Hi everybody - I just reached Infinite this season again with this Cerebro 2 deck. This deck was a terrific meta choice this season, as I'm sure those of you who are also in Pool 3 are running into a ton of Leader, Aero and Magneto, and a shortage of Enchantress. This deck has an incredible last turn power spike, adding up to 42 power in one turn.
This is NOT a revolutionary deck or particularly difficult deck to pilot, so I'm going to provide a guide that focuses more about the strategy rather a heavy card overview.
Table of Contents:
- Card Descriptions / Tips
- Card Substitutions
- Gameplan
- Matchups
Card Descriptions / Tips:
Iceman / Korg / Nightcrawler - This is our one drop package, and what I ran in this deck because all 3 of these cards are 2 power and provide disruption. Since you always have to have Killmonger in mind, making sure your 1 drops provide tempo (Iceman), card advantage (Korg), and flexibility (Nightcrawler) is why I chose these 3 cards. If you are running into a lot of Killmongers, you can sub out 1 (either Nightcrawler or Korg).
Scorpion - This is your preferred 2 energy play. This gets worse the longer the game goes on, so try to prioritize it early if you have it. Since Silver Surfer is popular now, Brood is a very impactful hit. The same also goes for Moon Girl decks as it will affect their copy as well.
Goose - This card is incredible in this deck, as you only one card (Blue Marvel) over 3 cost. Goose very often limits your opponents power in a lane, making it possible to take the location without committing a lot of power. Aside from that, this card protects your Cerebro from Enchantress, so keep that in mind. This card is very close to core.
Mister Sinister / Brood - This are your flood cards. The main tips for these cards is you just need to consider location space and you're not in a huge rush to play these cards. Each of your 2 cost tokens can get up to a max of 7 power, so these represent 14/21 possible power. Extremely powerful. Unfortunately, because of that I would not play this deck if you do not have Brood.
Mister Fantastic - This is definitely a flex spot in this deck, but for surprise value into already full or hard to reach locations. In a pinch, you can also copy his affect with Mystique as some times that can be game winning. You can try Invisible Woman or Daredevil as possible substitutions.
Storm - Locations are the #1 thing that can trip this deck up. This card is essential as this deck often will go wide and challenge all 3 lanes, and you need a way to neutralize location RNG. Without this card, your winrate with this deck will go way down.
Cerebro - Obviously this is the most important card to draw in the deck. In a perfect world, this card can represent up to 20 power since you can fill up 10 buffable slots and then have your last two slots for Mystique and Cerebro.
Two big tips about this card that I will cover more later, but I just want to hammer home:
- If you have the Cerebro/Mystique combo in hand, save it until turn 6 or turn 5 for more surprise value. If you play them early you'll be more susceptible to tech cards and lose some of the surprise power in your deck, causing you to win less cubes.
- Location matters where you play this card. Generally you want to play Cerebro/Mystique where your opponent is hard committing their resources since they are going to play only for 0 or 1 power depending if you played Blue Marvel. You can also play Cerebro in the Goose lane to avoid Enchantress and Goose lanes naturally need less power to win since your opponent is restricted there from their high cost cards.
Mystique - Unfortunately this is another Pool 3 card which is essential to this deck as it's a second Cerebro. Again, it's really powerful and preferential to save this card for Turn 6 to play alongside Cerebro. There are also many situations where you might want to copy Blue Marvel instead because you either didn't draw Cerebro, or you need to push more power to cards affected by a location or got their power reduced by Scorpion. But ideally you are playing this as a second Cerebro, and you're outputting an up to a whopping 40 power on Turn 6 with those two cards. While it'll naturally you misplaying a few times, order matters on when you play your cards.
Blue Marvel - This is your ideal Turn 5 play as it perfectly sets everything to 3 power and will also benefit from the Cerebro buff. Since you want to often Cerebro/Mystique on Turn 6 or play multiple cards in turn 6, you really don't want to hold this if you can drop it on turn 5.
Card Substitutions:
Invisible Woman - This card has the advantage of disguising our gameplan, and you can sub this out for a 1 drop if you are running into a lot of Killmongers. You can also sub out Goose for it if you don't have it, although Goose is very good.
Beast - Credit to ColdPhoenix in the comments. But Beast will help with location RNG to pick up unwanted fodder such as the monster from monster island, squirrels or ninjas.
Daredevil/Cable/Agent 13/Yondu - I don't think any of these cards provide anything exceptional to the deck, but they are all fine substitutions if you are missing Goose and don't have Invisible Woman.
Gameplan:
Turn 1 - Your ideal turn 1 is Korg (as it loses value the longer your hold it). Because locations can mess with this deck a lot, you really want to play your 1 drop in the left location if it is not disruptive. If you have Storm in hand, you can play your cards mostly anywhere, but there are still a few locations like Jotunheim that can screw your gameplan where it's just safer to play left on Turn 1.
Turn 2 - Your ideal turn 2 is Scorpion > Goose > Double 1 drop > Mister Sinister. Simply, Scorpion is best the earlier you drop it and Goose you want to generally drop before Turn 4.
Turn 3 - Here's where it gets less linear. Mister Fantastic mid is your priority drop, but you can also Storm a bad location or Brood. With Storm, keep in mind that you want to make sure you have adequate power to win the location with buffs, but you don't need to go crazy and fill out a Storm lane, usually 2-3 cards is enough., With Brood, as long as you understand that you are committing a lot of power to that location, make sure it is a location that is favorable and your opponent is at least somewhat challenging.
Turn 4 - Turn 4 is the most awkward turn for this deck, as we run no 4 drops so your either playing a 3 + 1, a 2 + 2, a lone 3 or a lone 2. Goose is not the worst to play on Turn 4 since you will have more information and can lock out a lane that your opponent hasn't committed a lot to.
As uneventful and awkward this turn can be, it's actually extremely important that you think hard on this turn. You should be able to have a good idea by now on what your opponent is likely playing, so you should be thinking about which lanes they are going to go for and which lanes you should be playing for. Should you be punting a lane and just stick your Cerebro/Mystique in there? Should you try to flood? To maximize cube gain, if your hand looks good at this point, I like to snap on either Turn 4 or 5 as this is when you appear the weakest, and it's not always obvious that you're playing Cerebro, especially if you haven't played Mister Sinister yet.
Turn 5 - You want to Blue Marvel here if you have it, but you can also play a 3+2, but you want to avoid playing Cerebro to disguise your hand here. The exception is if you're worried about Leech, you actually do want to play Cerebro. Leech is one of the few counters to this deck, but in my playing I've found him rare enough that I do like to hold onto Cerebro in spite of the risk.
Turn 6 - Assuming no location fuckery, a lot of your games will look something like this:
Turn 1 drop, Turn 2 drop, Turn 3 drop, Brood + 1 drop, Blue Marvel. That means you'll have anywhere from 7-10 bodies in play in order to buff with your Cerebro/Mystique, which means if you have Cerebro + Mystique, your last play is going to add 30-42 power to the board.
(2x+1)+(2y+1) = turn 6 power
where x is number of units buffed by Cerebro and y is number of units buffed by Mystique. The +1 is for the body for Cerebro/Mystique if you have Blue Marvel on board.
Now, that's the ideal scenario. You're going to win a lot of games like that. But let's talk about when things went awry. There are scenarios where Mystique is better off copying Blue Marvel, such as if Monster Island appeared, or your opponent hit a massive Scorpion into a Brood/Mister Sinister. If you drew Cerebro but not Mystique, simply play Cerebro and whatever gives you the most power on board.
What's also extremely important is the positioning, although you should have been thinking about this from turn 3 onward. If your opponent is going tall on one location, remember that your max power in a location is 28 power. You can basically play it two ways, forfeit a location and use that lane to play your weak Cerebro/Mystique and try to win the other two locations. Or you can go wide and put your opponent in a situation where they have to spread themselves wide, in which case our deck is one of the best in the game at going wide.
Common Matchups and Tips:
I have here 13 of the most common matchups that I faced on my way from 70-100. I am giving them a ranking based on difficulty on this scale. The decks are ordered in terms of frequency that I faced them.
VF - very favorable (65%+ matchup)
F - favorable (55-65% matchup)
N - neutral (45-55% matchup)
UF - unfavorable (35-45% matchup)
VUF - very unfavorable (\< 35% matchup)
(F) Dera Leader/Aero/Leech - this is the most common deck on the ladder. It's top end is Leader, Magneto, Aero and Leech which gives it a lot of versatility. What helps us in this matchup is that Leader is very bad for them as Cerebro/Mystique do very little for them. Magneto and Aero are also rarely a big deal. The only card which gives them an edge is Leech, which is indeed very powerful, but if you identify this deck, it can often be correct to play Cerebro on 5 to avoid getting hit by Leech.
(F) Dino - This is another deck which shares a lot of the same cards, but the top end plays Moon Girl/Dino/Leader instead of Leech and Magento. You can identify this deck if you see Sentinel. A key card in this matchup is Goose. Your strategy is to play for the Goose lane and one of the other lanes. In your non Goose lane you'll likely need to have max power (28 power) especially if they have double Dino. You can also try to win a Storm lane + Goose lane.
(UF) Deathwave/Baero - This is a tough but not unwinnable matchup. Wave is the card which really can hit us hard, as it messes up our turn 6 combo with Cerebro/Mystique. To play around it, you need to consider dropping Cerebro on Turn 5, or just be content with playing either a Cerebro or a Mystique copying Blue Marvel on T6. Killmonger is another card that they run that can hurt us.
(N) Silver Surfer - This matchup is overall neutral, however the greedy Wong version of this deck is very hard to beat since we do not run disruption cards and they can go over the top of us. However vs thge more common non-Wong list, our highroll beats their highroll as we are buffing our units to 7 with Blue Marvel/Cerebro/Mystique, and their units are only hitting 5 and 6 power each.
(VF) Sera Miracle - This matchup is extremely easy for us as we simply go wide much better than them. The only thing to watch out here is that they'll often run some tech cards like Cosmo and Killmonger, so be wary about playing too many 1 drops and be careful where you drop your Mystique.
(VUF) Galactus - This matchup is awful as we cannot create a high power lane when we only have four board slots. The only avenue to winning is this, find out what lane they are playing their initial cards, and then play Goose in one lane, and then Storm the other. It's still difficult because the Galactus decks have now evolved to be not so all-in on Galactus, making it harder to identify when you're playing one. Still though, unless you draw both Goose and Storm by turn 4, this matchup is very hard to win.
(F) On Reveal - This matchup is pretty decent, but you have to identify that you need to play for the Wong lane and one other lane instead of going Wide. So you want to have a 28 power lane ideally and then commit enough to the Wong lane to beat them there. If you drew it late, Goose is actually a decent turn 5 play to prevent Odin/Doom on turn 6.
(N) Zero - This deck can be difficult to beat if they have Shuri, as they'll play Shuri into Red Skull into Taskmaster, which is just a ton of power. If they don't have Shuri, and most don't since it's an S5 card, this deck is very beatable as it's power level is significantly reduced.
(N) Patriot - This deck operates very similarly to ours, so it's really just a matter of who drew all their pieces. If they Patriot/Mystique/Onslaught, it can be hard to beat.
(F) Ongoing Destroyer - The advantage to this matchup is that their plays are extremely telegraphed and easy to calculate ahead of time. They most commonly go tall on two lanes, so you can often win the third lane with minimal commitment, and then you just need a lane with ~20 power to win the game.
(F) Control - This deck has fallen out of favor a lot and mostly merged to the Dera variant, but outside of Killmonger, not much of this deck causes an issue. Prof X is easy to play around since we often have at least some presence in all lanes and we can buff over the top of Prof X.
(N) Discard - I mostly faced the Hela version and Lockjaw version of the discard archtype. By it's nature, discard is very RNG heavy and you can get blown out by retrieved Infinauts and other big cards, but just as often they aren't hitting. Just a very swingy matchup either way.
(VF) Zoo - This matchup is much less common farther you climb up, but it's still there (and a decent meta choice now imo). Quite frankly though, they cannot compete with us since our Cerebro and Mystique are buffing all our units by +2, and Kazar/Blue Marvel are only giving +1, in addition to costing more energy. Extremely good matchup for us.