League of Doom

Back in the day, the online place to be for Vs. players, at least in the U.S., was vsrealms. These days, the most active forum is the Vs. System Collective group on Facebook. Last week, one of the members, Aaron Mead, decided to stage a deck building contest among the members, and 24 of us signed up. I won't go through all the rules, but the basic idea was that Aaron randomly paired together teams, and assigned each of us two of them to build a deck around. My son got Brotherhood and Birds of Prey; I got Doom and JLA. Advantage, me.

When I started brainstorming ideas for the deck, I came up with the obvious one first, a control deck that played Batman on 3, Dr. Doom on 4, and Superman on 5. Mix in Reign of Terror, Mystical Paralysis, Indestructible and you've got five or six of the best cards in the game batting in the middle of your lineup. But I set that idea aside initially, for one simple reason: the contest decks were to be judged by playing them against each other, tournament style, by Aaron and his friends. That's WAY more efficient than having all of us try to play our own decks against each other online, but the downside is that the person playing my deck will probably be playing it for the first time, and control decks are harder to play than aggro decks. So my next step was to spend some time trying to figure out if I could build a really competitive aggro deck.

Good Guys (JLA/JLI), Moloids/Doomed Earth, and Moloids/Devil's Due are all very good aggro decks built with one of these teams, so it wasn't crazy to think about going the aggro route. Unfortunately, I could find no good synergy between the two teams among the more aggro-oriented characters and plot twists. I'm sure I could have cobbled together something playable, but after looking at my own options, and then looking at the other team pairings, it seemed like there was no way I was going to be able to build the best aggro deck in the group. Titans/Syndicate and Sentinels/Manhunters seemed to me to have much better aggro synergy, for example, than Doom/JLA. Back to control.

Initially, I had lots of ideas for cool things I thought I could do. Carrying the Torch could turn Doom into Batman or Superman, or one of them into Doom. Then everyone could get the benefits of cards like Doomstadt, At Their Finest, and Brains and Brawn! Unfortunately, all of these went out the window once I finished listing the cards I felt I had to have in the deck. The rules said that I had to have 15 cards minimum tied to each affiliation, and things like Doomstadt, Reign of Terror, Mystical Paralysis, and Indestructible weren't going to count because they had character-stamped effects, not team-stamped. Throw in some must-haves like Savage Beatdown and Enemy of My Enemy, and some team-ups, and I had no room left for anything overly clever.

Once reality set in, I decided to apply the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid!). JLA and Doom both have some great cards, so my new goal was to make the deck as consistent and foolproof as possible, and just let the powerful effects of the main cards do their thing. Here's the deck I came up with.

Characters - 30 

[1 - 1]
1x Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom (Doom)
[2 - 8]
6x Robot Sentry, Army (Doom)
2x Gypsy, Illusionary Operative (JLA)
[3 - 6]
4x Batman, Founding Member (JLA)
2x Dr. Doom, Richards’s Rival (Doom)
[4 - 5]
4x Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius (Doom)
1x Wonder Woman, Ambassador of Peace (JLA)
[5 - 4]
3x Superman, Metropolis Marvel (JLA)
1x Kristoff Von Doom, Pretender to the Throne (Doom)
[6 - 3]
2x Dreadnought Tank, Arsenal of Doom (Doom)
1x Aquaman, Lord of Atlantis (JLA)
[7 - 2]
1x Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas (JLA)
1x Wonder Woman, Founding Member (JLA)
[8 - 1]
1x Dr. Doom, Latverian Monarch (Doom)  

Plot Twists - 27 

[1 - 4]
4x Mightiest Heroes (JLA)
[2 - 6]
2x For the Glory of Doom!, Team-Up (Doom)
4x Forbidden Loyalties, Team-Up
[3 - 4]
4x Enemy of My Enemy
[4 - 10]
4x Savage Beatdown
3x Mystical Paralysis
3x Reign of Terror
[5 - 3]
3x Indestructible 

Locations - 3 

[1 - 3]
3x Doomstadt

There's only one copy of the 1 drop Boris, because unless you get an opening hand of Boris and Doomstadt, you probably aren't going to get his effect. He's here mainly for use on a later turn.

Turn 2 will ideally be Robot Sentry. If you are on your preferred even initiatives, you will be attacking with him on 2 and defending on 3. If all goes well, you will have Batman and a team-up on 3, and so he will be able to exhaust the opposing 2 drop on turn 3, limiting the amount of damage you will take on that turn. Best case, their 3 stuns your 2, and your 3 (who is hidden) stuns theirs. Gypsy is a good card for optimizing your next draw, but the plan is to recruit Robot Sentry initially, and use him to negate one or more potential attacks, and then sub in Gypsy later.

When following The Plan, the play on 3 is Batman. His effect is really good against decks that depend on certain locations or ongoing plot twists, but this deck rarely has many discards to spare, so the effect has to be used wisely--to nuke something really important like a New Brotherhood or Rock of Eternity, for example. Doom 3 is a really good play in most decks, and he's not bad here, but then you need to go with Wonder Woman on 4. If you have him in hand and don't have Doom 4, though, then it's a good play to recruit Doom and search for Enemy of My Enemy, then use it to get Wonder Woman on 4.

The downside to that approach is that you then lose any hope of playing Reign of Terror on 4, which is what you really want. Doom on 3, Wonder Woman on 4 is good. Batman on 3, Doom on 4 is better. A third alternative is to play Doom 3 and Boris. That is a really good play against weenie decks, especially if you already have one Reign of Terror in hand. Recruit Boris first, then Doom 3. When Doom's effect goes on the chain, activate Boris to go grab a second Reign. Then use Doom to search for Mystical Paralysis or something else you will need later. Before combat begins, you can double Reign to obliterate their field. If you're defending, let them declare an attack and waste a pump, then Reign.

In the more typical case, though, the play on 4 is the Diabolic Genius. If you are on odds, a good play is to let Doom's coming into play effect go on the chain, play Mystical Paralysis from your row to exhaust their 4 drop, then flip it back down for reuse later, hopefully on 6. Otherwise, I like to play a tutor to get my 5 or my 6 before recruiting, then flip it back down with Doom's effect.

The best play on 5 is Superman, but there's one little catch here, in that he has loyalty. If you aren't teamed up and you lost Batman, that's a problem, and that's why there's a single copy of Kristoff in the deck instead of a fourth copy of Superman. Kristoff has great synergy with Doom 4--together they can really throw a monkey wrench into an opponent's plans, But if you have a copy of Indestructible, the better play is generally Superman. Between Reign of Terror, Mystical Paralysis, and Indestructible, the deck has lots of ways to limit the opponent's ability to inflict damage, and to keep your field intact. With decent draws, it will be very hard for an opponent to win quickly, and this deck is designed to win late.

Turn 6 is not a strength for this deck, unless you are playing against an off-curve deck, in which case it becomes a strength. Dreadnought Tank is the character version of Reign of Terror. Against curve decks, he's just a guy. The best Doom card at this drop would be the MOR Dr. Doom or the MVL one, but normally you still have your 4 drop Doom on 6. The 6 drop Aquaman is very good--he gets a character and a plot twist back from the KO'd pile when he comes into play--but I like the 7 drop better. So the usual play on 6 is the Tank.

The preferred play on 7 is generally Aquaman. He can usually get back two to three cards from the pile on each turn. A tutor, a Mystical Paralysis, Savage Beatdown--there are several good possibilities, although it depends on what initiative you have and what your field looks like. If you are attacking on 7, Wonder Woman can be excellent, as your opponent can't play plot twists or use payment powers during your attack step. When I tested this deck against Good Guys, I dragged things out to turn 7, where Wonder Woman was the MVP. No Cover Fire DEF boosts. No Magnificent Seven power-ups. No BWA HA HA! No John Henry Irons hijinks.

Against most decks, Doom 8 is an awesome finisher. Suppose you and your opponent both have 6-8 on turn 8. Team with your 6 and 7 into their biggest guy. Make a safe attack into their 6 with Doom. Then KO someone who got stunned and ready everyone else. Even if it is their init, you can Mystical Paralysis the opposing 8 drop, and potentially get a big attack of your own in when your opponent is done, if they can't get through Doom's defenses.

The only location is Doomstadt, who gives your Dr. Dooms +3 DEF. That's really good on both offense and defense. Doomstadt also enables the effects of Boris, Kristoff and the Tank when Dr. Doom is not on the field. I wanted to play some other one-of locations like Stryker's Island and Latveria, and search for them with New Era, but there's no room for that in the deck.

When I saw which teams I got, my first thought was that I had really lucked out in terms of tutors. Most of the other decks in the contest will be completely dependent on Enemy of My Enemy, but I get to have Mightiest Heroes as well. It's not quite as good here as it is in my Trinity deck, where Barbara Gordon and Hook-Up give you a way to draw a card off the top of your deck, but as long as you plan ahead and use Heroes on the turn before you need the character, you're good.

The two team-ups are For the Glory of Doom! and Forbidden Loyalties. Glory seems like it would be the better card, but this deck does such a good job of maintaining its field in the middle turns that you rarely want to KO someone for the burn damage. Forbidden Loyalties is one of my two favorite generic team-ups, along with 31st Century Metropolis. If you have a card to spare, you can discard it to put a +1/+1 counter on someone.

The key plot twists are of course the ones I keep talking about: Reign of Terror, Mystical Paralysis, and Indestructible. These are the cards that make the deck hard to beat. The only other plot twist is Savage Beatdown, everyone's favorite attack pump. It would be nice to have room for Flying Kick or Trouble with Dinosaurs, to give the deck a little more firepower, but there just isn't. If I had room for another plot twist, I'd probably play a fourth copy of Mystical Paralysis.

One issue with this deck is that there is no obvious mulligan condition for it. In my testing, I have generally kept any hand that gave me a play on 2 and 3 or 3 and 4, and rejected any hand that didn't. But I would also probably keep a hand with Doom 4, Reign and a 2 drop. With decks like this, I also tend to adjust my mulligan condition if I know what my opponent is playing. If they are playing curve, I'm OK with missing my 2. If they are playing off-curve, I'm less likely to throw out a hand that contained a 2 drop.

This deck is probably not worth building for general play. I will most likely take it apart once the contest is over. But I had to do a write-up of the deck for the contest anyway, so the people playing it would know how it works, and I thought I might as well publish it here as kind of a case study in building a deck for an event with special rules.

Update on 2/10/2015:

I was really bummed when the brackets for the tournament came out. My deck was facing a Green Lantern-Marvel Knights stall deck, which on paper was a horrible match-up. Doom decks like this one are generally better against aggro decks. Stall decks are tough, because they don't care if they don't get to attack on turn 5. But in this case, a double Reign of Terror on turn 4 wrecked their board, and then Aquamans on 6 and 7 recurred enough Savage Beatdowns from the KO'd pile for an epic 31 to -1 pounding of the stallers!

Full match report here.

Update on 2/20/2015:

League of Doom continues to roll in the tournament! Second round was a tussle against a Squadron Supreme/JLI deck. Not a good match-up for the no-handers. Reign of Terror bounced their 3 on turn 4, and the Tank bounced a pair of smaller guys back on turn 6. Final score: 12 to -9. Next up is a Fearsome 5/S.H.I.E.L.D. deck that relies on Triskellion for consistency. Hitting Batman on 3 will be critical in this one. Stay tuned...

Full match report here.

Update on 2/23/2015:

All good things must end. League of Doom finally met its match in the form of the Fearsome 5/S.H.I.E.L.D. deck. Although Batman kept Triskellion offline for most of the match, Blade was able to take out the Dark Knight on turn 5, paving the way for an onslaught of burn damage on turn 7. Four activations of the Ultimates version of Thor on that turn, with a whopping 21 in damage on each one, producing a brutal -75 to -23 beatdown. Tough to stop in a format like this with no Omnipotence, no Lex and no Mr. Sinister. Oh well. Top 8 is never a bad result.

Worth noting that my son's Brotherhood/Birds of Prey deck also made Top 8, before falling to Revenge Squad/Skrull in a much closer match.

Full match report here.

Rock of Eternity

I started playing the game when Infinite Crisis was the current set, so I cut my teeth on the decks that came out of it. I dabbled with Shadowpact and straight JSA, played a lot with Villains United, but the decks that I kept gravitating toward all had one common denominator. Ahmed Samsarra, I absolutely hate missing drops on later turns, so I consequently loved the consistency of decks that never missed a drop once they hit their preferred 3 drop.

Over the years, I experimented with every team-up I could think of, for modern, silver, and golden. Villains, League of Assassins, Brotherhood, Kree, Inhumans, Marvel Knights. But the deck that I think is most fun to play is the Checkmate-JSA deck built around Rock of Eternity. Sadly, for me, my son loved it even more than I did, and promptly laid permanent claim to it. Consequently, I've never gotten to play it as much as I would have liked, and therefore am poorly equipped to write a definitive blog post about the deck. But I promised my son months ago that I would write it up for him, so I'm going to give this my best shot. Hopefully I can do the deck some justice.

Characters - 28 

[1 - 8]
4x Atom Smasher, Al Rothstein (JSA)
2x Jakeem Williams, JJ Thunder (JSA)
2x Connie Webb, Knight (Checkmate)
[2 - 4]
2x Black Thorn, Elizabeth Thorne (Checkmate)
2x Jack Knight <> Starman, Knight Past (JSA)
[3 - 5]
4x Ahmed Samsarra, White King (Checkmate)
1x Christopher Smith <> Peacemaker, Obsessed Outlaw (Checkmate)
[4 - 4]
2x Charles McNider <> Dr. Mid-Nite, Golden Age Academic (JSA)
1x Adrian Chase <> Vigilante, Street Justice (Checkmate)
1x Alan Scott, Golden Age Engineer (JSA)
[5 - 3]
1x Power Girl, Child of Crisis (JSA)
1x Annihilation Protocol <> OMAC Robot, Army (Checkmate)
1x Thunderbolt, Yz (JSA)
[6 - 1]
1x Huntress, Reluctant Queen (Checkmate, Gotham Knights)
[7 - 3]
3x The Phantom Stranger, Wandering Hero (JSA) 

Plot Twists - 17 

[1 - 3]
3x Threat Neutralized
[3 - 9]
4x Advance Warning
3x Revitalize
2x Transmutation, Magic
[4 - 4]
4x Knightmare Scenario
[5 - 1]
1x Check and Mate! 

Locations - 15 

[2 - 11]
4x Brother I Satellite
4x Checkmate Safe House
1x JSA Headquarters
1x Dr. Fate’s Tower
1x Slaughter Swamp
[3 - 2]
2x Brother Eye
[4 - 2]
2x The Rock of Eternity 

Equipment - 1 

[0 - 1]
1x Cloak of Nabu

In most Checkmate-based decks, you want Connie Webb on 1, and that's a decent play here as well. By far the best play, though, is Atom Smasher. This deck works significantly better if you get him on 1 and start making him bigger by exhausting him to add counters. If you do get him on 1, don't attack. His only job until you get Rock of Eternity out is to get bigger. Connie is a good play if you don't yet have Ahmed or another way to get him. And Jakeem Williams is a good play if you have Ahmed and want to grab a JSA 4 drop, although his best uses are often on turns 5 and 6.

There's really no strongly preferred play on 2. Black Thorn is good to have later on, to get two activations out of Checkmate Safe House. Starman is good for getting card advantage, although you have to be careful with him. Or you can play a pair of 1 drops, if need be. 

This deck plays an alternate 3 drop in Peacemaker, because that's better than missing a drop, but the deck really only works if you have Ahmed. As with all Checkmate decks, he's the key to everything. He fetches the team-up, the main tutor, the main attack pump, and of course the Rock of Eternity. If you miss him, you will miss one or more of them, and as a result you will almost certainly lose.

Turn 4 is when things start getting interesting. Adrian Chase is your Checkmate option. He's good if you aren't teamed up (which is bad). He also has a decent effect, since he can guarantee that whoever attacks Atom Smasher is going to get stunned back. Alan Scott is often the best play in hindsight, but he generally doesn't become valuable until a later turn, when he can help you recover a bigger character who got stunned while defending, allowing you to swing back with both of them after Rock readies them. More on him in a bit. McNider is normally the preferred play, I think. He allows you to move characters in and out of the hidden area for maximum advantage. Again, more later.

Despite the character counts, the usual on-curve play on 5 is Annihilation Protocol. His KO effect can wreak havoc with your opponent's field, and the cost of exhausting someone is less onerous here than in most decks because of Rock, at least on off-inits. Thunderbolt is a good play if you have Jakeem in hand, and really, really need a card like Transmutation or Advance Warning to keep you in the game. The strongest 5 drop is Power Girl, but she can be played on either 5 or 6, and if you are on your preferred even initiatives, she's better as your play on 6. If you played Alan Scott or McNider on 4, playing the other one here is a fine play, especially when on evens. If you have a Connie or Jakeem in hand, you can use one of them to search for your 4 drop,

Huntress is the only 6 drop, but she's really a plot twist. The usual play on a turn 6 initiative is Power Girl, and again, you can use Jakeem to get her. So how does that work, purposely underdropping on both 5 and 6? Glad you asked.

Here's a nearly ideal game for this deck. Turn 1, Atom Smasher. Activate for a counter and 2/2. Turn 2, Black Thorn. Activate Atom for 3/3. Turn 3, Ahmed. Use him to get a Checkmate Safe House, Rock of Eternity, Brother Eye, Brother I Satellite, or Dr. Fate's Tower. If you are facing a deck that can stun Ahmed out of combat, you need the Tower so you can get a Cloak. Activate Atom for 4/4. Turn 4, McNider. Activate Atom for 5/5. Activate Ahmed to get a combo piece. Exhaust McNider and Thorn somehow (maybe to return a Phantom Stranger from the KO'd pile?). Then ready everyone with Rock and attack. Atom Smasher has 5 ATK now, so he can take down a 3 or a 4, especially with a Brother Eye assist, or he can team with Thorn on their 4. Attack down the curve with Ahmed and McNider. Ideally you will wipe their field and preserve yours. Turn 5, Alan Scott. You can leave him visible or move him to the hidden area with McNider. Activate Atom for 6/6, and Ahmed for a combo piece. Attack strategically after your opponent has swung, to preserve your field, and maybe ding his.

On your turn 6 initiative, activate Atom to make him a 7/7 (i.e, a 4 drop) and Ahmed for another location. Recruit Power Girl. She comes in exhausted, but Rock will ready her. Swing her into the opposing 6 drop with a Brother Eye. When she stuns, recover and ready her with Alan Scott. Swing her down the curve into their 4. She gives other characters a +2 boost while she's exhausted, so use that to allow one or more characters to take down their 5. Then KO a resource to ready her, and swing to the face with everyone who is ready to finish the game.

It won't always go like that, and there are certainly lots of other ways to skin the cat with this deck, but that should give you the general idea. Just keep in mind that the scenario above was an example of one way you can go, and not a blueprint. Depending on what your opponent has and does, and what initiative you are on, you may want to play things very differently.

If you make it to turn 7 and haven't KO'd a resource on 6, you can play Phantom Stranger, or an Annihilation Protocol with boost, but the longer things go, the harder it is for you to win. This deck is designed to win on 5 or 6 using multiple attacks with Power Girl, and isn't really equipped to win later unless you are way ahead and just need to mop up.

Most of the plot twists are defensive in nature. Advance Warning is a +4 DEF for an exhausted JSA defender. Knightmare Scenario is a +1/+1 at minimum, but more often a +2/+2 or +3/+3. Threat Neutralized can give someone a +1/+1  for the turn, but is primarily here to keep you from getting kinged if they KO Ahmed. Together with Checkmate Safe House, these cards give the deck quite a bit of defensive prowess, and when it wins, it's normally due in part to having brickwalled one or more attacks. If you have a Thorn and 2 copies of Checkmate Safe House, everyone in the back row has +3 DEF. Sometimes your opponent will have to play an attack pump to get through your 1 drop with his 4 drop.

Transmutation is an important tech card, not only for getting rid of troublemakers like Lost City or New Brotherhood, but more importantly for taking out an opponent's Omnipotence. If they are able to shut down Ahmed, or prevent you from playing Rock of Eternity on 5, you are in trouble. Revitalize gives you another way, besides Alan Scott, to recover someone who has been stunned while defending, and also exhausting two characters so they can be readied by Rock of Eternity. Check and Mate! is an effect that's hard to pull off, since there is only a single copy, but it can be a game winner. Picture a turn 6 init where you already have Power Girl or a Brother I Satellite. You play Check and Mate! during the draw phase, and now characters cost 1 more to play this turn. That's perfect for you, because you were going to recruit a 5 anyway, but your opponent may not have an alternate 5, and if they don't, who knows what they will be able to recruit this turn? Maybe an alternate 4? A pair of 2 drops? Anyway, it's a terrific play on 6 or 7, especially if you are on odds, and not a terrible play on a turn 5 off-int if you are planning to underdrop and want to wreck their plans for the turn. The guy playing Faces of Evil who was planning to drop 4 weenies this turn will hate you forever. Nice.

One plot twist that is perfect for this deck, but not here, is Enemy of My Enemy. If you can find room for it, by all means play it. We can't, and we are at 61 cards as it is, which is a hard limit for me. There are enough tutors here with Connie and Jakeem and Ahmed and Brother I Satellite that you will rarely miss not having it, but it would sure be nice to have sometimes.

Lots of locations, obviously. The main Checkmate ones are Checkmate Safe House, which is your team-up and defensive boost. Brother I Satellite, your one non-character tutor. And Brother Eye, your main attack pump. Dr. Fate's Tower is for fetching the Cloak for Ahmed. Slaughter Swamp is for retrieving characters that you had to discard earlier but need now. Swamp is a recent addition to the deck. Or maybe this is a return engagement? I can't remember. For a while we played Swiss Headquarters, which was a nice-to-have card at times. Play Annihilation visible on 5, and exhaust Black Thorn to recover him later after he has been stunned while defending, so you can recover both him and Atom Smasher. But Slaughter Swamp seems more generally useful, so in it goes.

The other two locations are JSA's contributions. JSA Headquarters is a card that sometimes you need, and sometimes you don't. Its effect is decent, but more importantly it lets you exhaust a character like Annihilation Protocol that can't exhaust itself. This is important, because the one downside to Rock of Eternity is that, while it readies exhausted JSA characters once your attack step starts, it also exhausts any that are still ready. So for those characters without activated effects, you have to have a way to exhaust them before your attack step. Sometimes JSA HQ is the answer. Sometimes it is Phantom Stranger. Sometimes, on off-inits, it is for Revitalize or Annihilation Protocol's KO effect.

This deck is not terribly hard to play, but it is really hard to master. Besides figuring out how to win when you almost never attack before turn 4, and figuring out how to stay alive until your kill turn, and how to maximize damage on that all-important kill turn, you have to figure out when and how to exhaust your characters for maximum benefit. These are the challenges that make this deck so fun to play, but they can also give you a headache. This deck is not a good choice if you are the kind of player who wants to go all-aggro, all the time, or if you are simply not in the mood to do a whole lot of thinking while you play. It's not as taxing as Shadowpact, but it's up there.

In short, it's a thinking man's deck, like most Checkmate decks, but even more so. If you like a good challenge, or you are a Checkmate lover who hasn't tried this particular flavor yet, I can highly recommend it. I think you'll find it especially tasty.