Killing the horde makes it easier to pump the Sentinels. Targeted events are often stopped by Festival Circles, which are then toasted later before they are taken. Mostly, you attack the most unpopular person and have enough tricky stuff to get past his denial. You are always in a position to tear someone down because your "Big Man" cards put you far enough behind that you are not a threat.
The deck also benefits from the Trade Center/Bronze Sentinel combo, where you generate 4 power by having 1 site, 1 trade center, toast the site and play another. You will often generate way more power than the deck needs. Save it for when everyone retaliates and takes the Trade Centers away. Keep playing characters. Save events until you can use them to take sites. Yes, Lets Book/Ting Ting's Gambit/ Back for Seconds is a hard combo to get to work, but when it does you tend to win. In a pinch you can use Satellite Intelligence and Who's the Big Man Now for denial, but that is not the way the deck wants to play.
The Final Brawls are a new tune, for a little extra denial and quick killing of the Horde if you want to power the Bronze Sentinel or Bao Chou.
Mallrats is a "Wrecker" deck, a term which I never properly explained. "Wrecker" means it is very very good at taking sites. Wrecker means it can not be badly hurt by having all of its sites removed. "Wrecker" means that if it is in a game, it is very likely that no one will have sites on the board at some point in the game.
By being fanatical on offense, and not bothering with defense, you foster an environment where sites get taken. When enough get taken, everyone starts buring for victory. A wrecker deck ideally runs on little or no power, because even alternate power generation will only get a little if there is nothing on the board. Any deck in the game that needs a normal amount of power will tend to spend it on characters, not events. It is really hard to describe if you have not been in a game with a deck like this, properly played.
Mallrats has been played, with slightly different tunes, about 10 times.
Almost all games were 4 player. It has choked about twice, and has
won about 6 times. It is a little too slow for 2-player, something
I treat as a feature in multiplayer because it does not tempt me into coming
out too fast and becoming a target. It likes an environment light on denial
and heavy on speed. I brought it to the finals because people were
responding to Cold War by bringing fast, light denial decks. I brought
the right deck, but the tune was a little off and I got unlucky.
Next time I play it, it will be 100 cards, with more Dragons than Jammers,
instead of the
50/50 mix you see here. It will also change a lot after Throne
War, since scrounging will make me re-think the power generation.
Last modified: October 20, 1997.