"What If?" #1 - April 2nd, 1998

[Onslaught]

Sometimes I like thinking about different formats that occurred throughout the history of the game. A lot of the time, I'll come up with a deck for an old environment that I hadn't thought of back during a specific era. For example, I've always wondered what kind of reaction you would have got if you ran a Beast/Nightcrawler deck with three copies of Trick Transport and Analyze back in 1996. So, I have a bunch of cool decks that wouldn't be good in modern day OP, but would have been a blast to use in their respective heydays.

This entry will be about the time from the post-errata Image format up until the release of X-Men. Of course, the big rules change on April 1st added "dead is dead," offensive only DZ, and the nerfing of Image Inducer. So, for the first time since the introduction of Battlesites, we had a metagame that didn't revolve around shifting attacks. This should have led to an explosion of creativity, but I think the relative newness of the Image set and the uncertainty regarding release of X-Men led to some stifled deck construction.

Pre-IQ: characters died a lot. Like, all the time. If we were playing Mission Control format right now, a character just died while you were reading this sentence.

IQ to JLA: characters died less frequently, but you still had to be judicious in your special card count and alignment of redundant character grids. For comparison, dual stat decks dominate the current metagame. They are often anchored by Spawn or H4H, with little or no regard paid to the stats of their teammates. This is due to improved defensive cards, so blocking with powercards isn't nearly as important as it used to be. When you are only running two or three level 7 powercards (and one of them is a 7 anypower!), you don't really care if X-Man and the Reavers don't share any primary stats. In IQ-JLA, you still had to have an emphasis on shared stats, so the most powerful dual stat decks were Energy/Intellect due to the overwhelming amount of characters with high E/I. I liked the divergence here, as you still had some people who preferred to play only 2 or 3 special cards per character (in a deck like Prof X/Brainiac/Onslaught/3 Stat Magneto), vs. the emergence of decks with Spider Woman or Invisible Woman that loaded up on special cards. Perhaps this overlapping of new-school and old-school playstyles means that this was the golden age of competitive OP?

Monumental to Image (pre-April 1): characters never died due to Vertigo, Four Freedoms, and then (to a lesser extent) Image Inducer after Vertigo and FF4 were errataed. Unfortunately, battlesites were introduced in the same set as shifting, so I think the dramatic impact of their defensive abilities was lessened. Of course, everyone understands this now...but like I said earlier, the April 2nd metagame was the very first time players had been thrust into a format that had all the defensive power of battlesites but none of safety net of attack shifters. Modern OP is in this same situation, but the point of this deck is to consider what decks might have been a little bit better before X-Men came out. That's where this guy comes in:



I knew a group of extremely intelligent players who routinely argued that Mr. Fantastic was the best character in the game. 17 points for an eight stat is pretty absurd, and it's fairly uncommon for an 8 stat character to have a non-targeted venture winning OPD. The Ray compares pretty favorably to him. If you look at the other level 8 energy characters, none of them have an unavoidable special that will just outright win you the venture for the round (though Telepathic Coordination may have a bone to pick with this contention). This makes The Ray really cool and unique! So, why don't you see more people using him still? Well, of course X-Man was released with his superior set of specials and a grid that costs one less than The Ray. Ouch. That said, here is the lineup:

The Ray, Nightcrawler, Reavers, 3-stat Spider Woman

As previously mentioned, dual stat decks were kind of exclusive to E/I until Spawn came along. He made it evident that with a defensive net (he was the first 8 stat character with a team defense special) that crazy teamwork lineups would easily survive. This deck doesn't have Spawn, but Nightcrawler and Spider Woman in a deck with battlesite would be more than enough defense for this time period. In the modern X-Men format, people are far more willing to boldly mix stats, so I don't think a Ray/Reavers lineup would have been seen at this point in the game's lifespan.

I really, really like this deck. Power Porting for an 8 energy powercard just feels right. If I had a time machine to go play in a 100 person event on April 2, 1998, I would love to play this against the other popular decks of the time. You have a then peerless 8 stat, strong teamworks, a negate, two defensive specials...it's a very modern looking deck. I guess that makes sense since the existing card pool of that time is so similar to what we have now, and I'm working with the hindsight of knowing that archetypes like this are extremely powerful.
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Bonus side coverage of The Ray

After writing this I kind of feel bad for implying that you shouldn't use The Ray in modern OP formats. That's not what I meant - I was just trying to drive home the fact that he was much more incomparable before X-Man came out. Taking that into account, he still remains as the only 8 energy character with a "negate this or you lose" special card. This counts for a lot, and he's still quite formidable if you properly craft a deck that emphasizes his uniqueness.

Since you want to feature his Draw 3, we're looking for an aggressive, high venture deck. If you are able to consistently bet 2 or 3 missions at a time, it will ensure that you'll be in a position to bet for the win when your Draw 3 shows up. Traditionally, it's easier to have a higher average of "points to venture per card" if you are running a lot of teamworks, so we should be on the lookout for a dual or even triple stat character. You also want to augment the subtheme of "negate this or I win" as much as possible in the form of a) more venture winning OPDs (from other characters or a battlesite), and b) cards to fish out negates (AI specials, GA specials, events).

Based on the above criteria, the first character that jumps right out at me is Ghost Rider. He has his own venture winning OPD (though it is avoidable) to contribute to the subtheme, he has an AI, and he brings some off color teamworks. For the battlesite, I believe Wundagore Mountain is the only site with both an AI and a non-targeting OPD. Scarlet Witch's AI will help clear the way for Penance Stare, Light Constructs, and of course Siberian Strength.

For the last two slots, you can go in two different directions based on your playstyle. If you plan on trading characters and trying to end the game quickly (which may be the best strategy for a deck based around swingy OPDs), you probably want someone like The Flash or Velocity in reserve. Hawkeye would also be a candidate here. If you go this route, I don't think a negate character would be mandatory for your final frontline spot. Maybe something like The Ray, Ghost Rider, The Starjammers, The Flash?

If you wanted to go more stable, I'd put an emphasis on a negate character and some backup stats. Dark Beast is a negate character that can back up Ghost Rider's 6f, and is a reasonable 19 points. This leaves you 19 points for a reserve character, with stats of 8e, 7i, and 6s that still need backing up. Professor X is the obvious choice here, but that's a little plain.

Personally, I think I'd use Holocaust to backup the Ghost Rider 6s, leaving you 21 points in reserve. I'd probably end up with something like The Ray, Ghost Rider, Holocaust, and The Flash in reserve. Flash backs up the 6f for Ghost Rider, AI's to augment the theme of course, and a big venture winning OPD of his own (which I normally wouldn't run, but it's perfect for this deck).

There are a lot of ways to go once you establish a skeleton of The Ray/Ghost Rider. If you wanted to get really cute, you could have Dark Phoenix in reserve backing up Ghost Rider's 6 strength and Ray's 8 energy. This would leave 17 points for a negate character, where Scarlet Witch with her AI would be an option (but then you'd lose Wundagore Mountain). I even think Captain Atom is actually worth considering here, using his stats for some minor backup and his remove all hits OPD as a late game auto win if pulled off in the powerpack. As I've mentioned before, I think the key to building a deck with a lesser used character is to focus on that character's specific strengths (as opposed to just going "I have to use The Ray? Uh, sure my deck will be The Ray, Spawn, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Woman").

"What If" #2 will be a JLA era deck featuring Captain America.

[Hot Rod]

Man!  I almost played that exact deck for a very brief period during that time, I had Marauders instead of Nightcrawler though.

After trying to resurrect the old "Mega Draw" style recently with an energy based variant, I strongly suggest going with a fighting based instead (though I just built a ferocious Mega Draw with my dad that is actually intellect based).  With Scarlet Witch, Marauders The Ray, and Flash in reserve I was single handedly losing to The Crossing event set.  To be exact, I was running Hell's Kitchen with Infinity Gauntlet for events.  While the deck brought back a lot of memories, the killer weakness to The Crossing forced me to scrap it as a main deck.

If I were to build a 3rd Mega Draw (Fighting Based) I would absolutely frontline The Reavers, with some kind of combination of The Ray, Starjammers, Ghost Rider (With Marvels draw 3), Marauders, and Wonder Woman.  For the reserve, Flash, Velocity, Kingpin, 3 stat Spider Woman and even Mr. Fantastic come to mind. The 2 battlesites I would use are Hell's Kitchen and Morlock Tunnels. 

However, I would say an interesting combo would be to use the Outback, with the Morlocks frontlined, and Calisto in reserve.  Actually, now that I think about it, there is definitely a deck there.  Hmm...

[CoS]

I love this stuff Onslaught! Keep it up, many of us sit in rapture at your deck constructions comments.  What you are doing now re: 1998 Overpower, is what I was doing in 2004 for LotR-Decipher. I only wish I would have kept my first set of Overpower cards [compleate through classic w/ DC holos]... they are so much harder to replace a decade later

[Nate Grey]

Wow! Great stuff Onslaught! Thank you for sharing these thoughts and ideas of yours on the forums. As a player back in the 3-stat days, I appreciate learning all I can about modern deck building. This information is priceless for returning players like me. 

[Kal-el]

Agreed. Since I stopped collecting right around Monumental, almost all of the "modern" stuff is a mystery to me. Thanks!

[Overtime]

I finally got some time this weekend to go read some of the older threads to help gain some more insight on the game (as I never got to play competitively during Overpower's life span). This was a great read, but I was wondering why there isn't more articles like this?

Onslaught I know this was from a couple of months ago, but(besides your Imitation Energy article) I've noticed you haven't been posting these types of in-depth articles. Why isn't there more contribution like this?

I know for me as a player, I would love to read more about other people's thought process in choosing characters when building decks, or even how people decide how they bet for venture each turn. Overpower is the only card game I've played where you are playing MORE against the player(mind games) than the deck(I do understand there can be bad matchups because of events and what not, but it is not as "silver bullet" as most card games). Just getting a different perspective on how other people play/think about the game outside the people I play with, really help me towards understanding the game better.