Turn the Tide, Vol 6: Sabretooth

Turn the Tide, Volume 6: Sabretooth

In which Ghost Spider hopes Mystique will go away, if she just ignores her for long enough

Welcome to Turn the Tide, a deck-building series where I build decks to take on specific villain scenarios. In this volume, we're taking on Sabretooth, along with the Standard 1, Expert 1, Brotherhood, and Mystique mod sets. As we'll soon discuss, the Mystique mod set is the real star of the show.

Sabretooth's Threat Overview: Sabretooth demands the player thwarts a starting side scheme quickly, actively blocks villain attacks (lest Robert Kelly take the hit and trigger an alternate defeat condition), and favors decks that can deal large amounts of damage at once. Sabretooth has an opportunity to heal every time he attacks, and he picks up retaliate in stage 3, further disincentivizing low damage attacks. Sabretooth's deck is a bit unusual in that it contains zero minions. However, his deck and recommended mod sets are more than enough to drag the fight out and wear you down.

The recommended mod sets provide a scant five minions. The Brotherhood minions aren't particularly tough. But they have annoying effects when they activate, demanding the player's immediate attention, and giving Sabretooth time to recover more HP.

Mystique, and her mod deck are the primary threats in the default play. Mystique is (literally) a tough customer with 9 HP and stats identical to Sabretooth. Her mod set also includes three "Shapeshifter" treacheries which, when revealed, get shuffled into the player's deck. This gums up future player hands and inflicts nasty forced responses. Her mod set also has a side scheme, Metamorphic Mayhem which doubles down on this threat by forcing the player to potentially put all three shapeshifter cards into the deck upon clearing it. And until you clear the scheme, the side scheme adds another boost icon to the encounter deck. This includes Sabretooth's healing upon attacking.

I know this villain set has a reputation for being difficult and sometimes uneven unenjoyable. Let's make a deck to defeat it.

How this deck beats it: Ghost Spider has a number of traits that make her a great candidate for taking on Sabretooth. Her Dizzying Reflexes hero ability allows her to ready, once per phase, after she plays a card with a hero response or interrupt. This makes her a natural fit for a protection, with the aspect's many defensive responses. Riposte and Not Today! let her damage Sabretooth and keep threat low, as long she perfectly defends. Armored Vest and Defensive Conditioning will give Ghost Spider 7 DEF whenever she blocks with these cards. 7 DEF is enough to perfectly block any Sabretooth attack, even if Metamorphic Mayhem is play. This allows the player to ignore scheme, removing the encounter's most dangerous tool for adding Shapeshifter cards to the player deck. This indirectly makes Masterplan less dangerous, since it will add threat to a side scheme you don't care about, instead of milling the villain deck in search of another one.

She is also a Web Warrior, giving her easy access to web warrior allies, upgrades, and supports. They give her additional ways to blocks, attack boosts, and card draw upon exiting play. While all the various web warrior cards are helpful, I would highlight Spider-Man -- Hobie Brown and Spider-Man Peter Parker as providing great tempo boosts, which can really help lay the hurt on Sabretooth and close out the game. Round your web warrior allies out with Jocasta for more consistent access to defense events, and Black Widow for a consistent way to deflect those Shapeshifter cards.

This deck doles out damage fast and avoids the villain phase's worst effects. Thanks for reading and I hope you give it a try if you've been having trouble taking down Mr Creed. Join me next time as I continue progressing through the Mutant Genesis box. I tried something a little different this time by skipping the villain deck data in favor of just discussing the villain and hero decks. It makes these write-ups a lot easier and hopefully gets to the key parts faster. Let me know what you think and until next time!