Welcome to the second part of this series, the topic for today will be Rush, how is it played, how to recognize it and more importantly, how to beat it!.
Last week I gave a little introduction to this series, explained the terms and gave an example for each playstyle/deck that is gonna be exposed here. I will, however, when explaining each playtsyle/deck add a decklist, since it is the perfect way to help you understand and help me explain.
Today's topic is Rush, (as explained last article) "This type of deck is based on filling the field with more characters than your opponent and winning as fast as possible, since going into the latest turns (7-8) isn't something you may handle, the greatest example of this type of decks are the army decks"
S.H.I.E.L.D. Army
Characters:
12x S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents, Army-Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
4x Squirrel Girl, Doreen Green
4x Maria Hill, Deputy Commander of S.H.I.E.L.D.
5x Cape-Killers Unit, Army-Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
3x Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
2x Wolverine, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.-Hydra
2x Jessica Drew Spider-Woman, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.-Hydra
2x Captain America, The Patriot-Secret Avenger
1x Spider-Man, Unmasked
1x Life Model Decoy, More Human than Human
1x Sentinel Squad O*N*E*, Army
3x S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier
2x Birthing Chamber
4x Blinding Rage
4x Crackshot
4x Losing the Argument
4x Invasion Plans
2x Rogue Squadron
How to play Rush decks: As explained earlier, the main idea of every Rush deck is to swarm the field and take advantage of the numbers. You cannot lose any resource points at any turn, as losing even one may result in not being able to take down the big guy. You are facing a character that (being with normal stats) on turn 4 has 7 def and on turn 5 has 9 Def so if you don't spend all 5 resource you can't take the opponent's character down. But you also need to do some damage....so what can you do to take the opponent's character down AND do some damage? This is the main reason why there are several ATK modifiers and some decks pack some out of combat tricks (the x-babies have Fastball Special).
However since you are playing a lot of characters you need a hand refill, so every Rush deck (with no exception) has some way to add cards to the hand either special for that kind of deck or a generic one (sentinels had a great support on Reconstruction program, and X-men has a great way to draw with Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning, but every Rush deck has at least 1 birthing chamber). Every card is put into the deck for some reason and thus must not be wasted unless you just got to.
How to recognize a Rush Player: Every Rush player can be identified by their playstyle, since they will try to keep the hand rising, even while playing a curve deck, they will also try to attack up-curve every chance they got. These players tend to lose control over the game as soon as they lose a character (when playing a different deck than rush) since they can't possibly replace that character for someone and still keep with the curve, so a Finishing move or such cards are great to annihilate every deck they play. A curve player would just accept it and try to stabilize the control made, and would attack down-curve so that their opponent would have the same amount of characters he has, a curve player would keep attacking on curve, or waste all modifiers in the attempt to take down a big character with a lot smaller character.
However, being a rush player is not a bad thing, since they all try to keep their possibilities open to any situation and thus are far more prepared for anything their opponent might try. I have also seen that all good sealed players usually play Rush decks, and what I have, by far, concluded is that this is due to their experience while building decks out of limited resources, making the best possible play out from the worst case and due to their knowledge of what is needed to take the character up-curve without losing many of their cards.
How to beat Rush decks: As most of you have by now concluded, the answer is pretty simple: KEEP THEIR FIELD COUNT DOWN. A card every Rush deck fears (and I firmly believe that every curve deck should include in their decks) is Total Anarchy. While the curve deck really feels no danger out of this card the rush deck knows that a character stunned means a character less to count with.
However, there are a lot more options on how to beat Rush, add 1 or 2 cards that replace face-up resources (S.H.I.E.L.D. army is as harmless as a baby if they don't have the helicarrier-..well..kinda, and most of the cards that replenish cards are either locations or ongoing plot twists). MUN introduced a great card and most importantly of all not a rare!!! this card is Death of the Dream. Exhausting a character really doesn't hurt when it was going to be stunned anyways and you are leaving your opponent out of options!
The third, and most hard to accomplish way to defeat a Rush deck easily, is to keep your opponent with little cards in their hand...let's say for example that you are losing 40/15 on turn 5, but you have been keeping your opponent out of cards. By this time they have spent either most of their characters or most of their Plot Twists and cannot keep the pace, so they will just start to no place a resource and just try to recruit as much characters as possible, just to keep the endurance totals difference as balanced as they can, however by this time they are already lost, and in turn 7 you will have both the resources and the endurance checked, it has dramatically fall from 40/15 to a probable 23/11. However the hand control cards are from few to none and thus this way of winning, while probably the safest and most certain way is just way too hard to accomplish.
Thanks you for reading the second part of this series, keep tuned for next week as I will explain (in a much more elaborated way) the curve decks, and the curve playstyle.
YGO Daedalus-Liberi fatali
Tags: Vs System Strategy Rush
Related to:
Vs System
