Litori Frostburn

Today I'm going to cover what I think is the most powerful deck in my initial wave of deckbuilding, the Mage rush deck.

4 Counterspell
4 Fireblast
4 Fireball
4 Frost Bolt
4 Polymorph

4 Apprentice Teep
4 Grint Sundershot
4 Galway Steamwhistle
4 Kailis Truearc
4 Latro Abiectus
4 Milo the Unmerciful
4 Sha'lin Nightwind
4 Tracker Gallen

4 The Defias Brotherhood
4 Into the Maw of Madness

This deck is very straightforward. Play guys and attack with them. Use your burn to remove pesky protectors or allies with annoying abilities. You have a lot of elusive on your team. Just keep on sending your guys straight for the hero. Grint Sundershot is a very powerful card in this deck. Since most of your attacks are going to go straight to the hero, he can let all your allies essentially take free shots at the hero who won't be able to fight back at all. There's not a lot to say about this deck, but remember if you're playing against what looks to be a mage control deck leave up 2 resources to be able to Counterspell their Frost Novas. You want the game to end as soon as possible and letting them Frost Nova you basically wastes your turn.

Gorebelly

Today, I move on to my first build of a Horde deck with the Warrior hero Gorebelly.

4 Cleave
2 Execute
2 Heroic Strike
4 Mortal Strike
3 Skewer
2 Sunder Armor
4 Shield Bash

4 Arnold Flem
4 Guardian Steelhorn
3 Taz'Dingo
3 Halmer Stands Alone

1 Mymidon's Signet
1 Annihilator
1 Arcanite Reaper
1 Brain Hacker
1 Destiny
1 Krol Blade
1 The Cruel Hand of Timmy
1 The Shatterer
1 Thrash Blade

2 Golem Skull Helm
2 Draconian Deflector
2 Herod's Shoulder

4 Counterattack
4 Big Game Hunter
2 Sunken Treasure

This is a mid-range control deck. It looks to survive the early turn rush of beatdown decks while it sets up. Then it quickly turns offensive in the mid game removing allies and sending Gorebelly for big attacks on the hero. Counterattack is a great card in this deck. The deck will play pretty straightforward. Early turns play a couple allies like Steelhorn to buy a turn or two. Then equip Gorebelly with whatever you can find. Then start removing all their allies and beating them down. Tomorrow I'll stay with the Horde as I move along to Grennan Stormspeaker.

Graccus

Continuing in my 16 decks saga we move on to Graccus. This deck actually gave me some problems when building it because the Paladin is so versatile and can be built in so many different ways. I ended up going with a mid-range control deck, with a lot of abilities and a lot of equipment that goes low on the allies.

3 Blessing of Protection
2 Blessing of Wisdom
3 Divine Shield
4 Hammer of Justice
3 Holy Light
2 Holy Shield
1 Sacred Duty
3 Seal of Light
3 Seal of Wisdom

2 Donna Callister
4 Parvink
3 Galway Stormwhistle

3 Golem Skull Helm
3 Draconian Deflector
1 Edgemaster's Handguards
1 Girdle of Uther
1 Herod's Shoulder
1 Lionheart Helm
1 Wall of the Dead

1 Annihilator
1 Arcanite Reaper
3 Krol Blade
1 Truesilver Champion
1 Destiny

3 Dragonkin Menace
3 Sunken Treasure
3 Your Fortune Awaits You

This deck has a lot of versatility to it. While it won't win a game in 3 or 4 turns it does have the ability to get aggressive. It will basically want to do whatever its opponent doesn't. If the opponent wants to draw the game out, this deck will try to get aggressive. If the opponent wants to beatdown, this deck can play defense long enough to establish control and then take over. One of the combos in this deck is Blessing of Wisdom Donna Callister. It basically lets you draw a card every time an opponent attacks.

That's all for today, tomorrow I will be moving on to my first Horde hero, Gorebelly.

16 Decks (Elendril)

Well today I will continue with another World of Warcraft deck for another hero. Today I'll be covering Elendril, the Alliance Marksmanship Hunter.

4 Aimed Shot
4 Eagle Eye
4 Ravenous Bite
2 Rapid Fire

4 Bloodclaw
4 Old Bones
3 Fury
4 Apprentice Teep
3 Galway Steamwhistle
4 Kailis TrueArc
4 Latro Abiectus

3 Ancient Bone Bow
3 Krol Blade
3 Devilsaur Leggings
2 Stronghold Gauntlets

4 Into the Maw of Madness
3 The Defias Brotherhood
2 Battle of Darrowshire

This deck just wants to come out hitting hard and fast. It has access to the very aggressive Bloodclaw. You just want to start throwing your allies at the opposing hero letting your hero pick off allies in safety with his ranged attacks. This deck doesn't run out of steam in the midgame with Old Bones and Fury. Bones gives you some utility since you can use him to save your hero from any nasty attacks. You're looking to do as much damage as you can early so that you can finish them with one big turn using Rapid Fire and Elendril's flip ability. You should always get two attacks this way for at least 5 each and sometimes a third attack. Don't forget to play Ravenous Bite giving your ally plus 3 to attack against their hero so you don't waste any of that damage, and give one of thier allies minus 3 to attack into later in the turn, killing it and not taking anything back.

Well, that's about it for this straightforward beatdown deck. The next hero up is Graccus. I'll see you then.

16 decks (Dizdemona)

Continuing in my 16 decks in 16 days for World of Warcraft we move along to the Alliance Affliction Warlock Dizdemona.

4 Steal Essence
4 Shadow Bolt
3 Dark Pact
4 Fear
1 Forbidden Knowledge
4 Life Tap
2 Sever the Cord

3 Infernal
3 Helwen
4 Parvink
2 Leeba Wobblebonk
4 Sarmoth
3 Keena Shadowbrand

3 Mooncloth Robe
2 Inventor's Focal Sword
3 Bad Mojo Mask

4 Zapped Giants
4 A Donation of Wool
1 Chasing A-Me 101
2 Your Fortune Awaits You

Instead of going over why every card is in the deck, I'll just go over a few and how the deck should play. This deck obviously wants the game to go long winning in the long run with Infernal or just by stealing all of their allies with Helwyn. The early game is about surviving. The Fears and Sarmoths are some of the main weapons here. Parvink is also very good early as she replaces herself and has protector. As you get into the midgame you should start to stabilize and your card drawing should start to take over. In the late game you just want to beat down with Infernals or steal their allies with Helwyn. Forbidden Knowledge may be too risky given the easy access to ability removal. The deck might need a little more beef to go ahead and finish things. Overall, I think this deck has a lot of cheap and plentiful card drawing which may be enough to power it through other decks, but it might have problems with other decks designed to play a long game.

Boris Brightbeard

I've decided I'm going to take a shot at early builds of World of Warcraft decks for each hero. Today I'm going to start with Boris Brightbeard, the Alliance affiliated Holy Priest Dwarf.

Abilities

4 Chastise
3 Dispel Magic
4 Flash Heal
2 Power Word:Fortitude
1 Prayer of Healing
2 Resurrection
1 Rise to the Challenge
2 Smite
2 Spiritual Healing

Allies

4 Crazy Igvand
2 Donna Callister
3 Freya Lightsworn
3 Galahandra
2 Lady Courtney Noel
4 Lhurg Venomblade
2 Lorekeeper Dorian
2 Lt. Commander Dudefella

Equipment

3 Mooncloth Robe
2 Hide of the Wild

Quests

1 Blueleaf Tubers
4 Your Fortune Awaits You
2 The Missing Diplomat
2 The Love Potion
2 Zapped Giants

I decided the best way to go with the Priest here was just to stall the game out and try to heal as much damage as possible. The win condition is Lorekeeper Dorian milling your opponent out.

Chastise- Here to kill early allies that rush decks will throw at you.

Dispel Magic-This card is a lot like Disenchant in Magic. It doesn't necessarily have a lot of raw power, but it is extremely versatile. It kills DoT abilities or other annoying abilities like Polymorph on your own guys, or it can kill shielding abilities on opposing characters. Lot of versatility for almost no cost.

Flash Heal-I chose Flash Heal over Heal for 2 reasons. You're almost always either going to waste some of the healing power of Heal. This is important. You'll never use Heal on one of your allies. The second reason, don't underestimate that one extra resource you have to spend in the early game while you're trying to stabilize.

Power Word:Fortitude-Ideally you can get one of these on Donna Callister turn 6 and laugh maniacally as your opponent now has to kill a 12 health tank before they can attack anything else while the rest of your party just heals Donna. If you miss Donna you've still got plenty of fine targets.

Prayer of Healing-I'm not entirely sure this card is needed, but you will have several allies as the game progresses so an area heal can be useful. This would be one of the cards I pay attention to how useful it actually is.

Resurrection-Your allies are good. Bringing them back is good.

Rise to the Challenge-I can't say that I'm positive this card should be in the deck, but it looks like fun and that's where I'm at with this game right now.

Smite-Another card that would be on the early chopping block as this deck has some better removal as the game starts to drag on, but sometimes you will just want to kill something.

Spiritual Healing-You're going to play a lot of abilities. They're almost all holy, might as well add heal 2 damage to all of them.

Crazy Igvand-Tank

Donna Callister-The Ultimate Tank

Freya Lightsworn-She is one of the ways you are going to keep your main damage soakers alive

Galahandra-Good at keeping your opponents most threatening attackers at bay. With all the protector in this deck, keeping her alive shouldn't be too difficult.

Lady Courtney Noel-decent blocker who can also help keep your tanks around.

Lhurg Venomblade-Has a really good ability on his own. With Galahandra can set up a soft lock late in the game. With all the Protectors he shouldn't be too difficult to keep around.

Lorekeeper Dorian-the win condition. Once you reach the late game, winning by milling them out is actually probably easier than finishing them through damage.

Lt, Commander Dudefella-Another good way to keep nasty attackers at bay.

Mooncloth Robe-Decks that want to play a long time need cards. This is one of the only reusable ways to draw cards in the game.

Hide of the Wild-Another card I'm not sure needs to be in the deck but is in it for now.

Blueleaf Tubers-Just a way to make sure you don't deck yourself in case your opponent has some answer to Dorian.

Your Fortune Awaits You-Card drawing.

The Missing Diplomat-Search for your important allies. Specifically this let's you get Donna for turn 5.

The Love Potion-Card Drawing

The deck is pretty simple. Protect and protect more. You want to get Donna on turn 5, unless your opponent can kill her then. Then you can wait until 6 if you have a heal. Or you can run some of your other protectors like Igvand in front of her. After that you should be able to let her start soaking up all the damage your opponent can deal as you heal it with all the abilities in the deck. Then you'll want to set up the Galahandra + Venomblade combo. After you've wiped out all your opponents' allies it should be just a matter of letting Dorian finish off their deck.

World of Warcraft is almost here

The World of Warcraft Release Celebration is this weekend. Unfortunately, the closest tournament to me is about two hours away so I won't be making the trip. However, I do plan on purchasing some packs from my local store as soon as they go on sale and setting up a little mini-tourney with some friends. I know quite a few people who play the MMO who will buy a few packs and give the game a shot. If they like it, they'll probably keep on playing. I'll probably post something about the sealed deck environment some time next week after I can get a few matches in with real cards.

Time Spiral sealed deck

The first thing I would like to mention is how much of a powerhouse Errant Ephemeron is. When I looked over the spoiler I knew he was good. I knew he was really good actually. But until I saw him in action I just didn't realize how powerful getting a 4/4 flier in the midgame by paying 2 mana for him early really was. Add in the fact that he's a little bigger than most of the removal in this set and you've got yourself a winner.

Time Spiral sealed seems like a format where the card pools are deep and the tough decisions start with building your deck. In past formats a lot of the sealed decks have really built themselves. The tough decisions come in finding those last few playables or deciding whether you can stay in two colors or whether you need to branch into a third. Over the weekend I didn't have any problems finding playable cards. I knew red was in with Jaya Ballard, Sulphurous Blast, Lightning Axe, Firemaw Kavu, the Flowstone Spellshaper, Orcish Cannonade and Grapeshot for removal. I also had a couple Blazing Blade Askari and a Basalt Gargoyle. My white was out blue was thin. There was double Errant Ephemeron but not a whole lot after that. The green was pretty solid. Nothing spectacular but everything could hold its own in the red zone. Then I got to the black. More removal goodness with Strangling Soot, double Nightshade Assassin, and Faceless Butcher. A Twisted Abomination would help with mana and double as a good finisher if I needed it. So I looked at R/G with plenty of removal and some big guys or R/B killing everything. The R/B deck seemed like it didn't have enough guys who wanted to get in the red zone so I went to the R/G. I was about to start registering this deck when I decided I just couldn't leave that much removal out. So I dipped into blue for the Ephemerons as a finisher.

At the tournament I asked four different people whose opinions I respect what they would've done with my pool. The first guy said he thought I had built it right and the black was just too strong to leave in the board. The second guy said he would've splashed the green instead of the blue for green's beef. This is the only opinion I completely disagree with. The Ephemerons are just too good to go anywhere else for a splash just to attack with. The third opinion was that the Ephemerons and one Ophidian Eye (which was the only other blue card in the deck) weren't worth weakening the mana base. He would have stayed in just red and black. The fourth opinion was that red gave me enough removal and I should have gone with the green for a more balanced deck.

In retrospect, I think the way to go may have been the R/G. But it seems like I wasn't the only one who had problems deciding which was the best way to play his cards. One of the four guys above was actually switching back and forth between games between 2 different decks. No one I talked to was really sure they had built the best deck their cards had supplied them.

This tells me that most of the card pools are pretty deep. Deep card pools add another layer to a sealed deck tournament. I think that a lot of people are going to lose in upcoming PTQ's because they didn't build their deck right. So when you're out there in the trenches this PTQ season, put a little more time than usual into making sure you find the right mix of cards that will take you to Geneva.

Thoughts on this weekend's PTQ

Well, I went to Lubbock on Saturday hoping to qualify for Pro Tour Geneva. It was my first sanctioned Magic tourney since Pro Tour Houston back in '02. I felt a little bit of rust. I had a pretty good deck with lots of removal but not really any big creatures. My red and black were both very good but with nothing bigger than a 3/3 so I dipped into a little blue for a couple of Errant Ephemerons. I ended up 1-2 dropping after being a complete idiot in round 1. For whatever reason, I let my opponent play Voidmage Husher as counter target triggered ability instead of activated ability so he was countering all my suspended cards and madness. It was just really stupid on my part. In round 3, I ran into a Sol'Kanar that I couldn't kill so that ended my day early. I'll post some thoughts on some specific cards and the format in general tomorrow.

Ramblings

I have to admit, I suddenly find myself quite enamored with the new World of Warcraft TCG. I can't wait until next weekend to get my hands on some real cards. I've already said it once, but I think it's worth repeating. This game is by far the most fun TCG out there today.

While I am in love with WoW, I am quickly becoming disenchanted with The Spoils. I will say it started with the disappointing Organized Play announcement, and now with how much fun WoW has turned out to be, I just find myself not really wanting to play or build decks or even look at cards for The Spoils.

I was pretty shocked at the results of the VS. System's $10K Columbus. I wasn't shocked by the names in the Top 8 as much as the decks. Five Faces decks and a Wrecking Crew deck that was essentially Faces with Justice League Task Force taking the place of Faces of Evil. So six swarm decks, a New Society, and Heralds/Inhumans Stall. The Heralds deck also sported 4 copies of the good Dr. so all told there were 472 copies of Dr. Light in the top 8. You have to think that Prosak may have misjudged the metagame a little choosing not to play a copy of 5 drop Surfer or Worldship. This is no knock on Prosak, who is one of the most creative deckbuilders in the game. If you plan on playing Silver Age soon, I would recommend some good three-drop hate, not only for Dr. Light, but also for that other 3-drop that likes to dominate formats, Ahmed.

And finally, after a pretty dead period for tournaments in my area, I will be heading to Lubbock this weekend for a Magic PTQ for Geneva. The format is Time Spiral sealed, and I am really looking forward to getting back in there. I'll post a report on Monday or Tuesday.

So Much Fun

Well, I played my first game of the WoW TCG last night. I have to say it was the most fun I've had playing a card game in a long time. We just put together some proxies to get used to the game. I played a Graccus deck against a Ta'zo deck. I ended up winning because the Ta'zo deck just didn't have enough damage to get anything through all my armor and prevention. I can't wait to play in the release event next weekend.

World of Warcraft (again)

Well, I took some time over the weekend to learn the rules of this game. I must say it looks like a lot of fun. The release weekend is October 28-29. Luckily for me it looks like there are no other tournaments going on that weekend so I'll get a chance to check it out. I'm definitely going to talk to my local store owner and see if he can do anything for the release weekend. If not, I'll probably have to make the drive to Denton to check things out.

World of Warcraft

Well, right on the heels of what I consider a disappointing announcement regarding The Spoils Tournament Experience, I see Upper Deck's GenCon SoCal announcement about their new World of Warcraft TCG. Nothing specific regarding a pro circuit for WoW but there was confirmation of Regional, National, and World Championships with the World Champion winning $100,000. I think I might end up playing in the release weekend blowout to check this game out.

The Spoils Tournament Experience

Well, the big announcement from Tenacious Games regarding their Organized Play came this morning. And I must say......I am rather disappointed. You can read about it here.

Not on to be a pessimist, let's start with the good stuff. The Spoils World Championship is going to have the largest prize pool ever for a CCG or CMG. It's also going to be on a Caribbean cruise ship with all the players getting to go on the cruise for free. I know what you're thinking, what's not to like here? I actually agree with you, this may be the coolest thing in CCG history. This part of the STE I actually think is incredible, it's everything else I don't like. Obviously, Worlds will be invite only and the only way to get invited is to accumulate a certain amount of points. The only way to accumulate points is through a bunch of tournaments that will give no one a reason to play in them if they are not within driving distance. Let's just cover them all shall we?

The $200,000 Invitationals

This is a series of 200 $1000 tournaments. But since they are divided up into regions, everyone will only get to play in three or four. Not that you would travel to play in a tournament where first place is barely a week's salary. Or a Nintendo Wii. That you already have at home anyway.

The $300,000 STE Summer Tour

Okay, this sounds promising. But then you read on. 10 straight weekends of $5000 tournaments with 3 $500 tournaments leading up to the big weekend. The winners get to ride around on a bus with the all girl Spoilers. This would have been so much better if they had taken the $50,000 from the "main events", the $15,000 from the lead-ups, saved the money they spent on the tour buses and paying "the Spoilers" and just made the summer tour a couple of $50,000 events in each region. And the whole riding around on the tour bus thing is just a bad idea. The game is marketed to a more mature audience, but then they expect the winners of the $5k tournaments to be able to just drop their life for a week to ride around on a tour bus. Riiight.

$100,000 for Special Events

At the end of the article they say there will be 10 special events. So unless my math is lousy or the payout will be different at each one, that's $10k per event. I think VS. has already shown us that $10,000 alone is not enough to entice pro players to travel to these events. Throw in that two of the special events will be at GenCons Indy and SoCal, which happens to be the site of the only two American VS. Pro stops and that will hurt the attendance even more. I think this is another area that would have benefited from fewer tournaments and more money per tournament.

Overall, I'm not very enamored with The Spoils Tournament Experience. The game was supposed to be targeted toward pro and competitive gamers, but with the exception of the World Championships, the STE offers nothing a pro gamer is going to want.

Is Carnage good?

It's been a couple of days since I posted anything new here. I've been busy working on a couple of other projects. But I've been thinking about one of the more natural looking team-ups in the new Heralds of Galactus set, Heralds and Inhumans. The deck obviously wants to draw the game out and win around turn 7-9. It has a lot of cards to reach this end. I was looking at what I thought the optimal curve would be. There were a few options at almost every drop that seemed like good choices. For instance, at 2 you have Silver Surfer, Morg, San, and Franklin Richards. At 4, you have Human Torch and Triton. But the drop where it seemed like there just wasn't much going on was at the 7. Your option without going outside the team are Galactus, Morg, Silver Surfer, Gorgon, and Invisible Woman. The only one of these that even I even slightly want to play is Morg since his ability can be devastating against other decks that have game in the late turns. So I got to looking at possible out of team 7 drops and I saw Carnage. Now when you're playing a stall deck, your 7 drop is usually only meaningful against other full curve decks. Against short-curve and swarm decks, the numbers alone are usually what matters (unless they have an effect like Thing). So while the possibility of bouncing all your opponents' dudes is devastating, what about the idea of controlling the initiative for the rest of the game. In the Galactus mirror, both decks will presumably want to go to 9. Having the initiative on the critical turn 9 could make the difference in winning and losing. Having Morg, bounce their board on 7 would be good, but with the defensive capabilities of the deck, you may not be able to stun their 7 to bounce him. If you can keep the initiative for the rest of the game, it will be almost impossible to lose the game.
While I will probably play Morg as my 7 drop in this deck, I think Carnage may be a better option than the rest of the other on team 7 drops.

Checkmate/Inhumans

I've been messing around with the new cards from Heralds of Galactus looking for some decks. Since the current PCQ season is DC Modern and I'm currently not qualified for L.A., I have no reason to test Heralds in any in depth fashion. However, the creative juices are always flowing, so I've looked at building some decks. Some of them require more effort than I'm willing to put into a deck that I'm not going to play in a tournament, but here's one that I think is pretty good. Keep in mind, I've never shuffled this thing up, and it would just be a starting point for further testing. My real strength as a deck builder lies in tweaking the deck. The originals are usually pretty raw. So without further ado, here is a Silver/Modern Checkmate Inhumans deck.

Characters

4 Connie Webb
4 San
4 Ahmed Samsarra
3 Thing, Rockhead
1 Tritan
1 Adrian Chase
2 Black Bolt (5)
1 Karnak
1 Roy Harper
1 Annihilation Protocol
1 Maximus
2 Huntress
1 Medusa
1 Sasha Bordeaux

4 Brother I Satellite
2 Great Refuge
4 Checkmate Safehouse
4 Threat Neutralized
2 Brother Eye
1 Blue Area of the Moon
1 Attilan
1 Rook Control
2 Exploiting the Flaw
1 Leslie Thompkin's Clinic
4 Knightmare Scenario
3 Knight Armor

This deck has two main strengths, consistency and safety in combat. The consistenct comes from Ahmed and Attilan. With 4 Brother I's, 4 Connie Webb's, 4 Sans, and 4 Ahmed's you should pretty much always have Ahmed on 3. Ahmed is the model of consistency, insuring you're always teamed-up, always hit your curve, etc. The 4 Brother I's plus the 2 Great Refuges might be too much, only testing would let me know for sure. The other strength lies in the abilty of this deck to bounce attacks on defense and avoid stuns when attacking. Knightmare Scenario is in over some of the other powerful pumps because it works on offense and defense. Checkmate Safehouse + Knight Armor makes attacking your guys difficult. Knight Armor and Blue Area of the Moon give you relative safety when making your own attacks. Exploiting the Flaw is also an incredibly powerful card. I think the most common use will be attacking your biggest drop into their biggest that won't stun back, then attacking into their highest drop and getting your big guy in there again. With Blue Area or Knight Armor, there is a decent chance, your highest drop will get two attacks in and won't even stun. Talk about safe attacking.

Well, that's all I've got for now. I probably won't test this deck for a while since I won't be playing in any Silver Age or new Modern Age tourneys for a while, but if anyone wants to test it and send some feedback, I would be glad to help make the deck better with some notes.

Research Investment

Today I want to talk about a card in the The Spoils that I think is very bad for this game. That card is Research Investment. For those who don't know what it does,

Research Investment-Tactic
Cost-0 Threshold-4 Elitism

Both players may search their decks for up to 5 staple resources and put them into play.

The basic engine goes something like this. End of opponent's turn 2 or 3 depending on who went first, RI for five resources giving you nine in play. Invent for three leaving one unattached. Get two more RI's and an Invent. RI twice for ten more resources for 19 total, and 11 unattached. At this point, I usually go ahead and Invent for four getting another Invent and and the other three cards are dependant upon the current gamestate. I usually get a Micromajig Avalanche and a Micromajig Master in there somewhere to guarantee I always have whatever card I want. The engine can get a little more complex if you add Voidal Replication to the mix, but you get the idea. Now that I've shown you how it works, let me explain what's so wrong with it.

The first reason I absolutely hate this card is it takes one of the more intriguing deck building ideas in this game and makes it completely unplayable. For anyone who wants to try a two rage Warlord deck, you better hope your opponent isn't packing Investments.

This card has been discussed on message boards and one of the reasons most players say Research Investment isn't unbalanced is because of the symmetry of resources. While it is true that both players will have 20+ resources in play, if one deck is designed to play at that level and the other isn't that isn't really symmetry. Sure the opponent will get to draw a lot of cards, but between, Invent+Voidal Replication, and Micromajig Master, the Investment player will have access to whatever card they want pretty much at all times.

The deck is also increidbly consistent. It looks for 4 cards in its opening hand. 2 Elitism to fulfill the threshold, 1 Research Investment, and 1 Invent. Toolbox Elf can take the place of any of those cards, and a hand with two Invents can get to the same point but one turn later. This deck will almost always choose to go second to get the one extra card in hand to start the game and with the ability to spin off all the cards that aren't needed, this deck establishes dominating board control on turn three or four with remarkable regularity.

There is hope though. The first would be that Tenacious realized it's too powerful in its current form and change it somehow. The most likely change would be to make it cost something. I think three is a fair cost, leaving the threshold at four so it can't be played turn one. This would slow the deck down at least three full turns.
If Tenacious let's the card go as is, then it turns to the deck builders to combat the speedy combo deck. The first way is to play Warlords and use Tactician's Vacation. If you can use the five resources from the first Investment to Vacation the Invent, that should stop them in their tracks. The second is to have a plan built into your deck to play with 20-25 resources in play. use cards that are good with limited resources but get better with an ample supply (Invent is a great card to have in your deck if your opponent wants to give you free resources).

Even given these counter strategies, the Investment player will almost always have the upper hand when the resources get into the double digits. And as the engine gets played and tweaked more, it will only become more powerful along with its pilots at their understanding of the deck will become second nature. I predict if Research Investment isn't given a cost before the launch of the game, it will be The Spoils first banned card.