Thursday 13 #16: The Unbroken

Captain Spud held me down and demanded I let him to a Thursday Thirteen. Demanded it, I tell ya! I hereby relinquish control of this T13 to CaptainSpud, who runs through a bunch of cards that, if someone could only figure out how to best utilise them, should IN THEORY spell Endgame for your opponents.
- Gdaybloke

We’ve all seen them– the cards that inspire a ten-page preview page brimming with insane combo ideas. The card is completely nuts… and yet…

Sadly, very few broken cards ever turn out to be so. They seem busted at first, but in practice there’s always some limiting factor that stops them from performing. But still… the potential is there. Dozens of combo decks have come together over the years on the basis of some clever designer figuring out how to circumvent a cost or a restriction, and turning an expensive or inconsistent effect into a massively powerful one that can be fired easily and cheaply. And so, we can’t simply dismiss these difficult cards just because their straightforward use didn’t pan out– because somewhere, somehow, there must be a way to make them work.

There are hundreds of these cards– broken cards that nobody has broken yet. Here, I present to you a small cross-section of the most notable ones.

1. Jackal: A free 3-drop? On turn 4? Yes, please! The restricting factor here is that he needs to be ready during the recovery phase, which is quite a task. But he was created before the hidden area– it’s much easier to leave him ready if he can’t be attacked. So, there are three questions here. First, who do we team him up with to hide him? The easiest answers here are Fan4 for Invisibility, and Defenders for Astral Projection. Second, who do we want for free? “A random guy to beat with” isn’t a bad answer, but Jackal gives us so many options– he dodges uniqueness, so how about a second Ahmed? If we dip into banned cards, how crazy would multiple free Dr. Lights be? The third item: once we start dropping freebies, can we repeat it? Think about how awesome Press the Attack would be here! Activate Jackal, drop Dr. Light. Activate Dr. Light, in a Fan4 lowbie. Flip some team-ups, CosRad them all. Drop ANOTHER Light, bring back ANOTHER lowbie. There’s far too much potential here to ignore!
2. Fisk Tower/Changeling: Both let you dodge uniqueness and put free 1-drops into play. I can already think of quite a few great 1-drops I’d like to see– Boris, Alfred and Wong are easy ones. But how about Terry Sloane? How about Riddler – Riddle Me This? The 1-drop slot is packed with raw power, and the ability to drop them on late turns without hurting your curve is the craziness.
3. Master Mold: Closing up the “free characters” segment of our list is Master Mold, the mother of all freebie engines. MM gets an Army guy out– regardless of its size– every single turn. And we aren’t even restricted to Army guys thanks to Substitute. MM on 6 to drop a 5-drop army, ready him with Press The Attack, drop another 5-drop Army, and sub in two massive beaters. At the cost of 4 cards in hand, you’ve recruited 16 points of beats on 6. That has to be good… right?
4. The Demon’s Quarters/Richard Ryder <> Nova: Clean and simple– pick a character, and he’ll be stunned at the start of recovery. As with many of the other effects on this list, the extra craziness comes mostly from the ability to re-use the effect– Nova’s the easier one, spamming copies of B-Team for extra activations. But even Demon’s Quarters can fire again if you ready the location (Black Thorn) and drop a new Ra’s– which is easy to do since he has a 1-drop freebie version. I had a version of the Nova deck built that worked pretty consistently– it got out a Steel Girder on 3 and used Fate’s Tower to slide it onto Nova on 4, so that whoever he stunned was also automatically KOed. The deck I made fired consistently, but lost anyway to straight beats. Can either of these be turned into a well-oiled combo that actually win games?
5. Tomorrow Woman: I’m positive there’s a combo to be had here, I just can’t figure out what it is. It could be as simple as: cheat her into play, give her away, smash her unreinforceable backside into the dirt. But there must be other things. Can she be given some horrible detriment while on your side before she runs away?
6. Jericho: STOLENED! The challenge here is that even if you use Unfair Advantage to get an extra resource and steal an opponent’s on-init character, you’re still down a 3-drop. With the increasing importance of 3-drops, that’s something you just can’t afford. Hmmm… OOH! IDEA! Jackal puts Jericho in play, so you lose nothing. IT’S GENIUS! GENIUS I TELL YOU! Somebody go make it happen.
7. Hidden Agenda: I’ve been trying to abuse this card since DWF came out, but the truth is, I’ve drawn it in like a dozen games and I’ve never once played it. The situation I’m envisioning where it’s broken– your opponent’s first attack takes down your biggest guy, you recover him and force them to swing into him a second time (especially spicy with Coast City)– just never seems to happen. Is there a way to manipulate things to help it along? Or can this be used in combination with VU to give you copies 5 through 8 of Join Us Or Die? Hmmm…
8. Green Goblin, Friend And Foe: Has anybody figured out the IG “swarm in and attack direct” deck yet? Is there any way to make sure you get open swings? Or is “attack direct for character powers” just strictly inferior to “attack direct with multiple pumps”?
9. Anti-Life: I’ve had this thing pop up a few times, and even with only one in play, it was still fairly painful. Is it worth trying to build a deck that aims to spam out multiple copies of this? Maybe Ruin on 3, leading to Darkseid on 4? Imagine four of this– KO four guys, or lose 16 endurance. Every turn. Jinkies.
10. Lobo, The Main Man: I’ve been unimpressed with this guy since I saw the preview, but everybody shot me down and assured me he was t3h br0k3s. Well, I’m still waiting to see a SINGLE decklist to prove it. Was I wrong? Is there some insane combo that’ll let four 6-drops smash in for a ridiculous amount of break? Or was I right the first time?
11. O-Force/Thanos: I used O-Force as the lynchpin in a Deadpool (MTU) deck and it worked pretty well, but the deck just had too many moving parts and didn’t fire as often as I needed it to. Is there some other team that can pull this off? Crime Lords, perhaps– they could create a pincushion board and then force the opponent to swing into it. Or maybe a Hellfire, Hellboy, or Beast Boy deck– often your opponents elect not to attack once your beater gets too big, so is O-Force the key to ensuring their continued growth?
12. Neutralization Protocol: This guy lets you accelerate a character into play a turn early. It has to be an OMAC to start with, but surely there’s a 5-drop substitute we can bring in on top of that Annihilation Protocol to really kick some ass?
13. Satanus: Ah, Satanus… the first card I ever tried to break. I tossed him into a Teen Titans deck and used TTG to steal the opponent’s board. The problem is, six is too late for that to really help much. If you’ve got enough of a board to get that many team attacks, you’ve got enough board to win without the silly combo. So, how else can we get use out of Satanus without relying on “win more” combos? I’m thinking he’d be pretty nice in a Defenders build… Fate him up, activate a bunch of guys on him, and let him slam in AND steal all the opponent’s dudes. This combo seems less “win more”- you can turn the whole game from a losing to winning position with this– but it still doesn’t deal with the problem that a turn 6 combo just happens too late to be helpful.

Breakable, but not yet broken– the bait that tantalizes every jank deckbuilder. These are but thirteen examples, but there are hundreds more. Hundreds of cards with the potential to tear the game in half if approached by the right player with the right mindset.

Power on, my jank soldiers! Make silly combo decks! Break the unbroken!

Food for thought, to be sure. Having seized control once more, I promise next week’s T13 will be more along the lines of the usual shenanigans. Until then, this will have to satisfy your cravings.
- Gdaybloke