Family Feud: The Invisible Woman

The trouble with building a deck around Susie is twofold.

See, Thing hits solidly as a beater on any of the drops 3-7, so for his deck it’s largely a matter of deciding what tech you want, and using him to fill in the gaps. Johnny, it’s the even drops – 2, 4, 6 – so he’s a given there. Reed’s deck can either be built around card draw or equipment, so you use the 4 or 5 as your main accordingly.

Susie, however, excells at keeping you in the game through reinforcing your troops and hiding your weak links. In other words, by herself she plays like the old school Crime Lords. While she’s critical to the success of most good Fantastic Four decks, she relies on the rest of the team to do the actual damage to win the game.

Thus, Sue’s deck needs not so much to be built around her, but to be built around the second-stringers who can actually do the damage and get the win, while she plays her usual support row.

The second difficulty is that… well, Sue is excellent at her role, at almost every drop. Clearly she’ll be the one-drop, but then there’s the 3, 4, and 5 before we round out at the 7. Call me almost as bald as Sean Marinelli, but I’m pretty darn certain I don’t want to have the same character as my primary on three consecutive drops.

Instead, I’m going for a much healthier 1-4-7 slotting of our ever-lovely maternal superheroine. Really, this just makes sense, since the currently popular MVL 3-drop does only reinforces Ben, Johnny and Reed… none of whom are in the deck… while going all the way back to the original we have a high-defense 4-drop who reinforces her entire affiliation. Attagirl!

So Susan’s going to play her usual support role, providing probably the most effective stall tactics of the Family decks… but who’s going to do the damage and win the game for us? If we’re running Susie on 1, 4 and 7, who are we running in the gaps? Who are the alternatives? I think one name’s bloody obvious. Where does Sue go when she’s on the outs with Reed?
That’s right, ole’ fishboy. I’d be eagerly looking to include Namor’s Legend stuff from MUN except we’re only using cards up to (and including) DCL, so as not to give Reed an unfair advantage. Namor can surge in on a tidal wave at the 5 slot for a little recursion.

As for the rest of the curve, at 1 it’s tempting to run MOR Franklin as the alternate to Sue, but I don’t think turbo’ing out 4-drop Sue is the goal with this deck. That leaves me tossing up between Valeria for END gain and Uatu. If we go with Valeria on 1, we won’t be getting any use out of her until 4-Sue hits, while Uatu’s doing his thang from the word go. Valeria’s a potential underdrop later, but without Reed’s card draw it’s going to be difficult to run a swarm style deck full of weenies for underdropping… but in the end, despite the tempation and the choices, I think I’m just going to run Susie. There’s only so much room in the deck, after all.

At 2, Luke Cage is our man. An excellent choice at 2 for any Fantastic Four deck, he packs beefy stats and card draw niftiness. As backup I’m going to lean on an old favourite from MOR, the every trusty Sharon Ventura. Stats just as beefy as Lukes, and an ability that might help counter any equipment tricks that Reed tries to pull.

Turn 3 is normally Thing’s territory, but he’s got his own deck to worry about, so lets keep the girl power pumping with MVL’s Medusa. A similar power to MOR’s, she can help out with the stall side of the deck, while also packing slightly healthier stats than her Marvel Origins counterpart. Also on 3, the lovely Jennifer Walters, who pumps nicely to 6/6 on the attack (or defense, if I can exhaust her). Frankly, I just want to use the new Medusa because I like Cheeks’ art

Backing up the ever-lovely Susan Storm from MOR on 4? Let’s roll with Spider-man. With 6/8 stats he matches Sue’s big butt, and packs an exhaustion effect as well. We definitely want Sue as the preferred drop, but if we miss her, at least we’ve got someone else helping out a little with the stall.

Turn 5, as mentioned, brings Sub-Mariner, and I think we’ll slide in the all-grown-up Franklin as well. While Namor may fit in with the storyline better, Franklin’s no slouch at 10/9, and can gain us endurance as we play towards the later game.

As the turns progress the pickings are getting slimmer and slimmer, but I think we’ll go with She-Hulk on 6. Not only does she help keep the estrogen count high in the deck, but she’ll be able to make use of those 3-drops as powerups as well. 13/13 stats really don’t hurt either.
Turn 7 gives us a choice of Sues to play with, but I think MVL’s First Lady wins the day. Flight, range, healthy stats and an ability that lets us stall out to Norrin Radd, who closes out the curve at 8.

Okay, so that gives us a hefty 36 characters. Since we’re only running four tutors and we have a discard effect or two, that’s not necesarilly a bad thing. We’ll also run Susie’s Legend Plot Twist suite, cos, well, that’s the entire point of this darn thing, isn’t it?

Sue and her peeps are going to need a bit of beef for combat, so It’s Clobbering Time slots in as well as some Unstable Molecules to make those big butts just that little bit bigger.

That brings us to possibly the hardest choice for the deck, the four off-team cards. Combat pumps? Card draw? Further reinforcement effect? Something else exceedingly janky? In the end, I think the most important thing will be keeping Sue alive, and that means keeping her from being attacked where possible (Invisibility to hide her) and being stunned out of combat (I’m looking at you, Johnny Storm deck). As uninventive a response as it is, I’m thinking four Pathetic Attempts might ward off any No Man’s, KO effects, etc.

That all gives us: 

• 4x Invisible Woman: Walking on Air
• 4x She-Thing: Sharon Ventura
• 4x Luke Cage: Steel Hard Skin
• 4x She-Hulk: Jennifer Walters
• 4x Medusa: Red
• 4x Invisible Woman: Sue Storm
• 3x Spider-Man: Power and Responsibility
• 2x Sub-Mariner: Uncertain Ally
• 2x Franklin Richards: Child of the Cosmos
• 2x She-Hulk: Single Green Lawyer
• 2x Invisible Woman: Shield of the Four
• 1x Silver Surfer: Norrin Radd
• 4x Signal Flare
• 4x Force Field Projection
• 4x Invisibility
• 4x It’s Clobbering Time
• 4x Unstable Molecular Suit
• 4x Pathetic Attempt

At only 18 Legend cards, this deck doesn’t quite match up to Johnny’s in the bragging stakes, but heck, she’s just a girl… right?