Testing the waters: Crime Lords

We all knew from the moment the teams were announced that I’d be playing Crime Lords from MUN. There wasn’t any doubt – they’ve been so unloved and disrespected for so long (and maybe rightfully so, considering their lacklustre power level in the days of yore), and Lord knows us Aussies love an underdog… besides, they’ve been bloody hilarious in multiplayer – as one of the few teams that prefers never to have the initiative, playing three players when you only have the initiative every third turn has done wonders for the value of a good Face The Master…

… but now we have new toys to play with.

AIM, RAID and Hydra are out in full force, the Red Skull’s running amok with Baron Strucker snapping at his heels and egads, yes, even the Silver Samurai’s finally shown up on card form, giving us someone who’s actually supposed to wear a Samurai helmet, as opposed to that dimension-hopping six-armed wannabe hiding out in Mystique’s Brotherhood.

And now, of course, I’m spoilt for choice.

Army? Curve? One of the version themes? Red Skull Legend? Or do I play random stuff and push for Baron Strucker, a Satan Claw, and a Death Warrant for board-clearing fun?

So, that brings us to today’s little rambling as I test the waters for the Crime Lords and try to figure out just which way I’d like to go. What this means is a deck that’s pretty loose, with very few 4-of’s (which, really, works for me since I’m a card shy of a playset in a few places). We take the deck, we kick the tires. Cut stuff we don’t like, keep stuff we do, rearrange counts, you get the idea.

I’ve been champing at the bit to do something with a whole buttload of AIM agents, but I got distracted by the idea of a Hydra curve. Yes, I had to branch out into AIM and RAID in a few spots, but by and large I’m starting with a Hydra deck, and really, just trying stuff out to see what works and what doesn’t.

Hydra packs a lot hidden characters, and a few visibles to throw us off. This immediately reminds me of the Hellfire club – have a bunch of hidden toys, leaving some hideous visible brute to brickwall, or alternatively to smash face. It’s a fun theme that works fairly well, especially in an environment with limited hidden hate, so I thought I’d run with something along those lines to start.

At one, The Hand. Who doesn’t love a ninja? At 1/1 they’re not going to make much of an impact themselves, but if we’re looking to set up a single visible defender, and to punish our opponents for even considering attacking us, why not make our opponent go through them twice? Nice and spiteful, and rather thematic with the Hand’s habit of resurrecting deceased metahumans.

At two, Viper gives us someone to threaten opposing hidden lowbies, and if they have no concealed board, to just smash them to the face. At 3/3 she has very healthy stats (gee, someone with green hair having above average stats… whodathunkit), and while she won’t do much to your opponent’s board, she’ll definitely be able to cause a headache if left unchecked. 3 END every turn adds up, ya know. Also, she has the Hellfire Club affiliation on the side… food for future thought.

Also at two, Yelena Belova @ Black Widow. Average at 2/2, she’s packing a variant KO effect like Punisher: Suicide Run’s. Sure, it’s only usable during the Recovery phase, but she bounces to hand to become a handy discard or re-recruit as needed. While I’m thinking of Viper as my main, I’d still like to complete my playsets of Yelena. I’ll always be loyal to Natasha, but anything with “Black Widow” as an identity piques my interest.

At three, someone visible would be a bloody good idea, so Silver Samurai’s our Hydra man of the hour. 6 ATK is nice and healthy, and that Substitute may well come in handy at some point. His effect means your opponent better have predicted Kenuichio’s showing up to the party, or he’ll have just wasted an entire attack when Silver Samurai gets a freebie exhaust. And you know, if your opponent’s managed to swarm, a single one of those ninja’s we hopefully recruited on turn one will certainly put a dampener on their day. Heh.

Running as an alternate to Silver Samurai, the Hydra-corrupted Wolverine. Sure, he’ll leave us with no visible characters until turn four, but if your opponent hasn’t been able to gain momentum up til that point, then we’ll survive just fine, and look at that – a 6/6 who can hit either your opponent’s board or face, as the mood strikes. A couple of good pumps and, along with Viper, Wolvie could be doing some serious END damage.

Four’s a little irritating, as we need to break away from Hydra. Master Man’s a beast. Not only is he one of the few Crime Lords with flight, he’s also instantly a 9/9 on the defense. Slip a ninja past him for the next attack and he’s 11/11. It adds up, it eats your opponent’s pumps, and it leaves you with a beefy character to strike back with on future turns. He’s just several colours of nifty for the Crime Lords.

As an alternative on four, Monica Rappaccini, AIM’s Scientist Supreme. The primary value of Monica is that she’ll hide that Silver Samurai we recruited earlier, reinforcing him while she does so, leaving our opponent with no-one to swing into but Master Man, who just loves it when he’s attacked. The inherent problem here is that she’s the same drop as Master Man. She’ll help us keep our visible board count low to remove “simple” attacks from our opponent’s list of options, but to recruit her on curve means losing out on one of our best defenders.

Five is full of very nifty art, with Elektra leading the charge. Master Man should (in theory) be holding down the visible fort nicely, so having a 10/8 KO’ing attacker in the hidden area works nicely. Of course, with MUN every other bloody character’s dual affiliated, but we’ll take care of that when we get to the plot twists. Even without her KO effect she’s still a healthy 10 ATK, so we can’t argue too much.

The Gorgon’s our alternate for testing at 5, messing with out opponents once they’re swinging to our face by stopping them readying. Take THAT, Hulk! No multiswings for you! The 8/10 stats may make me wish he was a visible defender with that healthy DEF, but that’d just defeat the purpose of his ability, wouldn’t it. Tricks like Fast Getaway and Girls Night Out only work when a character is defending, so they won’t work with Gorgon, but I’m sure we’ll figure out something one of these days.

Pickings are a little slim at the high drops, with Baron Strucker and Modok competing for our six-slot – I’m not predicting a lot of card draw, so we’ll go with the self-recovering Strucker- and Red Skull being the only on-team 7-drop in MUN… but working off a Leader effect, which isn’t as useful as we’d otherwise like if we’re planning on hiding everyone with Monica as the game progresses… so we’ll delve back a couple of sets and grab Joe Fixit instead. 16/16 stats and Reservist means that even if we never get to use his ability we’ve got a solid wall who’ll stun back almost every other 7-drop in the game.

And just cos we have a Crime Lords 8-drop to play with, The Sleeper can have a single copy in the deck as well. 15 DEF means he’s not going to survive to be useful if we’re not running on Evens, but if we are…

Choosing our support cards isn’t any easier than choosing the characters. You’ll note there’s not a single Red Skull in the character portion of the list… well, this is about testing everything out, so maybe, just maybe, we can decide who we’re going to team up with ole’ crimson cranium based on this deck.

Four Mobilize is a given, especially since the Crime Lords have no inherent search of their own. We’ll also throw in some Savage Beatdowns and Nasty Surprises to make sure we’re getting stuns and doing some damage… but from the new toys MUN gives us, wer’e going to start with three Superhuman Registration Acts. Only three, because I don’t have four in hand yet…. Why SHRA? Because it’ll give Elektra a third affiliation so that her KO effect can trigger, and combined with Alias Investigations, it’ll give us access to an extra 1.5 cards per turn. 1 because we can rally whatever’s on top, and .5 because if it’s a character, we can recruit it. SRA’s a nice card. Sure, it sucks some of the surprise out of the game for your opponent, but that’s the price you pay.

From the Crime Lords stable of support cards, Fortress Yashida gives us a reusable pump that should be worth at least 2 or 3 each time we get to use it, on the attack or defense. That generally translates to a stun up the curve, so that’s a good thing for us. Throw in some Death Warrants for additional board control through KO, some Assault On Helicarrier Thirteen to further screw with our opponent’s opportunities to hit us in the face, and some New King in Towns to keep that one visible dude reinforced, and we’re pretty much at our deck.

Yes, it needs more pumps, yes, the curve needs tweaking, yes, it needs more focus, but this is about getting a feel for how the new cards work together, not about creating an uber deck from the word go.

So…

6x The Hand: Army/Hydra
2x Yelena Belova @ Black Widow: Agent of SHIELD/Hydra
4x Viper: Madame Hydra/Hydra
3x Silver Samurai: Kenuichio Harada/Hydra
3x Wolverine: Agent of Shield/Hydra
3x Master Man: Max Lohmer/RAID
3x Scientist Supreme: Monica Rappaccini/AIM
3x Elektra: Pawn of the Gorgon/Hydra
1x The Gorgon: Tomi Shishido/Hydra
1x Baron Strucker: Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker/Hydra
1x Hulk: Joe Fixit
1x The Sleeper: Doomsday Device/RAID
4x Alias Investigations
3x Fortress Yashida
3x Death Warrant
4x Mobilize
3x Savage Beatdown
3x Nasty Surprise
3x Superhuman Registration Act
3x New King In Town
3x Assault On Helicarrier 13

Aaaaand after a few games of testing:

• Missing drops sucks. Seriously. Four games, and I only pulled a single Mobilize. Four games and Yashida only came out once. Four games and I only ever saw a single SHRA, thus making Elektra blank against the vast majority of the characters in MUN.
• I do like Kenuichio, but the deck needs some defensive pumps – stunbacks are a killer, even with the ability to recover them with Hand ninjas. Some reinforcement tricks other than Monica would also be a nice thing.

• Flight! Dear God, the deck needs flight. Are Flying Kicks even legal in Silver nowadays?? I’d say a playset of Rabbit Fire, but almost everyone has Range already, so I’ll have to think of a better option. New Mutations is always nice…
• New King’s a very nice toy, as are Death Warrants (which your opponent can’t shake by going hidden), but irritating as it may be, I think I’m going to have to pack Pathetic Attempts in every other deck I run if Spud’s going to keep up with his Power Dampener obsession.
• I like the Assault on Helicarrier 13. It’s a neat little stalling toy, and a suicidal Hand Ninja can remove an opposing high-drop from the equation, and there’s really not a lot an opponent can do about it… it doesn’t target… (*cackles*)
• There’s a really solid Stall in the Crime Lords here… it’s just a matter of working out how best to coax it out.
• Ninjas! Ninjas! Ninjas! No, I’m not talking about the plot twist… I love the Ninjas! Recovering that sole defender is really quite neat…
• Options to consider: AIM Agents, Hydra Agents and MODOC squads – the team has four different Army affiliations, better give ‘em all a shot… and Red Skull needs to wave his rosy complexion around the place too…