Can anything beat Squad???

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Grippingrain20

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Now that PC ATL is over and squad has reigned supreme once again, is there anything out there that has a favorable matchup against it??? At PC ATL, I ran an avengers deck utuilizing Pym Laboratory for recovery. I was able to beat 2 of the 3 squad decks I faced because of it. My loss to squad came to me on an illegal play I was later notified of. Joys of being a rookie!!! Anyway, does Morlocks or FOX or Hellfire or anything else stand a chance against such a balanced squad deck??? Or should I simply skip MMA all together and look forward to more variety in Silver???
 
I do believe Avengers has the best matchup with it. I haven't really tested enough to be sure. The only thing is you will need to tech some cards to be able to beat other decks.
 
So is this the best we can do in this format. The same four decks against the same for decks? Hasn't anyone thought of something outside the box yet? I don't have access to any of the cards fro the new format, so I'm stuck in limbo. But surely there is more then this. Whatever happened to the good old days when you could just use anyold card to build a deck?
 
There are more than four decks in this format. Just not all of them will see play. I really like the mental deck and if built right it can give Squad a fit. I just haven't found the right build yet.
 
I really like the x-men mental deck also, I might put one together this week to play with next week. But I don't think it's stong enough to beat squad consistantly. A bad Squad player? yes a good squad player will be able to tear this deck to shreds though.....
 
your nuts alot of decks have favorable match-ups with it.

avengers has rick jones, natasha romanoff, and hawkeye. these cards alone can single handedly win you the game.

Hellfire club has shrink, the one system failure that pwns you whenever you get too big, the only way squad can beat this is if it gets in alot of early damage or you're running 1 sage with enemy of my enemy.

Faces or X-Faces goes toe to toe in the endurance race. the only reason squad reigned supreme is because people are comfortable with it.
 
exiledforcefreak said:
your nuts alot of decks have afvorable match-ups with it.

avengers has rick jones, natasha romanoff, and hawkeye. thexe cars alone can single handedly win you the game.

Hellfire club has shrink, the one system failure that pwns you whenever you get too big, the only way squad can beat this is if it gets in alot of early damage or you're running 1 sage with enemy of my enemy.

Faces or X-Faces goes toe to toe in the endurance race. the only reason squad reigned supreme is because people are comfortable with it.
Click to expand...

If avergers drops Rick Jones and you don't have an "Other Earth" or "Insect Swarm" squad will lose otherwise squad will win. Romanoff and hawkeye are annoying but don't win games against squad, espcially if Squad hits the curve which is what it tries to do against avengers.

Hellfire is very unstable, don't get me wrong I was planning on runing it, but the deck beats itself half the time. You have to hit the right Plot Twist and Character on the right turn or you will lose to any deck in the current meta. It has no room for error and would take a very very skilled player to pilot this deck to a consistent winning record.

X-Faces I could beat with my eyes closed. They don't beat you hard till at least turn 3, when they can flip thier team ups. Then if Squad goes off curve its a stun fest. Thier field stays limited and your characters get bigger the later the game goes. Oh, if squad misses "Other Earth" then there is a very high probablity that Squad will lose. But if Squad draws "Other Earth" your looking at taking 30 endurance lose in one turn without any stun back.

Basically, I believe its "Other Earth" that sets squad above other decks in the current meta. No reinforcement is pretty big, hence why I think the number 2 deck is going to be morlocks, they have a plottwist that also takes away reinforcement. Plus they keep thier field with evasion, burn, and recover life.... what's not to like about it.
 
System failure does nothing against squad. Their base attacks are so high to start, it is nearly impossible to system failure them. Shrink wont do much either. The attacks are so high and the defenses so low, it may actually hurt you to play shrink for the fact they may not stun back.

The mental deck doesn't stand a chance. All the stalling it does with mental dom and psylocke means nothing. Squad decks only run cards that are used outside an attack.

Other earth is the money card. Losing reinforcement often spells disaster. Without an other earth, squad becomes beatable sometimes. With it, its nearly impossible because of the amount of breakthrough you take.
 
hellfire club is the most consistant deck in MMA. 4 join the clubs and 4 power and wealths? please, it's alot more consistant then squad. shrinks and the like make HF club live to the later turns.

People who put their rick jones in the front row on their opponent's initiative while playing against squad are doing something wrong, you put it behind black panther. Avenger's reservist has the ability to match the field advantage squad puts out with stunnning outa combat tricks and heroes in reserve. Avengers reservist stays 10-15 points behind in endurance and pulls through a win on turn 5 or 6 against squad because it has the beats, and it's just that versitile.

faces recovers from bad situations by playing alot of characters every turn and then stunning every character the opponent has by attacking up the curve. faces will make sure no squad player has more then 1 character at the start of their next turn on their own init regardless of how many characters u play. I'm sorry, but faces goes toe to toe with squad and it's an even matchup. No plot twist in the game other then the wrecking crew dishes out 8 extra damage, it's just that good.
 
I don't know how much you playtested but Hellfire lost consistently against pretty much everything we put together. The one character on defense theme was not holding up too well when there are either A) too many characters on the field or B) they're attacks are huge.

The Squad/Avengers match-up favors Squad, simply because its the Avenger's player that has to hit thier tech to win. Missing Wonderman or not having enough reservist to stun Archer spells demise for Avengers. The position of Rick Jones doesn't matter when Albert Gains swings he can swing anywhere....

The Squad/Faces/Fox match-up I believe favors Squad because when Faces is off iniative it has nothing for stun back. Plus if the Squad player plays Other Earth its better than attacking the faces player directly. The other day I did 30 damage on turn 3 to Faces, plus no stun back! You don't recover from something like that.

Faces was what we were going to run for the PC, but it depended on too much luck. FOX helped make the deck more consistent in finding team-ups but the deck really doesn't deal any damage till after turn 3. Avengers can consistently beat a straight faces deck, FOX vs Avengers I'm still not sure who has the upper hand.

Another interesting thing between all these match-ups is the initiative is very important, any deck taht takes odds has a huge juymp on the other.

Avengers on odds garantees the use of a Romanoff team attack to stun a Lady Lark with her effect and a huge black pather swing through. It would be better on turn 2 for board presence, but a lot of the time avengers seems to miss Rick on 1.

Faces on odds is incredible! They can get at least 8 characters on turn five all swinging at huge attacks. Can you say intimidating. We are still tweaking one of these decks out and hopefully we can find the right cards to make this deck a winner over everything else.

Morlocks, I think morlocks is going to be the sleeper deck!!! They have everything, a great curve, evasion (huge board), burn and life gain, incredible attack and defensive pumps, a character searcher and great support plot twists. The deck can beat a FOX deck easily thanks to Tarbaby removing characters from the KO pile. It can easily handle an Avengers deck, "Is that hawkeye? I'll evade in response to you activating, oh and by the way when he recovers I'll burn you for one." Same goes for wonder man.... Or better yet "Did you just use Earth's mightest heros? Evade" Sure you re-ready, but your swinging for seven less.
 
I don't see the mental deck being that of a underdog to squad. They can negate all of squads plot twists. Then throw in a few other tricks and they can beat it if they last past turn 5. I don't see Hellfire doing that good when they will take some direct shots early. If they can live to turn 5-6 then maybe. Avengers has tools against squad and it comes down to if squad hit the a good draw or not.
 
You have to take a longer look at the mental deck or X-Mental as it was coined during the PC. You can only negate plot-twists while attacking or defending.
 
I was thinking about Psychic Struggle but it is only a character you control. Misread it. They still have a good plot twist that hurts squad.

Mind Control
Play Mind Control only if you control a Mental character.

Target character cannot cause breakthrough while attacking a character this turn.

This will stop alot of damage from squad.
 
blade146 said:
Mind Control
Play Mind Control only if you control a Mental character.

Target character cannot cause breakthrough while attacking a character this turn.

This will stop alot of damage from squad.
Click to expand...

This is one of my favorite cards from MXM, I'm hoping more people over look this card. It's the perfect work around "Other Earth" and might be what Faces needs to tilt the game in thier favor. Imagine soaking up 17 damage when albert gains swings into a one drop... It's bananas!!!!!

Do you hear me BlackSuperNinja?
 
DaAmazing1 said:
This is one of my favorite cards from MXM, I'm hoping more people over look this card. It's the perfect work around "Other Earth" and might be what Faces needs to tilt the game in thier favor. Imagine soaking up 17 damage when albert gains swings into a one drop... It's bananas!!!!!

Do you hear me BlackSuperNinja?
Click to expand...

Yeah I am rebuilding my faces deck to include some mental guys just to use this card. If I do horrible in sealed on Sunday I will be running it in the constructed. Just haven't got the correct build down yet but will soon.
 
aaarrrrrg.... I just realized ArchAngel is Physical...NOOOOO....

Did you also notice the lack of low drop mental characters?!? Maybe it won't work that great for Faces.....
 
Here are the two I was think of using but haven't tested the deck yet. Artie can evade each turn to keep from being a problem. Considering characters keep their trait when stunned its probably best if you do evade him on your opponents turn. You could boost Destiny and get some extra cards.

[font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Artieâ„¢ (MXM-045)[/font][font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]
Team: Morlocks
Rarity: C
Trait: Mutant "” Mental

Illustrator: Gene Ha [/font][font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Cost: 1
ATK: 1
DEF: 2
[/font][font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Card Text:
Evasion (Stun this character >>> Recover this character at the start of the recovery phase this turn.) Whenever Artie becomes stunned, target character gets -1 ATK this turn.

[/font]
[font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Destinyâ„¢ (MXM-090)[/font][font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]
Team: Brotherhood
Rarity: C
Trait: Mutant "” Mental

Illustrator: Alex Garner [/font][font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Cost: 2
ATK: 3
DEF: 1
[/font] [font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Card Text:
Discard a Mental card >>> Target attacker or defender gets -3 DEF this attack. Use this power only once per turn. Boost 1: When Destiny comes into play, draw two cards.


[/font]
 
I found that my JLI/Gotham 4 resource team-up worked against Squad at a PCQ. I didn't decimate it( I actually won by two points. 1 to -1) but the negation helps a LOT. I Kooey'd for a Fizzle right when it mattered, it was the turn Other Earth was gonna mess me up, a good thing I had Manhunter out as well
 
ok, honestly. Faces has nothing for the stun back? turnabout and no fear don't stun back?!!!

Faces relies to much on luck?!! yellow jacket, beetle (both of them), x-corp amsterdam, mystic summons, time breach... I could go on... the reason faces doesn't run enemy of my enemy is because your already extreemly consistant; it's a spot better used for pumps.

Albert gaines has gone into my back row jones several times. Half the time i pump twice with heroes in reserve/avenger's mansion for the stun back... allowing me alot more damage when I swing back. the other half I'll return jones to hand to give himself reinforcement and causing albert to ready, then albert goes into black panther and I pump once for the stun back, also allowing me more damage when I swing back.

To be fair, hellfire club is not using one character to defend yourself... you have deadly game (switch out and give the new character the shaw industries bonus?!). Also, does it really matter if you have one visable character if you can swing back out of the hidden area and not stun back (as is the case some of the time)?
 
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