SoL: Ad. Skrullmate vs Box Full of Evil

There are times I look at the shortened form of Summer Of Love – SoL – and I’m reminded of another term that these three letters are frequently used as an acronym for. It usually makes me giggle, but sometimes it’s just a plain representation of the game that’s just been played. Sometimes a deck dies due to a play mistake, sometimes due to bad draw, sometimes it’s just a poor matchup – sometimes, a deck is just plain SoL.

The dice are rolled, the initiative determined. Skrullmate (Spud) has odd and mulligans, the Box (Gday) has evens and keeps.

Gauntlet III: Legend of the Ten Rings

In which, once again, I challenge Aaron “Onyxweapon” Mead to build a deck according to whatever criteria has take my fancy.

Since we started getting Iron Man in expansions, I’ve wanted a Mandarin to go up against him. Master of an assortment of mystic stuff, wielder of ten rings of awesome power, even wearing a suit of powered armour at one point… not to mention his own version of the Helicarrier, the Dragon of the Heavens. In some ways, the Mandarin represented the anti-Nick-Fury in my mind, steering his hordes of minions in nefarious ways… of course, Red Skull and Baron Strucker are the more well known masters of Hydra et al, so they got all  the glory in MUN while Mandarin got a bearded, straightjacket-wearing meditator.

I’ve seen it theorised, I’ve seen folks postulate, but has anyone actually put it into practice? Well, guess what, Captain Shiny-Pate? Here’s your nice, simple mission:

Build a deck around Mandarin.

I’m thinking a large part barrels down to just how good a draw engine you can build, but for me I really just wanna see how much equipment you can load into your hand. I do love me some equipment abuse decks. One way or another, abuse the bearded git.

To keep it challenging, lets go Modern again (No Fartifacts or Infinity Gems for you!), and before next Sunday, if you please, good sir.

Succeed, and the Sunday slot will once more be thine. Fail, and you must play throughout the Battle For The Border wearing one of Spud’s more… amusing… hats. And yes, he has several. I have a theory that wearing a head covering will interfere with your communion with the VS Gestalt, giving me a slight chance of actually beating you. Muhahaha!