BEARSDAY: Golden Bear
Edgeworld had a Golden Age tournament last Friday, an event I was really looking forward to since it’s going to be the only format with Enemy of my Enemy soon.
At first I wanted to play a Rigged Elections build that focused on Lorena Marquez and USS Argus to power up Hypnotic Charms in unison with all sorts of crazy cards like Dangerous Experiment and Sorcerer’s Treasure to give you twelve copies of Cosmic Radation. However, Ludin “RocketGurl” Romero told me that it would be frowned on since most of the people there would be playing more casual decks.
So I had my mind set on playing Curtis “tchalla" Brown's Curve GK from many moons ago just for style points. Prior to the tournament though, I got to speak with Patrick “Majestic” Yapjoco who was also going to attend, and who chided me toward playing something more competitive.
Abu Ghraib
Characters: 31
4x Jaime Reyes ♦ Blue Beetle - High-Tech Hero
2x Mad Hatter - Mad as a Hatter
1x Mr. Mxyzptlk - Troublesome Trickster
1x Mikado and Mosha - Angels of Destruction
4x The Penguin - Crime's Early Bird <- I thought this guy was return any character to your hand : (
4x Poison Ivy - Deadly Rose
2x Deadshot - Dead Aim
4x Sage - Xavier's Secret Weapon
1x Punisher - Guns Blazing
1x Hawkeye - Clinton Barton
1x Captain Atom - Quantum Energy
1x Lex Luthor - Metropolis Mogul
4x Scandal - Savage Spawn
1x The Phantom Stranger - Wandering Hero
Plot Twists: 16
4x Enemy of My Enemy
4x Straight to the Grave
4x Savage Beatdown
4x Bad Press
Locations: 8
4x Dr Fate’s Tower
1x Slaughter Swamp
1x Soul World
1x Stryker's Island
1x Battleworld
Equipment: 5
2x Helm of Nabu - Fate Artifact
2x Amulet of Nabu - Fate Artifact
1x Cloak of Nabu - Fate Artifact
I wanted to fit Salvage and Null Time Zone in here but I don’t think I found the way to do it
The name felt somewhat appropriate since it’s a prison deck and Sage is I believe of Arabic descent. Anyhow, this list was based off a deck Brian Eugenio and Robert Krafschick came up with a long time ago. The focus is to use Sage and Bad Press to basically shut whatever your opponent is trying to do.
For those of you familiar with Magic, this is pretty much Fish: It is pretty weak in the abstract - Punisher - Guns Blazing is lame compared to Dr Doom at the height of his powers and does nothing in the face of A Child Named Valeria . It's very good however, at punishing the opponent for playing good cards that have threshold costs in the 2 to 3.
I goldfished the build a bit on OCTGN and it seemed pretty reasonable so I stuck with it.
I went 2-3.
That was a disappointing result for me considering how highly I thought of my list. Most of my game losses involved missing drops – the exception being a rather vengeful four drop from the Luddite squad, but all’s fair in the format of Reign of Terror and A Child Named Valeria – but the games played out in such a way that I felt had I played better I could’ve either made up for the defecit or just not run into that .
Other then a few changes to my list, one thought stuck with me that I thought I should share:
Going Somewhere
Ludin brought this point up, and it's something that I don't think I addressed properly in my build.
One of the problems with Spider-Friends has been that while your curve is very good for stalling, it's actually pretty hard for you to end the game, hence the pair-up with Heralds for Galactus. Having a temporary total lockdown is irrelevant unless you can cash in on it; otherwise you’ve just exhausted a good chunk of your deck to do something pointless while your opponent is deploying that exact same part of your deck to kill you.
The DIG build Ludin played demonstrates this principle elegantly; it uses Lex Luthor - Nefarious Philanthropist and Dr. Doom - Diabolic Genius to stunt the opponent just enough so it can mass All Too Easies and win. Instead, my deck played a much more controlling game which directly contrasts with Bad Press and Sage which lack the longevity the DIG lock has.
I was so focused so much on grinding people out with the lock that I didn't focus on other things like I don't know... winning. Like there are certainly some match-ups, but if you look at this deck there’s nothing dedicated it to winning it’s just a jumble of good cards.
While I've lost Brian's exact decklist, I do know that his curve after three was: Dewoz, Johnny Quick, and Maximus. While this curve does look goofy - which all of Brian’s decks do until you play them, at which point you realize how thoughtful the choices are- the Dewoz/Johnny Quick combo can end games fairly decisively, especially when your opponent can't mount any resistance.
The point of doing something is to get closer to the win. If you are expending all this energy to do something that is either not conducive toward the win or is going to be disregarded, what’s the point?
(In my defense, the Phantom Stranger was originally supposed to be a much better closer; either Superman – since my six drop is a four-of – or Doomsday – who can be cheated out through Deadshot – but I had neither on me and neither was for sale at Edgeworld.)
I think this, more then any notion of fun or, is the big distinction between the casual players and competitive players. Casual players are more about the first step of the game: They want to get to something. They want to assemble card X with Y or recruit character Z. For competitive players though, the focus is more on whether or not the assembling of card X with Y or the recruitment of character Z leads to a win.
For constructed players that enjoy both winning and playing the game though, it’s important for us to be able to transition that set up we find cool into something that’s cements a victory.
Some Thoughts on the Deck
There are a lot of engines I would consider adding to this ranging from Speed Queen and Ego Gem, Poison Ivy and Haywire, or the Lockjaw and San engine that Brian's original build had. Mad Hatter was pretty garbage.
You could also throw in Quicksilver, Inhuman by Marriage who also harmonizes with either Lockjaw or Speed Queen. You'd then have to tweak your deck to be considerably more resource friendly, but having double re-readiers holding an Ego Gem that would help you dig into your Bad Presses and make burning cards to Scandal and other discards much easier.
I am fairly sure this deck wants a real six drop. I opted to just go for the Scandals in a bid to save deck space, but I think a real play would be desirable.
I never got to really use the Captain Atom, Hawkeye, and Mikado set-up so it’s hard for me to gauge how good it actually is.
Golden Age
I think Golden Age as a format isn’t necessarily that bad, as long as you go into it with a different mentality. Golden Age is very similar in type one in that the whole format is about rendering everything the opponent does as meaningless as you can. Where it be combo decks, multiple readies of Puppet Masters or even rush decks with Flamethrowers and TNBs to guarantee stunbacks, the whole point of this format is to take away your opponent’s choices. That in itself says a lot about it’s accessibility.
The enjoyment of these types of formats comes from the situations where you can unilaterally implement your game plan – because they’re very overbearing when they stick. On the flip side, getting slowly pinged to death by Flamethrowers against Child Lock is nothing to write home against. Even worse, is that the difference between a tuned and casual Golden Age deck is eons apart from the variance between say a tuned and casual Silver Age deck.
Despite all this and my relatively mediocre record, I think competitive Golden Age should be given more of a spotlight. The combo decks out there can be easily diffused with a singleton toolbox of Sage, and there are both very many powerful answers and solutions. I think for Golden Age to become enjoyable of a format, many ‘un-fun’ tournaments will need to exist in order for a general metagame to develop and people to get an idea for what to tech against and what to include.
Peace,
-TDB
I found 
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