Gah Lak Tus!: The Ultimate Family Affair

It’s that time again where I get to show you guys my latest creation. This deck has been a work in progress for quite some time now. The reason is that I don’t really like making decks with proxies of cards that I don’t have. I proxy the hell out of my Mobilizes because I already have my play set. I’m not going to go spending extra bucks on more copies when if I did need them for a tourney or something else I can just get them from the deck they are in. But for me doing proxies of cards that I don’t have just doesn’t feel right. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against it and I have done it, but it’s just not the same. Don’t ask me why cause I guess there is no real valuable answer I can give you. It just feels that way.

Back on topic, what is this devious card that I just can’t happen to get? Well actually it’s a card that I ordered at the UDE point store and much like it is the case for those of us who ordered the cards they just haven’t arrived. Anyway the card is Gah Lak Tus!

I doubt you guys don’t know what the card does but just in case here is its text:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gah Lak Tus!

Play only if you have played no plot twists this turn and you control an Ultimates character or a character named Galactus.
Ongoing: At the start of the recovery phase, each player removes a resource he controls from the game unless he removes a character he controls from the game.

Now I don’t really know much, well OK I know close to nothing about Marvel Ultimates, but I know that this card is simply amazing. Long had I waited for the chance to build a deck that could control the board with such power and determination as the one that this card brings to the table. When I first saw Gah Lak Tus! I thought that Green Goblin, Ultimates was going to be the perfect match for the card. These where some of the early cards released for this MUL mini-set and I didn’t really knew if there was something else coming along. While he was a good idea it somehow just didn’t feel right. To my delight there were more MUL cards released and one of the cards was a match made in heaven for Gah Lak Tus! The card I am speaking of if Jean Grey, Ultimates. What? Yes Jean Grey. She compliments Gah Lak Tus! very well and with what I had in mind much better than what Green Goblin did, add to that the fact that there are far better choices from the X-men side of the of the shoebox to add power and control to the build. More and more useful cards came out in Marvel Ultimates and then when Marvel Evolution came out the few final pieces arrived. I just couldn’t keep waiting for UDE to deliver proxies it would be.

Ok on to the deck list since I know that’s what most of you are here for.


Characters (30):
4x Shadowcat, Phase Shifter
4x Wasp, Ultimates
4x Beast, Wild and Woolly
4x Clint Barton, Ultimates
4x Mr. Fantastic, Ultimates
1x Blade, Independent Contractor
2x Cable, New Avenger
4x Jean Grey, Ultimates
4x Cyclops, Ultimates

Plot Twists (24):
4x Gah Lak Tus!, Ultimates
4x Liberation Day, Ultimates
4x Total Anarchy
2x Pathetic Attempt
2x Finishing Move
2x Bodyslide
3x Savage Beatdown
3x Concussive Force
1x The Stamford Incident

Locations (4):
4x The Triskelion, Ultimates


This is a medium curve deck as it only runs characters up to the 5th turn. I always like to have options in my decks just in case the deck doesn’t work out as intended but I decided to throw caution to the wind, and play a deck that I would just have fun with. Now I like to have fun while playing but needless to say I’m a fairly competitive person. Even when making theme decks and janky inventions I like to make the best possible versions of the decks as I can. But enough of that lets see what makes the deck go, what is its mission in life, and how it works.

Now the object of the deck is to control the opposing board. That task is always easier to say than to do, but this deck does have the ability to do this. Now the key card in the deck is obviously Gah Lak Tus! As I stated earlier this card is a great control element. Now getting an opposing character removed from the game is a great thing, but making them lose resources is even better. Now the question is how do we force an opponent to lose a resource? Well basically if he has no characters in play he just won’t have a chance to remove them right? So that’s what the deck intends to do. The objective here is to control character presence on the board so that opponents lose resources. The best way I could think to do this was to KO their characters.


With the goal in mind and a pretty solid idea of what to do I decided to go with Total Anarchy, a few Finishing Moves, a pseudo Finishing Move found in Clint Barton and the character removal bonus of the fearless leader, Cyclops. This is a very high count of character removal and I wouldn’t of have it any other way. At this point the deck was pretty much going to be an S.H.I.E.L.D. and X-Men build, and I was ok with that. Although the X-men have been in featured in 3 sets (4 if you count Marvel Evolution) and they have received legacy content in almost every set and mini sets they just don’t see as much play as one would think, at least not around these corners.

So what I needed to do now was build the rest of the deck around these cards. I now I wanted a strong 1drop character so that I could easily attack up the curve. Most decks don’t use 1 drops so this could give me an advantage in board presence. I also wanted to make sure I kept the character around long enough to matter so it had to be a concealed character. Two results came MVL’s Shadowcat had enough “umph” in her so that she could take on a 2 drop and quite possibly even a 3 drop. She is also concealed and with her being X-men it was a perfect choice. The other choice came in the form of Wasp. With Wasp in the game I could easily use Clint Barton as a Finishing Move on the second turn not only because she is an Ultimates character but because she is also a S.H.I.E.L.D. character keeping me within teams. Other benefits came from the fact that she is concealed, and her ability could help me in the endurance race for the late game.

With one drops out of the way I moved on to the two drops. I already knew Clint Barton was in the deck but I needed more two drops in my arsenal. I looked at my options and I decided to play with Beast from Marvel Evolutions. This being a sort of combo deck I needed to get the pieces of the puzzle together and with his ability to cycle cards it really was a great choice. He also has great stats as far as common 3 drops come, but the best part is that I stayed within teams.

Like I just said this is sort of a combo deck and I need to get the pieces together as fast as I can if I am to get the control that I want. Maximizing the number of the cards I needed for the deck to go off helps in that department and well the Beast is another piece of help. But I wanted the deck to really provide me an effective way to search for what I needed. No X-men card provided me with that, but Mr. Fantastic from the Ultimates was a perfect choice. I really didn’t like going off team but I like consistency even more. At this point the idea of running my other 3 drops didn’t even exist so I’ll skip them and discuss them later.

This left me with the 4 drop choice to be made, as I already knew my 5 drop. As you know by now my 4 drop is Jean Grey. Now there are a few reasons why Jean is perfect for the deck. The first reason is that she is an Ultimates character, which essentially we need to play Gah Lak Tus! The second reason is that she stays in team, and then we have the fact that she has both flight and range. Then we have her high DEF value. This is really going to help us maintain a decent board presence. Now the best reason is that as I stated earlier is that she compliments Gah Lak Tus! Now it is really doubtful that an opponent will lose a resource so what Jean Grey effectively accomplishes is a 5 point endurance loss. This is something we need just in case the combo takes an extra turn, or if it doesn’t go off at all. Seeing as the strategy of the deck is to get stuck on 5 resources or less for your opponents recruiting her over and over again is not a bad idea. The other thing we can do is to have her enter and exit play, and whom better than her own offspring Cable and his Bodyslide plot twist to make it even better. (Having him on the deck actually makes this deck a family affair. The Ultimate Family Affair? I think this deck just got a name. )


Ok so here is what the deck wants to do. We want evens:

1st turn – Resource and either Wasp or Shadowcat. If we play Wasp, attack to face if the opponent lacks characters if we recruit Shadowcat sit back and relax. Do not activate Wasp for her ability, we save that for a late game win. You might be tempted to do so as I have been but we don’t really want to be throwing the pieces of our combo out the window. If an opponent recruits a 1 drop that can be taken out with Wasp go for it

2nd turn – Resource and either Beast or Clint, preferably Beast. Attack with Beast if you can get the KO with either a Clint or Finishing Move. If not cycle what you don’t need.

3rd turn – Resource and Mr. Fantastic. Use Mr. Fantastic to search for whatever piece of the puzzle you are missing. Total Anarchy, Gah Lak Tus!, or any drop you are missing. If we managed to KO their 2 drop we have a chance at keeping our board with only one stun.

4th turn – Resource, play Gah Lak Tus! Then recruit Jean, and then flip Total Anarchy. As stated Jean will cause the 5 point endurance loss unless your opponent is playing a deck that doesn’t care much for resource which at such an early stage in the game won’t be the case just yet. Make your formation with Jean in front of Mr. Fantastic. Now depending on what you have these are your options. Go with Jean after their 3 drop to force the KO thanks to Total Anarchy. He only has a 4 drop in play, if he still has a 2 drop then go after it with a pump, or attacking down the curve with Mr. Fantastic. Now if he doesn’t have a 2 drop we can either try to stun the 4 drop and force a KO with either a Finishing Move or Clint Barton, or just chill and let him attack. If we don’t get the KO odds are that Gah Lak Tus! will get the character for us as the opponent doesn’t want to lose a resource, but if we get his 4 drop out of play then he just went down a resource. That leaves us the easy choice of getting rid of our 1 drop or 3 drop and keep Jean and our resources intact.

5th turn – Depending on how our hand size is we either draw the 2 cards or link the draw to an activation from The Triskelion. We lay a resource, play Cyclops and use Concussive Force. That means our opponents can’t attack and if they just recruited their 5 drop they are going to loose their character to Gah Lak Tus! yet again. If they recruited a 4 drop because they lost a resource on the 4th turn then don’t worry about using Concussive Force. With Jean’s DEF at 9 and Cyclops’ ATK at 10 there isn’t much he can do to us that will bother us.

6th turn – Again depending on how our hand size is we either draw the 2 cards or link the draw to an activation from The Triskelion. Here is where the Cable fun begins. There are a few reasons why we play Cyclops and Bodyslide in this deck. Here are a few:

1) It effectively helps us out win the endurance race by continuously getting Jean Grey in and out of play.

2) We can exhaust Cyclops for Concussive Force and get him back ready for an attack.

3) Get a second activation from Mr. Fantastic.

4) Not quite as good as the endurance loss cause by Jean but we can also get double activations from Wasp.

5) Last but not least it effectively helps us to break uniqueness.

So knowing quite well that the deck already has already two sources for burn found in Wasp an Jean grey why not use Cable - Nathan Summers from Marvel Legends and keep adding more burn to the deck why does the deck use Secret Avenger? Well there are a few cards that the deck carries to help against certain matchups and Secret Avenger is one of these cards. I did play Nathan Summers at first but some decks actually started to give me more trouble than I could handle or actually liked. I admit I love the control and power that Radioactive Man gives me, but when I see him across the field it isn’t quite as fun. Playing Nathan Summers didn’t really give me enough of an advantage against these decks. Sure the extra burn did help but not being able to play Gah Lak Tus! or some of my other plot twists didn’t really make matters any better, specially going into a 6th turn with no 6 drop. Cable - Secret Avenger succeeds where Nathan Summer fails as he gives me the choice of boosting him into play and taking Radioactive Man out of the equation.

I could of kept in team (X-Men) and deal with characters like Radioactive Man and use Gambit, Swamp Rat. The reason I didn’t do this was because I really enjoy the interactions that Cable brings to the table. I mean his boost is a great tool that works not only on your characters but also with your opponents characters, so even though I won’t always run into a Radioactive Man I can boost his effect and use it as a Bodyslide to get double the uses that I mentions a while back.

Getting around Radioactive Man and Mesmero is something that I kept in mind while building the deck; hence the deck uses more copies of Clint Barton than it does of Finishing Move. You see running Clint Barton is not only an easy way to add more Ultimates characters for easy use of Liberation Day, Mr. Fantastic and Gah Lak Tus! The safer way to play would be to add more copies of Finishing Move so that no matter who my 1 drop was I would be able to get the KO, while I can only get the KO with Clint Barton if I recruited Wasp. The thing is using Clint Barton goes over not only Radioactive Man and Mesmero, but he also goes over: From the Darkness, and Alias Investigations, Dr. Doom - Diabolic Genius, The Riddler - Riddle Me This, Lex Luthor – Megalomaniac, and a few other less played cards cards.

Not a lot of army 1 drop decks, or small rush decks are being played here right now (other than mine) so I only added one copy of The Stamford Incident in case the need for it arose. If your area of play is like mine and you don’t see these types of decks either than I would suggest you add in another copy of either Finishing Move or Concussive Force.

Blade was a late addition for the deck. I realized that I wanted the ability to attack the concealed area, even if I wasn’t going to use it. Even though I could pretty much handle Mesmero by doing Bodyslides on my Hunter characters and the fact that I play most if not all of my plot twist before the combat phase, I still wanted that reassurance that I could go after him if I so wished to. I also like to have options just in case I face a deck I know nothing about. Nice thing about Blade is that I don’t need to play plot twist for him to visit the concealed and he is S.H.I.E.L.D. affiliated so he is another useful character to have in order to better use Clint Barton.

Like I stated the deck like evens but it can handle playing odds, it simply takes a bit more patience and understanding of how the deck works. Deck goes off 80 percent of the time, which isn’t a bad thing for a deck of this type. Mulligans for this deck are weird. A 1 drop with a Mr. Fantastic or a way to get him is a great hand, but a 2 drop with Gah Lak Tus! is just a good a hand. I suggest you solitaire it a few times just so you get used to it. After playing with it you will begin to understand what I’m saying here. Only cards that are not must cards to see play are Total Anarchy and The Triskelion so you absolutely don’t mulligan for them.

Deck is fun as can be, and the more copies of Gah Lak Tus! you get, the better. Hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do. Like always comments and suggestions are not only welcomed but also encouraged. I’ll be back in a few weeks when I write yet again about something that at this point I don’t know what it will be.