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From the Mind of Family Guy, Volume 1 I'm not a full fledged member of Team BTY, but I am one of the old friends that John mentioned that dragged him back into Raw Deal, sometimes kicking and screaming. When he came back on his own, he didn't want to resurrect Team BTY, so John, myself and our friend Harley Jones formed a new team, The Aristocrats. We made our appearance at Wizard World Philly 2006 and I happened to make the top cut with a Rene design that was both completely unexpected and quite recursive. John and I have very different styles of play; his is monster aggro, playing something like BFM or Vince where he gets down oversized retarded moves and then plays even beefier reversals. I play a far more cerebral style, with a lot of blue cards, recursion and combination. I think that having two completely different mind sets when it comes to Raw Deal allows John and I to both be better players - as he can get an idea of what a "control" player thinks of his deck, and I can get an idea of what an "aggro" player will attempt to do to mine. One of our joint ventures is to build solid All Axxess decks - up here in the Northeast, we <3 Afterburn and like our ability to play prematch and midmatch cards. What All Axxess boils down to is one of three hierarchies: play It's All About the Game or I'm Gonna Break You!, play the cards that hose It's All About the Game or I'm Gonna Break You, or play a Superstar that doesn't care about It's All About the Game or I'm Gonna Break You. With that in mind, I went ahead and found the Superstar that cares the absolute least about All Axxess prematch woes: Ken Kennedy. When I was at Neutral Ground, I got to see Enver's Kennedy design and thought I could build something that functioned much more effectively, so I came home, broke open my GAB boxes, and started building. I decided that It's Great to Be Back Here.... is too good to pass up, and that I would be Fan Favorite. I think the power of Once is Enough/Sloppy outweighs Manager Interferes, so I decided to go Face, considering I could still get Chimmels if I wanted them. I went with Raw to have the power to stop TMF's with King Interferes. Now that I know I'm going to be Raw/Face/Fan Favorite, the question became what engine I was going to run. I noticed the power of So Much Larger Than Life/Precision Sleeper, and with a lack of Restricted Use being played, I knew that a 0F, 14D, 8 Stun only reversable from Arsenal was a great idea. But what to fuel it with? Great American Bash gave me the idea with Blindside Drop Toe Hold and Blindside Sleeper, as well as Blindsided by the Dangerous Divas. I'll never end up in a Cell unless I choose to (or I'm up against Heyman, who never sees play here), so they're safe cards. So, Blindsides it is. Let's get to building.
Where'd That Come From?
Backstage Area:
Prematch (10): I'm leaning towards taking out the Raw Deal Belt for the Spinner Title - the thing is that unless they have Superstar Specifics, they aren't able to set their hand in any meaningful way. I play Mr. Kennedy's Mic only on the occasions that they still have a larger hand than I do after three Chimmels. Otherwise, Dare to Take a Challenge renders them -5. This makes me happy.
Midmatch (10): I'm known for playing a heavy red midmatch - it comes from my days of playing Spike Dudley and Rene Dupree. In the first case, I never had enough red cards in hand; in the second, I never wanted to play them - always overturn. I especially like Introduce, because it's an Action reversal as well which is never it's expected purpose.
Maneuvers (17): With your starting hand, plus overturning 5 to High Fives, plus three Chimmels and a Signing Appearance, you get to look at a total of 16 cards before the game begins. You will draw a Pump Kick 61.41% of the time. Also, you have the chance of drawing Blindside Hook or So Much Larger Than Life in that time frame. The recursive maneuvers allow you to do a ton of damage and ramp up quickly, and possibly hit that Victory Roll in the midmatch, or just go TMF crazy on people.
Actions (14): With the exception of the Unique Actions, every one of them is Fan Favorite, which makes them recursive with So Much Larger Than Life. Playing Divas from the Ringside Pile gives you the option of dumping more Fan Favorite cards into your Ringside to fuel more crazy tricks. A personal favorite is to get to 14F with Pump Kick/Drop Toe Hold, then So Much Larger Than Life into the Dynamic Finisher for 20D+ with 9 or 11 Stun Value, depending on how many Fan Favorites you're looking at. Testicular Fortitude nets you your SMLTL/Precision Sleeper combination.
Reversals (29): God LOVES Ken Kennedy. How do I know? That Divine Intervention can come back a grand total of 5 times in the game based on effects I generate - even more if someone nukes my Ring Area. The reversals are fairly stock, and Me Llamo....makes a GREAT Action reversal at 3F. There's no Elbow to the Face in the deck, because people are trying to do one of two things today: either push their moves to 8D and above, or play Chain/Divas moves that make Elbow redundant. People are unlikely to run more than two ACEs that matter in any given deck, so we're light on those. All in all, the deck is very stout, solid, and easy to run. Victory Roll was the key edition, as I kept on running into problems with recursive decks putting back reversals. It's a deck that can be taken into almost any metagame and do solidly - and it's a BTY special. Until next time, remember that The World Works Differently For Me.
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