re: Shiloh Norman <> Mr. Miracle, Soldier of Victory

So, I talked earlier about my desire to use him in a deck. Then, I decided upon Marvel Knights, largely because it's been awhile since I built a Marvel Knights deck. Thankfully, MK had Daredevil, Kitchen Cleanser, an almost perfect counter-part to Shiloh. However, burning as much life as I was likely to be burning through, I decided that it would be a pretty decent idea to include a little life-gain lovin', and why not use another team that often goes neglected for me: the Heralds of Galactus, one of the better life-gain decks in the game.

I was all set to begin building when, to no surprise to anyone, Marvel Universe came out, offering me a good deal more options. Now, obviously, we want to slow down the game. We want to slow it down a lot. There are a few recent cards that help with that that we'll be throwing in here...

Dirty Tricks
Cost: 3
Ongoing: Characters get -1 ATK.

and

Empire's End
Cost: 4
Play only during the build phase.
Ongoing: Characters that entered play this turn get -2 ATK.

Well, those are pretty decent in terms of staying alive.

Shilo Norman <> Mr. Miracle
Daredevil, Kitchen Cleanser

Dirty Tricks
Empire's End
The Herald Ordeal, Team-Up
Neighborhood Watch, Team-Up

Right now we've only got a 3-drop and a 5-drop. We need a Heralds character somewhere...

Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways
2
Heralds of Galactus
Flight
Range
ATK: 3
DEF: 2
Cosmic: Activate -> Search your deck for a card with cost 4 or greater, reveal it, and put it on the top of your deck.

And where would he be without his board?

Silver Surfer's Board
Equip only to Silver Surfer.
Exhaust Silver Surfer's Board -> Put a cosmic counter on a cosmic character you control. You may move equipped character to your hidden or visible area.

Why do we need his board? His board is only really helpful if you've got some Cosmic character on the field. If we're gaining endurance, and we want a cosmic character, and we need a 4-drop...

Human Torch, The Invisible Man
Cost:4
Team: Heralds of Galactus, Fantastic Four
Flight
Range
ATK: 7
DEF: 7
Heralds of Galactus defenders you control have reinforcement.
Cosmic: If a character you control would cause breakthrough, instead, gain that much endurance.

That gives us

2
Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways

3
Shilo Norman <> Mr. Miracle, Soldier of Victory

4
Human Torch, Invisible Man

5
Daredevil, Kitchen Cleanser

That's an ideal curve - but if we know anything, it's that we aren't going to always get our ideal curve. And we should probably pad out our curve a little.

On one, we have some options...

Frank Drake, Nightstalker
Black Cat, Thrillseeker
Galan, Famished

On two...
Blade, Nightstalker
Punisher, Suicide Run

On three...
Echo, Masterless Samurai
Air-Walker, Gabriel Lan

So, what are our options here?

Well, Black Cat would be quite helpful - but there's the downside, after the first few turns, we probably won't be hitting anyone directly.

Frank Drake is pretty nice. He can get out of the way when we need him to, and he helps us get over our hurdles for Dirty Tricks to get some stuns in on the offensive.

Galan...well, he just gives us endurance.

If we ran one-drops, it would probably be Frank Drake and Galan - but do we really want to run one-drops?

On twos, we've got two decent choices.

Blade is nice. He'll keep the opponent's characters locked down after Daredevil or Shilo lock him down, but his discard cost can be steep over the course of the game, and since he's visible, there's no way to guarantee he won't just get slammed first.

Punisher, on the other hand, can wait until I stun an important character then get himself scarce. He can exhaust to pay the costs of effects and still use his ability, and the fact that he's hidden means he can probably stick around until we need him. I think Punisher will be our alternate 2-drop.

On the three-drops?

Well, Air-Walker is nice. His 3 attack hardly matters, and his exhaustion ability definitely helps lessen the amount of damage we'll take. All around, Air-Walker is a solid back-up.

Unfortunately, Echo is another decent choice for an alternate 3. Echo will get stunned, but Echo is probably the most reliable way we have to get the stuns on our opponent. Her 0 ATK isn't really a drawback in this deck and with her ability. Still, I think Air-Walker is the way to go here.

So, if we go over what we've got, we have...

2
Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways
Punisher, Suicide Run

3
Shilo Norman <> Mr. Miracle, Soldier of Victory
Air-Walker, Gabriel Lan

4
Human Torch, Invisible Man

5
Daredevil, Kitchen Cleanser

So, how are we going to kill? The obvious choice would be Galactus on turn 9 - with Silver Surfer, The Last Zenn-Lavian's help, that could be brought down to turn 8. I think we stand a pretty fair chance of lasting 'til turn 8 as is against some decks, though not all.

That's all we're going to do today, but we're getting close to being done with the deck. Will it work? Who knows. Will it be fun? It generally is.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend, and more regular updates will be coming up.