A Lot of Hot Air
By: Scott Gerhardt 
 

First of all, I have to apologize to all you out there.  It wasn't MY fault, but somehow my article from last week got wiped off the face of the planet.  How lovely.  To make matters worse, there wasn't a backup copy written anywhere.  So, my review of the new NetNavis....poof.  If anyone out there happened to read and copy that article (yeah, I know - real doubtful), if you could forward that thing on to me at scottg(at)pojo(dot)com I would appreciate it.

Now, on to this week.  I want to look a little into deck building.  One that struck my interest is the AirMan deck.  I wanted to take a look into how we could build this deck and make it work right.

First of all, we need to look at 2 key components of the deck.  First is of course, AirMan himself.  He's relatively weak at a 1/2/3, but his ability to return resources when you play a chip can be quite helpful in keeping an opponent's resources under control, or even keeping your own in line so you have what you need, when you need it.  This said, we will need to play enough Battlechips to utilize this ability.

Second, we have AirMan's NetOp Arashi.  With him, you can blast for cheap.  Get him plus 1 other AirMan can in play, and you're blasting for that key number of 1.  Blasting every turn is good I heard.

So how do we take advantage of perpetual blasting?  Lots of high destiny cards, of course.  Immediately Full of Hot Air comes to mind.  It's a 5 destiny resource that can be used to manipulate the next card in your power bar by putting it back on top of your deck.  On top of this, it's an AirMan card to lets us abuse Arashi some more.  It also helps in playing some green-based cards, of course.  It's overall a near perfect card for the deck.

Wind is another no brainer.  Getting to lower the blast (if you don't have Arashi in play, this could be huge) and adding 6 to strength is a little too good to pass up.  It's a custom Battlechip for AirMan, and we're fine with this.

Correction is another card that looks like it's begging to go in this deck.  Yes, it's triple Blue, but who cares - you run the BattleChip trick, return some of their resources, then utterly devastate their hand.  Kicking this bad boy off early can spell a nasty demise for your opponent...making someone lose 4-6 cards for 1 card is often enough to finish them off early.

On top of this, we should definitely go with Like Father, Like Son.  This card helps out, especially if you don't have the Battlechip in hand to wipe out their resources, but you have the correction handy.  It works well also to return any of your own resources you need to play other things.  Remember, you don't have to spend the resources if you can return them, and later replay them.  It's nice to allow you to play color intensive cards.

Glide, At Your Service is another card that goes in most green decks.  It's very power intensive, but it's effect is worth it.  This is good for getting that Battlechip, or Correction, or whatever else you need.

Since we can't be completely offensive, we have a couple of nice options.  System Error plays off AirMan's low defense by turning the tables for a turn and making them lose the energy instead of you.  When they're gonna hit you for a lot, it can be game winner to turn it around on them.  We're already very heavy blue, so hitting quad blue should not be that hard.

Additionally, defensive BattleChips are very important since we need to be able to stop them and utilitze AirMan's ability more often.   Good old WideSword covers this without a problem.  Nullifying an attack as well as popping back some resources works really well with us.

There are other cards you could play, but we start to get into personal taste here.  I simply wanted to give everyone some form of a basis.  Remember, you need to be able to play our your quad blue cards, and also some intensive green, so you'll need enough resources to cover this.  Viruses might play a role, they might not - you'll have to decide for yourself.

Give your own AirMan deck a try and see how it works for you.  next week I think I'll hit another NetNavi that I really like and think would make for a very fun deck. :)

Until next time, keep playing!

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