Beloved Evolution pt.2
Posted 08-21-2009 at 10:24 PM by Shadowtrooper
Welcome back to my ramblings on Vs. It seems like every day people write less and less about this game. There are so many formats out there to choose from and so many card combinations to pick that I can't believe the community doesn't share more the ideas that they have. I would like to encourage the remaining members of the community to go ahead and write about their decks and post about them in their blogs. Don't worry to much about how good the deck is, or how well written it is. My decks are not always the best, and I have never been that great with grammar, but I enjoy sharing what little I know. I hope you guys give it a shot. Well enough of this on to what your probably here for.
Last week we began a project that took an old version of a My Beloved deck in hopes to transform it into a refreshed version of itself. The first step of the process was to breakdown the deck, and analyze how the deck functions, and what the main goal of it was. We concluded that the goal of the deck was a limited toolbox deck that wanted to control the opponents actions with high versatility cards like D!ck Grayson, and solid control elements like Tower of Babel. To enable the toolboxing the deck had plenty of search cards, thanks to the fact that both the Gotham Knights and the League of Assassins have real search cards.
Now that the refresh form last week is complete we will move on to the evolution part of our journey.
Characters:
I don’t think there is a better 1 drop option for the deck than our dear old Alfred so he will stay as our 1 drop. Searching for plot twists is great but for the idea I have on how to improve on the deck the fact that Alfred returns to our hands is a welcomed benefit. He can be discarded for cycling power, while being put into play for free.
The best option for a two drop character for the League has is Talia, Beloved Betrayer. Not only does she have big 3/3 stats for a 2 drop, but she also allows for a character to stay in play, which is good news for us in case we don’t team-up on 2. Now since I don’t want just one option at two like the previous deck, and I want the deck to continue having that control feel to it I would like to add Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon to the deck. When compared to Harvey Bullock, Bishop our dear old Gordon doesn’t look to good. Unlike an activation from Harvey, he will consume some endurance to get the equipment KO but the fact that he can KO more than one equipment per turn just makes up for it. Just thinking about blowing away complete Fate Artifacts sets just overflows me with joy.
The third drop turn will also get an upgrade, while keeping options available. This time all our options are of the concealed type. We will start things off with our main drop Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Elite. We all know her stats are not the best out there but the extra cards she brings are just to good to ignore. She also has substitute which means we can get her into play at any point we deem her necessary. We continue with Batman, Founding Member. This little guy has great stats at 5/5 and the fact that he is a walking Have a Blast just makes him a great choice for a control oriented deck. Any ongoing or location that’s bothering you will find it’s way to the KO pile in a hurry. Last option here is The Mad Dog, Rabid Killer. He is going to be our little guy killing machine. A perfect fit for the deck in this control oriented theme.
So we have reached the 4 drop slot. Here we have some very though choices. I like almost all of the choices offered in the original deck list but I think we can beef them up. First up is Merlyn and one of the best things we can do with him is upgrade for the DCL version. While the DSM version is very good and an integral part of the old Deep Green decks this deck will not run as many locations, and no easy way to go get them other than The Demon’s Head. Being cosmic and with no way to hide him effectively his usefulness in this deck might be limited. I will also keep a copy of D!ck Grayson just because of his versatility. Finishing up the lineup I think Huntress, Harsh Mistress is the perfect fit, not only because she was on the original deck list but also because she adds yet another control element to the deck.
Almost done with the characters, as we are up to turn 5. On the 5th turn I would really like to bring in some new blood. First up we will bring in Talia, Daughter of Madness. I like the fact that I can put extra characters into play for free, and if that character happens to be Alfred even better. This might be a risky move if you don’t have the initiative but just thinking about having the initiative and pulling this off sends yet another smile to my face. Now we cant have a League of Assassins deck without the presence of Ra’s so we will play his DCL incarnation at this spot too. He is basically a per attack Tower of Babel and well I don’t think I have to tell you how good a card Tower of Babel is against most decks out there. I’m a sucker for free stuns so I think Kate Kane will be a nice play here. There are several 1 cost locations and plot twist we will use so her ability can go off more than one would think.
Turn 6 brings in even more control to the deck with Batman, Cape and Cowl. There is really no other character I would rather play here than him, and that takes up to turn 7. Not many drops that I consider worth playing here. I really like Nyssa Raatko, Maiden of Death because she can just say in play and become a real pain to deal with. Just in case we have the initiative on the 7th turn I feel obligated to play Lady Shiva, Master Assassin. She was also on the original decklist and well a KO for an activation is just to good to pass. Last turn is the 8th turn and Ra’s al Ghul is who we will play. He can completely shut down any opposing decks with his power and again I don’t want to deviate from the original deck too much.
So now that we have our characters this is how we split them into the slots for the deck:
4 Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend
4 Talia, Beloved Betrayer
1 Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon
1 Ragman, Patchmonger
1 Hassim, Loyal Retainer
4 Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Elite
1 Batman, Founding Member
1 The Mad Dog, Rabid Killer
3 Huntress, Harsh Mistress
1 Merlyn, Direct Hitman
1 D!ck Grayson <> Nightwing, High-Flying Acrobat
1 Ra’s al Ghul, Demon’s Head Rising
1 Talia, Daughter of Madness
1 Kate Kane <> Batwoman, Katherine the Younger
2 Batman, Cape and Cowl
1 Lady Shiva, Master Assassin
1 Nyssa Raatko, Maiden of Death
1 Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head
So that’s our character base, 30 of them in total. If you take a look at the character base you will see two fellows in there that weren’t on our initial choices, Hassim, and Ragman. Now recruiting Hasim on the 2nd turn it might not be such a good idea, but discard him on the 5th so that Talia can put him into play and you just gained an extra ATK pump that you previously didn’t have. This extra ATK pump is perfect for going up the chain and causing some serious damage. As for Ragman I just like the ability to remove possible recursion any opponents might be working on, or even better get those copies of Meatmarket , Satana, and even Jean Grey out of the KO pile. His starting stats of 3/3 are not to shabby either.
Locations:
So we are officially done with the characters, now we move on to locations and plot twist. League of Assassins is a team that benefits greatly from the locations you have so I think it is better to address them first.
The first order of business is to up the count of Flying Fortress. This location is just beautiful. What else can you say about a reusable pseudo flying kick? I’m also interested in augmenting the chances of drawing into it rather than having to search for it, specially since we can start using it as early as turn 2. We will keep the Mountain Stronghold count at 4. It is the best way we have to ensure that we will hit our Talia on turn 2. It also gives us our second resource with a 1 cost so it improves the chances we have into getting a free stun with Kate Kane. Whenever I play a deck that allows for location search I like to include Sewer System. It’s a perfect card for attacking into the concealed area, and since it isn’t a plot twist or target an opposing character it can’t be negated as easily. One Slaughter Swamp, one DCL Lazarus Pit, and one Espionage to copy any interesting locations out there should be enough.
Here is what we have:
4 Flying Fortress
4 Mountain Stronghold
1 Sewer System
2 Slaughter Swamp
1 Lazarus Pit, Non-Unique – Death’s Door
So that’s a count of 12 locations. With the 30 characters we have that takes our deck up to 42 cards. Leaving us 18 plot twist and/or equipments cards to add to the list.
Plot Twists:
To be honest I think the plot twists are really good, but there are some choices I would like to increase, some to decrease and some to cut altogether.
First thing I would like to do is up the count of Bat-Signals to four. If you recall we already have two locations with a cost of 1 so again this increases the chances of getting a free stun from Kate Kane. It also allows for more search to be available to us.
I have a great debate between using Fizzle or to change over to Bat Got Your Tongue. It really all comes down to what do I prefer. Do I want to discard, or do I want to exhaust? Lets take a look at what we have. Four of our character choices enjoy or work with discarding, between them the total is seven. Mountain Stronghold is a discard as well but considering its searching for a character I have to say it just cycles the cards. Now for exhaustion effects we have 7 characters that have activated powers which translate into 14 characters that work of exhaustions. If we count Bat-Signal and The Demon’s Head its pretty clear the deck would prefer to discard rather than keep on piling the exhaustion so Fizzle it is. The fact of the matter is that the deck has the advantage of extra draw thanks to Barbara, and with Slaughter Swamp we can get back any drop we need that we might have discarded.
Though the deck is called My Beloved we must acknowledge that The Hook-Up is a far superior team-up. First of all it is an actual team-up so not every resource disruption card out there can target it, and well it can cycle cards like crazy. It’s also an easy way to control what character we discard for the Daughter of Madness. Still it isn’t in me to completely eliminate My Beloved from the deck, after all the deck was named after that card so one copy of it will remain.
After that we have two very useful utility cards from the League of Assassins side of the spectrum. One is The Demons Head, which will allow for us to search whatever location we might need. This card basically represents for our locations what the variety in characters does for the deck, and that is to have searchable options for whatever we might encounter. The other is Tower of Babel. I have talked about Tower of Babel before and I think by now everyone knows just how much I like this card. In BYOT and BYOTT this card is amazingly valuable, in other formats like Golden the card really helps out in certain matches like Lost City decks who hate not having Brotherhood affiliated characters. The count of the card in this deck is down to two simply because 5 drop Ra’s has a very similar effect.
So after everything has been said and done this is the plot twist count.
4 Bat-Signal
4 Fizzle
1 My Beloved
4 The Hook-Up
3 The Demon's Head
2 Tower of Babel
I have done a few runs of the deck in MWS and the deck performs like intended. Sure it is not the sleeper deck it once was, and with the newer sets having better and more powerful cards and strategies at their disposal we won’t be in for easy games, but it is just as fun as the old versions were. Here is the full decklist so you don’t have to scroll up and down:
Characters:
4 Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend
4 Talia, Beloved Betrayer
1 Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon
1 Ragman, Patchmonger
1 Hassim, Loyal Retainer
4 Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Elite
1 Batman, Founding Member
1 The Mad Dog, Rabid Killer
3 Huntress, Harsh Mistress
1 Merlyn, Direct Hitman
1 **** Grayson <> Nightwing, High-Flying Acrobat
1 Ra’s al Ghul, Demon’s Head Rising
1 Talia, Daughter of Madness
1 Kate Kane <> Batwoman, Katherine the Younger
2 Batman, Cape and Cowl
1 Lady Shiva, Master Assassin
1 Nyssa Raatko, Maiden of Death
1 Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head
Plot Twists:
4 Bat-Signal
4 Fizzle
1 My Beloved
4 The Hook-Up
3 The Demon's Head
2 Tower of Babel
Locations:
4 Flying Fortress
4 Mountain Stronghold
1 Sewer System
2 Slaughter Swamp
1 Lazarus Pit, Non-Unique – Death’s Door
Well it certainly was a long time coming so I hoped you enjoyed the upgraded version of My Beloved. Remember that with Enemy of my Enemy as a toolbox enabler there can be much better versions of this deck built if we choose to step out of the two team comfort zone. So don’t be afraid to try out other cards to fill in any gaps you might have when playing the deck.
See you guys next time.
Last week we began a project that took an old version of a My Beloved deck in hopes to transform it into a refreshed version of itself. The first step of the process was to breakdown the deck, and analyze how the deck functions, and what the main goal of it was. We concluded that the goal of the deck was a limited toolbox deck that wanted to control the opponents actions with high versatility cards like D!ck Grayson, and solid control elements like Tower of Babel. To enable the toolboxing the deck had plenty of search cards, thanks to the fact that both the Gotham Knights and the League of Assassins have real search cards.
Now that the refresh form last week is complete we will move on to the evolution part of our journey.
Characters:
I don’t think there is a better 1 drop option for the deck than our dear old Alfred so he will stay as our 1 drop. Searching for plot twists is great but for the idea I have on how to improve on the deck the fact that Alfred returns to our hands is a welcomed benefit. He can be discarded for cycling power, while being put into play for free.
The best option for a two drop character for the League has is Talia, Beloved Betrayer. Not only does she have big 3/3 stats for a 2 drop, but she also allows for a character to stay in play, which is good news for us in case we don’t team-up on 2. Now since I don’t want just one option at two like the previous deck, and I want the deck to continue having that control feel to it I would like to add Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon to the deck. When compared to Harvey Bullock, Bishop our dear old Gordon doesn’t look to good. Unlike an activation from Harvey, he will consume some endurance to get the equipment KO but the fact that he can KO more than one equipment per turn just makes up for it. Just thinking about blowing away complete Fate Artifacts sets just overflows me with joy.
The third drop turn will also get an upgrade, while keeping options available. This time all our options are of the concealed type. We will start things off with our main drop Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Elite. We all know her stats are not the best out there but the extra cards she brings are just to good to ignore. She also has substitute which means we can get her into play at any point we deem her necessary. We continue with Batman, Founding Member. This little guy has great stats at 5/5 and the fact that he is a walking Have a Blast just makes him a great choice for a control oriented deck. Any ongoing or location that’s bothering you will find it’s way to the KO pile in a hurry. Last option here is The Mad Dog, Rabid Killer. He is going to be our little guy killing machine. A perfect fit for the deck in this control oriented theme.
So we have reached the 4 drop slot. Here we have some very though choices. I like almost all of the choices offered in the original deck list but I think we can beef them up. First up is Merlyn and one of the best things we can do with him is upgrade for the DCL version. While the DSM version is very good and an integral part of the old Deep Green decks this deck will not run as many locations, and no easy way to go get them other than The Demon’s Head. Being cosmic and with no way to hide him effectively his usefulness in this deck might be limited. I will also keep a copy of D!ck Grayson just because of his versatility. Finishing up the lineup I think Huntress, Harsh Mistress is the perfect fit, not only because she was on the original deck list but also because she adds yet another control element to the deck.
Almost done with the characters, as we are up to turn 5. On the 5th turn I would really like to bring in some new blood. First up we will bring in Talia, Daughter of Madness. I like the fact that I can put extra characters into play for free, and if that character happens to be Alfred even better. This might be a risky move if you don’t have the initiative but just thinking about having the initiative and pulling this off sends yet another smile to my face. Now we cant have a League of Assassins deck without the presence of Ra’s so we will play his DCL incarnation at this spot too. He is basically a per attack Tower of Babel and well I don’t think I have to tell you how good a card Tower of Babel is against most decks out there. I’m a sucker for free stuns so I think Kate Kane will be a nice play here. There are several 1 cost locations and plot twist we will use so her ability can go off more than one would think.
Turn 6 brings in even more control to the deck with Batman, Cape and Cowl. There is really no other character I would rather play here than him, and that takes up to turn 7. Not many drops that I consider worth playing here. I really like Nyssa Raatko, Maiden of Death because she can just say in play and become a real pain to deal with. Just in case we have the initiative on the 7th turn I feel obligated to play Lady Shiva, Master Assassin. She was also on the original decklist and well a KO for an activation is just to good to pass. Last turn is the 8th turn and Ra’s al Ghul is who we will play. He can completely shut down any opposing decks with his power and again I don’t want to deviate from the original deck too much.
So now that we have our characters this is how we split them into the slots for the deck:
4 Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend
4 Talia, Beloved Betrayer
1 Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon
1 Ragman, Patchmonger
1 Hassim, Loyal Retainer
4 Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Elite
1 Batman, Founding Member
1 The Mad Dog, Rabid Killer
3 Huntress, Harsh Mistress
1 Merlyn, Direct Hitman
1 D!ck Grayson <> Nightwing, High-Flying Acrobat
1 Ra’s al Ghul, Demon’s Head Rising
1 Talia, Daughter of Madness
1 Kate Kane <> Batwoman, Katherine the Younger
2 Batman, Cape and Cowl
1 Lady Shiva, Master Assassin
1 Nyssa Raatko, Maiden of Death
1 Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head
So that’s our character base, 30 of them in total. If you take a look at the character base you will see two fellows in there that weren’t on our initial choices, Hassim, and Ragman. Now recruiting Hasim on the 2nd turn it might not be such a good idea, but discard him on the 5th so that Talia can put him into play and you just gained an extra ATK pump that you previously didn’t have. This extra ATK pump is perfect for going up the chain and causing some serious damage. As for Ragman I just like the ability to remove possible recursion any opponents might be working on, or even better get those copies of Meatmarket , Satana, and even Jean Grey out of the KO pile. His starting stats of 3/3 are not to shabby either.
Locations:
So we are officially done with the characters, now we move on to locations and plot twist. League of Assassins is a team that benefits greatly from the locations you have so I think it is better to address them first.
The first order of business is to up the count of Flying Fortress. This location is just beautiful. What else can you say about a reusable pseudo flying kick? I’m also interested in augmenting the chances of drawing into it rather than having to search for it, specially since we can start using it as early as turn 2. We will keep the Mountain Stronghold count at 4. It is the best way we have to ensure that we will hit our Talia on turn 2. It also gives us our second resource with a 1 cost so it improves the chances we have into getting a free stun with Kate Kane. Whenever I play a deck that allows for location search I like to include Sewer System. It’s a perfect card for attacking into the concealed area, and since it isn’t a plot twist or target an opposing character it can’t be negated as easily. One Slaughter Swamp, one DCL Lazarus Pit, and one Espionage to copy any interesting locations out there should be enough.
Here is what we have:
4 Flying Fortress
4 Mountain Stronghold
1 Sewer System
2 Slaughter Swamp
1 Lazarus Pit, Non-Unique – Death’s Door
So that’s a count of 12 locations. With the 30 characters we have that takes our deck up to 42 cards. Leaving us 18 plot twist and/or equipments cards to add to the list.
Plot Twists:
To be honest I think the plot twists are really good, but there are some choices I would like to increase, some to decrease and some to cut altogether.
First thing I would like to do is up the count of Bat-Signals to four. If you recall we already have two locations with a cost of 1 so again this increases the chances of getting a free stun from Kate Kane. It also allows for more search to be available to us.
I have a great debate between using Fizzle or to change over to Bat Got Your Tongue. It really all comes down to what do I prefer. Do I want to discard, or do I want to exhaust? Lets take a look at what we have. Four of our character choices enjoy or work with discarding, between them the total is seven. Mountain Stronghold is a discard as well but considering its searching for a character I have to say it just cycles the cards. Now for exhaustion effects we have 7 characters that have activated powers which translate into 14 characters that work of exhaustions. If we count Bat-Signal and The Demon’s Head its pretty clear the deck would prefer to discard rather than keep on piling the exhaustion so Fizzle it is. The fact of the matter is that the deck has the advantage of extra draw thanks to Barbara, and with Slaughter Swamp we can get back any drop we need that we might have discarded.
Though the deck is called My Beloved we must acknowledge that The Hook-Up is a far superior team-up. First of all it is an actual team-up so not every resource disruption card out there can target it, and well it can cycle cards like crazy. It’s also an easy way to control what character we discard for the Daughter of Madness. Still it isn’t in me to completely eliminate My Beloved from the deck, after all the deck was named after that card so one copy of it will remain.
After that we have two very useful utility cards from the League of Assassins side of the spectrum. One is The Demons Head, which will allow for us to search whatever location we might need. This card basically represents for our locations what the variety in characters does for the deck, and that is to have searchable options for whatever we might encounter. The other is Tower of Babel. I have talked about Tower of Babel before and I think by now everyone knows just how much I like this card. In BYOT and BYOTT this card is amazingly valuable, in other formats like Golden the card really helps out in certain matches like Lost City decks who hate not having Brotherhood affiliated characters. The count of the card in this deck is down to two simply because 5 drop Ra’s has a very similar effect.
So after everything has been said and done this is the plot twist count.
4 Bat-Signal
4 Fizzle
1 My Beloved
4 The Hook-Up
3 The Demon's Head
2 Tower of Babel
I have done a few runs of the deck in MWS and the deck performs like intended. Sure it is not the sleeper deck it once was, and with the newer sets having better and more powerful cards and strategies at their disposal we won’t be in for easy games, but it is just as fun as the old versions were. Here is the full decklist so you don’t have to scroll up and down:
Characters:
4 Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend
4 Talia, Beloved Betrayer
1 Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon
1 Ragman, Patchmonger
1 Hassim, Loyal Retainer
4 Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Elite
1 Batman, Founding Member
1 The Mad Dog, Rabid Killer
3 Huntress, Harsh Mistress
1 Merlyn, Direct Hitman
1 **** Grayson <> Nightwing, High-Flying Acrobat
1 Ra’s al Ghul, Demon’s Head Rising
1 Talia, Daughter of Madness
1 Kate Kane <> Batwoman, Katherine the Younger
2 Batman, Cape and Cowl
1 Lady Shiva, Master Assassin
1 Nyssa Raatko, Maiden of Death
1 Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head
Plot Twists:
4 Bat-Signal
4 Fizzle
1 My Beloved
4 The Hook-Up
3 The Demon's Head
2 Tower of Babel
Locations:
4 Flying Fortress
4 Mountain Stronghold
1 Sewer System
2 Slaughter Swamp
1 Lazarus Pit, Non-Unique – Death’s Door
Well it certainly was a long time coming so I hoped you enjoyed the upgraded version of My Beloved. Remember that with Enemy of my Enemy as a toolbox enabler there can be much better versions of this deck built if we choose to step out of the two team comfort zone. So don’t be afraid to try out other cards to fill in any gaps you might have when playing the deck.
See you guys next time.
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