Friday, March 21, 2008

Skrulls with no EOME? What is a boy to do?

I've been thinking a lot about how one of my favorite decks is going to look once Marvel Universe comes out and Enemy of My Enemy rotates out of the Silver Age. Of course, some of this is silly considering the fact that we have no clue what is to come in Marvel Universe. Hell, considering that issue 3 of Secret Invasion will be shipping right around the time Mega Weekend New York happens, we might be in a situation where not only did Marvel Universe come out, it might at least partially feature the Skrulls and make the current deck stronger. But I can't assume that that will be the case.

So what can be done to make the Skrull deck still work sans Enemy? Is Enemy even truly needed in the Skrull deck? I would think so, as hitting Captain America on 3 seems tantamount to success and the Skrulls do not have their own in team search. Mobilize isn't an option due to the fact that there are no Skrull characters on turn 1 (shed a tear for the busted, busted Nenora) and Franklin's your turn two play (who would actually play Warskrull anyway?). Heroes of Two Worlds is a turn too late. So do we have any options for searching out Captain America? This is where I turned to Doc X's search engine and did some digging. What I found was New Recruits. I can discard a Legionnaire character card and search my deck for any cosmic character? And it's active on two? So not only can I use it to find Captain America, I could conceivably use it to find Franklin as well if I managed to miss Lockjaw on one and didn't have him in hand. Plus, it's going to pretty much search for any character in my deck sans Lockjaw and Warskrull, both of whom are basically plot twists. But this does create a problem. We need to discard Legionnaires to make it work. This means we're looking at a pretty significant overhaul of the deck to fit in a third major team and at least slightly alter our strategy.

Running the Legion allows us to consider some things. Skrulls, for the most part, are a curve based deck. Lockjaw on one, Franklin on two, Cappy on three, Ethan on four, Paibok on five. Sure, under dropping can occur, but it's unlikely to happen any time before turn five. The Legion gives us a ton of very powerful low drop characters, as well as a free one drop in Jazmin Cullen. Timber Wolf's boost is a swarm curve's dream, as well as being a 4/1, which is great in a deck where you're not getting stunned while attacking. Element Lad can add to the up the curve madness that's already apparent thanks to Act of Defiance. XS is basically Quicksilver on three. And Wildfire can allow for Cap or Ronan or someone equally important to regain their counter once they recover. And, of course, they're all cosmic, so they can all be hidden by Franklin. The only apparent downside to this is the fact that Franklin can basically only hide one guy a turn, so you might have to leave a character or two visible if you do indeed underdrop. The full Skrulls curve is still there, and the addition of a solid swarm strategy with a predominantly hidden board can allow for full Birthing Chamber activations.

Th main drawback of the deck seems to be that the addition of the Legionnaires and Birthing Chambers take away from the number of raw attack pumps in the deck. There's a pretty big difference between running 12-13 pumps and 16-17. Those four missing attack bonuses can end up losing you a game. But this is the type of thing that can be ironed out in testing. Here's a very early build to give an idea of what I'm thinking here.

Characters:
4x Lockjaw, Inhuman's Best Friend
2x Jazmin Cullen <> Kid Quantum, Hero of Xanthu
4x Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter Earth
4x Warskrull, Skrull Infiltrator
3x Timber Wolf, Brin Londo
2x Ferro Lad, Andrew Nolan
2x Element Lad, Jan Arrah
4x Captain America, Skrull Imposter
2x Wolverine, Skrunucklehead
2x XS, Jenni Ognats
1x Ethan Edwards, Visitor From Another World
1x Ronan the Accuser, Starforce
1x Wild Fire, Drake Burroughs
1x Paibok, The Power Skrull
Locations:
3x Birthing Chamber
Plot Twists:
4x New Recruits
4x Act of Defiance, Team-Up
3x Extended Family, Team-Up
4x Flying Kick
4x Savage Beatdown
4x The Uni-Power
3x Blinding Rage

So there you have it. We'll have to see if this even works.

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