Wild Punk’t to the Moon!

We’re decidedly blessed to have an AWESOME venue, complete with ambient music, 25-cent cans of pop, and high-back office chairs around the gaming tables,  to engage in hobby league shenanigans every Tuesday night.

It’s only fitting, therefore, that we kick up the awesomeness each week by engaging in a wide variety of tomfoolery with our decks. Netdecking all over the place? We’ll have no such thing! Nothing but tier 1 decks? Pshaw! A truly competitive proving ground? Nah.

We play for fun, pure and simple. To help us achieve this goal, each week we play by a different theme. We mix up the ages, we mix up the formats, and we generally try to keep it fun and interesting. I’m telling you now, it’ll be the key to keeping the VS love flowing while we wait the long wait for Marvel Universe….

This week, we decided to go with Random Punks. It’s been a while since we shoved all those gold-numbered cards to the back of our binders, and concentrated purely on grey and white.

I’ve proven in the past that I can engage in some solid beatiness with pure Morlocks in a Random Punks format, so I wanted to try something different this time. Once again I took a quick look at Crime Lords and sighed wistfully before shelving that binder and pulling out the one that holds my Skrulls and Infinity Watch.

Skrulls aren’t rare intensive, but there in the back of the binder were a couple of pages with a team I’d never even experimented with…

The Wild Pack. Cut out their rares and we lose Battlestar and Sable, but there’s still joy to be had. Powell digs out Ongoing plot twists, Quentino hunts equipment, Chen turns anyone into a powerup once you’ve got your teamups running, and there’s a lot of potential card draw if you can get your Bounty Hunts rolling.

The thing about the Wild Pack is, of course, they’re mercenaries who work in conjunction with someone else. You can’t really make an effective mono-team Wild Pack deck (I challenge you to do so!), but they make nice pals for everyone else.

So we have a bunch of guys who play nice in other decks… who better to team them up with than the OTHER team of nice guys that everyone loves to splash? The Inhumans!

I’m a big fan of Black Bolt and his peeps, especially since reading the Jae Lee TPB, but I confess that I haven’t played with them as much as I would like. I attribute this to my loving to play mono decks, and again, the Inhumans love to work with other teams. They can be played mono, but like the Wild Pack, they seem to shine as a complementary team.

So, slapping the two teams together and nutting out a basic curve to 7, what did I end up with? Read on and be dazzled… or, in the very least, read on and have wasted 20 second or so of your life that you’ll never get back. NEVER!!!

Wild Moon Rising - Random Punks edition

• 4x Powell: Southern Charm
• 4x Crippler: Carl Striklan
• 4x San: The Alienated One
• 3x Chen: Amy Chen
• 4x Jolen: The Treacherous One
• 3x Man-Eater: Intruders
• 4x Thing: Rockhead
• 3x Fin: Intruders
• 3x Sandman: Intruders
• 2x Black Bolt: King of the Inhumans
• 2x Quicksilver: Terragenisis Rebirth
• 2x Invisible Woman: Flame On!
• 3x Blue Area of the Moon
• 1x Metropolis Reborn
• 3x Capture Net
• 3x Bounty Hunt
• 1x Extended Family
• 2x Stealthcraft
• 1x Terragenesis
• 4x Duty Calls
• 4x Path of Destruction

Ah, what a lovely mix. Allow me to elucidate on my choices.

At one, Crippler is the preferred recruit. He’ll need a pump to be useful by himself, but the plan would be to toss him into team attacks later in the piece where he’s not really needed, to get his “You can’t ready!” effect. Powell’s not in the deck to be recruited, but rather to be used to hunt out ongoing plot twists. You’ll see there’s a fairly low count of teamups, and the one-off of Terragenesis. Ideally we’ll have both 1-drops in hand in the first turn, so we can toss Powell to guarantee a team-up, or to nab a Bounty Hunt for us.

At two, San either grabs Metropolis Reborn if we don’t yet have a team-up, or Blue Area for a DEF pump when we’re on the offensive. As an alternative, Chen turns every spare character in hand into a power up for. That’s a good thing in a deck otherwise light on pumps.

Jolen swings in at three as another way to avoid getting beaten like a red-headed stepchild (hang on… I had reddish hair… and step-parents…) by duplicating Crippler’s effect. As a backup, Man-Eater gives us anti-hidden tech, should those bloody Anti-Matter goons show up.

Four brings us Fin and Thing. 8/6 Unstunnable on the offence, or 6/8 changing to 9/9 once the cosmic counter hits. While neither is Earth-shattering, they’re not completely embarassing either.

Five, the perpetually pumpable Sandman comes out if we have the offence, while Black Bolt leads defensively. Six, Quicksilver is a lot more dangerous than he’s given credit for, and Invisible Woman rounds us out as the only non-rare Inhuman 7-drop. She’s a breakthrough magnet, but has a very solid ATK and that burn effect’s won me games in the past.

Blue Area of the Moon helps keep our attackers alive, while Metropolis Reborn is a searchable team-up should Powell fail us. Capture Nets help with board control, as well as feeding Bounty Hunts, and we all know how much I love equipment cards.

Duty Calls is a good catch-all, providing flight, range and reinforcement. Really pisses off Archangel: Angel of Death. Stealthcraft and Extended Family are alternate teamups, while Terragenesis is handy for the Inhuman half of the deck, especially since it’ll keep Jolen dangerous. Bounty Hunt gives card draw, and Path of Destruction’s a +6 or +8 ATK beat in the last stages of the game. I’m using the DCL reprint of the card because it’s new and shiny.

I’m posting this now even though it’ll give my worthy opponents a heads-up as to what I’m running, but as stated before, I play for fun. If just once I can get Bounty Hunt working and slap an opponent around with Quicksilver, I’ll be happy.

My Dad and Stepmum are visiting from Australia  for the next couple of weeks, so tomorrow we’re taking them to Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls - nothing says “Holiday in Canada in January” like going to a waterpark!

What that means is that I’ll have a grand total of zero time to playtest the deck, let alone goldfish it in OCTGN or somesuch. Testing is for chumps! (and people who like to win a lot). Tuesday night, it’ll be fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants time!