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



UPDATE:
Based on feedback, I've edited out Wolverine's cost reduction power, this is the most current version.