Hello guys. I’ve been super busy lately so I haven’t been able to find time to write up a new post. For today, rather than talk about a specific deck, I would like to talk about the deck building process in VS System instead. Hopefully it will help interested folks to make their own lists based on what I feel are sound principles. This post is a bit long, so don’t force yourself to read it all in one go. Absorb what you can. Take breaks if you need to. The important thing is to learn.
The Big Three
So let’s start off with the basics. Before you start making a list, there are three important things to think about:
1. What is your plan for winning?
2. When do you plan to win?
3. How do you plan use your resource points?
Section One: What is your plan for winning?
The most important difference between a VS System deck and a random pile of cards is that the deck has a plan for winning. There are generally three ways that decks expect to win. The first way is to be better at combat than the opponent so that you come out ahead in every attack step. The second way is to recruit an unbeatable character. The third way is to assemble a combination of interactions that instantly create a win.
As a game, VS System was designed to revolve around combat. This means that the most straightforward way to win will be through combat. It’s a victory condition that is available to every affiliation. Because of this, it will be easier for anyone to build and use a decent combat deck. I recommend this approach for VS System beginners.
The problem with this strategy, however, is that you can expect every opposing deck to be built with combat in mind. Your opponents will be prepared. They will have a plan in mind for combat. You just have to hope that your plan is better than their plan. There won’t be any match-ups where your opponent just has no way to interact with what you’re trying to do.
The second way to win is both much simpler and immensely more complicated than the first. On the surface recruiting an unbeatable character is ridiculously simple:
1. Draw the unbeatable character
2. Recruit the unbeatable character
3. ???
4. Profit
Of course, as anyone familiar with this strategy knows, it’s never that simple. The fact of the matter is that there are no completely unbeatable characters in VS System, and the few that come close come with fairly high resource costs. Take the most common choice for this slot: Galactus. Recruiting him will most likely instantly win the game because most decks are not prepared to deal with a 25/25 character that drains every point of endurance when it comes into play.
What they are prepared to do, however, is win before turn nine. Having Galactus in your deck only matters if you actually get to recruit him. Pretty much every character that could be described as “unbeatable” costs seven resource points or more (there are “indirectly unbeatable” characters like Amazing Spider-Man that all but ensure that the game goes to turn eight). That’s why most decks utilizing this strategy opt to go for a “stall” approach to the game. Coming out ahead in combat is no longer important. Surviving until the unbeatable character can be recruited is all that matters.
Or is it?
Like I said before, no character in VS System is truly unbeatable, and even the small group of characters that comes close has varying degrees of “unbeatability”. Galactus is the most common character used here, but it’s not impossible to lose after recruiting him (ie. the opponent has his own Galactus). Phoenix is another option for this slot, but she can be negated by a simple Omnipotence. Every other option is vulnerable to something, be it Ras Al Ghul, Amazing Spider-Man, Onslaught or Apocalypse. It sounds silly, but your deck must also be able to beat the cards that beat your unbeatable character. There are few things in VS System that feel worse than recruiting Imperiex on turn nine, only to lose to your opponent’s even more unbeatable boosted Dr. Light.
So if this strategy is so complex and fraught with risk, why even bother with it? The answer lies in the fact that combat-based decks are by far the most common type used in VS System. When everyone else is all about winning combat steps, and you only really care about not losing until Amazing Spidey can single-handedly win the game for you, that can be a tremendous tactical advantage.
Take the Fantasticars vs X-Men Curve match-up as an example. If you’re on the X-Men side it doesn’t matter how far behind you are as long as you manage to recruit Phoenix and use her ability. Phoenix lock is “unbeatable”. The only card in the Fantasticars deck that can stop it is Omnipotence. Once turn eight rolls around every other card might as well be blank.
The situation gets a lot more interesting when you consider two decks that are both using the “stall to unbeatability” strategy. A Green Lantern deck using an “unbeatable” Mogo will actually lose to an opponent running Onslaught, so it might decide to try and beat that by running a copy of Galactus. The other player might try to negate Galactus with Apocalypse. This game of one-upmanship can go on for quite a while.
Of course, each successive card added to shore up the end game makes the deck worse at actually stalling to get to it. Stalling to the later turns against dedicated combat decks is really hard, and requires lots of slots! Designing a deck that can traverse this tightrope is where the fun lies.
The last strategy is actually a variant of the second one, except instead of recruiting an unbeatable character you are assembling an unbeatable combination (or combo) of interactions. Whether you are putting 25 votes on Rigged Elections on turn six or recruiting Thing, the Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing on turn four, the idea is the same:
1. Draw the combo
2. Play the combo
3. ???
4. Profit
It’s just like the second strategy, and you don’t even need to stall to turn eight or nine to do it! It’s almost like a day-walker, with all of the strengths and none of the weaknesses! How could you go wrong with this?
Well, there are actually several ways you could go wrong with this.
For one thing, you might not draw into your combo. Given that the components tend to be highly specialized cards that don’t do much for combat, you might find yourself durdling around and accomplishing nothing while a dedicated combat deck just kills you. You will need ways to search out your combo pieces, and if those combo pieces are characters you will need to recruit them all and keep them alive until your combo can “go off”. This can be done in one turn if they have low costs, but sometimes you’ll need a character to survive one or more turns before the combo happens. If the opponent knows what you’re up to he will do everything he can to get rid of that character, and stopping him can be tricky.
You will also need to protect your combo. Aside from the risk of characters dying that I already discussed, your opponents might have cards that directly stop your combo so you will need to have solutions for those. Your opponents might have cards that stop your search cards, so you will need to have solutions for those. Different opponents will try to disrupt you in different ways, and having a solution for every possible option is always difficult and sometimes impossible. Sometimes the cost of running answers is too much, or no answer exists. You’ll need to just dodge the problem cards through good ol’ luck.
Finally, you’ll need to protect yourself. Your opponent will most likely be attacking you as you assemble your combo, and if their deck will kill you before your combo can kill them you will need to defend yourself. Of course, running defensive cards will leave you with fewer resources to find and protect your combo (not to mention fewer slots for the combo itself) so you’ll have to find the right balance. This can be very challenging, which is what makes it a lot of fun. I would recommend it to the more advanced players who can anticipate the contents of their opponent’s deck and plan the next few turns accordingly. It would be terrible if you missed out on a Rigged Elections win because you searched out a Fizzle instead of a Pathetic Attempt two turns ago.
In the end, though, perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind when constructing a decklist is to avoid diluting the plan with cards that don’t help it! Is that Savage Beatdown going to help you get to turn nine? Will those late-drop Hulks help you make one giant attack that completely drains your opponent of life on turn four or five? Will that Acrobatic Dodge help you exhaust every opposing character? If not, think carefully about whether you want to include it at all.
Most decks have a few flexible slots that they can devote to cards that don’t directly help the main plan, but it’s really easy to go overboard and end up with a deck that doesn’t actually do anything very well. If you devote too many slots to shoring up your aggro deck’s late game “just in case” it gets to that point, you end up actually ensuring that it does.
Section 2: When do you plan to win?
Well, that first section was a bit of a doozy! Luckily, the second one should be short and sweet. The game of VS System was actually designed in such a way that three distinct phases emerge:
* Turns one to five are the early game. If a VS System deck dedicates itself completely to winning as fast as possible through combat, it will need to start attacking on turn one and will most likely win by turn four or five. Turn three wins are possible but unlikely.
* Turns six and seven are the mid game. A normal VS System deck that dedicates slots to both aggressive and defensive combat cards will typically be able to win on these turns. Turn seven wins are most likely. Turn six wins are possible with a good draw or if the opponent stumbles.
* Turns eight and beyond are the late game. It’s unlikely for a VS System game to get to these turns unless one or both decks actively try to stall towards them.
It’s important to recognize when you intend to win the game, because otherwise you might waste slots on cards that won’t really help you. For example, Omnipotence is a powerful option that is good in general. However, its threshold cost of 5 means that it will not be useful in a deck that intends to win by turn four at the latest. There’s a bit of leeway here where you can afford to run cards that are relevant one turn after you should have won “just in case”, but each slot dedicated to this makes the whole deck worse at actually winning when it wants.
My personal rule of thumb is that one or two cards that can be searched out when needed is fine. A curve deck that plans to win on turn seven isn’t really hurt by running a single 8-drop, for example. However, running drops from turns seven to eight in a deck that ideally wants to win on turn five is probably a terrible choice.
Section 3: How do you plan use your resources?
So you’ve figured out how you plan to win and when you plan to do it. Now it’s time to iron out how you plan to use your resource points. This is where you will learn about the “curve”, and why it’s so important. This topic can get really long and involved, but the concept can actually be boiled down into one sentence:
The player who spends the most resource points will most likely win the game.
That’s it. Even if you don’t really get the idea of curving out, you can go a long way by playing with that rule of thumb in mind. Let’s suppose I am playing an aggressive deck against a stall deck. If I recruit a character from turn one to five and my opponent only starts recruiting on turn three, I am three resource points ahead and have the advantage. If I end the game on turn five I will have spent fifteen resource points while my opponent would have spent only twelve. If he survives to turn eight he might recruit and 8-drop while I can only muster a 5-drop. Now he’s the one with the advantage.
Resource points are a big deal in VS System. Wasting them can easily lead to a loss. Good decks waste as few resource points as possible. Great decks even generate “phantom” resource points by reducing costs or even creating resource points outright (ie. the Checkmate/Kree “Press Chess” deck wins by effectively spending fifteen resource points on turn five, for a ridiculous ten-point resource advantage).
When it comes to fully utilizing resource points, the two main strategies are to go with the “curve” or “off-curve” approach. To fully understand the logic behind going curve and off-curve, it is important to know a couple of things:
1. You draw two cards per turn, so you can maintain your hand size by playing one resource and recruiting one character.
You start the game with four cards in hand, and draw two cards per turn. This means that in order to maintain this hand size you can only afford to recruit one character and play one resource per turn. If your deck recruits two characters per turn, for example, by turn four your hand will be empty. Your deck will stop working by turn five. You will need to draw extra cards just to keep doing what your deck wants to do. If you only recruit one character per turn, you can keep playing forever with only your regular draw step.
2. VS System Characters get significantly stronger the more they cost.
Abilities matter, of course, but to keep things simple let’s just look at the stats. A single 7/7 four-drop is better than two 3/3 two-drops. A 16/16 seven-drop is better than a 12/12 six-drop and a 2/1 one-drop.
3. Once you get to turn seven, you start to see “finisher” characters with very powerful and potentially game-winning stats and abilities. Based on average stats of VS System characters, this is also roughly the turn where most “normal” games will end.
Going by the average stats of VS System characters and the 50 endurance starting life total, most games will end on turn seven. Turn seven is also where you start to see “game-ending” cards like Two-Face, Amazing Spider-Man, Warpath and many more. These characters can typically win the game if given enough support.
4. On turn eight or more the “unbeatable” characters start to become commonplace.
Since most games are supposed to end on turn seven, players who manage to get to turn eight or higher are rewarded by ridiculously powerful characters like Ra’s Al Ghul, Sentry, Apocalypse, Phoenix, Onslaught, Imperiex and many more. These characters can typically win the game all by themselves.
But what does all that mean for someone making a deck?
Based on the above, you will see that the fundamental design of the game is based on recruiting one character per turn, ideally the highest cost character you can muster. Characters do combat, and the cycle repeats every turn until the game ends on turn seven. Traditional curve decks work along this axis. They recruit the best combat characters they can and strive to hit their curve and finish the game on turn seven. These decks usually recruit characters on turns two to seven, because you would need to play ten or more one-drops to consistently drop them on turn one and there isn’t enough space in the deck to accommodate them.
Short curve decks seek to exploit the late starts of traditional curve decks by playing characters from turn one to five. They aim to end the game early, before the more powerful six and seven drops of traditional curve decks come online. The trade-off is that they usually have no good plays if the game goes past turn five.
Stall decks aim to exploit the fact that most decks have no intention of letting the game go past turn seven. They play cards that stall the game out so that they can recruit the ultra-powerful eight-drops or higher.
All of the above decks are curve decks, aiming to play one resource and recruit one character on most if not all turns. Off-curve decks aim to work on a completely different axis, playing multiple characters every turn and flooding the board. This means that they won’t draw enough cards to maintain their hand size and their characters will also be underpowered in terms of stats and abilities (even though they have more of them). Off-curve decks counter those drawbacks by playing cards that provide extra draws and effects that key off every character, or that count the number of characters. They usually aim to win on turns five and six because it takes time to accumulate a big enough character advantage and have all the effects come online. They can’t wait any longer than this, though, because characters with cost seven and higher exist that can beat all but the largest opposing swarms of characters.
So now I’ve laid out the theory. Let’s translate it into something useable to a player.
Going with the previously discussed information, your typical deck has several options on how it plans to optimize resource use:
1. You can follow the game’s intended design. This means recruiting one character per turn to maintain your hand size and winning on turn seven. This is a “normal” VS System deck. It doesn’t need to do anything special. Just recruit a single on-curve character every turn to maximize power and play plot twists that ensure they do well in combat. In magical Christmas land you could recruit characters from turn one to seven every game, but draws are random so in reality you need to build your deck with more copies of early characters so that you can consistently draw them when you need them. You also need to play a lot of cards that search for characters so that you can further ensure that you don’t miss any drops.
Unfortunately, this means that most curve decks need to “skip” one-drops entirely. Eight to twelve one-drop character cards are needed in the deck to consistently draw them naturally on the first turn, and they cannot be searched out because character search cards typically have a threshold cost of two or more. The deck just doesn’t have the space for them.
2. You can try to exploit the game’s design by building a “short curve” deck that aims to recruit characters from turn one to five instead of two to seven. Instead of ending the game on turn seven you intend to end it on turn five. With this approach you don’t have to worry about resource use on turn six or seven because you don’t plan for the game to get to that point. This means you have the space for one drops and can play more copies of your drops on turn two to five because you don’t play any drops for turn six and up at all. You can devote the entirety of your deck to the first five turns and slant it completely towards aggression.
The drawback of playing a short curve deck is that it becomes significantly less effective after turn five. Sometimes the deck will play a few direct damage cards to finish off an opponent that managed to survive turn five with just a little bit of endurance left, but if the opponent is at a healthy life total the short curve deck will almost always lose.
3. You can exploit the games design the other way around. Instead of ending the game on turn seven you intend to end it on turn eight or later. The idea is that the opponent will not have any way to efficiently optimize resource use on the later turns, giving you the resource advantage.
The drawback of playing stall is that the stall deck must be ready for anything. It has to be prepared to defend against any angle of attack the opponent might employ, be it attacking or direct burn damage. Whether through locations or equipment. Whether through curving out or swarming. The stall deck needs a little something for everything. The deck needs to be playing answers to the opponent’s threats, it needs to be able to draw them or search them out, and it needs to have enough of those answers so that it doesn’t run out of them before the game-ending characters can be recruited. It even needs to plan for opposing game-ender characters in case of a mirror match!
4. The last basic strategy a deck can employ is to go “off-curve”. This means that the deck does not seek to recruit a single character every turn to maximize strength. It aims to recruit multiple characters every turn to maximize numbers. A single 7/7 four-drop is better than four 2/1 one-drops, but if every one-drop gets +2 attack and flying they start to look a lot better. These decks typically use the first four or five turns of the game to build up a critical mass of characters, and then on the fifth or sixth turn they unleash whatever trick their deck has to take advantage of having a large number of characters on the board.
Off-curve decks have a ton of problems to contend with because they go against the design of the game so completely. They need to draw extra cards to keep recruiting characters. They need to find away to keep their numbers up despite having generally underpowered characters compared to curve opponents. They need to defend against low-drop hate cards like Flame Trap. They need to have effects like Blackbird Blue or Faces of Evil to generate an advantage from their superior numbers, and they need to ensure getting those cards by turn six (on turn seven and higher cards like Thing, the Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing makes it all but impossible to win). They need to ensure that they can consistently flood the board with characters without running into uniqueness issues. If they can solve all those problems, however, they can reap the benefits.
There are other ways to build decks. Hybrid strategies combining different approaches exist, as well as crazy combo decks that break the rules even more completely than off-curve decks. In general, though, VS System decks are built with the above rules and strategies in mind. I hope that you find this post helpful next time you decide to make a VS System decklist!
ukyo_rulz 