I've always loved the concept of alternate win conditions. This is one of the reasons I've fallen in love with the game of L5R. The fact that you can win an enlightenment or honour victory at the same time that your opponent is smashing your provinces into dust appeals to my sense of gamesmanship.

The same applies within the game of Vs, Whether it be by Rigged Elections, or Secret Six Victorious, there is something cool about winning by means different from the norm. Last night my friend Cameron came over looking to test his Shadowpact deck. As I had recently dismantled all my decks so as to catalogue my collection I quickly slung together a GLEE deck with spare cards I had lying around unfiled. The end result was a deck that played agressively through the early turns with G'Nort, Kyle, Light Armour and Chop Block, then slowed up laying more characters including Black Hand, Rain of Acorns and Catchers Mitt. The deck was nothing original but I was looking to bag a win using the 7-drop Sinestro's ability just because I had never won by this method.

As it turned out the deck played out fairly well. It had been a while since the debacle that was DC Modern season featuring GLEE, GLEE and more GLEE so the deck no longer felt stale.  After bagging a few wins I began to see the potential of Cameron's Shadowpact characters within the deck. The stall and life gain of GLEE mixed in with the ability to 'buy' resource points possessed by the 'Pact looked to have real potential. We also realised that there was an alternate win condition in the form of Cpt. Marvel just dying to be abused. We stopped playing around 2am, after much discussion upon the merging of the two decks.

To be honest I was a bit disappointed today when I started this Blog to find that three players had posted decks along this combination of teams already, obviously with the same plan in mind, to use conjuration to bust out an 'early' Captain Marvel, then use his ability to win the game. I did think however that none of the builds really used Shadowpact to its full potential, leaning more on the tried and tested methods used within a standard GLock build.

So here we go with what made it into my deck.
First choice was a no brainer, a dude who pretty much acts as my mulligan condition for getting off to a good start in the match, Kyle Rayner. His ability to search out combat pump equip (Light Armour), KO Tech (Chooping Block), Reinforcement Assistance (Catchers Mitt), Team Up (No Evil Shall Escape our Sight) and Defence Support CArds (Helping Hand) is what makes him one of the best 2-drops in the game. The next choices were comparitively straightforward, I wanted Catchers Mitts, Light Armours and Chopping Blocks as they are all 'fetchable' targets for the 2-drop of choice. The deck however needs Black Hand to be successful so search cards are required. I'm fortunate enough to own a set of Enemy of my Enemys, but in the end I decided to plump for only three of them and three The Ring has Chosen. My reasoning behind this is simple. If unsuccessful at pulling Kyle even after Mulliganing, Salakk plus Ring = Turn 2 Kyle. Other no-brainers for the deck include a couple of Rain of Acorns, 4 Cover Fire and a bit of recovery tech in the form of Lanterns in Love. At this point I've shied away from mentioning the Shadowpact characters and teamstamped cards that have crept into the predominantly DGL build. I like the fact that a number of the Shadowpact characters have Willpower allowing them to a) provide life gain from Black Hand and Sectors Ability but also b) be searchable with The Ring. Secondly they provide a couple of 'tech' cards for matchups locally. I'm expecting to see plenty of Good Guys locally so Magical Lobotomy is great, as is Transmutation in a number of other matcups in the local meta. Both of these cards as well as Conjuration and Stepping Between Worlds are fetchable by Madame Xanadu. With regards the Shadowpact characters, the Zatanna 6-drop is great, I also like the 2-drop Blue Devil as a splash card.

By this stage we had thrown a number of cards into and back out of the melting pot and some kind of fusion was beginning to take place. A preliminary deck list looks as follows.

1 G'Nort, Green Lantern of G'Newt
2 Salakk, Green Lantern of Slyggia
1 Olapet, Green Lantern of Southern Goldstar
1 Sonar, Dastardly Discord
1 Henry King*Brainwave, Psionic Manipulator
2 Madame Xanadu, Cartomancer
1 Arisia, Green Lantern of Graxos IV
4 Kyle Rayner, Last Green Lantern
2 Black Hand, Dark-Hearted Villain
1 Blue Devil, Dan Cassidy
1 Tomar Tu, Green Lantern of Xudar
1 Zatanna, Magical Manipulator
1 Hal Jordan, Green Lantern of Earth
2 Malvolio, Lord of the Green Flame
1 Ch'P, Green Lantern of H'Leven
2 Katma Tui, Green Lantern of Korugar
1 Nightmaster, Slayer
1 Sinestro, Green Lantern of Korugar
1 Zatanna, Showstopper
1 Dr.Fate, Hector Hall
1 Ganthet, Last Guardian
1 Captain Marvel, Champion of Magic

2 Birthing Chamber
3 Willworld
1 Sector 2814

4 Cover Fire
3 Enemy of my Enemy
3 The Ring has Chosen
2 Rain of Acorns
1 Helping Hand
1 No Evil Shall Escape our Sight
2 Hard Travelling Heroes
2 Stepping Between Worlds
1 Conjuration
1 Transmutation
1 Magical Lobotomy
1 Magical Conduit

2 Catchers Mitt
1 Chopping Block
1 Light Armor

At this pre-testing stage I have a number of concerns for the deck.
a) With so many 1-ofs will the deck lack consistency
b) It can gain life but can it stall enough to survive the fast paced decks of today
c) Will Blue-Devils lack of range figure as important
d) less search, more equipment?
e) I'd like to squeeze in Lanterns in Love or equivalent recovery card, but what to drop?

If you have any comments regarding my concerns feel free to post them