Emperor Joker – The Golden Jank Master

The Joker, Emperor Joker. 8-drop with an alternate win condition. Not just any alternate win condition, but one that many other games know and love, a deck out win condition. Now, there are a number of challenges associated with achieving this goal. First of all, you need to reach turn 8 with your endurance intact. Secondly, you need to remove your opponent’s deck without The Joker getting stunned. A third important point is that, if you would win by endurance loss to you opponent on turn 8 anyway, particularly if you need to use the Joker’s ability to remove cards by converting endurance loss into your primary method of killing the opponent’s deck, you aren’t really using an Alternate Win Condition at that point, you were going to win anyway, and you just did it a different way. Many decks that use him instead aim to get the opponent’s deck eliminated as soon as possible.

Fall of Oa is a card that helps that particular theme. By allowing a player to draw their entire deck as a reward for finishing the opponent’s deck off, it provides a solid way to play out the turns until 8. Similarly, eliminating your opponent’s deck means they will be unable to draw cards, which can make it difficult for them to hit their drops. Fall of Oa is also stamped to a team that has, perhaps, the most powerful deck destruction tool in Vs System, Manhunter Giant. The 5-drop Manhunter Giant is the lynch pin of the deck, as the characters that come before him are all building towards his turn where he’ll start a massive milling spree that should trigger Fall of Oa, and allow the final turns to be able to play with whatever cards I want. In that past, this could lead to a Fiddler loop, enabled by Nenora, to trigger a Nega Bomb to help stall the game out. Unfortunately, the two most important pieces of that loop are no longer legal.

My previous incarnation used Suicide from the Marvel Knights set along with Deadshot, Dead Aim to get a loop going. I’m going to go a slightly different route this time. For turn one, The Riddler, Riddle Me This, is a great character for the deck. He works similar to Lana Lang, Manhunter Sleeper, except he gives the Arkham affiliation, so he can help herald in the Joker, and his mill has a secondary effect of preventing the opponent from playing plot twists. His fellow Society characters, Chemo, Toxic Waste and Dr. Polaris, Polar Opposite, also provide aid, with Chemo giving another way to cost the opponent a card and Dr. Polaris providing a bit of stall power to the deck. Finally, the Manhunter Clone will always have a spot in the deck, not only providing the Manhunter team affiliatino on turn 1, but having a built in mill power as well. Dr. Sivana, Mad Scientist can provide our own deck with cycling, as well as a means to get specific characters in the KO’d pile, but it can only be used as a Gravesite on the opponent. The more likely candidates for 2 however are Deadshot, Dead Aim and Charaxes, Moth Monster. Both of these two drops have the ability to being resurrected for free under the right conditions. Turn 3 belongs to one woman, and that woman is Poison Ivy, Intoxicating. Free characters are a key to the deck, and she is the new Dr. Light in that regard. Each turn she can bring out another Riddler, Chemo, Manhunter Clone or Polaris, to build up a board for the Manhunter Giant. She can also exhaust to Deadshot, Dead Aim. Turn 4, there is another lady. Deadgirl, Dead Again? (who curriously has a different name than Dead Girl that appeared on the original X-Statix roster.). She is able to ressurect not only Deadshot, Dead Aim, but herself as well. Unlike Suicide, she can’t do the loop a number of times during the build phase, but even bringing back Deadshot once before being KO’d herself, and then being KO’d a second time during the combat phase is at least 10 cards, before considering any uses of Fall of Oa. Turn five of course, Manhunter Giant rules the roost. The remainder of the curve can be filled out with characters that are useful in multiple ways. Scandal and Lex Luthor Mockingbird both key off the Secret Six team affiliation that Deadshot has. Getting out a second copy of Poison Ivy, Intoxicating would be crazy, and if the extra stunned copy of Deadgirl, Dead Again? gets KO’d at the end of the turn, she can get right back up again later on. And of course, the deck needs Ongoing plot twists, team ups and Fall of Oa mostly.

As far as team-ups go, the main ones would be Funky’s Big Rat Code, which provides exactly what the deck needs, and Help Wanted, which can get the Secret Six team affiliation online, and give a discard outlet for characters. Training Day may also be useful to cherry pick certain team ups during any given turn. For example giving Deadgirl the Manhunter team affiliation for use with Fall of Oa, or to team up Society and the Six to use Mockingbird to get out another Ivy.

Search cards would probably be Enemy of My Enemy and Straight to the Grave. Every character up to 3 has the Society affiliation, yet all the higher cost characters do not, so it makes an excellent discard outlet for the low drops that we want to put directly into play, to go and find the high drop. To use with Straight, Master Plan is a solid choice because it is searchable with Scandal, and it requires Society characters be discarded, which we will be looking to do anyway. Also, unlike Remote Facility, we don’t need to be teamed up before hand. We can also include the generic-ish character card bounces, Avalon Space Station, Slaughter Swamp and Soul World.

For random other cards, Unnatural Selection can be useful not only for a bit of early board control, but also the mutual milling that it provides. Gravesite is another card that can be found with Scandal, and I’m not sure, but I believe that even if you are unable to draw, you still have to discard to it’s effect. Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster would definitely find a place in the deck as well, as he would have a lot of places looking to use him as a discard outlet.

Decklist to follow