The Tinkerer's Vs. Workshop

02.02.05 - Swarm Sentinel deck

Welcome to yet another installment of “The Tinkerer’s Workshop.”  This week I received an e-mail from a guy called Darris in need of help with what he calls a swarm Sentinel deck.  This is what he writes….

“Call me Darris.  I've been playing Vs System since its release, and I love the game.  Thing is, I've never been a 'good deck builder'.  One thing I've learned in other CCGs is that speed kills, so I figured an Army deck would work well.  This one isn't as great as I would have hoped, so I'm sending it to you in hopes of getting it fixed.  All cards are listed in cost order from lowest to highest. 

Characters (31)

2x Boliver Trask, Creator of the Sentinel Program

3x Senator Kelly, Anti- Mutant Advocate

8x Wild Sentinel, Army

2x Sentinel Mark I, Army

2x Sentinel Mark III, Army

4x Sentinel Mark II, Army

2x Sentinel Mark IV, Army

1x Sentinel Mark V, Army (only reason for one in deck is I only have 1)

3x Nimrod, Mutant Hunter

1x Master Mold, Sentinel Supreme (See Mark V)

3x Magneto, Master of Magnetism

Plot Twists (21)

4x Flying Kick

3x Burn Rubber

2x Combat Protocols

4x Reconstruction Program

4x Cover Fire

1x Termination Sequence

3x Relocation

Locations (8)

3x South American Sentinel Base

2x Orbital Sentinel Base

3x Underground Sentinel Base

The deck should be pretty straight forward.  Load up the field with Army Sentinels and team attack as often as needed, reinforce when needed. 

Master Mold, South American Sentinel Base, and Reconstruction Program keep the weak ones coming back into hand for Master Mold to drop again next turn. 

Magneto is in the deck mainly because I don't know of a good turn 7 Sentinel character. 

If there is anything I've learned from other CCGs, denial works wonders, so I put in Relocation.  If the location I take doesn't help me, at least it’s not helping my opponent.

One of the big helpers is to play Trask to dig for a Sentinel, then play Trask on top of that to get a second one (of course, the first Trask is KO'd, but hey...).

The other little bit is also obvious... with a few army Sentinels on the board, Senator Kelly can do some pretty mean things to your opponents Endurance.

Anyway, that’s the deck and what it does.  It can't beat my friends Doom deck, it can't beat my Spider Friends deck, and it’s about 50/50 against my X-Men deck (no matter who is playing either).  Help please?

Thanks either way.”

  First off, Darris seems to be going in two different directions.  He wants a swarm, yet he’s very close to the curve Sentinel deck that’s placed so well is recent PCQ’s and 10K’s.  Let’s start off with what looks good in the deck, and what looks bad then we’ll see where we can go from there. 

  Looking at the characters Boliver Trask is as fine a search card as Sentinels are gonna get, so there’s no real harm keeping him around.

  Senator Kelly is much more of a card for the old style Wild Vomit deck where we fill the field as fast as possible with Wild Sentinels and burn your opponent’s life away.  Let’s hold off on him for now.

  Wild Sentinels, read above.  Holding off here too.

  Mark I’s are just about the most useless characters ever created.  These belong in absolutely no Sentinel build.

  Mark III’s are an all around better choice than the Mark I’s simply because of a useful, and possible devastating attack boosting effect.  This guy should make a showing in our deck.

  Mark II is actually a card that can screw an opponent over royally if timed well.  While not overly strong, a decent effect can make up for it.  I think this one will stay on too.

  Mark IV is another Sentinel that is made almost exclusively to go along with Wild Sentinels.  Nowhere near to being as good as Mark V, he probably won’t have a home in our deck.

  Mark V….With the release of the Spider-Man set we got a card that effectively made Sentinels a top tier deck.  A 7/7 flyer that reinforces all your other army characters is just to good to pass up. Definitely makes the cut.

  Nimrod, the only 5 drop Sentinels have and a damn fine one at that, it’s a keeper.

  Master Mold contributes to the over all quantity of Sentinels that can hit the field, but is his inability to attack to big a drawback when Bastion could be occupying this spot?  I think so too.

  Magneto is without to much argument one of the best 7 drop characters in the whole game, and is always a great choice for any deck without a good turn 7 character.  Plus let’s not forget the advantages of Genosha.

  So we’ve got six characters right there to make a showing with, but is anything missing?  Yup, big time.  Bastion is so good he needs to fill every six spot in every Sentinel deck everywhere.

The Plot Twists in this deck look to be in pretty good shape with a few exceptions.

  Relocation has got to go.  In the long run there are more cards that can help you out way more.  If you’re absolutely set on denying your opponent there locations, Ka-Boom would do so much more for you so you can keep dropping army characters while your opponent has uniqueness issues to deal with.

  Termination Sequence isn’t that bad of a card, but again, there are more helpful things we can make use of.

  Burn Rubber is a great card under most circumstances but why should we use it when the   Mark V’s give us reinforcement for free?

As far as the Locations Derris is using, I don’t really care for any of them.

  Orbital Sentinel base would have to make use of multiple small Sentinels to work consistently and I’m not fond of losing my board presence.  Finishing Move or A Death In the Family are much better choices.

  South American Sentinel Base just works to slowly when compared to a Reconstruction Program so it has to come out too.

  If I were to use Underground Sentinel Base I’d never flip it until turn 7 after I recruited my Magneto simply because I don’t like setting my resources back behind my opponents.  Perhaps we can find something we can use a little earlier.

So this is my final deck list for a Curve style deck.

Characters:  34

Boliver Trask x2  (If you find you hit your curve well enough you may want to remove this guy in favor of a few more Mark’s)

Sentinel Mark III x7

Sentinel Mark II x7

Sentinel Mark V x8

Nimrod x4

Bastion x3

Magneto x3

Plot Twists: 22

Reconstruction Program x4

Cover Fire x4

Combat Protocols x4

Finishing Move/A Death In the Family x4

Tag Team x4 (This just works to well with the Mark V’s)

Savage Beatdown/Mega-Blast/Flying Kick x2

Locations: 4

Genosha (so much drawing power, food for Bastion)

Here’s a simple version of a Wild Vomit deck.

Characters:  38

Longshot x4

Senator Kelly x4

Wild Sentinel x18

Sentinel Mark IV x12

Plot Twists: 12

Combat Protocols x2

Reconstruction Program x4

Cover Fire x4

Search and Destroy x2

Locations: 10

Underground Sentinel Base x4

Orbital Sentinel Base x3

Xavier’s School x3 (To use Longshot over and over again)

  Personally Darris, I think these are the two best ways to go when playing Sentinels.  You must find some more Mark V’s to make a Sentinel deck worthy to go against any other deck if you don’t want to play a vomit style deck.

  Hope this helped you out a little.  I know I went a little off of your original “swarm” idea, but I really do think these builds are much more competitive.

Until next time,

    Ciao