Your Freakin’ Hero
Afterburn
by Jake Negley

BACKSTAGE (3)

Backstage Signature
WWE Raw Deal 5th Anniversary
WWE Signing Appearance

Strategy Notes: To avoid Backstage Shenanigans, only reveal the one most appropriate for you based on your opponent’s Superstar.

BACKLASH (20)

Pre-match (10)

Fans Love an Underdog (throwback) x1
In the Interest of Fairness…x3
Old School Manager x1
Raw Intercontinental Title Belt x1
The Champ Is Here! x1
Unbreakable Chain x3

Strategy Notes: Raw Intercontinental Title Belt is actually important enough to lose all of Angle’s foils. Raw Intercontinental Title Belt and Champ is Here net you an extra Pre-Match card. Old School Manager is a free slot and fits the deck perfectly. Fans Love an Underdog is almost exclusively for First of All Decks, however it may prove more effective than one of your In the Interest of Fairness’s in certain situations as well.

Mid-match (10)

A Phoenix Rising x1
Backstage Shenanigans x1
How Important Is It? x1
I’m Just Hitting My Stride x2
Ready to Fight x1
The Road to Victory x1
Took That on the Chin x1
Unscrupulous S.O.B. x1
You're as Graceful as a Cow on Ice x1

Strategy Notes: How Important Is It is primarily for Andre the Giant so you at least have a fighting chance. Phoenix Rising is for Jimmy Hart against Legends. I’m Just Hitting My Stride will provide both excellent recursion and hand advantage if need be. Ready to Fight is an all-around solid card worthy of a slot without being Chain, adding Chain to it is just gravy. The rest are fairly standard cards to end your opponents turn.

ARSENAL (60)

Maneuvers (27)

Angle's German Suplex x1
Ankle Lock (Throwback) x3
Apply Legal Leverage (Throwback) x3
Atomic Driver x3
Dynamic Finisher x1
Fujiwara Arm Bar x1
Grab x3
Olympic Slam x1
Rest Hold x3
Scoop Slam (Throwback) x3
Steel Chain Shot (throwback) x3
Vise Lock x2

Strategy Notes: Steel Chain Shots are there to help you combo out (I’ll get to that below). Plenty of Chains to finish off your opponent. The Ankle Locks will probably be played as maneuvers, but also are a part of the combo. The Rest Holds are important for removing Cerebral Assassin, and it is an all around solid card to begin with. The Fujiwara Arm Bar is mostly for I'll Make You Tap!. Dynamic Finisher is better than Angle Slam in this build since it doesn’t count as a reversal for the purpose of In the Interest of Fairness.

Actions (21)

A Few Heel Men x1
Angle's Leg Bar x1
Brave H x1
Chained Aggression x3
Chain Wrestling x6
Flawless Execution x1
I'll Make You Tap! x1
No Pain, No Chain x2
That's Broken x3
The Straps are Down x1
Woooooo x1

Strategy Notes: Keep in mind that all Actions that are Chain replace themselves due to Your Freakin’ Hero’s ability. The card advantage provided by Chain Wrestling is amazing in this deck. Chained Aggression and No Pain, No Chain may not seem like quality cards to some, however both are great for Your Freakin’ Hero. That’s Broken should only be used to fetch Reversals except in drastic times. Angle’s Superstar Specifics and the Movie cards should be self-explanatory. Angle’s Leg Bar and Woooooo are your money cards that will allow you to combo your opponent out as I’ll explain below.

Reversals (12)

A Revolution of the Mind x3
Anything and Hate It x2
Bad to the Bone x1
Chained Heat x3
Divine Intervention x1
It's True, It's True! x1
Where Are your Medals? x1

Strategy Notes: Just the bare minimum so you hopefully never get stuck with more red than your opponent when resolving In the Interest of Fairness. Chained Heat will actually be used as Actions (and often as they are likewise part of this mysterious combo I keep referencing), but I’ve placed it here to give an accurate count of the number of Reversal cards.

Final Strategy Notes / Insights: The three In the Interest of Fairness should clear your opponent’s hand of most reversals. The Unbreakable Chains will allow you to play through You’re as Graceful as a Cow on Ice, along with two other reversals. In my experience your opponent will only be able to reverse one maneuver from hand at most and probably won’t have any other Mid-match, so the other 1-2 Unbreakable Chains will allow you to in effect ignore overturned reversals.

I’ve mentioned a combo numerous times throughout this article. If you aren’t familiar with this combo than perhaps my subtle (or not so subtle as the case may be) mentions have worked to build a suspense as great as the build-up to meeting Jay Gatsby during the first three chapters of The Great Gatsby. No. Probably not. But here is the combo that this deck centers around.

Play Angle’s Leg Bar to search for two Ankle Locks, drawing a card for YFH’s Superstar Ability.

Discard the Ankle Locks to search for a Chained Heat using the chain trait.

Play Chained Heat shuffling in the two Ankle Locks, drawing a card for YFH’s Superstar Ability.

Discard the 2 cards to search for Angle’s Leg Bar.

Rinse and Repeat. You are now cycling through your Arsenal. Soon enough you will draw into your Steel Chain Shots, which you will then discard to the chain trait and pick up when you play Angle’s Leg Bar (the Ankle Locks and Chained Heat are no longer necessary anymore). You are now drawing cards from your Arsenal – draw until you feel comfortable.

From here you should try to win via Woooooo, preferably after forcing your opponent to discard his hand. Since, like Lashly’s Superstar Ability, it gets around Divine Intervention, if they aren’t packing Restricted Use in This Area it is game over. If they are, it’s not the end of the world as you still have plenty of maneuvers to go off on your opponent. Using the Olympic Slam to end the game is very effective since it isn’t hybrid or and doesn’t have any random effects that are tagged by a low Fortitude Reversal.

The four worst match-ups are Piper, Andre, Highlight of the Night, and Leader of the Edge Army. Against Piper, the villain that defeated Heath Gray in the finals at DragonCon, all you can do is go aggro and hope luck is on your side. In the other three match-ups, once again you must go aggro, but hopefully you will be able to discard their hand and get How Important Is It? on the table to make things easier.

I know some of you must be thinking to yourselves “this deck could have been played during Great American Bash – this isn’t a Revolution deck.” However you would be wrong. Although the deck does not contain any cards from Revolution 1 or 2, the various shifts in the environment/metagame have made this deck far better now than it was during the Great American Bash or Revolution 1 Era of Afterburn. In other words, despite not actually utilizing any cards from the past two sets, the deck has become more powerful upon the release of the last two sets. I think this is an ideal example of how new sets can improve old superstars/deck ideas without you even purchasing any. I tried to come up with a clever analogy for this concept, however I am no Sam Seaborn (or Will Bailey, or Toby Ziegler).