Marquee Monday: Luthor’s PrisUM

My favorite superhero is Superman, bar none.Powerful, benign, with an unbreakable code of ethics, Superman really appeals to me to me with his simplicity. I wish I could be Superman.

Unsuprisingly, my favorite villain is then Lex Luthor.

This is actually a pretty recent change for me after I read this incredible breakdown about him here written by Christopher Bird – better known by some as CHDB.

After I read this, I wanted to make some kind of Lex Luthor deck.

Outwit

I never really liked the Lex Luthor – Megalomaniac on three, The Joker – Headline Stealer on four set-up because it always felt redundant – your three and four are essentially locking down the same thing, so I decided to go for a more holistic character ensemble.

My first thought was Lex Luthor and Ronan the Accuser – Starforce on four, which is more or less a total lockdown. To keep them alive, you can slide them to the hidden area with Underground Movement.

Fill in the rest of the core with a standard toolbox, something like Black Manta, Terrax – Harbinger of Ruin , Stark’s Protégé.

The first hurdle is Ronan.

If you had evens, getting the Accuser into the hidden area with his cosmic counter was easy, especially when you had Fates.

When you had odds, he probably lost his cosmic on the attack that moved him. While your opponent wasn’t able to play pumps, just a simple team attack was enough to turn him off.

Honestly, getting your four drop stunned is way too common of a situation not to have a contingency for. I did some looking around and all the ways to add Cosmic Counter are team stamped.

: (

After some more thinking, I somehow remembered Reset. After the attack is legal and Ronan is hidden, you can Reset the attack, courtesy of the Underground Movement. Ronan gets moved.

Success!

Unlike Extended Family – Team-Up , Reset isn’t completely dead either.

: )

Characters: 25
1x Mr. Mxyzptlk – Troublesome Trickster
4x Jaime Reyes ♦ Blue Beetle – High-Tech Hero
4x Night Thrasher – Dwayne Michael Taylor
4x Lex Luthor – Megalomaniac
4x Ronan the Accuser – Starforce
1x Black Manta
1x Mr. Sinister – Visionary Geneticist
1x Scarecrow – Chiroptophobic
1x Terrax – Harbinger of Ruin
1x Human Torch – Herald
1x Spider-Man – Stark’s Protégé
1x Ra’s al Ghul, the Demon’s Head
1x Death – The Second Force of the Universe
1x The Beyonder – Inhuman

Plot Twists: 19
4x Savage Beatdown
4x Underground Movement – Team-Up
4x Mobilize
4x Reset
3x Straight to the Grave

Locations: 8
4x Dr. Fate’s Tower
4x Soul World

Equipment: 8
4x Helm of Nabu – Fate Artifact
2x Amulet of Nabu – Fate Artifact
2x Cloak of Nabu – Fate Artifact

This deck was really bad. I keep missing drops. Te search and chracter base needs to be retuned I think. There’s so much stuff I want to fit in here. More then 4 search, Fate Gear, Reset etc. I added Ra’s as an experiment, but I never got to try him.

Reset and Ronan is money though.

Radio!

The other approach, is something I’m a bit more interested in. There’s no point to reinventing the wheel is there?

Enter Michael Robinson’s t8 deck from Worlds: Radioactive Man – Containment Suit and Ronan is similar. Radioactive Man also allows us to play Thunderbolts Mountain /Endgame , which is probably my favoritest win condition of all time.

Both have their advantages I think. A big part of it is the Fates vs Counters, as these take up the same slots. More then that these take up the same type. Reset takes the burden from fating up a bit too. In addition, the Radioactive Man lock prevents you from getting Have a Blasted out of the game, whereas the Lex Luthor deck doesn’t.

The ciomparison comes down to whether or not Ronan the Accuser is better then The Captain. For some reason I don’t think so. Chalk this one up to a lesson in pointlessness. I really wish I could get this setup to work.

Peace,

-TDB