Old Deck: Random Heralds

When I picked up VS System as my main card game, I was, to say the least, a bit late to the party. Marvel Team Up had just recently come out, and right as I started buying cards (as I mentioned, I decided to start with the Heralds of Galactus set), the first City Champs happened. I didn’t have the cards or the experience, so I decided not to participate. The next major tournament at our local place was the inaugural Random Punks tournament. It seemed like a very good way to get started, considering I had very few rares, so I started to put together a deck with my buddy Brian. Since I was mostly working off the Heralds set, my choice for a deck seemed pretty simple. The Heralds of Galactus had a non rare search (and a very good one) in Kindred Spirits, and at the time had the only non rare 8 drop in Tyrant. I also wanted to splash in some Inhumans, mainly because every major character in the deck was cosmic, and no one loves cosmic counters more than Franklin Richards. The general idea was to create a mostly stall deck based on moving characters hidden, cosmic effects, card draw and endurance gain. It’s pretty straightforward.

Characters (30):

4x Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend

4x Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter Earth

4x Frankie Raye <> Nova, Soul Searcher

3x Human Torch, The Invisible Man

2x Moondragon, Protector of the Mind Gem

3x Air-Walker, Harbinger of Despair

1x Alaris, The Outgoing One

3x Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation

1x The Fallen One, The Forgotten

3x Galactus, the Maker

2x Tyrant, The Original Herald

Locations (7):

3x Elemental Converters

2x Worldeater Apparatus

2x Soul World

Plot Twists (23):

4x Cover Fire

4x Extended Family, Team-Up

4x Kindred Spirits

4x Cosmic Necessity

3x The Power Cosmic Unleashed

2x A Proud Zinco Product

2x The Herald Ordeal, Team-Up

The deck almost always wants even initiatives, due to the deck turning aggressive on turn six, with Destroyer making a big swing as a 15/15 thanks to a Power Cosmic Unleashed. Even though this might lead to Galactus losing his counter off my initiative, it usually works really well. Most opponents would not exactly expect Destroyer, especially with a counter put on him, so you can usually either one way across the curve or swing down for some healthy breakthrough. Cover Fire is absolutely insane in the deck. Since the deck isn’t really designed to attack, and Franklin should be pretty much hiding everyone on the board until turn five, Air-Walker should be the only visible character with the potential to pump his defense into the 15-17 range on turn 5. With Frankie and the Converters drawing you cards, and either Moondragon drawing you even more cards or Torch taking away breakthrough and gaining endurance, it shouldn’t be too hard to reach turn 8, at which point Tyrant steals Torch’s counter (provided he still has it), and you absolutely obliterate your opponent’s board on 8. What I really like most about the deck is that the Heralds strategy really isn’t nerfed too much by the loss of rares. Sure, Air-Walker 3 (whose version happens to be my Gamertag on Xbox Live. Yes, I’m a geek), Red Shift, Terrax and 9 drop Galactus are fantastic and important cards, but I really dig how the team plays in the Punks environment.

I didn’t write anything down during the tournament as it happened, mostly due to the fact that it was the first tournament I ever played in and was a bit nervous due to that fact. There were seven or eight people there. I’ll try and go on memory to give a little tournament report.

Round 1:

I went against a New Brotherhood reservist deck (which I guess is New New Brotherhood. I’m not really up on the older deck names). He was having a lot of trouble drawing into his TNB’s, and thus didn’t have enough raw attack to get over a Cover Fired Air-Walker, which let me stall out a couple turns and use Galactus and Destroyer to very great effect.

1-0

Round 2:

This was my buddy Los’ Kree/Darkseid build designed to completely lock down my row with a Fated Up Ronan. He ended up putting the Fate Gear on Commander Dylon-Cir on three. I blew up his cloak with a Proud Zinco Product from the row and when he attacked into my Frankie, I replaced the APZP into a second APZP (the only other one in my deck) and broke his Amulet, which pretty much completely shut him down. I was brickwalling left and right on his initiative, and ended up clearing his board on 8 and swinging direct to gain 25 or so endurance due to Torch’s effect, which put me around 70 endurance to his ten. He scooped shortly after that.

2-0

Round 3:

Brian’s pseudo High Voltage Squadron burn deck based mostly around Black Panther with an Advanced Hardware and Golden Archer. This game went back and forth like crazy, and I ended up eking out a victory with both of us in the negatives. This game was probably the best example of the importance of Cosmic Necessity and Worldeater Apparatus in the deck, as the endurance gain let me hold on enough to win.

3-0

Round 4:

Another TNB Reservist deck. This was the first time all day that I missed a drop, and the lack of Frankie Ray on 3 and Lockjaw on 1 seriously neutered my Cover Fires. I ended up scooping on five after Air-Walker got taken down.

3-1

I ended up splitting with Brian for the finals, as he agreed to give me the win if I agreed to trade one of the EA Mobilizes for a standard Mobilize. I felt pretty good walking out of my first ever VS tournament with two Mobilizes, a Howard the Duck playmate and a bunch of packs. Not bad for my first foray into VS. One thing I must say, and this could simply be due to the format, but Cosmic Necessity was an extremely important card in every one of my wins. It either allowed me to draw into action (either a power up or Cover Fire) or gain enough endurance to keep my stall active into the late turns when Tyrant took things over. I still believe it’s an underrated card. This tournament led to a nice little streak of victories over the next couple months, with my winning a Marvel Team-Up sealed event, the World’s Finest Release and the Alter Ego Marquee Event. Of course, I ended up burning out in the World’s Finest City Champs with my extremely consistent Inhumans deck (I couldn’t draw a Lockjaw or Great Refuge to save my life) missing drops right and left. I guess the karma realigned itself that day.