VS Deck Garage
Unaffiliated / Negative Zone deck
by Paul Hagan

06.01.04  Hey all, sorry for the considerable absence, but now I’m back and ready to start straitening out the kinks in decks sent in by readers. If you’d like to see your deck in the VS Deck Garage, drop me an e-mail at Hagan0001@aol.com, and I should get back to you within a few days.

Before I get started this week, I have to make my case for a decision I made a week or two ago. I took Burn Rubber out of the Doom deck. I didn’t think it was necessary, especially with a large number of Army characters to play and reinforce with. After receiving a few complaints on this particular bit of advice, I’d just like to let everyone know that I underestimated the power of Burn Rubber, and you should probably consider putting it in many of your decks.

I didn’t get a name with this entry, so I’ll refer to him as Jim. Jim has sent in an Unaffiliated / Negative Zone deck, and wants some help. He didn’t mention any specifics in what he’d like done, other than a few possible directions he may go with the deck (i.e., Skrulls or Skrull/Negative Zone) in the future. Since I can’t really make that sort of decision for Jim, I’ll have to stick to Unaffiliated.

[Side Note: I don’t really like the little Skrulls – they just seem so sub par. Don’t let this comment stop you from trying to build a Skrull deck.]

Here’s the version of the deck Jim submitted:

CHARACTERS (30)
7 Random Punks
4 Puppet Master, Philip Masters
3 Arcade, Master of Murderworld
4 Mojo, Ruler of Mojoworld
3 Spiral, Ricochet Rita
3 Lady Deathstrike, Yuriko Oyama
3 Blastaar, King of Baluur
3 Annihilus, Destroyer of Life

PLOT TWISTS (19)
4 Burn Rubber
4 Acrobatic Dodge
4 Nasty Surprise
4 Flying Kick
3 Savage Beatdown

LOCATIONS (5)
3 Negative Zone
2 Base of Operations

EQUIPMENT (6)
3 Personal Force Field
3 Dual Sidearms

WHAT LOOKS RIGHT:

Ok, I’ll go ahead and start off by saying Jim is doing a *lot* correctly. He has a good mix of characters, locations, plot twists, and equipment. He also is playing most of the correct cards. Hooray for Jim spotting that Burn Rubber and Personal Force Field are amazing in this deck (yes, that’s right, Personal Force Field is actually OK to play). He’s also partaking in the cardinal rule of almost every CCG: Play the minimum number of cards. It increases the chance of drawing what you need.

Jim (I know that’s not your name, sorry! – Paul), you’ve done a great job and I’m only going to do a little bit to your deck. You have forced me to have a short column this week.

WHAT NEEDS FIXIN’:

Taking a glance over the deck, I see that Jim has a few out of place guys at six and seven, while he is skimping on turns 3 and 5. I’m also not a huge fan of one of the plot twists and one piece of equipment, so we’ll work on that.

HOW WE DO IT:

I know some of you are asking, “But wait, how can Blastaar and Annihilus be out of place? Negative Zone is in the deck!” Here’s my problem with Negative Zone and crew in this deck: you want to play almost every card you draw. If the point of playing unaffiliated is to make Mojo huge, then Jim wants to keep a lot of small, unaffiliated guys in play. In turn, this means his hand size is going to be a bit low. This, in turn, means he doesn’t have cards to lose to Negative Zone. This (in turn), means that he’s putting himself at a disadvantage for no good reason.

-3 Negative Zone
-3 Annihilus, Destroyer of Life
-3 Blastaar, King of Baluur

So who gets to join up in these cards’ place? Well, looking at unaffiliated, Jim is playing almost all of the good and none of the bad. So why don’t we start by filling out some of the slots in the deck:

+1 Arcade, Master of Murderworld
+1 Spiral, Ricochet Rita
+1 Lady Deathstrike, Yuriko Oyama

Now, we can’t have a deck without 6- or 7-Drops, right? Looking over the listing of Unaffiliated characters, there don’t seem to be any 6-Drops. So I went on the hunt for a decent 6-Drop. After eliminating anything that required playing a specific affiliation for a good ability, I came up with the list of Storm (Weather Witch), Hulk (New Fantastic Four), and Super Skrull (Engineered Super-Soldier). As this deck tends to use all of its resource row, Hulk had to go out. Between Storm and Super Skrull, I’d tend to take sheer power in the late game over tricks, so:

+3 Super Skrull, Engineered Super-Soldier

In the way of 7-Drops, I went down to just running two, and they are in the form of:

+2 Juggernaut, Cain Marko

The ability of this card to completely wreck a game is amazing. I’ve played enough against it that I am now worried about having initiative in Turn 7, just so I can deal with Juggernaut before he deals with me. Finally, I’ve added -- on the Just ‘Cause Principle – a powerful card that doesn’t see much play:

+1 Apocalypse, En Sabah Nur

Jim won’t draw him all the time, which is probably a good thing, but it can’t hurt to have one floating around in the deck. By the time he hits Turn 8, he’ll have gone through 20 cards (24 if he takes a mulligan), meaning about one in every three games he hits Turn 8, Apocalypse will be there to back him up. This seems reasonable.

Taking our attention away from characters and towards Plot Twists, I like the mix Jim included. He has plenty of offense and some good defense. The only thing I don’t care for is Nasty Surprise. This card has always seemed not-so-hot to me, so I’m cutting it.

[Side Note #2: I know some of you probably love Nasty Surprise, but I just don’t care for it. Feel free to play it; it’s not going to ruin your deck.]

-4 Nasty Surprise

Replacing the Surprise is the final Savage Beatdown and a card that probably needs to hang out in almost every deck: Ka-Boom! Locations are so key in a lot of decks right now, meaning you should be doing something to stop your opponent’s locations from doing you harm.

+1 Savage Beatdown
+3 Ka-Boom!

Under locations, I’ve already cut Negative Zone and replaced it, so all looks well here. If Jim can find room, he could try putting in a third Base of Operations, but it isn’t necessary.

Equipment is the last place I’ll touch on, and it’ll be quick. An unaffiliated deck’s weak point is its lack of defense. You have to play cards like Personal Force Field and Burn Rubber, and anything else would probably be worth it. Dual Sidearms is a good card, no doubt, but this deck really doesn’t need any help with offense.

-3 Dual Sidearms
+3 Unstable Molecules

So, with all of the above changes, the final decklist looks like this:

CHARACTERS (33):
7 Random Punks
4 Puppet Master, Philip Masters
4 Arcade, Master of Murderworld
4 Mojo, Ruler of Mojoworld
4 Spiral, Ricochet Rita
4 Lady Deathstrike, Yuriko Oyama
3 Super-Skrull, Engineered Super Soldier
2 Juggernaut, Cain Marko
1 Apocalypse, En Sabah Nur

PLOT TWISTS (19):
4 Acrobatic Dodge
4 Burn Rubber
4 Flying Kick
3 Ka-Boom!
4 Savage Beatdown

LOCATIONS (2):
2 Base of Operations

EQUIPMENT (6):
3 Personal Force Field
3 Unstable Molecules

Hope this helps you out, “Jim”, and I appreciate any feedback you give. If you’d like to see your deck in the Deck Garage, drop me an e-mail at Hagan0001@aol.com.  That about wraps it up for this version of VS Deck Garage – Thanks for reading!

-Paul Hagan
 

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