No Tournament, But There Was VS.

I got to play some Little Deck today. Started out with my pretty bad Stand Alone X-Statix and a bunch of not teamed up people vs. Mostly JSA with some JLA/Titans. It was a fun match with Orphan 3-drop in play until turn 5 when he got finishing moved after a big team attack. Lots of turns with a big team attack and Mr. Terrific bonuses being able to overcome my huge character and Vivisector bouncing from my hand to play to hand to burn for 5. Unfortunately I got up to Anarchist: Man of the People and had nowhere left to go, while he kept swarming medium guys at me until turn 9 or 10 when he dropped Power Girl: Earth 2 and the bewbage did old Tike in with very little help and allowed the rest of his field to hit my face.

Next up the Origins X-Men took on Glee with emphasis on EE. I think I'll do my LDC on the Glee deck soon. Anyway, on turn 4 I had Goldface, then I got Major Force on 5, which gave me enough characters to flip In Darkest Night. I might have been able to attack his Blackbird wearing Cyclops this turn but I wanted to play Darkest Night, so I did. Next turn I played Black Hand, Ring Has Chosen'd for Olapet and boosted him for G'nort. Flipped Empire of Tears, KO'd a couple resources and after using Goldface's ability was down to 3. IDN, EoT and a Millennium. I was able to kill him a on 7, because he couldn't recover his characters and wasn't hitting anyone big enough to match up with mine.

The next game, however, took the cake for sure.

Since my friend had forgotten to bring his regular decks he decided to throw together another little deck with his stuff he had brought. Going through the stuff he had just bought from the X-Men set he got out some Hellfire Clubbers with the addition of some other X-Men villains like Lady Deathstrike and Black Tom he shuffled up and I played my Little Press Chess. He hit HFC Initiate, Viper, Tarot, Beef... And I hit Dr. Minerva (whiffs), Ahmed Samssara (searches up Penal Colony), return Minerva to hand at end of turn, play her (whiff), return her, play her (whiff), play the 3-drop OMAC, Neutralization Protocol... And you know what he does?

Declares attack with Beef to Ahmed. Legal. I search up Brother I Satellite. He stuns. Attacks Minerva with Tarot. Attacks the Robot with Viper and a pump... HFC Initiate exhaust for Finishing Move on Ahmed.

Me, "Well, good game."

Him, "What?"

Me, "Oh, wait, you don't know?"

Him, "No, what?"

Me, ::Hands him Ahmed.::

Him, "Well, I'm glad he's bigger than the Robot, that's the only reason I used it on him!"

Me, "::laughs:: That's gotta go in the blog."

And so it is. Hehe. Great game. Love VS. Best game ever. Ever.

-Mike

The Galactus Come! The Marvel Zombies Essential Collection.

Card draw as I've covered before is a major part of any swarm deck. Card draw and over sized weenies. Today I have four characters for you. Each of them get a bonus from World Devourer? which I debuted last time. Most of them fit into one of those two categories. One on the other hand gives you a reason to have all those dead bodies lying around.

Along with Hank Pym they all have the version The Galactus. Now, you may notice all ready that four plus one is five and there were six Marvel Zombies who became The Galactus. Well, I'll tell you right now that there isn't a Galactus version of Spider-Man. I didn't want to repeat characters in this set since it's so easy to fill out the curve with unique characters and didn't want to leave anyone out that I didn't absolutely have too. I can always make a Zombie Spider-Man: The Galactus later anyway!

First up is Spider-Man's buddy and living taxi in the Marvel Zombie series, Luke Cage. Luke is usually associated with card draw and good stats, so I thought why mess with a good theme?

At 3/3 he's a strong two drop, even better with flight and range. With World Devourer? face up he's a 5/5. With Power Cosmic Devoured, he's a 7/5! What's even better is if you don't have those cards and you team attack with him, you can maybe draw into them.

True, it's not pure card draw, but with the KO'd pile as an extension of your hand the way it is in VS, card filtering is all most better. You can discard flak from your hand and potentially still use it later on.

How can you use it later on? Well, let's take a look at our next card!

Zombie Iron Man allows you to trade an old, dead Zombie for a fresh body from the KO'd pile. They'll be stunned next turn, but you can do a lot with them before then. Besides the obvious ability to trade a stunned one or zero cost character for a two drop attacker at the cost of an exhaust and having said two drop in the KO'd pile, Iron Man works very well with the Zombie version of Sue Storm.

Since Iron Man stuns the character at the start of the next build phase, if you bring back Invisible Woman, you can stun her this turn during an attack, search for an ongoing plot twist, recover her, stun her at the start of the build phase and get another ongoing plot twist.

Or you can KO the character to the cost of, Iron Man, Power Cosmic Devoured or... Well, you'll see shortly.

Another thing you can do is leave them in play, because stunned characters sticking around help make this next character bulk up. Wolverine often has powers triggering on him stunning other characters or becoming stunned himself. This version plays off stunned characters, but he doesn't have to do the dirty work himself to come and scavenge the corpse for a few pounds of flesh.

So, I expect in most games Wolverine will be at least a 6/6 when he comes into play for you, putting him on par with his MOR three drop version. If you can stun multiple characters on turn one, you could even play him on turn two as a 7/7! Now, that should be a very rare occurrence if it ever happens at all. More likely he'll make for a 7/7 or 8/8 on turn four, that costs two.

This might be a little too powerful, as the first similar character I think of is the five drop Sinestro who costs three on turn six and gets +1 ATK/+1 Willpower for each face up resource an opponent controls. Starting at 8/9 I would guess on average he's an 11 or 12/9 for three. Thoughts? Should he just not get cheaper? Is his other power strong enough for three resource points in a deck like this?

Finally we come to what I consider the close of the normal curve for the Marvel Zombies. He's a big, mean, hungry six drop. In fact, he's the hungriest one there is! Just ask him.

Zombie Hulk is massive. How massive is he? Just look at him. At his size, most characters force horrible drawbacks on you. Like Bizarro: Dark Mirror who makes you discard two cards every time you draw one! He better finish the game for you or you're not gonna be playing resources or characters very much longer. Legion: He Who Is Many straight up says you cannot play plot twists! Bizarro(hmmm, I see a theme): Bizarro World's Finest lets your opponent pick the order of your attackers. For other examples go look for yourself on Doc X's VS Search Engine.

What is Hulk's drawback? Whenever he attacks or defends, you have to prod him with a bit of food or he'll go diving into the KO'd pile looking for some himself! That is to say, you have to KO a character anytime he enters combat. Yes, you want to keep stunned characters sitting around and yes this is part of the reason why.

However, those zombies you KO'd to pay for other costs won't go to waste with this bad boy around. Instead of sitting there in the KO'd pile, Hulk can scarf down on a few and make his incredible attack even bigger! Though it'll hurt him on the back end. Worst of all, for your opponent, he has flight, range and like all four of these cards he gets a power boost from World Devourer?, that last part makes him on par with a seven drop! Nobody wants to mess with the Hulk, people. Nobody.

Despite Hank Pym being your seven drop, this guy is the most powerful character at your disposal as a player of the Marvel Zombies deck. And who can argue with that? Hulk was, after all, the only Zombie powerful enough to take down the Silver Surfer, which let the other Zombies gain their cosmic powers and take down Galactus.

Next time I'll be showcasing the last few Marvel Zombie characters and their one location. I'll also give you a breakdown on the deck list!

-Mike

Curse You VS Network!

So, now Google has VS Network as the top link when you search for VS System Blog. God damn you! I will reclaim my spot! I hope! lol

-Mike

Who's Number One? It All Depends How You Define It!

So I just found out something hella awesome.

Go to Google. While you're there type "VS System Blog" into the search field and hit, "I'm Feeling Lucky." We'll wait here.

Okay... Did you do it? Muahaha, yeah, that's right! Takes you right back here where you started! We're number one! We're number one!

I have to say that's one hell of a nice surprise. A bad surprise though is that I can no longer make the Golden Age BYOS tournament at Grapevine Comics and Cards. Buses stop running from BART towards my house at 6:30 and no one will be home to pick me up from the station. And a 10 mile walk is one thing I _won't_ do for VS. To be fair, there's very little in this world I would walk 10 miles for. Like money or my life or something.

I was really looking forward to it. Was gonna play Common Enemy! COMMON ENEMY! C'mon, man! How often do you really get to bust out EA Reign of Terror?! I love that deck so much. One of the few decks that isn't "budget" that I was able to put together. Well, all most. I still only have 3x Signal Flare, 3x Boris: PSODD and, this is actually pretty funny, 3x Common Enemy. Also I lent my 1x Flame Trap to somebody and never got it back, but it was okay cause they did a lot for me. Anyway, here's what I woulda played.

OGMoney.dec

4x Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom
3x Robot Sentry, Army
3x She-Thing, Sharon Ventura
4x Medusa, Inhuman
2x She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters
4x Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius
1x Ghost Rider, New Fantastic Four
1x Robot Destroyer, Army
1x Thing, Heavy Hitter
1x Dr. Doom, Victor Von Doom
1x Hulk, New Fantastic Four
1x Sub-Mariner, Ally of Doom
1x Thing, The Ever Lovin' Blue Eyed Thing
1x Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria

3x Doomstadt

4x Common Enemy
2x Faces of Doom
4x It's Clobberin' Time
4x Signal Flare
1x Flame Trap
4x Mystical Paralysis
1x Press The Attack
4x Reign of Terror
4x Savage Beatdown

I hadn't made a final decision on the 2-3 tech slots I had left but I was thinking maybe 1x Apocalypse, En Sabah Nur and 2x Political Pressure. Or 2x Press The Attack, since you have such big characters and Doom with Mystical. I'm really sad I won't get to play it, cause I have some great memories of this deck. I know JVirtue does too. ;) I nearly won the very first PCQ I ever went too with a very similar list. I had 1x Wolverine: NFF, Acrobatic Dodges instead of Beatdowns, an even count of Purple Man/She-Hulk and Silver Surfer: Norrin Radd. Oh well, sometimes things just don't go your way.

Maybe next time.

-Mike

Incident Trouble, AKA Little Crisis Doom - Little Deck Creations

This is easily my favorite Little Deck so far. Doom was my very first love in VS. The very first pack I opened had the 6-drop and as I commented to a friend, "Man, I got the 6 cost Dr. Doom. I think he's really good!" Talk about an understatement. Of course, the 4-drop we all know, love, fear and loathe was the break out star because of things like Mystical Paralysis, Reign of Terror and Boris: Personal Servant of Doom, but still the 6-drop was good enough that even in an age of Curve Deck domination it wasn't uncommon to replace your turn four play a mere two turns later. As long as that turn six play was a certain dictator in a little known European country named Latveria.

Even Big Brotherhood usually tried not to replace characters that close together. Unless we were talking about a certain dictator of a small nation of mutants named Genosha. We all know how good HE was too, but since he doesn't show up in this deck lets keep moving on.

Doom's controlling nature and the power cards making up a Skeleton Deck led to multiple strategies being playable in the months after his debut. You could play Gamma Doom trying to stall out with Puppet Masters, Mysticals, Reigns and Robot Sentrys to win after setting up a recurring Gamma Bomb starting turn 7, thanks to Beast: Dr. Henry McCoy and Latveria.

You could team up the Common Enemy route and control with Doom, while the Fantastic Four played out the super beats of a lifetime with It's Clobberin' Time, Thing: Heavy Hitter and Savage Beatdowns. Not to mention Signal Flare was old school for "Consistent," back before "Consistent" meant rarely missing a drop.

And of course you'd be remiss not to mention Evil Medical School. Shimmer, Dr. Light: Arthur Light, Alfred, Boris, GCPD Officers and another deck that went to the late game to win. With what I think is probably the best win condition ever. Boosting Dr. Light on 9 is beyond cool! I mean, you snag all your guys in the KO pile and dump them on the board, stun anybody you please and attack for lots? Hell yeah.

But that's a lot of exposition. As I said, Doom is what I love! So, it's easy for me to go on and on about him and his team. Lets get down to brass tacks.

For Little Deck I decided to emulate a more recently version of Dr. Doom debauchery, the Crisis Doom deck. The deck plays Crisis on Infinite Earths to make your characters non-unique and hopes to spam out Latverian Overlords, with help from somebody else's friends to fill the gaps.

The first thing to do was to pick out Dr. Dooms to go in the deck. Victor Von Doom and Diabolical Genius are the first two, followed very closely by Richards's Rival. Next I put Lord of Latveria in, Sorcerous Savant fills up your six drop slots nicely. Scientific Sorcerer is okay, I'd rather play Fearsome Monarch, but I don't have him. I'd also be playing Latverian Monarch and Power Hungry if I had them for the record.

Dr. Doom, Richards's Rival
Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius
Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant
Dr. Doom, Victor Von Doom
Dr. Doom, Scientific Sorcerer
Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria

Next I decided to bring in the "Skeleton Deck" that every Doom deck really should play if it can. Doomstadt is a ridiculous pump that gives most of your characters +3 something. In this case Defense. I don't have Castle Doom or I'd play both. lol Reign of Terror, Mystical Paralysis, Faces of Doom and Boris: Personal Servant of Doom.

Boris, Personal Servant of Doom

Doomstadt

Faces of Doom
Mystical Paralysis
Reign of Terror

That leaves us with gaps to fill. Let's start with characters. You need two drops, you need five drops. Five is one of the more important drops in any game so let's start there. Kristoff is unplayable in this format as everything is one-of anyway. I considered Post: Kevin Tremain in the tradition of Thing: Heavy Hitter since if all your characters are Crisis affiliated you don't stun anyone, but I'm not going to have Crisis every game. I know that. However, if I miss it, I'd rather underdrop than get my 5-drop auto stunned. So the only Loyalty character I'm going to play is Garth <> Tempest: Atlantean Sorcerer. For a mere 3 end you get to fish back all those insane one-of's you're going to play. Like Reign of Terror!

On team I decided to play Robot Destroyer and Ultron <> Ultron II: Army. They both offer good options. Out of combat stuns are always strong, even if you trade a five for their four. With a Mystical Paralysis, Robot Destroyer can often turn that into a dead initiative for your opponent. Worse for them still if you exhaust a three drop to Mystical. Or worse, have a Puppet Master too boot. Ultron can be KO'd to either your 6-drop, your 3-Drop or just at the end of the turn and boomerang back to the board keeping your presence up. He also lets you play Mask of Doom for a much less costly price.

Garth <> Tempest, Atlantean Sorcerer
Robot Destroyer, Army
Ultron <> Ultron II, Army

At two, I went with San to search up locations because Doomstadt is so important and Doom also has some other very nice locations. Puppet Master and Robot Sentry help you to control the flow of the game and finally Kristoff Von Doom allows you a way to control Doom. Better yet he gives a +1/+1 pump to most of your five drops. With that in mind I figured filling in a little of the Doom army theme would be a good way to close out my drops.

Kristoff Von Doom, The Boy Who Would Be Doom
Pupper Master, Phillip Masters
Robot Sentry, Army
San, The Alienated One

On three I added Doom-Bot and Doom-Bot Corps. Being able to ready a Dr. Doom I control is crazy in this deck. Ready my six drop and attack for the win? Yes, please! For 3 endurance your Doom-Bot Corps can become Dr. Doom for a turn and take advantage of your Doomstadt* or Mystical or activate Faces. On four I picked up Mr. Fantastic: Doom's Adversary. Free characters rock and you have two three drops that fit the bill of his ability. However if you have Robot Sentry in the KO pile you might as well try and take advantage of the whole effect so I also added Tibetan Monks. With all these Army characters, and a focus on your characters being Dr. Doom, Decoy Program became an easy addition as well as Dr. Hauptmann.

Dr. Hauptmann, Diabolic Inventor
Tibetan Monks, Army
Doom-Bot, Army
Doom-Bot Corps, Army
Mr. Fantastic, Doom's Adversary

Decoy Program

That brings us to 24 cards. We have 6 slots left. One has to go to Crisis on Infinite Earths, obviously. Next I decided to run Mask of Doom since we can return characters and run a freebie, and two search cards is much better than one. With location search I looked at Doom's locations. Latveria, Latverian Embassy and Doom's Throne Room are all great cards. In Little Deck the Embassy, like it's character counterpart 5-Drop Kristoff, is sadly useless. Latveria though, that's VERY useful. Nearly global reinforcement can really kill a rush deck, worse yet if they're trying to get past an extra 6-9 defense too boot. Not to mention the occasional chance to Reign or Mystical on turn 3. Sadly I don't think we'll be playing enough plot twists to run the Throne Room, because I really like that card.

Seeing as Doomstadt is so nice as a global pump for Doom, I looked for other Doom Legend cards. Power Cosmic is nice, but without a huge closer like Sub-Mariner: Ally of Doom I don't want to risk losing all my resources. Micro-Size and Supersize aren't big enough pump, but I did like Expendable Ally. You can't rely on it as a Savage Beatdown, but as a Fizzle/Nasty Surprise it works just fine. Bitter Rivals is a way to bring the attack bonus of Castle Doom online, though very limited. I've found it very useful in combination with Sorcerous Savant and Lord of Latveria though. You play it on 4, keep it a couple turns before that drop dies off and then switch the target by replaying it. Finally I decided to add Diplomatic Immunity, however I'm thinking it may need to be cut. It just hasn't done much, but at the same time I haven't played it more than a couple times.

Here's the list...

Little Crisis Doom
Boris, Personal Servant of Doom
Dr. Hauptmann, Diabolic Inventor
Tibetan Monks, Army
Kristoff Von Doom, The Boy Who Would Be Doom
Pupper Master, Phillip Masters
Robot Sentry, Army
San, The Alienated One
Doom-Bot, Army
Doom-Bot Corps, Army
Dr. Doom, Richards's Rival
Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius
Mr. Fantastic, Doom's Adversary
Garth <> Tempest, Atlantean Sorcerer
Robot Destroyer, Army
Ultron <> Ultron II, Army
Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant
Dr. Doom, Victor Von Doom
Dr. Doom, Scientific Sorcerer
Dr. Doom, Lord of Latveria

Decoy Program

Doomstadt

Bitter Rivals
Crisis On Infinite Earths, Team Up
Diplomatic Immunity
Expendable Ally
Faces of Doom
Mask of Doom
Mystical Paralysis
Reign of Terror

In place of Diplomatic Immunity I think I'm gonna try Have A Blast! because with the one-of rule in Little Deck, you can blast some very powerful twists and then safely expect to never see that crap again! Hehe.

-Mike

*You don't have to use it and then flip Doomstadt do you? It says you are considered to control Dr. Doom, but that doesn't mean the same thing as a character named Dr. Doom does it?

Take Two. The Marvel Zombies Essential Collection.

With the feedback I received from Pi, I was inspired to edit the Cosmic Power Amplifier, change the art on Power Cosmic Devoured and add a new card to the set! First lets take a look at the two cards you've seen before.






















First I decided that the new card should use the art from Power Cosmic Devoured and got a new image for Power Cosmic Devoured. I think this fits better anyway, especially with the flavor text. Making the Amplifier cost one, but still stun any attackers seems to be much more balanced. You can use it earlier in the game and get your plus 3 attack and hope to stun the equipped character or sit back and watch your opponent do everything they can to stun the equipped character before stunning any body else. You also get a very strong incentive to play it... Because if you don't have a Cosmic Power Amplifier, you can't take down Galactus and if you can't take Galactus down, you can't have The Galactus zombies!


I'm really not sure about the name, but hopefully this makes the versioned Galactus zombies much more flavorful. This gives the zombies quite a bit of global pump, so I made sure you could never have more than one face up. It also gives me a better reason to keep Power Cosmic Devoured as costly as it is. However, if you play this, Power Cosmic Devoured and equip another Cosmic Power Amplifier you should be able to finish off just about any opponent! Making the steep drawbacks more than worth it.

If you go back to the book, that was a theme they explored with Hank Pym, who at one point says that even if he somehow cured the zombies of The Hunger, he thought he'd still want to eat flesh. He'd started to like it. So essentially he's saying being an undead, rotting corpse was worth it. Hopefully, having a board full of rotting, undead characters will be worth it!

-Mike

Selling A Magic Card, To Buy More VS!

A friend sent me some Magic Pre-Con decks his store was throwing out. One of them came with a copy of Umezawa's Jitte, which I remember was worth a bit of scratch. So I checked ebay to see it goes for about 11 bucks usually and I decided to auction mine off. It'll just about pay for the Darkseid/Birds of Prey Random Punks deck I want to build for the Silver Age Random Punks event coming up.

Dark Fury, All Hail Darkseid, Lord of Apokolips and if it works out with Titans of Tomorrow to team up JLA... Battle Training! Yeah, that's a lot of sauce! Plus all the card draw with Babsy, Furnace of Apokolips and The Hook-Up... I think it'll be fun.

So anyway, here's the link.

Umezawa's Jitte!

-Mike

When All Else Fails! The Marvel Zombies Essential Collection.

When designing a swarm deck, you don't usually think of giving them a seven drop. In fact you probably don't think of giving them a six drop and maybe not even a five drop! However with an essential collection, despite the end product being a deck, you're still making a team and I think every team should be fully developed enough to at least play one through seven.

Plus, the team opposite the Marvel Zombies is a stall team. After all, what's the best way to survive zombies? Hole up in a defensible position and ride out the hunger. So I didn't want to give them an easy win if they just made it past turns four or five. Instead the zombies can continue being a threat even in later turns of the game, in this case thanks to Zombie Hank Pym <> Giant Man.

Even as Pym was consumed by his need to feast on flesh, he was working on things. In fact he kept Black Panther down in a basement hidden from the other zombies so he could grab a snack here and there when he needed to do some heavy thinking. It's hard to think when you're hungry for us normal people, let alone a creature dominated by hunger like a zombie. He didn't even tell his wife the Wasp.

This allowed him to come up with a way to amplify the boost given to the zombies from eating the Silver Surfer when the Herald's master arrived and made it clear he'd wipe the Earth of all life, living or undead. So what does the Cosmic Power Amplifier do exactly?

Well, if the Power Cosmic Devoured gives zombies +2 attack, amplifying that Cosmic Power must be worth an even larger boost. However, +3 ATK is a bit too much to put on an equipment without making it expensive. With one resource point you can usually get +3 ATK to one single character or +1 ATK/+1 DEF across the board. You can even get upwards of +5 ATK for one resource point. At the cost of KO'ing the character if it's stunned. With two characters Cosmic Power Amplifier is all ready better than that. So I felt even two resource points wasn't enough.

So making it cost three seemed the fairest way to go, but as you've all ready seen, the zombies can cheat it out on turn 7 by playing the man/zombie who invented it. However it's still got it's drawbacks. The reason is because the only time the zombies used it, they were fighting such a huge threat that even with the neat little toy a few of them went down in the process.

This is meant to close the gap when the chips are down and if it doesn't work the fight was probably over anyway.

Join us next time when I show you the other zombies with the version The Galactus.

-Mike

I Love VS! New Player Update!

So, I just spent the last few hours putting together a deck for the Golden Age BYOS event at Grapevine Comics and Cards in Stockton gonna start goldfishing to see it to see if I like it. If I'm not feeling it I can always play the DCL Injustice Gang deck, since I ordered the character cards on Monday and got them TODAY! Cards In Hand has awesome prices AND speedy shipping! I'll definitely be going back. I really like the deck.

BUT, that's not the important part of today's VS Experience.

My friend Muffin has started playing and after buying a box of DSM and making a Superman deck he bought a lot 34 Marvel Knights packs and made a Marvel Knights deck and now, today, he got 2 boxes of Marvel Origins delivered from ebay and made a quick X-Men deck. When I called to talk to him about game night (Cyberpunk 2020!) he was buying a couple Infinite Crisis boosters to replace the New Gods in his Superman deck. He was playing 5-drop Scott Free and didn't realized Loyalty made it impossible for him to play the character, so he filled out his curve with some JSA'ers like Katar Hol and Power Girl.

I'm calling it, we have a new player! Now to get him to a tournament. I don't know if he'll be willing to hit Stockton, but I'll try and keep a better eye out for Berkley stuff now I guess.

Man, one taste and it's all over. VS really is like crack!

-Mike

Crime Lord / Hydra Previews Begin!

Read the preview article at VS System . com!

I'm kind of disappointed they aren't doing Hydra as their own team. From what the Wiki says on Winter Soldier, I don't know if he'd have the Hydra affiliation anyway, so there may still be hope of the Hydra name being put on some characters ala The Rogues in DCL. I just wanna see the symbol, you KNOW it's gonna be cool looking on a card!

With that said, I'm very excited about the Crime Lords. Death Warrant is so damn cool. Everything in this set seems to get me excited. Except the lame Thunderbolts Bullseye, anyway. I'm dying to see a deck drop 2-3 Death Warrants onto an opponent's field on turn 4 and see the look of dread come over my opponent. "Wanna pass on your attacks?" Nasty Surprise has never looked this good since Overload was banned! Since it's not unique and it IS concealed-optional, it's pretty safe once you get it on your opponent's side of the table. There are certainly tricks to kill it. Level 12, Zinco, Bodyslide.

Another worry is it being moved though. Wonder Woman can change where it lands and if they have enough characters it doesn't matter how many Warrants you sign this turn, none of them will end up on Wondy.

Of course that leads us to my favorite bit of text on the card! "Return death warrent to its owners hand" means that after the contract is cashed in, you get to sign it out on someone else! Bucky is okay, I like him, but in a bubble he's not exciting. Not to me. Very good, obviously, because any out of combat stun (especially since it doesn't have a cost of character restriction!) is an effect you cannot over look as it is likely very powerful. I mean, look at Roy Harper <> Arsenal from DOR, you'd think blowing up a resource and exhausting your own board would be the end of your game, but he was easily one of the most abusable cards to ever hit a VS board! So, Bucky, most definitely a power player.

But Death Warrant? That makes him exciting. Very exciting. Imagine if you will a wall of 1's and 2's that plays this version of the Winter Soldier on 3, 4 and 5. Now give them a mass reinforcement effect and a full compliment of Death Warrants. He becomes the World's most deadly contract killer. Who do you want to cap? Worried they'll attack him first with some unimportant drop? Hide him. He doesn't even have to activate so you can even exhaust HIM to play the Death Warrant to begin with!

THAT is cool. Very, very cool. Here's to getting us some 1 and 2 drop Bullseye, Deadpool, Taskmaster and Crossbones to play with Winter Soldier, because I'm dying to turn this into a serious deck and it can't get any better than actually being full of contract killers. Hmmm, Crime Lords could also see a version of Katrina Luisa Van Horn when she was known as Man-Killer too. If it has to be a team up deck the Thunderbolts might also have Killer Shrike and obviously Bullseye is on the team, even if I dislike the version we've all ready seen. The Cat (Shen Kuei) could have a spot on the Crime Lords. Which I would like to see after the issues of Cable and Deadpool I've been reading. He seems to be a very cool character.

I can't wait to see what the rest of the week brings, hopefully that blanket of reinforcement I'm hoping for. Maybe the "even bigger flying carrier" that will be previewed Thursday on VS Realms?

-Mike