Anticipated Metagame Shift

After playing a few games with Empire of Evil and seeing how things went down at Gen Con, I am anticipating a need for a shift in the metagame.  More and more there are new cards that allow for penetration during attacks.  This is either by Stealth, Superleap, cannot be intercepted (e.g. Hegemeister or Scramble Suit), stop intercepting (e.g. Blue Meditation, Dust Storm), or healing (e.g. The Willow Bends...).  Relying on interceptors to stop attacks is becoming far less reliable.  I think this is going to necessitate a shift back towards more direct removal.  Zap denial had fallen out of favor somewhat because of the amount of counter denial with some of it even being punitive, Who's the Monkey Now and Brain Fire being the biggest.  I, however, think that without zap, it will become increasingly hard to mount effective defenses.  So either zap will need to come back or more creative (most likely site based) defenses will evolve.

Hand Empire of Evil Sampler Deck

Foundation (13):

Willow Warriors x3

Golden Candle Society x5

Shaolin Student x5

 

Characters (12):

Peasant Leader x2

Stoic Wanderer

Yuan Chonguan

Shung Dai

Wei Fong-yi

Yen Fan

Sun Chen

Shihong

Blue Master x2

Fong Sai Yuk

 

Events (9):

Blue Meditation x2

Resistance in Numbers

Rigorous Discipline

Difficulty at the End of Things x2

Superior Kung Fu x2

Natural Order

 

States (11):

Meditative Flight

Awesome Presence

Rain of Fury

Dim Mak

Hand without Shadow x2

Butterfly Swords x4

Flying Windmill Kick

 

Edge (1):

Strength of the Land

 

Sites (3):

Mountain Monastery x2

Bandit Hideout

 

FSS (14):

Temple of the Shaolin Dragon

Hydroponic Garden x2

Disco

City Park x3

Mirrored Lake

Mobius Garden

Ancient Stone Arch

Bird Sanctuary

Festival Circle

Fox Pass

Golden Mile

 

Since a lot of the characters in the set have some type of evasion, the deck just wants to get damage adders on the characters and sneak past interceptors to take sites.  A secondary theme was to get the Peasant Leaders so they could take control of opponents' characters.

Jammer Empire of Evil Sampler Deck

Foundation (13):

Suicide Squad x3

Just Another Consumer x5

Edge Warrior

Resistance Squad x4

 

Characters (12):

Cocktail Waiters

Tunnel King

Dump Scrounger x2

Andy Di x2

Potemkin's Brigade

BattleChimp Potemkin vPaP x2

The Wrath of Kong

Furious George

King Kung

 

Events (21):

Out of the Barrel x3

Back in Black x3

Close Call x2

Auspicious Thermite

Scrounging x4

Death-O-Rama x4

Who's the Monkey Now x2

Street Riot x2

 

States (4):

Thingshot

Explosive Motorcycle x2

Homemade Tank

 

Edge (1):

Payback Time

 

Sites (8):

Bomb Factory x2

Rebel Camp x2

Killing Ground x4

 

FSS (9):

Nightclub x2

Hot Spring

Whirlpool of Blood

Fox Pass

City Square

Disco

Coral Reef x2

 

Here's my deck to try out the Jammer cards from Empire of Evil.  Note that I did not get a copy of Jayne Insane or Johnny Amok, so both are missing.  With Out of the Barrel and Back in Black, I felt that event recycling to pump out lots of characters would be a strong strategy.  The BattleChimp vPaP is just the card to make it work.  Lots of the other cards are then used to maximize the damage they do.  Use the City Square and Fox Pass for defense, and it should play fairly well.

Play Results

So we had six people show up at my place for some casual play and as a warm up for Plattecon and the Wisconsin state championship.  We broke down to two three-player games.

Table 1 was Collin, Jeff, and Tim.  They played three games.  Tim won the first two with his Detonating Destroyer deck.  I think Collin might have won the third.  At one point he was playing a Dragon / Jammer gun deck.  I saw Jeff playing his Ascended Bounty deck one game, and an Architect deck in another game.  Obviously I don't have many details overall.

Table 2 was John, Willow, and me.  Game one, John played a Jammer coin flip deck; Willow played an Architect tank deck; and I played my Lotus Empire of Evil sampler deck posted previously.  Willow and I had good starts.  She got a Tank Commander and Commandant Barkhorn each with a Panzer X, and I had the Demon Emperor, his Evil Twin and Xin Ji Yang.  Fortunately, I got my Waterfall Sanctuary in play, and that slowed Willow down.  She had to drop the bomb to slow me down.  The Alabaster King, however, showed up in place of the Demon Emperor.  My next turn, a Hell Hound showed up to protect the King.  His Evil Twin then showed up.  Once Willow realized that the Hound protected both from another Bomb, she convinced John that the Hound had to die.  He obliged and smoked the Hound with "Do You Feel Luck, Punk".  Willow then dropped the Bomb.  The only survivor was Commnadant Barkhorn.  It looked like Willow as going for the win, but John stopped her with Safety Third.  I played my fourth FSS and waited.  I could have spent all my power on a hitter and gone for the win, but Willow had power and most likely an Imprison in hand.  Instead, I passed thinking my two Tortured Memories would be enough to win next turn.  John played Jayne Insane and attacked Willow.  She was forced to Imprison Jayne.  Willow attacked me for the win with Barkhorn.  I took control of him to end the attack and Willow's turn.  I then took control of him on my turn and played Jueding Shelun, which was enough to take a site to win.

Game 2, I played a Hand Empire of Evil sampler deck, Willow played a Dragon Is That All You Got deck, and John played a Dragon/Purist coin flip/gun deck.  There was lots of character build up in this game.  Willow had a very defendable position with a Maze of Stairs in the front row and a Kinoshita House in the back row.  I was not able to crack this egg, but John broke it down with his Wild Spirits and Zen Ritualists to move the sites around.  Willow made a push against John with her Big Bruiser and Good Ol' Boys backed up by Lin for healing.  John was able to stop them by recycling an Origami Handguns through his chain of interceptors.  The final and crowning moment was when the final defender was smoked, the Handguns went on the Big Bruiser to reduce is fighting to zero and fail the attack.  John then played some foundation and launched a longshot attack against me, which failed to take my site.  I then played my fourth site and attacked with Shung Dai a Butterfly Swords and Flying Windmill Kick to take John's site for the win.

At this point, Collin, Willow, and Tim left.  Jeff, John, and I played one more game.  John played Syndicate/Ascended ReAscended; Jeff played a Dragon gun deck; and I played a Jammer Empire of Evil sampler deck.  John got stuck with a Proving Ground as his only site and could have been shut out of the game because I had a Whirlpool of Blood.  I, however, needed his help to shut down Jeff, who had an early burn for power.  With Andy Di pumping my weenies, I was able to pull down Jeff.  My City Square with lots of non-FSS limited his ability to attack effectively.  Once I seized Jeff's Fox Pass, I had to tools to hold off attacks and build to a win.  One of the keys was Battlechimp to play Back in Black to bring back chump targets for Fox Pass to limit effective attacks.

Empire of Evil Lotus Trial Deck

So we are going to get together to play some games finally with the Empire of Evil cards.  Here is my first deck.  It is pretty much a sampler of the new Lotus cards that I drew.  I'm missing the promo cards for now.  Once I get some play time with it, I'll tune it up.

Foundation

Imperial Sycophants x3
Prefect’s Guard x3
Sinister Priest x5
Eunuch Underling x2

Characters
Unholy Legionnaires x3
Eater of Fortune
Hell Hound
Evil Twin x2
Demon Emperor
Xin Ji Yang
Jueding Shelun
Xin Kai Sheng
Seven Evils
The Alabaster King

Events
Drowning in Blood
The Withering of Souls
The Becoming
Larcenous Mist x2
Flying Sleeves
Die!!!! x2
Underworld Coronation
Tortured Memories x4
Pocket Demon x2
Inauspicious Return

States
Under the Knife x3
Withering Touch
Abysmal Behemoth

Sites
Alchemist’s Lair

FSS
The Alabaster Palace
Martyr’s Tomb
Mirrored Lake
Mobius Garden
Ancient Stone Arch
City Park
Hydroponic Garden
Nine Dragon Temple
Disco
Gambling House
Golden Mile
Petroglyphs
Waterfall Sanctuary
Temple of the Monkey King