Hidden Gems #2

So one of the most important things in the game of VS, and pretty much anything else in life, is the amount of bang that you can get for your buck.  In the real world, if you can get a good deal on something you really want, you’re usually going to take it, as its going to put you ahead in the world.

In the VS world, we always try to get the most that we can out of our cards. If a 2 drop can stun something bigger with a plot twist, we will almost always go that route, or if we can cheat in characters, if they’re on team, we will definitely include them for additional firepower.

This brings us to todays concealed gem.

Recently, I was building a Checkmate deck that abused Aspiring pawns. The deck did ok, but it crapped out often on turn 5. After considering the different options that Checkmate offered on turn 5, I took a step back, and stumbled upon a gem of a card that would fit the theme well, offer some flexibility as to when she could be played, and give me more bang for my resource points;

A not so dreamy aftermath…

So I’m liking the build, but it seemed to crap out an awful lot when you played it yesterday. Is there some kind of consistency issue with the deck, or were you two just not getting along that day?

     by TheBraveandtheBlog March 20, 2008 at 11:10 am 

So the deck did not play as marvelously as I anticipated. A few minor tweaks were made before I sat down with it on Tuesday night to test it out. It did an awesome job of being annoying a wiping the floor with my friends insanity build (the fact that he missed on 5 may have been a contributing factor, but I did only put out 2 pawns that turn) After a few matches, we decided that Amanda Waller, Queen, with a boost on 5 was a pretty awesome play. Her + 2 pawns equaled for 13 atk in the concealed!

Wednesday, after a few more tweaks (most notably adding in 2 amanda and cutting a Brother Eye, and a Hunte Castle) saw the deck play fairly poorly. Consistency all of a sudden turned into a big issue with the deck, and it totally bombed a couple of drops every game. It seemed I made something to anger the precious balance of the deck. Still, I really enjoyed playing the deck, and definitely plan on tweaking it some more until it becomes a kitchen table powerhouse.

Knightly Aspirations…

So first and foremost, my apologies to any consistent readers I may have. My internet has been down, as well as wonky this past week, and that, coupled with work, made posting close to impossible. Everything seems to be good now, so I plan to be posting on a much more consistent basis.

Moving on…

So, one of my goals since playing the game has always been to come up with a slightly competitive army deck. Out of my VS playing friends, I’ve always been the one to bring the jank-tastic army decks and see if they can at least scrape out a win. So far, only my variants on 2 net decks (War Paint, and AGL) have been able to net me some wins. This being the case, I had kind of put that on the wayside, and instead had become interested in characters that shared versions. After a few discussions with my VS partner in crime, we came upon a version from Crisis that never seemed to become abused; Knight. So after some discussion and card searching we came up with this little build. Oh, and guess what, it uses awesome Army characters;

The Dream Deck (because we all have Knightly Aspirations)

Characters:

13x Aspiring Pawn, Army

4x Sarge Steel, Knight

4x Fire, Knight

4x Harry Stein, King in Check

1x Roy Harper <> Arsenal, Knight

2x Huntress, Reluctuant Queen

Location:

4x Secret Checkmate HQ

4x Brother I Satellite

4x Brother Eye

4x Hunte Castle

4x Birthing Chamber

3x Rook Control

Plot Twists:

4x Ravaged

2x Furious Assault

3x Poker Night

The deck runs an obviously heavy location suite, but, thanks to Fire, you should be able to discard for damage every turn. The cool thing is that your Knights will get fairly big starting from 3 on, and with Rook Control, you should be able to throw your more important characters into the concealed, so you get to hurt things on the attack. While the deck is pretty straight-forward, having only one option at each drop, heres a dreamy play by play.

Preferred initiative is odds, but evens isn’t terrible.

Turn 1: Aspiring Pawn. As most deck run no ones, it should get a counter, and become a Knight.

Turn 2: Sarge. Stun their 2, and the Pawn will smash face for another counter.

Turn 3: Fire, burn for 2. I will add that against a World Finest Deck, it might be worth boosting in Sarge here to deny them an Alfred activation. Or Wong for defenders. Or any pesky 1 drop. Here, yet another counter for the pawn.

Turn 4: Harry Stein: Rook Control him into the concealed if possible. Smile as your Knights get beefier. Discard location for 2 burn from Fire.

Turn 5: Now here is where things can get interesting. Though that could have easily happened last turn. You should be up by at least 1 or 2 characters against your opponent, and have a 4/4 Pawn hanging around. You would hopefully put out 5 pawns on this turn. With Harry boosting up your knights, you can play ravaged and furious assault, helping Fire stun their 5. (With just one Ravaged and Furious Assault, she’d be at 9) Then either the Pawn or Sarge into their 4, and if a 3 is around, Harry into that. Now your Pawns are free to smash face, and get fabulously big. You Rook another Knight (preferably Fire) into the Concealed.

Turn 6: By this time, you should have a fairly large board, with a couple of pawns at 3/3. You drop another pawn and Arsenal, who gets Rooked to the concealed. With simply exhausting your locations, you should be able to get him at 13. If you played odd initiative, you can flip Secret Checkmate HQ so that when attacking back, your board is really gonna hurt them. Not just that, but whoever they attack with should easily be able to be stunned by Roy’s ability. Ouch. After that, stunning their remaining drop should not be a big problem, and everyone else can smash face for lots of painful damage.

So thats pretty much it. I’ll hopefully be able to put it together sometime before Hobby League this week. If thats not the case, I’ll just wait till next week. I’ll make sure to post on how it did. If you have any tweaks or suggestions, I’d be more than happy to take them. Oh, and just in case, I know Ahmed would probably make the deck run a lot better, but 1, he’s not a Knight, and 2) he’s Ahmed. Let’s just leave it at that.