Can anything beat Squad???

[Grippingrain20]

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.

Youre absolutely right up until turn 4. Turnabout and no fear will stun a 3 drop without a problem. When a large 4 drop hits the field, you need 2 pumps to stun back. Dont get me wrong, those cards are staples in a faces deck because they blow early attacks, but if you pinpoint attacks at the right characters, its not easy to stun a faces board and none of yours.

As far as the luck factor with faces, I agree. It is a consistent deck for the most part. There are a few key cards that are imparative to win. Ive found that marcus daniels is an absolute necessity to stall the game so faces can make it to the next attacking turn.

 

[Grippingrain20]

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.

DaAmazing1, BlackSuper and I have tested Morlocks quite a bit. While we're still tweaking it, it seems to have many favorable matchups because it is a well rounded deck. The one problem I have seen with it is the consistency with hitting the curve. It ate faces because of morlock justice and was decent against squad simply because everyone gets so big late in the game and of course shrapnel blast helps a bit!!!

 

[DaAmazing1]

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.

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)?

Turnabout and No fear are only good when attacking or defending up the curve. I see a faces deck and I pinpoint my attacks so that they can't be used against me, or minimize thier effectiveness. Plus turn about only works on X-Men characters, so they have to team up first before it can even be used.... So you basically aren't going to see turn about until turn 3. Besides most faces decks save thier pumps for offense rather than defense, it more benificial to swing one character in for a stun rather than team attack. Its an endurance race so if you have to team attack on offense then that's less direct damage that can be dealt. Besides if you only stun back one character what good is it? you have to stun back at least 2 or more for the stun backs to be effective. How many No fears and Turn abouts do you think you will draw by turn 3-4?

Faces is inconsistent you burn your hand too quickly, X-Faces or Fox is a better deck and more consistent.

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.

Ok, if you pump twice on turn five you still won't be able to stun Albert Gains unless you use 2 Heros In Reserve and your resource row is nothing but reservist. If you have Avengers Mansion then you would have to use 2 Heros and your Avengers Mansion. If your going to waste all the beat to stun back then the game is definitly going to swing in the favor of squad player. If he bounces back to your hand I'll re-ready and leave black pather alone, there is no benefit in attacking him. He is a 3 drop with 6 defense, if I'm aming to do damage he is not worth me wasting an attack.

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)?

The problem with Deadly Game is that you don't want it earlier than turn 5 and if you don't have it by turn 5 you defenses even with Shaw Industries aren't good enough. But swinging out of the hidden is great, hence why I wanted to run this deck, but in playtesting it kept getting it's butt beat.

 

[exiledforcefreak]

on turn 4 the sqaud player plays either golden archer (6 defense) or hawkeye (which can turn against you pretty fast if your opponent has the brave new world out and a mobmentality down)

archer can be stunned back with one pump while attacking a 2 drop with 3 atk and the archer can be stuned back with a pump while attacking a 1 drop with 2 attack. also, to be fair, faces doesn't use it's pumps in the early game.

on turn 5 my whole row usually IS reservists aside from maybe an avenger's mansion. I only need 2 pumps in this senario for a rick jones as 1+5+5=albert gains's defense, I do not need three pumps.
like i said, half the time I return rick jones to my hand because i only have one pump, enough to stiun back with the panther, the other half I do have the pumps so i keep the one drop around to stun 4 points up the curve, sonetimes it's even a good thing your opponent attacked jones with gains.
Also, sometimes I do put jones in the fron on purpose so that my opponent with insect swarm a smaller character so it will be easy to stun back.

with faces you can have any character or team-up you want. yellow jacket gets beetle which gets archangel which gets x-corp amsterdam which gets brave new world? just one example of how alot of cards can get specific cards indirectly in faces.

If you won't listen to me, maybe you'll listen to numbers.
at pro circuit altlanta:
-122 squad decks, only 4 made top 10
-20 faces of evil decks, 4 made top 10
-1 hellfire club deck, 1 made top 10
-1 energy rush/burn, 1 made top 10 (it wasn't even a good build, i play with one of the team members who created this deck and gave Jessie Hill the decklist; Jessie botched up the deck quite a bit)

personally, i don't think these numbers are nessisarily an accurate portrayal of which deck is the best.

I looked through all avengers decklists to find out what happened to them. I discovered the people who went to the pro circuit are bad at building avenger's decks.

Roy St. Clair is a skilled player... and he did pretty well for himself day 1 with a badly build avenger's deck.

 

[DaAmazing1]

on turn 5 my whole row usually IS reservists aside from maybe an avenger's mansion. I only need 2 pumps in this senario for a rick jones as 1+5+5=albert gains's defense, I do not need three pumps.

Well, if you have avengers mansion down as you mention before, and four reservist that means that 1 + 4 + 4 = 2 - Albert Gains defense. And if you draw an Avenger's mansion your not going to tell me that your not going to set it after turn 3.

on turn 4 the sqaud player plays either golden archer (6 defense) or hawkeye (which can turn against you pretty fast if your opponent has the brave new world out and a mobmentality down)

archer can be stunned back with one pump while attacking a 2 drop with 3 atk and the archer can be stuned back with a pump while attacking a 1 drop with 2 attack.

This I agree with but if the Squad player took odds he isn't going to attack on turn four, and even if Archer stuns on turn five its expected to happen, but I would force you into using your Mansion or Heros in Reserve in order to have another attacker not stun back.

It's situational, an perfect squad draw against a perfect avengers draw, Avengers will win. But through all the playtesting I have done, its proven that you don't get perfect draws all the time. If I had to take a sub-optimal draw, I would rather a sub-optimal draw with Squad than with Avengers.

The hellfire deck had to be a fluke! I watched a couple of his matches either he was getting extremly lucky or he was really just that good! He had the right balance of plot twists and characters when he needed them....

I think FOX did good because of the surprise factor, very few people I talked to even bothered to test against it. Plus, a lot of the Squad decks were awfull!!!! People put in way too much tech for the deck to be effective anymore. I was seeing some real wierd stuff in squad decks while in the PC.

The energy Rush/Burn deck I really, really liked! I think it was probably the most innovative deck at the PC. I didn't think it was going to do as good as it did though.

 

[Grippingrain20]

I looked through all avengers decklists to find out what happened to them. I discovered the people who went to the pro circuit are bad at building avenger's decks.

Roy St. Clair is a skilled player... and he did pretty well for himself day 1 with a badly build avenger's deck.

Do all 52 of us bad building avengers players a favor and show us a solid avengers deck that could have won in ATL.

 

[exiledforcefreak]

the person piloting the deck is niles rowland... obv he's really good, he's considered pro, he has several VS. acomplishments to his name.

Your right, I was thinking about situations that happen on turn 6... cause that's when all these situations occured...

I posted my MMA avengers reservist deck here: http://www.cogonline.net/threads.15987

testing at YMGs reveals it's a consistant winner and holds it's own against squad,