07.26.04 Hey all, and welcome to another edition of the VS Deck Garage!  This week, we have a deck sent in by Carl, who wants some help with his Arkham Inmates – Sinister Syndicate deck.  Both teams are good on their own, so they have to be great together, right?  Below is Carl’s current decklist:

CHARACTERS (34):

3 Harley Quinn, Dr. Harley Quinzel

2 Query and Echo, Double Trouble

2 Vulture, Adrian Toomes

3 Electro, Maxwell Dillon

3 Two-Face, Harvey Dent

3 Charaxes, Drury Walker

3 The Joker, Joker’s Wild

3 Dr. Octopus, Otto Octavius

3 The Joker, Laughing Lunatic

2 Green Goblin, Norman Osborne

2 Killer Croc, Wayland Jones

2 Venom, Eddie Brock

1 Bane, The Man Who Broke the Bat

1 Dr. Octopus, Doc Ock

1 The Joker, The Clown Prince of Crime

PLOT TWISTS (16):

3 Crushing Blow

2 Fast Getaway

3 Marvel Team-Up

2 One-Two Punch

3 Prison Break

3 Sadistic Choice

LOCATIONS (8):

2 Arkham Asylum

2 No Man’s Land

4 Osborn Industries

*2 Missing*

I’m not sure if the two missing cards are my fault or not, but that’s OK, we’ll fix it through the course of the article.

The first thing I spotted was a somewhat high number of 1-Drops.  Aside from New Brotherhood and Sentinels, there aren’t many decks that need more than four 1-Drops.  As much as I like Harley Quinn (she’s so good!), I like Vulture that much more.

-3 Harley Quinn, Dr. Harley Quinzel

-2 Query and Echo, Double Trouble

+2 Vulture, Adrian Toomes

Next, I like Electro in this deck, but not so much Two-Face.  Carl mentioned being unable to get cards like Have A Blast, making opponents’ locations a nuisance.  Thus, I would suggest running Firefly, who is a nice, inexpensive substitute.

-3 Two-Face, Harvey Dent

+3 Firefly, Garfield Lynns

Hooray for Charaxes, no problem with that character.  However, I do think that The Joker, Joker’s Wild needs to go.  I understand that drawing cards is good, but this deck needs all the help it can get in the early game, and Joker just isn’t the sort of help that’s needed.  Instead, I think Rhino, Alex O’Hirn would be a suitable replacement.  The endurance loss isn’t as bad with Vulture running around, and he is a rather large 3-Drop.

-3 The Joker, Joker’s Wild

+3 Rhino, Alex O’Hirn

I think Carl’s 4-Drops are more than acceptable, but I have to disagree with the choice of Killer Croc over Scarecrow.  Although small, Scarecrow is an obscenely good character, allowing you to have some degree of board control.  Combined with many other cards in this deck, Scarecrow fits the theme better, as well.

-2 Killer Croc, Wayland Jones

+2 Scarecrow, Professor Jonathan Crane

The rest of Carl’s characters are great – no complaints whatsoever.

In Plot Twists, I’m not too sure Crushing Blow or One-Two Punch really belong.  Instead, I would suggest running Flying Kick and Mega-Blast.  Here would be a good spot to use those two extra slots, allowing us to have seven major pumps.

-3 Crushing Blow

-2 One-Two Punch

+4 Flying Kick

+3 Mega-Blast

I’m not a huge fan of Prison Break.  It seems like its decent, but at the same time, I’m not sure that there are a lot of occasions I would like to draw it up.  Instead, why not use those three slots to help out the Team-Up aspect of the deck with World’s Finest.

-3 Prison Break

+3 World’s Finest

Finally, reviewing locations, if I had to choose between Osborne Industries (or Cerebro Light, if you will) and Doc Ock’s Lab, the Lab wins every time, especially in this deck, which tends to have characters that are on the smaller end of the spectrum.  However, I don’t think the Lab is good enough to have a full set, so I’m going to shift one of those cards over to Arkham Asylum. 

-4 Osborne Industries

+1 Arkham Asylum

+3 Doc Ock’s Lab

That about wraps up the work on Carl’s decklist.  The final version looks like this:

CHARACTERS (34):

4 Vulture, Adrian Toomes

3 Electro, Maxwell Dillon

3 Firefly, Garfield Lynns

3 Charaxes, Drury Walker

3 Rhino, Alex O’Hirn

3 Dr. Octopus, Otto Octavius

3 The Joker, Laughing Lunatic

2 Green Goblin, Norman Osborne

2 Scarecrow, Professor Jonathan Crane

2 Venom, Eddie Brock

1 Bane, The Man Who Broke the Bat

1 Dr. Octopus, Doc Ock

1 The Joker, The Clown Prince of Crime

PLOT TWISTS (18):

2 Fast Getaway

4 Flying Kick

3 Marvel Team-Up

3 Mega-Blast

3 Sadistic Choice

3 World’s Finest

LOCATIONS (8):

3 Arkham Asylum

3 Doc Ock’s Lab

2 No Man’s Land

I hope that helps, Carl, and good luck smashing your opponents!