Considering that our Champs is coming up this weekend, I thought I'd take a step back and give a tournament report of my previous City Champs experience. When my local store was gearing up for our Marvel Legends City Championships, I had to choose between three decks. The first, a Marvel Knights/Fantastic Four equipment deck that spotlighted a Fated up Punisher, was a very good deck and quite consistent, but I couldn't go in that direction due to my lack of a full playset of Enemy of My Enemy. The second deck was a Jean Grey Legend deck that I had been tooling around with pretty much since Marvel Legends was released. It was a fun deck and I liked playing it, but I always thought something was lacking. The addition of a couple cards I had ordered online helped things, but I was still reticent. My favorite deck at the time, and the one I was positive I was going to run, was a solo Inhumans stall deck that was designed to basically stop my opponent from ever readying characters thanks to cards like Jolen, The Treacherous One, Nahrees, The Negative One, Medusa, Queen of the Inhumans, Gorgon, Thundering Hooves and Waking the Ancestors. Plus, the addition of Attilan allowed me the opportunity to throw in tech cards like Pathetic Attempt, This Bores Me and Mr. Sinister, Visionary Geneticist. I liked the deck and still do. The Inhumans are some of my favorite comic characters, and thus one of my favorite teams in VS. I often find myself thinking about new sets and new teams in VS in relation to how they could potentially team up with the Inhumans. I had my deck finalized and was ready to go.
However, and you can probably tell this was coming given the title of this article, I had a change of heart the morning of the tournament. Maybe it was the way the Inhumans betrayed me in my last City Champs, I don't know, but I wanted to play something fun. The Inhumans deck is a different kind of fun than Jean. Jean is much less susceptible to play mistakes. Plus, I just like playing combat builds. So I made the switch and decided to run Jean. It was an extremely good choice, as the meta would have absolutely wrecked a concealed stall deck that day. So here's what I ran.
Characters (29):
4x Jean Grey, Teen Telepath
3x Jean Grey, Telekinetic Fighter
4x Wolverine, Logan
1x Jean Grey, Age of Apocalypse
3x Emma Frost, Ice Queen
1x Nightcrawler, Hit Factory
4x Jean Grey, Phoenix Rising
2x Colossus, Organic Steel
1x Mimic, Exile
1x Jean Grey, Red
2x Juggernaut, The Unstoppable
1x Professor X, World's Most Powerful Telepath
2x Jean Grey, Phoenix Force
Locations (3):
3x Cerebro
Equipment (2):
2x B.P.R.D. Signal Device
Plot Twists (27):
4x Mobilize
4x Splintering Consciousness
4x Flying Kick
4x Turnabout
3x Savage Beatdown
3x Telepathic Suppression
3x New and Improved
2x Sneak Attack
And here's what went down
Round 1: JSA/Marvel Defenders
I was going against a relatively new player who was borrowing a new from his friend, so I decided to take it easy on him and slow play on a lot of my abilities. No Flying Kicks to the back row, no Telepathic Suppressions to take away reinforcement, nothing like that. I could have finished him on five, but we ended up going to turn seven, where Juggernaut did some serious damage to end the game.
1-0
Round 2: Jean Grey Legend
This wasn't exactly a mirror match, as Tom's deck was based around getting Jean as large as possible over and over, while mine was more focused on a strong curve in addition to the giant turn 5 Jean. With two big characters and lots of reinforcement, we went into turn 8 with my endurance in the high 20's and Tom at 10. The Jean Grey, Phoenix Force duel had begun. My mind was working overdrive here, as I had no recursion and only one 8 drop Jean at my disposal, while Tom has a Slaughter Swamp in his row. I knew this had to end before turn 13, but I didn't know how that would happen. I lucked out. On turn 10 Tom's initiative, he decided to play a Jean Grey, Teen Telepath so he could KO her to New and Improved and bring out a ludicrously large Jean Grey, Phoenix Rising with 22 +1/+1 counters on her. I laid my resource, played Jean Grey, Telekinetic Fighter and dropped Professor X, World's Most Powerful Telepath into play. The bald wonder proceeded to activate, targeting Jean, which would have burned Tom into the negatives by a pretty large margin. So Tom responded by KOing his Jean to New and Improved. With the board empty, my Telekinetic Fighter swung direct. With three power-ups and a Flying Kick, I was still one point of ATK short. I had a Mobilize in my row, so the game was already won, but I decided to be a little dramatic and flipped Cerebro, pulling a Jean Grey, Phoenix Rising off the top of my deck to end the game in my favor. It should be noted that this was my single favorite game of VS I've ever played. Excitement, drama, and victory all rolled into one.
2-0
Round 3: The Next Brotherhood
I made a huge play mistake in this game. I had a Mobilize in my row turn four that would have allowed me to search for my one off Nightcrawler, Hit Factory, who was put in the deck for the specific instance of being able to severely deplete the board advantage Kellen was slowly building. He would have been huge. But since I already had an Emma Frost, Ice Queen in hand and no guarantee that I would draw into a Jean Grey, Phoenix Force the next turn, I decided to go with Emma. With Nightcrawler, I would have been able to suppress his board, and he wouldn't have been able to barely eek out a victory on his initiative turn six. If we went to seven, Juggernaut would have caved in his skull, but sadly that was not to be.
2-1
Round 4: The Next Brotherhood
This was a different version of the deck than my last opponent, but it was hard to tell. Both of our decks weren't being cooperative this game. I missed on two, which is a cardinal sin with my deck, and ended up without a 4 drop on turn 4. I ended up having to play a Jean Grey, Teen Telepath, KO her to New and Improved and play another Jean Grey, Teen Telepath, who ended up one-waying my opponent's four drop thanks to a Turnabout. I was able to take control from there, as my less than inspiring four counter Jean was too much for my opponent to handle, and he scooped on five.
3-1
Finals: The Next Brotherhood
So it came down to another match against Kellen, wherein I happened to make THE EXACT SAME MISTAKE I MADE THE FIRST GAME. I had initiative on four. I had a Mobilize that could search out either Nightcrawler, Hit Factory or Emma Frost, Ice Queen. Hell, I even had a Sneak Attack in hand, which would have led to much board smashing. But I assumed that Kellen would stay on curve until turn 5, like he did in our first game against each other. But no. He underdropped into a 3 and a 1, and with Nightcrawler on the field, I would have one-wayed his entire board and shut down his game. But no. I went with Emma. And lost. I gave up during turn five, knowing I had messed up my chances at coming back.
So I finished in second place. It was an extremely fun tournament, and one I'll always remember.
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