ICYMI: North American Overpower League Western Shootout Tournament Report

Written by Robert Wilson, written on June 7, 2025

Overpower

My name is Robert Wilson. I’m a long-time competitive Magic the Gathering (MTG) player from
Columbus, Ohio, currently living in Houston, Texas. I founded Buffalo Chicken Dip
Legacy (BCDL), a MTG tournament series, which has been running for over seven year. I’ve
been involved in competitive MTG for over a decade.

I played Overpower alongside MTG as a kid. I jumped back into Overpower when the Kickstarter was announced.

I recently ranked third at the 2025 Western Shootout; my first North American
Overpower League (NAOL) event; my first event was the Orange King Open (OKO) in Houston. I highly recommend the NAOL. Thanks to Carl Caroffino, Tyler Bertrand, and Larry Van Etten
for a great event.

I’m going to talk about my preparation for the NOAL, including the expected competitive meta, card choices, decklist, and how to fight this deck. I expect the team of Heroes for Hire, Hercules, Beast: the Brute, and three-stat Spider-Woman will become common at competitive Overpower Legacy events.

One of the first things I did to prepare was look at NAOL’s 2024 data to see if I
could extrapolate trends among what characters and archetypes tended to perform well. I expected players to gravitate toward those characters.

Reviewing Data

After reviewing Top8 data from the five 2024 NAOL events, I prepared the following summary for an idea of the expected meta:

Not surprisingly, to be competitive in the Western Shootout, I needed to prepare for Spawn-based energy decks and Heroes for Hire-based brute force decks. For years, energy decks have been top dog in Legacy Overpower. Choosing The Crossing was a natural fit to combat energy decks. My initial Western Shootout deck, pictured below, used the traditional brute force deck but swapped Juggernaut and Dracula’s Armory for Hercules; a newcomer from the recently released Edgar Rice Burroughs and
World Legends Overpower expansion.

Hercules is an upgraded brute force-based version of Spawn. While Spawn’s
Protector of the Innocent avoids any attack of 9 or less against any team member,
Hercules’ Protector of Mankind avoids any attack of 7 or less against any team member
and can be offensive as a level 7 brute force attack.

The flexibility of an extra defense when needed or an extra attack can’t be understated. Hercules’ Godly Prowess provides a perfect big attack alongside Beast’s Drop Kick with Heroes for Hire’s
Iron First to assemble a 2-hit K.O. or another large attack in a deck already full of potent
offensive options.

Sowing Chaos generates virtual card advantage if successful by potentially locking out characters from teamworks and providing a much needed off-suit energy attack to increase spectrum K.O. pressure. The flexibility of Protector of Mankind and an offsuit attack that can generate virtual card advantage makes Hercules an upgrade over Juggernaut.

The main difference between my initial list and my final list is primarily in the battle site. I
tend to gravitate toward The Outback and Wundagore Mountain depending on
my deck's focus. The Outback is the best defensive battle site with up to six different defensive cards and two different negates. Wundagore Mountain has two of the best battle site characters in Colossus and Scarlet Witch.

Colossus’ Siberian Strength, Haymaker, and Stoic Defender alongside Scarlet Witch’s Change Outcome and Spontaneous Combustion give a potent battle site that can handle most opposition. I initially went with the full defensive package with the Outback until...

Who's the Beatdown?

In MTG, there’s a timeless article from 1999 written by Michael Flores titled Who's the
Beatdown. It’s one of the seminal articles of competitive card games; I’d highly
recommend reading it even if you’ve never played MTG.

In the article, Flores’ describes how to identify your role in a matchup and play to that role. Flores’
describes those roles as either the Beatdown (i.e., the aggressive player), or the Control (i.e., the
defensive posturing player waiting to exhaust their opponent’s resources).

The predominate brute force duo of Heroes for Hire and Hercules offer a wealth of premier offensive special cards, which all feel like “must defend” cards, and eight brute force stats that can bully any team. Teaming these characters was clear that I wanted to be the Beatdown almost every time.

To be the Beatdown, I changed my battle site to be more aggressive. I wanted
an offensive One Per Deck; Dazzler’s Absorb Sound. Absorb Sound can generate enough card advantage to win a match on its own against energy decks.

Against non-energy decks, Absorb Sound is great at generating card advantage by
discarding opponent’s Activators and cards with more than one icon (e.g.,
multipower power cards, multipower special attacks, and teamworks). I used it
during the Western Shootout to discard two of my opponent’s placed cards alongside two
of their teamworks from Spartan Training Ground.

In decks where I need to keep a key character from being K.O.’ed, The Reavers’ Pretty Boy makes sense. However, with this decklist, I wanted to be aggressive. Dazzler’s Absorb Sound was the better choice for that plan.

Another advantage of The Outback over Wundagore Mountain was having more off-suit
non-combat and brute force battle site attacks. Wundagore Mountain only has Doctor
Doom’s Concussion Beams and Omega Red’s Drain Lifeforce. The Outback has up to
five energy or intelligence attacks. These off-suit battle site specials provided with much-needed spectrum K.O. pressure.

The Mirror

In preparing for an expected brute force mirror, I wanted to identify potential edges. I expected at least one other person to make Top8 with the same four-character team and that I would have to fight through multiple Heroes for Hire decks during the Swiss. I was correct on both counts.

Asclepion was my mirror-breaker plan against opposing brute force decks — a card-advantage engine. If you’re active in the Overpower Discord, you know Sean Ballantyne.

Sean has been a valuable resource as I jumped back into competitive Overpower. I’ve learned by getting my butt kicked by him.

I asked Sean for feedback on my initial list; using Sentinels Overhaul to combat brute force decks and Absorb Sound as an aggressive OPD against energy decks. Sean responded to Sentinels’ Overhaul, “Have you considered Asclepion?”

While you can build around Asclepion, you don't need to. In addition to Beast: the Brute’s
negates, the Outback provides three cards to remove hits from permanent records to
trigger Asclepion; Wolverine’s Heal, Sentinels’ Overhaul, and Sentinels’ Master Mold.

Activating Asclepion once or twice throughout a match makes all the difference. That’s how it played out during the Western Shootout. Thanks to Sean for his effort helping me prepare, his feedback, and grinding test games before the event.

The final aspect of my deck are power card choices, deck size, and activators quantities. In MTG, one of the fastest ways to lose is not to be able to play your cards. The same goes for Overpower.

Other than special cards and level 8 power cards, I wanted every other card to be playable by at least three characters. I also diversified my power card types for spectrum K.O. purposes and to weaken the
impact of opponents' Power Leech or events that interfere with the use of brute force power cards. Using 5, 6, and 7 any-power power cards was part of that choice.

This allowed for more options to follow up teamworks. Not using a level 8 any-power power card was a deliberate choice to maximize opportunities to follow up Heroes for Hire’s Black Knight special with a level 8 brute force power card.

Another deliberate choice was to run a slim 58 cards, which meant cutting some specials, power cards, and activators. Generally, I don’t like using more than five specials per character to reduce unusable cards when a character is K.O.’ed but Hercules specials are good enough that I wanted a second Sower of Chaos.

This meant using only two activators for most battle site characters to at least have
some situational flexibility in the battle site card used. My plan was to only play five or six
hands per match, venture big when I could generate big card advantage swings, and attack
aggressively.

Throughout the event I only went into the power pack once for one card. As a
result of these changes this was my final decklist:

Attacking Brute Force Team

What's the best way to attack this brute force team? During the Western Shootout, most took one of two approaches; attack Beast: the Brute then Spider-Woman, or Hercules or Heroes for Hire then whichever of them remained.

Attacking Hercules or Heroes for Hire is the most effective strategy. Between Heroes for Hire and Hercules, there are 11 unique special cards and three 8 brute force power cards: 14
cards that cannot be played by Beast: the Brute and Spider-Woman.

On the flipside, Beast: the Brute and Spider-Woman combine for only eight unique cards leaving more usable cards in the deck. Heroes for Hire and Hercules’ cards are the main offense. Black Knight and Protector of Mankind are among some of the best non-One Per Deck specials in the game — premium offensive and must-defend cards.

In my Top8 quarterfinals match, my opponent K.O.’ed Beast: the Brute and Spider-Woman. I
won with Hercules and Heroes for Hire while behind because I had plenty of offensive firepower. Beast: the Brute and Spider-Woman provide almost no offense.

Overall, I was happy with the deck and this team. It has all the offensive and defensive
tools you could want. This deck will be a player in the Legacy meta going forward and you should be prepared for it.

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