KO'd pile. This is important both because of Straight to the Grave, and because sometimes you have to discard a higher cost character early in the game. Avalon Space Station is the best one, simply because you can sometimes get two characters with it rather than one by discarding one of the two Mimics. If you team up Heroes, X-Men and Brotherhood with UN Building, then you will have more options to choose from. Honestly, though, it doesn't much matter, because you rarely need to get more than one character back in a turn. It's just a way to generate card advantage. For all other purposes, Slaughter Swamp and Soul World work about as well, apart from the burn factor with Soul World.

An ideal curve would look something like this: Frankie on 1. Puppet/Ivy on 2. Dr. Light on 3, bringing back Ivy/Puppet. Rogue on 4, with Dr. Light bringing back Blizzard. Sunfire or Sinister on 5, with Dr. Light bringing back Frankie, Surfer, or Black Thorn. If you hit a curve like that, then the remaining turns should be easy. You want Battleworld and a team-up by turn 4, Xavier's School by 4 or 5, and Avalon/Swamp/Soul World as soon as you can get one of them. Early on you use them to get back Frankie, so you can keep sacrificing her for Ivy and drawing cards; later you need them to get back any higher level drops you discarded.

Although I designed this to be the ultimate stall deck, it is not a competitive deck by any means, even if you set aside the issue of the banned cards (Dr. Light and Frankie Raye). Anything that can disrupt the resource row consistently will give it fits (e.g., X-Mental), as will anything that plays the 5 drop Lex and/or Mr. Sinister. Reign of Terror is a PITA (hello, Crisis Doom). Galactus can be a problem too, especially in decks that bring him out on 8 with the Last Zenn-Lavian. There are no Pathetic Attempts here, no Omnipotence, no Caliban, really no counter measures at all other than Mr. Sinister. Certain opposing decks are almost auto-losses. But this deck wasn't designed to be played in a tournament. It was designed to be played just for fun against aggro decks as kind of a mental exercise, for both players. This combo deck has a lot of moving parts, and it's fun to play--both with and against it--once in a while, just for the challenge. If you like playing stall decks, you'll probably like this one. If not, you will probably find it tedious beyond measure. If you've read this far, chances are you are in the former group, in which case I hope you like it. If you are in the latter group, I'm really surprised you made it this far...