Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Secret Six Victorious!

I love alternate win conditions. I love them - but I'm bad at them. It's exceedingly rare for me to successfully win by anything other than beating the crap out of my noble opponent, but I will never stop trying. And while alternate wins have become less popular (the last two I remember are Darkside (8) and Captain Marvel (8)), one of the coolest alternate wins of all time is still, for a very short time, silver age legal: Secret Six Victorious.

Now, I've been thoroughly enjoying playing around with the MUN cards that I have. Unfortunately, having a Mac makes it difficult to play a deck if I don't own all the pieces of it, since neither MWS or OCTGN are Mac-compatible, and so there are decks I might want to build (Any MUN Legend deck?) that are sadly beyond my ability.

That said, it's never stopped me from goofing around with decks. So here's my attempt to win a Secret Six Victorious victory, on turn 6. My ridiculous jank attempt.

Characters
1
4x Mad Hatter

2
4x Deadshot, Dead Aim
4x Professor X, Idealistic Dreamer
4x Namorita, Atlantean Princess

3
3x Catman, Thomas Blake
4x Parademon, Apokaliptian Ally
4x Hal Jordan, Founding Member

4
4x Ragdoll, Resilient Rogue

7
3x Lex Luthor <> Mockingbird

Plot Twists
4x Enemy of my Enemy
4x Recharge!
4x Realm of the Mind
4x My Name Is Peter Parker...
2x Secret Six Victorious
4x Carrying the Torch
4x Origin Story

Okay. You may notice one or two...oddities. Hal Jordan? Namorita? Professor X? What're all y'all doin' here? Well, Hal is actually your 3-drop of choice if you have any Recharges in your row. Chances are, as you play this deck, that you will never attack. Hal only attacks if it's turn 3 AND you have no Recharges.

Ideal game?

Turn 1
Nothing

Turn 2
Professor X

Turn 3
Hal Jordan, exhaust to Recharge. If you have a Realm of the Mind, exhaust Prof X to that. Chances are, you're keeping both characters due to large DEF values. If you absolutely can't keep Prof X, don't be afraid to KO him or return him to hand with Origin Story to thin your deck and get some discard bait.

Turn 4
Ragdoll. You should be drawing 3-cards a turn at this point. If you have another Recharge, feel free to lay it, but you can also lay a My Name Is Peter Parker.... When Ragdoll becomes stunned, you probably want to pitch a Deadshot to recover him, and play the Parademon for free. Then, exhaust Parademon to bring Deadshot in. You went from 1 S6 character to 3 - like magic! With Parademon now on the field, Ragdoll recovering, chances are good that you're going into next turn with some good board position - and they HAVE to stun Professor X if they want to be able to hurt you at all. Thankfully, by now, you should have some My Name Is down. Save who you need to.

Turn 5
Catman + Namorita. Use Hal to fetch Secret Six Victorious and lay it as your resource. If you have a Realm of the Mind, use it. When Ragdoll becomes stunned, pitch Mad Hatter to recover him, putting Hatter in play, then, at the end of the turn, Mockingbird your last character into play and flip SSV for the Turn 6 win. If you're worried about Parademon, put him in front of Ragdoll, so they stun him first, Origin Story him back to hand to search for another one of him, then, when Ragdoll becomes stunned, you can put Parademon back into play, unstunned and with an extra Parademon for discard bait to My Name Is Peter Parker. You should be able to keep all your characters around unless you're playing MKKO or Secret Society, but this was never meant to be a competitive deck, just a fun one.

Carrying the Torch is in there for when you really want to be able to use Realm of the Mind or Recharge, but they've gotten rid of your Hal/Prof X. Remember, Realm can be recurred thanks to Namorita, so you can get some decent mileage out of it.

I hope you've enjoyed. I know there are a lot of interesting ways to pull a Secret Six Victorious win now, though they can't really catch up to the extreme rush that's become so common. Still, if you're looking for a kitchen table deck, give this one a shot and let me know how quickly it falls apart.

Edit #1: Man, is it just me, or does Clash of Worlds make Secret Six Victorious REALLY easy to pull off?
Edit #2: There IS another alternate win available - Xorn's Takeover - , and I'll give it a shot, too, because I love me some alternate win conditions.

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