Hi everyone, its Justin. I've got another
deck profile for you today.
I'm gonna talk to you about how to build
a Nebula deck, and then afterwards I’m
gonna talk to you about how
you beat a Nebula deck. And
I’m gonna run through the cards
first, but I’ll just give you a hint that it
all kind of hinges on turn 4. So here we
have Nebula from the Black Order
expansion for Versus, and she’s a level
one. She has 0 attack, 3 defense, and 5
health. Her keyword power is Thanos’s
Greatest Creation: Nebula is passive and
she loses and can’t gain other keyword
or super powers. You can see that she
is not a very powerful character. She’s got a powerful appearance, but her
attack value is 0, which means she
can’t even strike back, so you can’t use
strike-back effects or anything like
that. And she has a pretty low defense,
and not particularly high health either.
And then she also has the keyword power
Vengeance Stirs, so for one XP, you level
up. At the end of an enemy turn, if Nebula
is equipped with a one of a kind
equipment, she gains an XP. So it doesn’t
require her to have much XP—she just
needs one—but it’s a tricky level
up condition. So that’s what this
video is about, is taking advantage of
that and figuring out how to do that as
quickly as possible. With that aside,
before we look at her level 2 card, let’s take a look at some
of the equipment that she can use. In
order for her to level up, it must be a
one of a kind equipment, and there aren’t
too many of those in the game, and the
number that you can use to actually
level her up before she gets KO’d is
even smaller, so we’ll take a look at
what there is. This is The Nullifier. If
you’re a veteran Versus player, you know
what this is. One of a kind.
Ultimate nullification when The
Nullifier appears, name a keyword or
superpower and enemy characters lose and
can’t gain that power until
The Nullifier leaves play. I have to say this
card—by the way this is a proxy that I
made because I’ve got my real Nullifier
in another deck—but this one is
probably the equipment that you want to
go for for Nebula, out of all of them.
This one is definitely going to help you,
because it has that ability so that you
can cause your opponent to lose critical
keyword powers like say flight or other
things that might make it easy for them
to get at your Nebula when she’s most
vulnerable, which is all the time until
she levels up. So, Nullifier is a
very useful card to get. Most of the
time you want to be searching for that
card, but there are a few others
that could work. Next one is the Cosmic
Cube. You’ll note this is a Hydra
equipment. Nebula is a Super-villain.
You’ll need some Hydra characters in
your deck, if you’re going to use the
Cosmic Cube, which is another reason why
The Nullifier is good, because it can be
played without any team affiliations.
It’s just got the Marvel stamp and Nebula is,
of course, Marvel. So, the Cosmic Cube.
One of a kind, again. Reshape Existence:
For a [skill], look through an enemy
player’s deck and choose a card. Remove
any number of cards with that name in
their deck from the game. It’s a great
power, but it’s not gonna help you
protect Nebula at all, so you can you can
already see that The Nullifier is going
to give you a distinct advantage over
the Cosmic Cube. And then I have a level
3 Cosmic Cube. Again Hydra, One of a Kind.
Reshape the Mind: Look at an enemy
player’s hand and choose a card. Remove
all cards with that name in their hand
from the game. So this one could be
interesting, could be useful. You
can remove, again, critical cards
that will potentially help your opponent
stun your Nebula, but I have to say three
costs it’s already almost too expensive
to be used at this point. You’ll, again,
start to see more of that as this deck
evolves. Next, we have The Darkhold: One
of a Kind. It costs three, as well, so it’s
gonna be real risky to try to use this
one.
Malevolent: Equip only to an evil
character. Nebula is evil, so that’s fine.
Dark Magic: When you play your first plot
twist each turn, put it into your hand
instead of your KO pile. Now, this can
definitely be useful, if you can get it
out there, because if you play enough
plot twists, then you can kind of double
them up and that will help protect
Nebula by adding defense, because she has
a very low defense. If you play
something like Find Cover to give her +3
defense, she’ll get up to 6. If she has
The Darkhold, you can then put that plot
twist back into your hand and play it
again, and then she’ll have 9 defense. That will definitely help you to to
get your Nebula leveled up and to help
protect her from getting KO’d—or from
getting stunned, rather—and then losing
the equipment, and thus losing the XP. So,
you can see The Darkhold is also gonna
edge out the Cosmic Cube because it can
be very useful when it comes down to the
wire.
After that, we have a level 4 Cosmic Cube,
which, if you are equipping this to her
on turn 4 and you don’t have a good
strategy, then you’ve basically just lost
the game. She has such a low defense that
you’re gonna take wounds early on, and if
you’re only attempting this by turn 4,
the only thing you can put out is your
Cosmic Cube, because it’s gonna take out
all your resources—take up all your
resource points. It’s a Hail Mary, but
you basically don’t want it. I’m actually
thinking about replacing this in
in my deck with something else, but I
haven’t thought through what
that is gonna be yet. If you can hold
on to one of these by the end of an
enemy turn, then Nebula will level up into
her level 2, and she goes from 0/3 to a 12/12. You can see that
she’s got pretty massive stats.
She has range, so you can keep her in the
back row, and she has Revenge:
Thanos characters are passive, and they
lose and can’t gain other printed keyword and super powers. In most decks,
eh, it’s not gonna be that useful, but if
you happen to be playing against Thanos
then this will definitely help seal that
deal. And then her super power is called
Tomorrow is Mine to Sculpt: Choose a
printed keyword or super power on a
character on a side or in a KO pile. Nebula gains that power. So that’s really
awesome and that costs an [alien] location,
so a Space location. I mean you can get
any number of things. You can change the
game any number of ways, and you can also
take your opponent’s
super powers and kind of use them against
her. When I played this the first time—well, the first and only time—I managed
to choose X-23’s healing power, so for a [might], I could just heal
all wounds, and that was pretty good cuz
she was down to down to 1 wound and,
all of a sudden, she was back to full
health, and she was 12/12 by turn 4.
That was pretty good. I was able to wreak
havoc after that, and the more space
locations—the more [alien] locations—you
play, the more super powers she gains.
I ended up giving her Shrink and
Regeneration, so she was she was
definitely a tough cookie to crack and
ended up winning the game for me. I
felt very victorious with that. So that’s
kind of how Nebula works. Next, I will
start to get into the cards. For my
one cost characters,
I have an Outrider. They have Legion and
Swarm, and they’re Genetically Engineered:
When this character appears, choose one
of the following four to get this turn:
flight, range, +2 attack, or +2 defense. In
my playing, as far as helping Nebula
level up, it doesn’t really matter what
you choose, because it only lasts until
the end of your turn. If you choose
flight and try to block with flight,
you’re gonna lose it anyway. Basically,
to your opponent, this is a 2/2
supporting character and that’s that.
Since they have Legion and Swarm, I have
five of those in this deck, because I
want lots of one-cost characters, and
you’ll see why when I get into the
strategy. In my other deck, I had twelve 1-cost characters, and in this one, I think
I have more even more than that. I also
have Crossbones. He is 1/1 with range.
Henchman—this is cool: When a Super-villains supporting character appears on your
side, put a +1/+1 counter on
Crossbones. So, every time I drop an
Outrider, then Crossbones gains attack
and defense. And then Combat Master is a
really cool keyword power: While
Crossbones is in combat, enemy players
can’t play plot twists. I have some
Hydra 1-cost, so I can use those Cosmic
Cubes. Four Black Ants with the classic
Shrink power. If you watched my first
video, it’s all about shrinkers. When Black
Ant gets attacked the first time each
turn, you may cancel the combat. He also
has 2 health, which is incredibly
useful, and a Life Model Decoy, which is
less useful. But, you know, it could come
in handy: Put three +1/+1
counters on Black Ant for each Black Ant
supporting character in the your KO pile. Actually, I don’t think I can use
that power with this deck, because I
don’t have any [might]s in my deck—any
Hydra [might]s, in particular. But Shrink is
the big thing and 2 health is also
another very important part of Black
Ants and and important part of this deck.
And then, I also have, again, if I need to
use a Cosmic Cube, I have the Hydra
Soldier. They have Swarm, just like the
Outrider: You can have any number of
this character on your side. This power
can’t be turned off. And then Soldier:
When this character appears put -1/-1
counters equal to the number of
Soldiers on your side onto an enemy
supporting character. That can be
useful. I’ve got four of those in my deck. Those are all the 1-cost characters.
Here is why I have that many: and
there’s 15 1-cost characters, which is
kind of incredible, because usually you
want high cost characters and, in this
case, if you swarm them with low cost
characters—oops it’s not supposed to be
in there yet. The reason why there are
so many of these is because, again, it’s
critical on turn four that that is when
you want to make your move. That is how
you’re gonna win with Nebula, because you
have to, again, protect her until the end
of your opponent’s turn. You have to
do everything you can to make sure that
your opponent doesn’t stun Nebula and
then she loses that One of a Kind
equipment. If they manage to do that once,
it’s pretty much a game over for you. You
might be able to recover, but it’s not
very likely at that point, because you’re
gonna spend the first four turns getting
your butt kicked, because you only have
3 defense. And you’re not gonna have
people out, because you don’t want to
waste them. You want to make sure that
your hand is full of 1-cost characters
at least two 1-cost characters by the
time you hit turn four, because you want
to put those 1-cost characters out in
front of Nebula. You want to have
your Hydra Soldiers protecting Nebula so
that they have to go through your Hydra
Soldiers before they can get to Nebula.
Or you want to have a Hydra Soldier and
Black And out, because then Black Ant
can shrink. That wastes an attack. Then
Black Ant gets stunned. And then they
take out your Hydra Soldier.
And then there’s no one left to attack
Nebula, and then you’ve leveled up. Or you
want to have—I mean, Outriders are the
same same kind of deal. Soldiers are nice
because they put counters on—-1/-1
counters on your enemy. So if you put out
two Hydra Soldiers on one turn, then
that’s three -1/-1 counters on
an enemy character, and maybe that’ll be
enough to stun them. Maybe it’ll be
enough that they can't get through to
Nebula’s defense. Those are the kinds of
useful things that you want to be
looking for in the 1-cost characters
that you’re putting into your deck. (By
the way, Black Ant is blue just
because I pulled him out of my Shrink, Shrank, Shrunk deck. I would normally re-sleeve
him brown like the rest of my Super-villains deck. Just FYI.)
So that’s where you're at. If you get The Nullifier out
and you attach to Nebula, and you get
Black Ant out and, say an Outrider, then
you’re in a pretty good spot because by
turn four they have to be able to attack
you one, two, three, four times in order to
actually stun you. So, you definitely
want to make sure you have those 1-cost characters in your hand, so that way
you can put them out. You’ve got 2-costs for The Nullifier, and then 2-costs
for both of your 1-cost characters, and that’s gonna be your
your best bet. When I played, I had so
many one cost characters in my hand that
I actually managed to put out two Hydra
Soldiers on turn three, and whether or
not they survived turn three didn't
matter as much, because I wanted to put
those three counters on someone, and I
wanted to make sure
that I stunned one of my opponents
characters. That way, they would have one
less person to attack me. Again, those are
the things that you’re trying to think
about. How do you put your opponent
at a disadvantage enough on the turn
that you bring out your equipment, so that that equipment can
survive. Another way you can do that is
with Black Dwarf. You could bring him
out—you could bring The Nullifier out
and Black Dwarf out on turn four, if you
have to. That would be your four resource
points. It’s not gonna be as good as
Black Ant and another one cost, but
because Black Dwarf has Tough, when
he gets stunned you, may recover him. So you basically have to attack him
twice in order to get through him and get to your
Nebula, so if you’re on the ropes then
Black Dwarf could definitely come in
handy. He also has the power: When he
appears, reveal the top six cards from
your deck. Put a One of a Kind equipment
from them into your hand and shuffle the
rest of the revealed cards into your
deck. So you could bring him out on, say
turn three, if you don't have The
Nullifier in hand, or if you don’t have
some other way to get at The
Nullifier and his Black Order power will
hopefully help you out there. If you
bring him out on turn three and he gets
stunned, you could optionally not use his
Tough power and you could stun him—and
maybe Nebula will get stunned again—but
then you can bring him back and he could
be protection. Then you
could bring out, you know, a few more
characters and now you have to do four
attacks to get through to you.
Turn 3 is isn’t going to be an
important turn, and turn four is gonna be
where it all hinges. I have four
Black Dwarfs in my deck—here’s the other
three—at cost two. If you don’t manage to
succeed on turn four, you’re probably
doomed, but I did put 3-cost Doctor
Octopus in there, cuz he’s a Super-villain. He
matches the theme and he has Grab: While
he’s in the front row, enemy characters
can’t fly over him. He’s a decently high
defense for a 3-cost character
and so it will protect Nebula from
flyers, and will maybe cause them to
team attack and exhaust a couple of
their characters to get through him.
Doctor Octopus. There’s only two of him in there. I may swap him
out for someone else, but he’s a
decent card overall from the old set.
Then I don’t have any 4-cost
characters and I only have two 5-cost
characters, because I filled my deck up
with so many 1-cost characters, and I
want some higher cost characters later
on down the line, so in the middle is
where I'm trying to even that out. So, I
grabbed Corvus Glaive. Again, this is sort
of a Hail Mary. If you are waiting until
turn five to level Nebula up, again,
you’re probably already dead by then, but
just in case, he has Black Order again, so
you can reveal cards and hopefully get that Nullifier or another
One of a Kind equipment, and he’s
ferocious: While in melee combat, Corvus
Glaive strikes before characters without Ferocious. Sort
of like Tough, except he doesn’t get
stunned, I guess is one weird way to
think about it. But he has a very high
attack, so he is will likely take out a
lot of lower cost characters before they
can even strike back at him, because he
has Ferocious. And then we’re just
getting into the higher cost characters.
At this point they’re not necessarily
protecting Nebula from holding on to
her equipment, although, you know, if
possible, that would be great. So, I have
Magneto—again it’s a proxy—flight
and range, 7 attack, 6 defense, and
Magnetic Suppression enemy supporting
characters can’t recover.
They remain stunned, which is really
annoying when you’re playing against
Magneto, and so I decided to throw him
in there. Again, he’s a villain, so that
works with the deck theme, and I have
four of those in there. And then we get
to turn seven. 7-cost Dormammu.
Immortal: when he gets KO’d, you may
shuffle him into your deck. Necromancy:
For an [intellect] and an [energy], put a
character from an enemy player’s KO pile
onto your side. It could be useful, but
mostly he’s just in there because he’s
the Super-villains’ 7-cost, and he’s got two
health. He’s not super great.
You could probably swap him out for
someone else, but I'm just trying to keep
it Super-villains themed at this point.
So, two Dormammus, and then two
Red Skulls, getting a high
cost Hydra character out there. A
Diabolical Plan: For an [intellect],
enemy players can’t draw cards until
your next turn. He has 10 attack, 6
defense, and range. A Diabolical Plan is
actually pretty diabolical, and I have
the intellect in here and I may or
may not be using them, so it’s great to
do that late-game and take away your
opponent’s options. So, two Red Skulls and,
of course, Gilgamesh.
He’s the one who breaks the theme of
Hydra and Super-villains, but he’s just too
good to to keep out of it. Eternal: If
Gilgamesh would leave play, you may put
him into his owner’s hand instead. And The
Forgotten One: At the end of your turn, if
you didn’t say “Gilgamesh” this turn, he
loses and can’t gain Eternal. Just
gotta keep saying “Gilgamesh”. And then, of
course, flight and 16 attack, 16 defense,
and one health. He’s just a powerhouse.
That is all of the characters. That’s the curve of this deck. We look at
the locations. Of course, we’ve got four
Vaults which are the Super-villains’ locations.
Got four Academies, so we can use A
Diabolical Plan and another card that’s
coming up. Got four beautiful Space
proxies here to use Nebula’s level up
power, which is Tomorrow is Mine to
Sculpt. Those space locations…
The Vault—it’s not a true wild card—you can’t use The Vault to
create Space icons
or [alien] icons, so we need all four
Spaces, so we can use those [alien] powers, so that we can give Nebula all of the
powers that she needs. And the last
batch is four Wakandas. Again, we’re
looking for very specific cards; we’re
looking for specific equipment cards,
so Wakanda allows you to use
Vibranium Technology: During your Build
Phase, your main character may pay an
[intellect]. If it does, turn this location
face down. Then search your deck for an
equipment, reveal it, and put it into your
hand. If you want that Nullifier,
there’s no better guarantee than
Wakanda. Of course, that’s why we have
the four Academies, as well, because those
give you Intellects, which Wakanda
needs. That’s how those locations work.
There’s lots of ways to get the cards
that you need. One is just by drawing
cards, of course. Another one is using the
Black Order that Black Dwarf and others
use to allow you to search your deck—or rather flip over the top six cards—but
then Wakanda is very good for getting
exactly the card that you want, so that
one is in there. Although, I lucked out
the first time I played this and I got
The Nullifier precisely when I needed it,
and so, unfortunately that sort of meant
that Wakanda kind of went unused,
and so it was a little bit—there’s a
little bit of fat—fatty in the deck.
Then we get on to the plot twists. Again.
We’ve got to protect Nebula on turn four, so
whatever you do, do not play any
defensive plot twists before Nebula has
that equipment in her hand, because if
you do, you’re just wasting them. If you
have The Darkhold, then you can play
those plot twists twice—well, you can
play the first one twice—which is gonna
be really awesome. And if you have The
Nullifier, then you have a 2-cost
equipment that will allow you to bring
out two 1-cost characters, which is also
gonna be awesome. These are
probably the two
that you will be looking for the most. You’re gonna have a harder time with
Cosmic Cubes, but it’s still possible
that you can do it. The plot twists
that I got are Find Cover—and this is a
proxy that I made because, again, I need
more of them, so I just printed some out. Any turn combat, choose a defender to get
+3 defense this combat. If I can play one
of those and get +3 defense, that’s gonna
force my opponent to do something. And if
I have The Darkhold and I can play it
twice, then that’s awesome. And if I have
two Find Covers, I can play one twice and
then play the other one, and that would
be awesome too. And then, likewise, I have
Shock to the System which is: Any turn
combat, choose an attacker to get -3/-0
this combat. Again, think
about if you have The Darkhold. Think
about which one you want to be able to
play twice, because it’s the first
plot twist you play each turn. If
you’re up against someone who has… If
you look at Nebula, and you’re up against
someone who has 3 attack to get
through her 3 defense, and you play
Shock to the System while she’s holding
The Darkhold, then their attack goes
down to zero and that goes back into
your hand. I don't know what I’m saying,
but basically, you might want to be able
to increase the defense higher instead
of lowering the attack. They’re more or
less the same thing, but sometimes you’ve
got to think about, like can they strike
you, or can you go below zero if you play
this twice, that kind of thing. That is
the deck. Again, building a
successful Nebula deck is going to hinge
on turn four, because that’s
going to give you the most opportunities
to play 1-cost characters, especially
Black Ant. You might want Wasp in there,
if you want to protect with flight.
That’s definitely another viable one
that you’d want in there. I didn’t put
her in, just because she’s A-Force, and it
kind of breaks the the theme of the deck,
and I wanted more Hydra characters
because I want to be able to play those Cosmic
Cubes. As ever with these games, it’s
always a balance of what it is you
need, and what’s in your deck, and all
that kind of thing. The weakness of
this deck is, of course, if your opponent
knows that it’s hinging on turn four
then they’re going to also keep their
hand protected pretty well. They’re gonna
keep their most offensive cards in their
hand and they’re gonna build up their
board, so that way they can get
through your board by the time you build
it on turn four. So that’s that's how you defeat a Nebula deck,
basically by playing her strengths—or
her weakness, I guess—against her.
You want to hold on to
offensive plot-twists and things that
will let you attack again, a second time.
All that kind of good stuff,
because you want to make sure—you don’t
want Nebula to level up. You’ve got to make
sure that you stun her when she has that
equipment. With the release of The Utopia
Battles, there is one card in particular
that I think is going to be incredibly
useful for this deck and that is Dark
Beast.
He has the power Dark Scientist: You pay
two less to play evil equipment, to a
minimum of one. He can definitely be
useful but, again, it’s all in
the resource points that you have. He could make The Nullifier cost one
instead of two, but Dark Beast himself is
going to cost two, as well, so you’ve got to
make sure that you have the resources.
You could bring him out on turn two and
then do your move with The
Nullifier on turn three, but you have to
make sure that Dark Beast stays out, so
that might mean protecting him with your
Nebula or something like that.
He is definitely an interesting addition
to the cards, but I don't know quite how
well he fits in with a Nebula deck.
Similarly, he’s got the H.A.M.M.E.R.
affiliation, so he's gonna be off
theme, so it might not be worth it to have him in
your deck, after all. But definitely worth
looking at. I think he’s gonna be a fun one
to try to work in there. That is where
I’m gonna leave it. That is how you build—
and beat—a Nebula deck. I hope y’all give it a shot. I hope you send
some comments my way, if you think there
are different ways you can trim the fat.
Maybe I don't need four Wakandas. Maybe I don't need the 4-cost Cosmic Cube.
Maybe I could put in some more
supporting characters if I got rid of
those. Maybe I don’t need quite so many
1-cost characters. Either way, let me
know either in the comments or on the
Facebook group, and, otherwise, happy
playing.
