Stu-vivor Round Four

The challenge: A story deck. Choose a format, and build a deck that tells a specific tale. The theme and situations and characters can be an original script from the bowels of your imagination, or it can be directly correlated to a real comic book arc. Each card in the deck must be used in the narration, walking us through an actual game state.

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This gave me much to ponder. Make up my own tale, or use something already in comics? Making up my own would give me much more freedom in building the deck… but matching an existing tale would be pretty darn cool if I could pull it off.

My first thought was the Annihilation Wave… and the Pi_3.14159 posted a deck along those lines. Dang.

Next thought, what about the Secret Wars? Nope, CaptainCuba posted his decks for that story.

I kid you not, the first two tales that came to mind, and both ideas were sniped. The nerve, I tells ya!

Then another idea came to mind… a card I LOVED playing back in the day, with a thoroughly implausible story behind it, for which pretty much all of the key players had cards.

Bring on Spider-Man: The Cosmic Adventure!

Spider-Deck: Acts of Vengeance

• 4x MTU111 Trapster: Peter Petruski
• 3x MSM033 Black Cat: Master Thief
• 4x MHG133 Dr Doom: Richards Rival
• 3x MAV130 Grey Gargoyle: Paul Pierre Duval
• 4x MTU022 Spider-Man: The Sensational Spider-Man
• 3x MSM048 Puma: Thomas Fireheart
• 3x MHG143 Magneto: Acts of Vengeance
• 1x MAV148 Titania: Vengeful Vixen
• 1x MVL208 Dragon Man: Experimental Monster
• 3x MVL080 Sentinel Mark VII: Repurposed
• 1x MXM145 Sebastian Shaw: Black King
• 1x MSM135 Tri-Sentinel: Super Sentinel
• 1x MSM054 Spider-Man: Cosmic Spider-Man
• 4x MSM012 Spider-Senses
• 1x MSM094 Dangerous Experiment
• 1x MSM143 Bad Press
• 2x MSM159 Sinister Six
• 4x MXM194 Enemy of my Enemy
• 4x MHG207 The Uni-Power
• 4x MTU032 Empire State University
• 2x MTU035 Indebted
• 4x MTU117 The Contract: Team-Up
• 2x MVL261 New Mutations

If I may be so bold, please pull up a bean-bag chair, and let me spin you a tale…

NB: Card names related to the deck will be shown in Bold, while cards that didn’t make it in the end will be italic…

The whole thing started way back in the day when Peter Parker, otherwise known as the Sensational Spider-Man, moved into a new loft in Soho with his lovely wife. Peter went to the Daily Bugle to look for some freelance work, only to find Thomas Fireheart, Puma, had purchased the newspaper in a hostile takeover, believing that he had a debt of honour to Peter that he would repay by getting rid of all the bad press that had surrounded him for much of his career.

No freelance work for our hero, so he made his way to Empire State University to check in on a work assignment, unaware that Graviton has signed a contract with the Kingpin to take care of a certain wall-crawler. At ESU, Peter discovers he’s being assigned to help one Dr Lubisch with a rather dangerous experiment involving extradimensional energy.

Espying a floating Daily Bugle, Spidey engages and is defeated by Graviton, who drops the building on him. Is this the end of our hero? Of course not! he’s down, but not out!.

After recovering (and receiving the delightful news that his hawt wife has scored a regular gig on a soap opera), Spidey ends up in a brawl with Trapster, in which Petruski somehow gets the better of Spider-Man and defeats him, and Spidey is left sinking to the bottom of the East River. Of course, he escapes, but Trappy doesn’t know that.

Meanwhile across town, Kingpin is meeting with Dr Doom, Magneto, and the Wizard, and putting together the Acts of Vengeance. Include Trapster and Graviton in the mix and you have a rather ubiqitous, albeit not the usual sinister six. The core four demand proof that Trapster has killed Spidey - Hah, good luck finding proof, chump.

Back at Empire State Univesity, Peter is helping Dr Lubisch with his dangerous experiment, and true to form something goes wrong. The machine overloads, unable to handle the power surge, and Peter takes the brunt of the ensuing blast - what a heroic sacrifice.

Before the dust has settled, Peter saves some kids from collateral damage and is surprised to find that he’s still alive after grabbing hold of a power line. What a shocker! He also discovers that his super-strength is enhanced, as are his spider-senses. He somehow filters the incoming sensory rush and hears Trapster complaining about fishing his body out of the river - Time for vengeance! A short fight ensue, and Peter discovers that he’s experiencing some sort of new mutations, including the ability to fire energy bolts from his fingers.

Of course, the core villains behind the Acts of Vengeance are working behind the scenes, and Dr Doom sends out Titania to take care of the wall-crawler. It turns into a three-way fight between Titania, Puma and Spider-Man, while Dr Doom observes from afar. Spidey falls 30 stories, but his new mutations seem to be keeping him safe from harm.

This turn of events prompts Magneto to go after Spidey next, the master of magnetism curious as to whether Spidey’s developed mutant powers. Spidey tries to blow off some steam at a junkyard, but it turns out the owner of the site has some sort of contract with some bad press connections, and next thing you know Spidey’s workout’s televised. Magneto and Spider-Man square off, Spidey responding to Magneto’s metallic assault by using his new powers to make a giant baseball bat and going all batter up! on Magneto. Magneto ends up leaving after Spidey is distracted rescuing a cruise ship in the bay - probably somewhere near Pier 4.

Next, The Wizard engages in a breakout and frees the Brothers Grimm to take on Spidey. Pshaw, Wizard! The joke’s on you. I won’t even embarass you by making you sit through a paragraph about that scuffle.

Next up to bat is Goliath, but with Spidey’s new powers, he’s simply overpowered. All the while, Dr Doom is watching through floating doombots, to assess the changes in our hero. Kingpin calls out Spidey through the Daily Bugle; naturally, it’s a death trap, but Spidey leaps in heedless of the potential danger - My hero!. Goliath’s heart gives out, and he collapses under need of medical attention.

The core baddies contact Sebastian Shaw, the deposed Black King of the Hellfire Club and offer to return to him his rank within the club if he defeats Spider-Man. Shaw is well aware that Magneto, the man responsible for Shaw losing his throne, is a member of the core, but well… the enemy of my enemy and all that… Sebastian Shaw meets with the Grey Gargoyle, who had failed miserably at defeating the Hulk. Sebastian is inspired, and offers Hulk, currently grey, an obscene amount of money to take down Spidey. Bring on the fight to the finish!

Hulk admits to Spidey that he’s been marked for death, and after a quick scuffle suggests that they meet the next evening to fight in a less-inhabited battlefield. In what was a remarkably short yes powerful shot, Spidey proves he’s worthy of the big leagues and, quite literally, punches Hulk into low orbit. Ever the hero, Spidey pulls Hulk back to Earth. Hulk, feeling indebted, decrees that he won’t kill Spidey.

Sebastian Shaw send a very confused Bruce Banner back to Nevada, and realises that Spidey’s powers need to be neutralized, and that this is a higher priority than his alliance with Magneto.

Dr Doom comes up with the next stage, resurrecting a defunct anti-super-soldier robot named T.E.S.S.-One. After niftilly defeating Hydro-Man, Rhino and Shocker, Spidey heads home to chat with his missus, but his Spider-Senses alert him to the incoming T.E.S.S.-One. After a fight where the public really seemed to be believing all of the Bad Press about our hero, Spidey gives in to a moment of blinding rage and obliterates the ‘bot.

All of the public rejection is starting to get to our hero, and he tosses his mask in one of his recurring “I don’t want to be Spidey anymore - I want to be normal. Only human.” moments.

The Wizard, retrieves the mask, and sets Dragon Man after Spidey. The two battle in a subway, and after all the grief he’s endured, Spidey finally gets a hero’s welcome.

And now we come to the climax and revelation as to what the smeg’s been going on with Peter’s new mutation.

Sebastian Shaw is checking out his new Sentinels, which he plans to … repurpose… to take on Spidey. Ties to Project Nimrod are mentuioned, and Shaw goes to the ESU Science Lab to find out more about what happened to Spidey and to have the machine that gave him the powers, altered to sap them.

Enter Loki, the evil genius behind the entire Acts Of Vengeance stuff. The AoV’s pretty much kaput, but Loki wants vengeance, or at least a consolation prize. He merges the Sentinels into the Tri-Sentinel and sends it out to wreak havoc - it decides to make a nuclear power plant go ka-boom!

Sebastian Shaw and the scientist from Empire State University shoot Spidey with their … repurposed… futue technology in an attempt to neutralize him, but instead it fully enables the enigma force - the uni-power - to transform Spidey into Captain Universe - the Cosmic Spider-Man.

To cut an exceedingly long story short, he kicked the Tri-Sentinel’s butt with the uni-power, and everything was bright and happy. And just to round out the whole story with a nice personal ending, old pal Flash Thompson shows up to introduce Peter and Mary Jane to his new girlfriend - Felicia Hardy aka Black Cat.

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So thank you for indulging the long tale of Spider-Man’s cosmic adventure, I hope you enjoy the deck, and remember: Love isn’t love without a violin-playing goat.