Friday, May 16, 2008

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

4 comments:

Pi_3.14159... said...

Well, Hank certainly is interesting, although I am not sure if I agree with the power, given the version. When he was part of "The Galactus" he had already used the Cosmic amplifier to take out Galactus. After that, the device was never seen or heard from again.
The equipment has too many drawbacks for its effect, IMO. Basically, I could pay 3 resource points and have my characters all become stunned at the start of recovery (while not bad, still annoying as hell), or I could team-up with X-Men, get a Blackbird Blue, give all my guys flight, and not have them die and get 1 less ATK. Which could easily be supplied by something like Forward Assault. With the resource cost and the steep cost of attacking, I don't think it is worth it. Plus, by turn 7, when you can get it for free, you probably have done something so you should win, or at least have something more powerful.

RanmaSolo said...

The thing with the version is that it's too cool not to use... But if I really used it to represent them only after they ate Galactus, I'd have to make them all rather big and more "Galactus-y". It's more like something I wanted to use to tag them and potentially revisit.

I have a feeling you're right on about the Amplifier. What do you think would be a fair cost for it? I could do away with the flavor text and let you KO zombies to make it cost less, but then the stun at recovery becomes a steeper restriction... Hmm, what if it gave +4 ATK?

My intention is for it to be something you'd only play on a kill turn.

Thank you for the feedback, I really appreciate it.

-Mike

Pi_3.14159... said...

Well, if you want to see what I did, which was different (I also went with a different concept):
Cosmic Amplifier
1
E
Equip only to a Zombieverse character.
Exhaust any number of Zombies you control >>> Stun target character with DEF equal to or less than the ATK of the Zombies you exhausted. Put food counters on each of the Zombies you exhausted. Use only once per turn.
“Hit him again!”
Rare

Basically, my whole thing is that zombies are more powerful, but require food. Whenever a zombie stuns a character, you put a food counter on that zombie. At the start of the recovery phase, you stun all zombies without food counters, then remove a food counter from each zombie. This has them using their power combined to take out one big guy, basically a giant team-attack, except none of your guys get stunned back.

As for Galactus, I guess I understand, but still think that you shouldn't give them a version that they don't represent on the card.

RanmaSolo said...

That's really cool. The food counters would be real fun, but definitely require everything to key into them.

I guess, to me, they were kind of all ready The Galactus as soon as they ate Surfer. Eating him just gave them more of the same. Hmm... You know I just got an idea... I'll have to think on it and may have a revised Amplifier and a new ongoing plot twist. :)

-Mike