Reading up on Kralik's "
Durin's Secret Society of
Dear Friends" really got me thinking more about this format. My interest was spurred from dredlox posting in the hall chat how the deck was broken and unbeatable, etc...and I was like "man it really sounds like he's a person that just played against an Expanded deck".
So I checked it out (posted on his original list as well), and realized that I had already played someone using his deck...in fact, I think I've played against you, sgtdraino, using a variation of the deck, maybe.
Anyway, I was very impressed with the ingenuity and fast-acting strategy of the deck to get set up ASAP. I had to call out the deck a little bit on the weaknesses that I did observe, merely because I heard a lot of people in the hall saying it was "perfect" or "unbeatable". I don't think anything is unbeatable in this game, even in Open format
Annoying? YES...but not invincible!
To make a long story short, after looking at the decks from this thread, and watching some replays, I'm coming to the conclusion that to make a
really great deck in Movie, you need to prepare more like you are getting ready for Expanded than you think! Bold statement...this is what went on in my mind (feel free to blow my ideas out of the water, as usual
).
In Fellowship, Towers, Towers Standard, and King Blocks, you are
in general able to develop a strategy for fellowship and shadow, without worrying TOO much about what your opponent is going to throw at you. It's more of a "I show you what I've got, you show me what you've got" atmosphere.
For example: If I'm playing Uruks in Fellowship block, of course I'm going to include a couple
Saruman's Power to help prevent choke or take down those Last Alliance tanks. But if I'm Moria or Sauron, I just build my shadow to plow through them, regardless of what conditions they are using. Best deck (including a little luck with draws and matchup sometimes) comes out on top. Pretty clean cut.
Compare this to Expanded. Its a maelstrom of wild strategies, tomfoolery, NPE, abuse decks, you name it. I really believe that there is truly no "broken" strategy or something that can't be stopped, even among all of these (at least none that has been seen yet).
However, the measures you need to take to prepare in making a
winning Expanded deck are broader. In some cases you really CAN'T just throw your best Nazgul corruption deck into the league, comprised of 34 Wraith-only cards and just say "Well, I'll just corrupt them before they can stop me"...yeah, it happens sometimes. But what do you do when you have no way of using threats during Shadow phase? Pop, pop, pop...there goes all of my minions during maneuver phase, and they are doubling to
Mithlond. The difference here is that
if you don't prepare specifically for certain strategies,
you won't even get to show your opponent what your shadow/fellowship actually does.
Now I'll try to bring this full circle back to Movie block format (the whole point here).
Just looking at the lists and replays of some of the most competitive decks in Movie format, I'm compelled to say that to have a Movie deck that can go the distance (
consistently stay competitive up through site 9), you must tech at least a little, to prevent being blown away by certain strategies.
In light of Kralik's deck alone, I think its vital to have at least
some form of condition control. Preferably an end-all, like
Saruman's Power. Almost any deck would automatically benefit from a couple of the Grima's and some SP. Are these cards going to be useless to you sometimes? Absolutely. But they will also sometimes be the difference between you putting up a fight, or being utterly shut down.
What do you guys think? Does Movie need teching to have a truly "League-class" deck? Or can you just put your head down and give it the college-try, plowing through with pure besiegers, Gollum, etc.