Golden Age Insanity

The other night, my son and I spent some time plugging our new custom proxies into existing decks. Some of them we had to fight over, since we each have our personal favorite decks, but for the most part it went smoothly and painlessly. Because I had had several cards made specifically for his Insanity deck, those were all no-brainers. The more interesting part of the process came after deciding that it was time to tweak that deck a bit.

Our Insanity deck was built after World's Finest came out, obviously, and it was built to be a semi-competitive Modern Age deck during that era. Over time it got tweaked some, but for the most part it has always been a "Modern Age deck" in the sense that we never went back and put in pre-DWF cards to make it better. It was time we did.

Here's our new build. It's still a work in progress and subject to further change, but initial tests show that it is a better deck now, and has a far more interesting end game.

Characters - 30 

[2 - 7]
1x Calendar Man, Julian Gregory Day (Arkham)
1x Terra-Man, Toby Manning (Revenge)
1x The Penguin, Crime's Early Bird (Arkham)
1x Charaxes, Moth Monster (Arkham)
1x Brainiac 13, Mental Giant (Revenge)
1x Ragman, Patchmonger (Gotham)
1x Two-Face, Harvey Dent (Arkham)
[3 - 7]
1x The Joker, Out of His Mind (Arkham)
1x Batman, Problem Solver (Gotham)
1x Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Elite (Gotham)
1x Professor Emil Hamilton <> Ruin, Power Suit (Revenge)
1x Two-Face, Jekyll and Hyde (Gotham/Arkham)
1x Satanus, Colin Thornton (Revenge)
1x The Creeper, Jack Ryder (Gotham)
[4 - 5]
1x Batzarro, World’s Worst Detective (Arkham)
1x Batman, Twilight Vigilante (Gotham)
1x Hush, Silent and Deadly (Arkham)
1x Bizarro, Me Am Bizarro #1 (Revenge)
1x Maxima, Empress of the Almerac (Revenge)
[5 - 4]
1x Catwoman, Jewel Thief (Gotham/Arkham)
1x Matt Hagen <> Clayface, Mud Pack (Arkham)
1x Scarecrow, Fear and Loathing (Arkham)
1x Preus, Citizen's Patrol (Revenge)
[6 - 3]
1x Sondra Fuller <> Clayface, Mud Pack (Arkham)
1x Lex Luthor, Power Armor (Revenge)
1x The Joker, Crazy for You (Arkham)
[7 - 2]
1x Basil Karlo <> Ultimate Clayface, Mud Pack (Arkham)
1x Batman, The Dark Knight (Gotham)
[8 - 1]
1x Bat Mite, #1 Fan (Arkham)
[9 - 1]
1x Mr Mxyptlk, Felonious Fiend (Revenge)

Plot Twists - 28 

[0 - 1]
1x Certifiable
[1 - 7]
1x Beside Myself
1x Bat Signal
1x Crackshot
1x Flying Kick
1x Bizarro Brawl
1x Roshambo
1x Jack in the Box
[2 - 10]
1x Dimensional Deal, Team-Up
1x Forbidden Loyalties, Team-Up
1x World’s Worstest, Team-Up
1x Battle for Metropolis
1x Knowledge is Power
1x Money Talks
1x Pick a Card
1x Interrogate
1x Future Shock
1x Smiles, Everyone!
[3 - 8]
1x The Hook-Up, Team-Up
1x Executive Privilege
1x Batter Up!
1x Burn Baby Burn
1x Imprisoned in the Source
1x Hidden Agenda
1x Enemy of My Enemy
1x Have a Blast!
[4 - 1]
1x Savage Beatdown
[5 - 1]
1x Omnipotence 

Locations - 2 

[2 - 2]
1x Graveyard of Solitude
1x Arkham Asylum, Team-Up

For the most part, the deck plays just like the old deck described in my earlier blog post, but better. Good generic cards like Flying Kick, Savage Beatdown, Enemy of My Enemy, Have a Blast! and Omnipotence are clear upgrades over their predecessors. And Forbidden Loyalties is a better team-up card than Truth and Justice, while Smiles, Everyone! is a nice Arkham-themed card from DSM.

We also replaced quite a few of the weaker 2 and 4 drops with better ones. The biggest change, however, was replacing the very OK Killer Croc, Cannibal with Batman, The Dark Knight. You may remember him from the Fat Bat deck that was built around him, back in the day. That deck tried to stall to turn 7, then attack multiple times with his very large body using Press the Attack.

Our idea here is much simpler. When an Insanity deck works (i.e., you got Beside Myself early on and drew a boatload of cards with it), you generally make it to turn 7 with lots of cards in hand, typically 10-15. These are great for use with the 6 drop Joker, to make one guy really big. Now that stockpile of cards has two uses. On a turn 7 init, you can attack first with Batman, then with Joker. If you have 12 cards in hand, Batman is a 19/19, too big for most decks to handle. Use him to take out their biggest character, then swing for game with Joker, after discarding all 12 cards to make him a 24/24 behemoth. 

Obviously things won't always work out that way, but it is a much stronger end game than the deck used to have, and lots of fun when you can pull it off.

Update on 11/7/2014:

Further testing has shown the 7 drop Batman to be a complete beast in this deck. We highly recommend this addition. To provide further drawing power, we are also going to try the following changes to the deck:

-1x Mr Mxyptlk, Felonious Fiend (Revenge)
-1x Roshambo
-1x Hidden Agenda
+1x Graveyard
+1x Kidnapping
+1x Mind Gem

We haven't retested since making those changes, but I suspect they will all be improvements.

Update on 1/26/2015:

Those last changes were good ones, especially Mind Gem. Since then, we've made one more change:

-1x World's Worstest, Team-Up
-1x Millenium

We are also considering dropping something else to make room for Invasion Plans. Haven't found a good candidate for dropping, though. We'd also like to squeeze in a Slaughter Swamp, Avalon, or Soul World.

Normally this is my son's deck. I rarely get a chance to play it myself. Last night I played it for the first time in the Golden Age version, and I have to say, this deck is WAY better than the old Modern Age build. Beat it early, because it has a very solid end game. I drew poorly, didn't get Beside Myself until turn 5, had a very poor percentage on coin flips, and I still had 10 cards in hand on turn 6.