So I had an idea. I love cosmic characters, both from the perspective of the mechanic in VS System and the characters in the comics themselves. I’ve built all kinds of cosmic decks that revolve around 2 drop Surfer (especially after his Board was released) or 2 drop Franklin Richards or this or that, and wherever I go to play VS, I always have at least one deck on hand based around the cosmic mechanic. But you know what? That’s not good enough. I want to push it further. I want every single card in my deck to have the word cosmic on it somewhere. Whether it’s the name, version, keyword, text box, flavor text, I don’t care. But it’s got to have the word cosmic on it somewhere. Will it be good? Probably not. But it’ll be a fun experiment, and that’s what’s important in this day and age.
I'm limiting myself to Silver Age here, as I don't really have any cards that stretch back to Golden. So after doing some quick research on Doc X’s Search Engine, we’re looking at 23 Plot Twists, 6 Locations and 3 Equipments with the word cosmic in the name or text box. Some of these cards, namely Bestow the Power Cosmic as an example, are completely useless to me, but we should still have enough support cards to put something together. What’s really fun about this is what we can’t use. The king of cosmic stall decks (and all stall decks, really) that is Galactus, Devourer of Worlds? Can’t use him. One of the most popular one drops in the Silver Age that makes his personal job searching out cosmic characters? No Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend for you. Want to draw some cards? No Elemental Converters. Want some pumps? You’d better be running Titans. Exhaustion effects? You’d better be a fan of Air-Walker 3. No I Must Obey or Spider-stall. Recursion? Soul World doesn’t have the word cosmic anywhere on it. Endurance gain? Say hello to Plasma, because that’s pretty much your only option. Indeed, there are only about four to six teams that are legitimately playable in this deck, and two of them, the Skrulls and the Infinity Watch, are mini teams, one of which only has three cosmic characters.
So what options do we have? The two most obvious are the Heralds of Galactus and Legionnaires. Indeed, the Legionnaires have probably the most cosmic support out there. Our other options are the Legion of Superheroes refeature of the Teen Titans, and the Inhumans. But at the same time, both of these teams are very important, as the only two Team-Ups available in this “format” are Extended Family (not stamped, but definitely beneficial to have some Inhumans out there) and Youth of Tomorrow, which requires Titans and Legion. Plus, the only search available to me (outside of Bestow the Power Cosmic, of course) is New Recruits, which requires a Legionnaires discard, but has the added bonus of searching for any character in my deck. Cosmic Tuning Fork will also allow for sifting, and it'll be nice to never miss with it as long as I hit a character card. Considering their support, the Legion should probably be the main focus of the deck, with splashes of the other teams. I am adamant in getting Adam Warlock, Protector of the Soul Gem into the deck even as a one of just due to the fact that I love his cosmic loyalty. I don’t know if I would ever actually play him, considering he does a pretty good job of completely dicking over the Legion’s undercurve strategy, but this is more of a thought experiment than anything else, so I'm trying to have some fun.
From here, we want to start formulating out overall character skeleton. With the Legion as our foundation, we’re going to want to go with a swarm curve that takes advantage of the bonuses from both the Legion and the Titans. The nice thing about this is suddenly cards that are pretty bad for their team (I’m definitely thinking Destroyer, Soulless Juggernaut) are a lot better in this situation, especially with the Legion’s multiple abilities to recur counters. I mean, boosting Timber Wolf on three and dropping Destroyer just put 8 attack on your board turn 3 with both characters able to stun up the curve. The character suite is starting to fall into place, but I’ve still got some combination of 33 characters (15 Legionnaires, 5 Teen Titans, 7 Heralds of Galactus, 2 Inhumans, 2 Infinity Watch and 1 Skrull) that I need to find out numbers and cut down. It’s still going to take a lot of work to try to finish this out, so I’m going to come back later with a second part complete with deck list.
And I’m also going to throw in a quick little extra. For those of you that also read my contributions to the Read/RANT comic review blog, I’m getting my new shipment of comics on Friday. This is what I plan to read in order, and what you folks can look forward to hearing my thoughts on in the next two weeks.
1. Captain Marvel #4 (Secret Invasion)
2. New Avengers #39 (Secret Invasion)
3. Ms. Marvel #25 (Secret Invasion)
4. Mighty Avengers #11
5. The Order #9
6. The Immortal Iron Fist #13
7. Thor #7
8. Angel: After the Fall #5
9. Incredible Hercules #115
10. Captain America #36
11. Green Lantern #29
12. World War Hulk Aftersmash: Warbound #4
13. World War Hulk Aftersmash: Damage Control #3
Plus, Comics Now Issue 2
Not a bad book on the list, and I want to immediately read every single book in this shipment. Pretty sure that the second I get home from work, I’m going to tear through every single one of these books back to back. Then I’ll hold on to Comics Now 2 for the long wait outside Wild Pig Comics Saturday morning prior to the uber sale.
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