Five days and counting

With the ‘coverage’ of the California Mega-weekend finished we have a new look to the Silver Age meta. How will that affect things over here in Ol’ Blighty. Well, not at all really.

The Biz, and by that I mean Bizarro and not Simon Bisley, was the new top dog. However in the upcoming SA London City Champs there is a general consensus from all taking part that any one playing a ‘fate suite multiple attack’ deck, or a Bizarro abuse deck will probably receive a quick kick to the nads (thats testicles for those not in the know).

This isn’t because we aren’t competitive, nor because we build sub-standard jank, Ian Vincents Deep Green anyone? It’s just because the UK community never really had big money events, 3 x 10K’s aside. We never got the ‘must win big bucks’ mentality engraved on our psyche because we never had the option. It has always been about playing a great game with a bunch of superheroes on bits of cardboard.

Check out the blogs and articles from the UK contingent of Vs Realms (Poppy the Cat, Alec, myself, Kamiza) and it’ll always be about casual and fun play.

Right, now to get onto the intended subject. City Champs coverage. Some of you may have seen my Youtube broadcast ‘The Lazarus Pit’. That was our first attempt at tourney coverage, this time we hope to knock up something a bit more polished.

The event is taking part at the County Hotel in London on the 16th February and 7 members of the Maidstone community (Team Demon) will be making the trip for the Silver Age event:

Graham ‘The Demon’ Beadle (SS Grodd Control)
David ‘The Bear’ Moakes (X-Babies)
Amy ‘Cheeselet’ Chizlett (Future Foes)
James ‘Silent-J’ Warrener (?)
Holly ‘Scorcese’ Humphrey (Worlds Finest)
Jack ‘Giantkiller’ Rutter (either IG Handfill or Defenders Backup)
Nathan ‘Future Pro’ Greenwood (Budget JLA Curve)
Will be interesting to see how the members of the team fare, particularly Nathan with his ‘deck on a shoestring’

Holly will be filming as well as playing, there’ll be a couple of pre-recorded Vs features (including a Government health warning about the addictive qualities of the game) and hopefully some deck discussion and interviews.

Expected opponents include Garry ‘Happymoog’ Hewitt, Roy ‘Hotshot’ Raftery, Steve ‘Kamiza’ Garrett, Amit ‘Amitverse’ Sharma and ’Shotz’ 
Grodd Control
So after much testing on MWS I’m near to having a final build for my SS deck. I’m still finding low-drop hidden characters problematic, but don’t know what to drop or put in to provide concealed hate. 

4 The Riddler, Riddle me this
1 Chemo, Toxic Waste
3 Deadshot, Floyd Lawton
2 Charaxes, Moth Monster
2 King Shark, Jaws of Death
2 Poison Ivy, Intoxicating
1 Dr.Psycho, Demented Dwarf
4 Gorilla Grodd, Grodd Awful
1 Sinestro, Yellow Lantern
3 Black Manta, Underwater Marauder
1 Mr.Freeze, Cold Blooded
1 Deathstroke the Terminator, Killing Machine
1 Mark Desmond<>Blockbuster, Mindless Brute
1 Gorilla Grodd, Psionic Simian

1 Strykers Island
3 Gorilla City
3 Remote Facility

3 Total Anarchy
1 Flying Kick
3 Unnatural Selection
4 Path of Destruction
4 Forced Conscription
4 Straight to the Grave
3 Mobilize
1 Savage Beatdown
1 Coup D’Etat
3 Monkey See, Monkey Do

I tend to choose odds wherever possible, unless I expect to see off-curve in which case I take evens.
The deck pretty much builds itself and apart from The Riddler (I originally ran 2 Cheetah, 2 Dr.Polaris) and Path of Destruction (originally 2 more beats and 2 more savage) it wasn’t influenced by other SS decks around the net. After testing for a while both those changes were incorporated and I have to say that Path+Manta can do some horrid things, although I have come to hate Flying High.

I’ve bagged 4-0, 3-1, 2-1 with the various evolutional stages of the deck in tourney play so far so it is consistent, the only problem is to make the build above I’m relying on finding 2 Manta and 2 King Shark to borrow on the day.

The Doom/SS build (which went 2-1 yet was hellishly unstable/inconsistent) has been scrapped and the SS/GK and SS/VU builds are on hold now till after the event.

So 5 days to go…can’t wait
Lazarus Pit coverage of the event should be up by the 4th March.