Deck idea: Taking one for the team

[JohnL]

Looking out some items to photograph I came across this deck still made up. Frozen in time.

I originally called this the suicide deck but since characters in OverPower are only knocked out and not killed I'm not sure what to call it. Taking one for the team?

I was still developing this as an idea when OP died. It includes both Megapower and Marvels cards but you can take out the Marvels card if you wish to play with only the released cards with relatively little effect. It's a fun deck to play but it takes a bit of getting used to since you WANT to lose two of your characters quickly because of the bonuses you get when they are KO'd. Decklist first and then some comments. Since I can no longer remember all the card names and effects I've given a shorthand description of what the cards do.

Scarlet Witch    7 3 2 5 (opponent -5 to venture when KO'd)
New Warriors   6 6 5 5 (Draw 2 cards when KO'd. Keep dupes)
Team X               5 7 6 5 (May play non-opd Wolverine, Sabretooth or Maverick cards)
Morph(3 stat)(R) 1 6 3
[Just legal at 72 points, the maximum for a 15 rank team]

15 Specials:
Maverick, Sabretooth and Wolverine specials for Team X
  3 x Kinetic Absorption (avoid 1 power card attack and draw 1 card)
  1 x Combat Armor   (5 F/I attack etc)
  1 x Power Channel (Remove 1 hit etc)
  1 x Reaction time (6 E attack)
  1 x Bloodlust (4F attack)
  2 x Wildcat attack (7S attack)
  1 x Dangerous Mind (2F attack, if successful 8I)
  1 x Berserk attack (4F)
  2 x Fighting Instinct (Avoid 1 attack)
  1 x Tracking senses (5I attack etc)
Morph
  1 x Substitute Death (exchange Morph and KO'd teammate)
No specials for New Warriors or Scarlet Witch

23 Power cards:
4 x 7F
4 x 6F
1 x 5S, 1 x 5I, 1 x multi-5
2 x 4I, 1 x multi-4
1 x 3F, 1 x 3I, 1 x multi-3
1 x 2F, 1 x 2I, 1 x multi-2
1 x 1F, 2 x multi-3

14 Battlesite cards: Onslaught's Citadel w/ 3 Holocaust, 1 X-man, 3 Post, 1 Sentinels , 2 Beast, 3 Onslaught activators plus Beyonder

Holocaust's Avoid
Holocaust's  Move hits from current battle to permanent record
Holocaust's Negate
X-Man's Multi-4 attack
Post's Avoid and may not be attacked
Post's Move opponents hits from permanent record to current battle
Post's Opponent -2 to venture
Sentinels Avoid 1 power card attack or remove 1 power card hit
Beast's Avoid 1 fighting attack
Beast's Only Attacks made with Universe cards may be played against Beast
Onslaught's Target opponent may not play specials
Onslaught's KO teammate
Onslaught's 7F attack

Homebase: Marvel universe - Opp. is -1 to venture total per battle
1 Aspect: Any Homebase 4S attack.

Mission: The Crossing with 3 events:
  One front line hero is immediately KO'd 
  No cards energy power cards may be played this battle
  Plus Any Mission event – Discard all placed Teamwork cards, no teamwork cards this battle

I think it's fairly self explanatory. Drawing 2 cards when KO'd is huge – you even get to keep dupes. Scarlet Witches 5 to venture is also very nice and makes all the difference more often than you'd think. Not only do you get these advantages when your characters get KO'd but in the early hands make sure you show how willing you are to trade damage. You have ways to remove damage from Team X and a whole host of avoids. In fact you may want to play out hands you think you will lose just because the damage will hurt your opponent more.  So venture slightly aggressively to force your opponent to play or concede. If they play then try to trade as much damage as you can. They will win on venture if they avoid Team X but sooner or later they'll have to knock out your other characters. Your deck has a big advantage if you both start losing heroes since you'll have no unusable cards. As long as you keep Team X... There's a LOT of defense for Team X to help with this. With all the funky Onslaught cards you'll often have to think carefully about how best to use your activators. Morph's card is useful and he can bring back New Warriors for another go around. With no level 8 characters, and probably less characters than your opponent you don't really want to go into the power pack but if you play this deck aggressively it will usually be all over before you get that far.

[Onslaught]

It seems like any deck in general that can run the KO event will automatically pose a threat to any Spawn based team, just because they are so unprepared to actually lose a character. Even with a conservative estimate of one placed card and one card in hand for the character that they choose to KO, and +2 from the New Warriors, right off the bat you have a minimum of +4 advantage for the turn the event comes up. It would be crazy if there was some way to fit in Bishop's IQ card to recur the KO event, but of course Citadel is just too perfect for this deck. On the turn you use the "can't be attacked" OPD on Team X, you can just stop blocking completely and gain a ton of card advantage. I think a lot of people have forgotten how amazing it is to just be able to take hits, since most modern decks are more defensive in nature. 

I think the real breakthrough in this particular build is the use of Team X, just for the fact that they have a million special cards to run. Anyone else in that slot and it would have been difficult to get to 56 cards without a ton of duplicates. Substitute Death is also a nice alternative to The Infinity Gauntlet....hrm, I really like this deck the more I think about it. Cool stuff.

One thing that might be worth considering - Cannon Fodder as the OPD instead of the "can't be attacked" avoid? It would help to prolong the life of Team X while guaranteeing that one of your inherent's would kick in.
Post Merge: July 11, 2011, 08:22:52 PM
A double post...but I've been mulling over this for a while and have some more thoughts. If it seems like I am gushing a bit over this deck, it's just that I really enjoy what it's doing here. For anyone who doesn't understand how cool this deck is:

Normally, when you break the skeleton of 8 stat character/Negate character/____, _____, you need some kind of gimmick. Oftentimes your gimmick is somewhat non-interactive, making the deck less fun to play overall (it either works, or it doesn't, there's no real inbetween). I've made tons of New Warrior decks (both during the shift era and in modern day), and while they may have been as good as this deck, they were certainly never as much fun. With this particular build, you have enough tricky stuff to not follow the normal deck mold, but it can also just play "actual" Overpower too...as in, you aren't going to automatically win or lose just based on whether or not your gimmick is disrupted. It is such a GREEDY deck, and greedy decks are usually the most fun to play due to the necessity of aggressive venturing. No teamworks in your deck while running hideout discovered? Brutal. Or the aforementioned four (or more) card swing caused by the KO event. While these things are going on, you still have to play smart and properly attack, block, and just play "regular" Overpower in an interactive manner. So you get the best of both worlds - flashy chicanery with a simultaneous necessity for fundamental based play. It is probably very rewarding to pilot this deck properly, since it is a delicate art to know when to push the gas pedal with something this stylish.

Also, here's an alternate take on this archetype that manages to fit in a second chance at the KO event:

Onslaught, Scarlet Witch, The New Warriors, Morph (Original) w/The Crossing and Danger Room battlesite (with Bishop's Temporal Anomaly as the OPD). This one I'd include the Infinity Gauntlet artifact too, just to increase your chances with Substitute Death to make sure then New Warriors are alive for the second time you use the KO event. The "no cards with the word teammate" works here too as a second copy of Hideout Discovered, since you'd have to drop the "No energy powercards" event. You could really load up on the Merciless Conqueror's in this version, and hopefully Cannon Fodder will show up early enough to maximize their efficiency. For example, bet for the win, Cannon Fodder on Witch, Merciless Conqueror on New Warriors, and then just take every attack they throw at Witch for the rest of the turn.

[gameplan.exe]

I love the idea of this deck. Taking one for the team is one of my favorite strategies in RPGs, too. One of my favorite things about OP is actually how closely it mirrors team-RPG battle systems.

Well done 

[Hot Rod]

Man, there's so many things going on in this deck.

The use of Team X here is a master stroke if I've ever seen one.  What makes Team X so great here is the ability to play 2 different personal avoids.  Since no other character is really worth attacking here, you'll get a ton of mileage out of those avoids, especially Kinetic Absorption.  Also you have enough defense in the deck to actually survive through Devourer/Entrophy Field, which is absolutely key.

I really like the idea of Morph in reserve with Substitute Death.  Technically Substitute Death is better than a draw 3 when used on New Warriors, due to the fact you get to keep duplicates.  In addition (though it's not being utilised here), is that ontop of being a pseudo draw 3, you get to swap your reserve character for a dead frontline charater, which limits the loss of playable cards, thus giving you the advantage of a reserve chacrter who can play 4+ cards from reserve.

I'll echo the Cannon Fodder suggestion, or perhaps an Image Inducer, and I'd probably add Rage if you're using Marvels. 

I can see there being weird issues with channeling attacks here with an addition of Cannon Fodder/Image Inducer.  Since you're running so many avoids for Team X, you do sort of want them to be attacked, so don't end up eroding your own card advantage due to not being able to place for shit.

I like you're take on this style of deck as well, Onslaught.  The use of Temporal Anomaly out of a battlesite is really cool.  But I can see that deck having similiar problems to my Onslaught variant, which is dying horribly to the Devourer/Entrophy Field combo.  You can beat everything else though!

[JohnL]

Cannon Fodder sounds like a good replacement. I can't recall any specific reason I went with Post's card.

I did have a number of reasons for favoring Team X over Onslaught:

1) I wanted to use Onslaught's Citadel! I'd want to weigh up other battlesites pretty carefully. Onslaught's Citadel has a lot of cards that work well with this deck.

2) Team X has a LOT of useable specials. True, Onslaught does too but getting 15 specials for Onslaught would involve some more duplication or, alternatively, using less specials and including other cards. That's certainly possible, a teamwork maybe and maybe one special each for Scarlet Witch and New Warriors. I'll admit I was attracted by the simplicity of NO teamworks and no specials for 2 of the heroes. Having zero specials means you are never tempted to hang onto the heroes.

3) Perhaps trivial, but if Onslaught is on the team he is the target. The way to beat this deck is to focus 100% on the key character (ie Team X or Onslaught). The more you can prevent, distract or dissuade your opponent the better. If you face New Warriors-Onslaught-Scarlet Witch you'd attack Onslaught because you know he has some serious cards. If you faced New Warriors-Team X-Scarlet Witch I suspect you'd attack Scarlet Witch because of her negate. Who'se afraid of Team X?

[Onslaught]

I tried the Onslaught build just as a proof of concept, and I can already see how much it differs from the (most likely much better) Team X version. The one advantage I can see with the Onslaught version is that it can really easily win by KO against another battlesite deck, but I'm thinking the Team X deck can probably do that too.

Here's a very broad outline of how the match went:

Onslaught/Scarlet Witch/New Warriors/Morph (Original)/Danger Room/The Crossing
versus
Neron/Donald Pierce/Robin/Mr. Fantastic/Hell's Kitchen/Infinity Gauntlet

Turn one: I was able to outplace him by two cards, so I ventured one and conceded even though he bet three.

Turn two: KO event, I nuked New Warriors and he dropped Robin (no big loss since he has so few specials), unfortunately my two drawn cards included another event. I was up on cards a lot and felt like the clock was ticking already, so I bet four and won venture handily with an Acrobatics active on Onslaught and a Merciless Conqueror in hand ready to blow away Scarlet Witch if needed. I targeted Donald Pierce this turn, knowing that I could KO him if he decided to stay in the battle and trade hits. I probably should have been going after Neron instead, but at this point I was still in "I should clear this negate so I can pull off my tricks" instead of realizing how viable it would be to win by KO.

Turn three: This was the pivotal turn of the game and I made some misplays by overthinking. I placed Cannon Fodder and Infinity Gauntlet while he had some discards and two Robin specials. Fantastic had his Draw 3 placed and I had a negate placed on Scarlet (there's three of them in this version, I figure I can get away with running three cards for her due to Infinity Gauntlet). The way I envisioned the turn playing out would end in me negating the placed Necromantic Blast on Neron that would have been for KO, then using Temporal Anomaly, then conceding after he popped his Draw 3. I ventured two just to entice him to stay and fight, and he ventured two as well. 5S Ally hit Fantastic, followup Onslaught 7F on Fantastic was blocked by a 7i from hand, and now I realized that I could actually KO Fantastic (or at least force him to use the Draw 3 while Scarlet was still alive) since he didn't have many cards left in his hand. I blocked a 6S teamwork on Scarlet, took the followup 8i on her, Fantastic was hit by a 1m, a 2e pointed at Onslaught was shifted to Morph by Cannon Fodder, Inventive Genius was played and Negated, Fantastic was KO'ed, and we stood at one card in hand for him, one placed card (Necromantic Blast), a damaged Donald Pierce, and a clean Neron. I had Onslaught with a 6e placed with Onslaught's 7i OPD and Bishop still in my hand. He played Necromantic Blast on Scarlet, and I let her die even though I wasn't going to win venture that turn. I should have avoided it with Bishop and conceded, since using Temporal to shuffle back the KO event wouldn't do me much good if Morph died (and Morph was currently one icon away from spectrum). I think my reasoning for using the Temporal was that I had 2 cards left (the 6e and the 7i), so even if he did stay in to KO Morph I could take venture and put Neron on the brink of death. I shuffled back the KO event, he killed Morph with Neron 6i, and I was screwed. I tagged Neron with the 6e before going into the next turn.

Turn four: I only had one discard, and he discarded two while placing two teamworks. He ventured three for the win, which led me to believe he had a Kingpin activator. My plan for this turn was to kill someone as quickly as possible to turn off at least one of the teamworks before he could use it, and then try to use Onslaught's GA on his lone remaining character before he could pop the Draw 3. Another option would be to open with the GA to turn off potential defensive activators and then use Rogue's AE from the battlesite to make a 12 and kill someone. He opened with a 8i TW on Onslaught, which I blocked. He followed up with a 2m. Since I was planning to try using the GA first, I let this hit (I had a 5i and 4m in hand that I should have used to block). I decided my best option at this point was to just risk that he didn't have a defensive activator, so I made the 12 on Donald Pierce to kill him. Neron played a 6f from the battlesite on his next phase, I used the GA, and then died to his final usable card (a 6s powercard) on the next turn while holding a 5, 4, Beast activator (negate under the site still left) and a Gambit activator. I guess I was wishy washy about the best plan of action with the AE, which was only included in the first place as filler. Had I blocked the followup 2m I could have KO'ed Neron pretty easily, which brings up the initial takeaway point that I learned from this first game:

-As long as they are also a battlesite deck, it might be better to plan for a KO victory. Had I played more defensive and waited for the second use of the KO event (especially with an active Infinity Gauntlet), winning by KO would have been all but assured. You will probably win by venture anyway while pursuing KO just for the fact that they will concede to save characters while trying to trade hits with you, but yeah.

-You can't make mistakes with this deck. That's a pretty stupid observation since the same goes for any deck really, but you can't recover from a mistimed thought pattern here. Attacking Donald Pierce and then moving onto Fantastic in the following turn was wildly inefficient, and the timing of deciding when to use the AE (or save Rogue for an avoid), GA, etc on the final turn - those two things were the deciding factor.

-GA specials are so absurdly good in this kind of deck. I want to add a third for Onslaught (currently using two).

-The Team X version seems much, much faster than this one and thus will most likely be much better against Any Hero decks. Since this Onslaught build is so much slower, I might even consider adding a few teamworks to be more of a standard deck while pushing through the tricks whenever the opportunity arises. Not only is it slower, but it is much more reliant on Beast activator/Cannon Fodder to protect Onslaught early on, whereas Team X has all their defense already built in.

-Speaking of Beast, the Acrobatics turn on Onslaught was so strong, I just stopped blocking the rest of the turn and gained massive card advantage from that. So, I can totally see the upside of having a second "get off me" effect by using Protective Plates as the OPD instead of Cannon Fodder in the Citadel version.

I can't wait to play with this deck more, it's just so much fun...really amazingly cool deck archetype that you created here.
Post Merge: July 23, 2011, 11:48:10 AM

1) I wanted to use Onslaught's Citadel! I'd want to weigh up other battlesites pretty carefully. Onslaught's Citadel has a lot of cards that work well with this deck.

Yeah this can't be overstated. I thought by having x3 Merciless Conqueror included in the main deck I could overcome not having the unique effects of Apoc Minion, Gather Info, etc. In the end though, Merciless is just so much better as an activator.

Apocalyptic Minion is stupidly powerful in general, but I can't even imagine how good it is in this kind of deck...

2) Team X has a LOT of useable specials. True, Onslaught does too but getting 15 specials for Onslaught would involve some more duplication or, alternatively, using less specials and including other cards. That's certainly possible, a teamwork maybe and maybe one special each for Scarlet Witch and New Warriors. I'll admit I was attracted by the simplicity of NO teamworks and no specials for 2 of the heroes. Having zero specials means you are never tempted to hang onto the heroes.

This came up in the very first game of testing too! I used a 7e power card to defend Scarlet Witch since she had a Negate placed when the whole point should have been to let her die. To get to 56 without Team X supplying so many cards, I had to go with a monstrously large battlesite (16 cards + Neron), x3 Scarlet Witch negates, some artifacts (Infinity Gauntlet and Image Inducer), and two ally attacks.

[JohnL]

It's hard to let go! I always wanted to play this deck in a tournament since if your opponent started attacking Scarlet Witch there might be a certain amount of bluffing to ensure they continued. You certainly wouldn't want your opponent to know that they were playing into your hands.

[CoS]

Reading match play by play results is nearly as exciting as playing myself.  I feel the stress of "take or block" decisions to crappy TW follow ups EVERY time!

[Onslaught]

It's hard to let go! I always wanted to play this deck in a tournament since if your opponent started attacking Scarlet Witch there might be a certain amount of bluffing to ensure they continued. You certainly wouldn't want your opponent to know that they were playing into your hands.

Ah yes, the game outside the game. Remember the people who would have different characters on the back of a sleeve, then flip them over to reveal their real lineup right before the match began? I wonder what little psychological edges you could try to gain to keep them from realizing the point of your deck.

Now I want to do a double blind trial that finds out if Scarlet Witch is attacked more frequently when you set out your frontline like this:



As opposed to:



Now we just need to find a huge population of people that know how to play Overpower...

[Palatinus]

Now we just need to find a huge population of people that know how to play Overpower...

That's what I keep saying!

[Hot Rod]

Ah yes, the game outside the game. Remember the people who would have different characters on the back of a sleeve, then flip them over to reveal their real lineup right before the match began? I wonder what little psychological edges you could try to gain to keep them from realizing the point of your deck.

Now I want to do a double blind trial that finds out if Scarlet Witch is attacked more frequently when you set out your frontline like this:



As opposed to:



Now we just need to find a huge population of people that know how to play Overpower...

Haha, I remember those people!  Thinking back on it, I should have done a FFP smoke screen complete with homebase.

What I do is: put the character I want attacked in a red sleeve and place them on my left; with everyone else in black sleeves.  If 70% of the population is right handed I figure this setup should be good for something!

New Warriors actually help thier own cause with that bright yellow background; so I would put them either in the center, or on the left with a red sleeve.

[Onslaught]

Some thread necromancy to give a postmortem on my recent experiences with this deck concept.

Before last weekend, I had mainly fooled around with the Onslaught/New Warriors/Scarlet Witch/old Morph/Danger Room version that I posed earlier in the thread. Some of the major differences from the deck outlined by JohnL included three negates for Scarlet Witch and an increased capability to win by KO due to Bishop's OPD from the battlesite recurring the KO event (especially in conjunction with Infinity Gauntlet artifact, another difference from the original build). With a gigantic amount of activators, x3 Merciless Conqueror, the Scarlet Witch negates, etc., the deck was able to run a relatively normal power card count, which I liked. Compared to the Team X build, it felt more like a normal deck that just didn't happen to have teamworks. It was somewhat difficult to defend Onslaught until you drew into Cannon Fodder, and then after that you could blow the game wide open with Merciless Conqueror abuse. For the events, I dabbled with "no cards with the word teammate" to augment the Hideout Discovered, which was hit and miss.

Since it played so similarly to a normal deck, I tinkered with various builds that added more and more regular cards, such as a handful of teamworks, more special cards here or there, etc. I didn't play many games with this version at all, so I think there is still a lot of room for exploration. The main thing I took away from my testing of the Onslaught build (without teamworks) was that it is an entirely different deck from the Team X version. Even though they have almost identical strategies, they utilize vastly different tactics to achieve their overall goals. Like I said, there is a lot of room to explore the builds that use Onslaught to find the optimum deck list (I suspect it is something involving a few teamworks and at least three Scarlet Witch specials).

To get back to the Team X version though, I actually played quite a few games with it for the first time this last weekend. Some initial thoughts:

-I used Cannon Fodder as the battlesite OPD, but there were times I wished it was Protective Plates/Illusory Reality. There are merits to both in all kinds of situations, but for now I think I'll keep Cannon Fodder in for the times you actually want them to go after Team X (like when you've bet for the win and have both Wolverine/Maverick avoids).

-Infinity Gauntlet is a must add to the deck and was a complete powerhouse in almost every game. There is one minor downside to it, which I will bring up in a second.

-You almost have to win your venture on the first turn every game. This actually isn't as daunting as it sounds, because the small amount of cards available at the beginning of the game usually leads to your opponent conceding due to a lack of defense. Nobody is going to trade hits with you first turn and stay in a battle to win venture if it means losing their Spawn. In the games that you don't win the first venture, it just feels like such a roadblock to be able to bet more aggressively and move any defeated missions up.

-I went with the philosophy that I would rather have a few non-duping cards that don't add anything to the current venture rather than run high duplicate counts of cards that are very low to venture (like level 1 and 2 powercards). Was this the right call? Debatable. On one hand, drawing something like The Infinity Gauntlet first turn really does hurt your ability to win venture. Also, even though it is annoying to draw dupes of cards that add very little to venture like level 1 and 2 powercards, playtesting reveals that they are pretty key. Since your main path to winning venture is to force them to concede by threatening KO's on key characters while trading hits, you kinda want a consistent stream of powercards to apply pressure. On the other hand, drawing into some of the non-duping cards I added to cut down on excess powercards (things like a single Ally, Image Inducer, some Scarlet Witch negates, etc) was usually a welcome sight.

-So, much like the Onslaught build, I think there are varying ways to go with the Team X version as well. The initial list at the beginning of the thread is the most consistent and offensive. A version with a few Scarlet Witch specials and trimming some of the heavily duplicating powercards sacrifices a bit of offense/pressure but gains a bit more trickery. For the lower powercard version, I ended up using a 14 card battlesite, x3 Scarlet Witch specials, x1 New Warriors special, x2 Artifacts (Infinity Gauntlet and an Image Inducer), x3 events (KO, Hideout Discovered, "no teammate), an ally, and 14 specials for Team X. This allowed the powercard count to go down to 15. After playtesting, I think even the seldom used Excelsior! aspect could have a place in this deck, letting you cut down on duplicates even more.

-After my experiences with a version running a few specials for the other characters, I am certain that adding teamworks would probably be a mistake. Something like that would be better suited for the version that uses Onslaught, which already skews more towards a normal deck in the first place. For a version without any special cards other than 14 Team X/1 Substitute Death, I'd still run the Artifacts and probably an Excelsior, leaving you with a powercard count of 18.

-Some closing thoughts: This deck is such a delight to play. In other CCGs, running something that tries to break the normal conceptions of deck construction usually leaves you playing matches that have very little interaction with the opponent. This deck is the opposite: you are still playing an engaging match of Overpower, just in an extremely novel way. It makes you think differently about the way the game is played, and because of that you get to make some fun decisions. At the same time, it seems interesting for the opponent too as they race to come up with ways to disrupt what you are trying to do. It brings a different flavor to a game that is usually oriented around a consistent attack/defend flow, and it's a welcome change of pace.

[JohnL]

Interesting. We'd played around with this deck a little but nowhere near enough to iron out the wrinkles or explore all the possibilities. I love the idea of adding Infinity Gauntlet. I hadn't thought of that. It's not obvious to me that it would be such a valuable addition but I can believe it. It almost makes me want to check out other possible artifacts - this is the deck that can afford to have an artifact! But wait, they're mainly crap. M'Krann fragment maybe. Is that worth trying? (6S and 6E or greater to use: teammate may discard two cards from top of draw pile to venture 3 with no penalty). If it comes up early you could use this to win in 2, 3 or 4 hands. I'm not convinced, on average you probably don't get enough value from it,  but it might be worth trying.

[Onslaught]

The most ridiculous part of Infinity Gauntlet is that it specifically says on the card "after drawing but before playing events," so you can just wait for the KO event, resurrect New Warriors, and immediately blow them away. I like the idea of M'Krann fragment enough to test it out. The deck is so redundant that removing your own cards doesn't really do anything, and keeping cards out of their hand just makes it easier for you to trade hits. Nice find for a card that I've never seen used before.

[Demacus]

I have to say MAJOR kudos on this build/idea.  I may have to throw this one at my buddy too, just to watch his jaw hit the floor.