Marvel Evolution - Previews Officially Announced!

TBS, you remember him, right? Started a thread today on the Realms announcing the beginning of preview season. You can read it here.

Along with the start date and telling us that VS Bloggers would again get to preview cards, he also told us WHICH bloggers would get previews and even spoiled the themes they were be covering!

Now, this is cool enough on it's own. However, infinitely cooler is this... I'm on the list! We get a preview! Snazzy! For those of you who didn't follow the link here's a list of the themes TBS mentioned as preview material.

"X-Factor"
1. Cyclops Legend
2. Multiple Man Legend
3. Energize

"X-Force"
1. Cable Legend
2. Combat Plot Twists

"Marauders"
1. Gambit Legend
2. "Press the Advantage" Opposing Stunned
3. Mr. Sinster Legend
4. Mystique Legend

"Exiles"
1. Blink Legend
2. Mimic Legend
3. Shift

"Weapon X"
1. Deadpool
2. Shift
3. Hunter

"Runaways"
1. Secret Mechanic

"The Horseman of Apocalypse"
1. "The Coming of Apocalypse"

"Starjammers"
1. "Piracy"

"Generics"
1. Including- "M'Kraan Crystal" and "Kid Omega"

Now seriously. It's hard not to be uber-geeked getting a preview. It's impossible not to be full on geeked out of my head after reading that list! We're supposedly going to be doing some sort of blogger draft to see which theme we preview, so I have my fingers crossed to get my hands on Deadpool or Mimic for the Exiles. Blink or Shift is fine by me too, but Mimic has always been my favorite Exile and Deadpool is one of my favorite comic characters period.

To think I have Rob Liefield to thank for that. ::Shudder::

Anyway, beyond that all that we have right now is rampant speculation. Which, I should point out, is hella fun. So let's try some.

Mystique Legend: I'm thinking Bizarro World, Legend stealing effects. Maybe even something like a payment power on an ongoing plot twist to treat your Mystique as if she had a name of your choice. I also imagine she'll do some concealed play as I can't see the Marauders NOT being a concealed heavy team. Mystique is a sneaky little assassin/spy/terrorist and not being able to attack her while she's visible would be a good way to represent her being undercover and make for a very tempting option if you have to pick between always getting attack backs or something juicy while she's hidden. Activate to KO a stunned character? Mystique lock? I like it!

And she can lock me up anytime... Rowr. She seems nice, not at all like a cat with a mouse. Not at all. Eeep.

We know there's a Cable and Deadpool named Plot Twist in the set, I'm hoping it's not JUST an X-Force/Weapon X team up. I'm hoping it's something real complicated. Something that teams up Cable and Deadpool, but also does something funky and off the wall. Like team up all teams that Cable and Deadpool that you control have and when something effects one it effects the other. Bodyslide one, bodyslide the other. Even if it has to be a payment power. Pay 3-5 Endurance -> Copy target effect targeting a Cable or Deadpool you control, choose a new target named Cable or Deadpool.

Considering Deadpool and Cable are both the first theme listed for their teams, I would hope they're considered worthy of such thought out and complex strategy.

The Hunter keyword for Weapon X, I feel probably is something we've seen before. "When this character enters play choose a character in play..." and then some effect that revolves around that character. Dominus, Despero, Hank Henshaw <> Cyborg, all had them. So did Wolverine, Sabretooth and Mavrick. Point being the later three were ON the Weapon X team. I think a team that keeps bouncing back to hand might be fun. Just as long as it's at LEAST as good as the X-Statix. The idea of Deadpool sucking breaks my heart more than a little bit.

I had to look up the M'Kraan Crystal, but it sounds very interesting. I hope we maybe get some of the Marvel Ultimate Alliance storyline here, since apparently it would mean Dr. Doom + Some Power Stolen From Odin, which to me = freaking awesome. I'm a fan of Doom and any chance to see him kicking more ass is to be savored. Also we know UDE doesn't shy away from letting Marvel video games influence their designs. Charging Star and the rest of the Captain America suite, anyone?

I noticed both Exiles and Weapon X will have a focus on the Shift ability or keyword, whatever that is. Considering the Exiles are dimension hoppers and my thoughts on Hunter... I have to think "shift" is a keyworded form of Bodyslide. Maybe you stun the character, remove them from the game and at the start of the next turn they come into play all shiny and new? Allowing you to pick new Hunter targets and representing very well the way the Exiles move from one altered reality to the next.

Kid Omega... Well, I have a very love/hate deal for Grant Morrison's X-Men run. Mostly I hate what follow ups did to the characters and the situations it set up. I'm very curious to see if maybe this will mean a good chunk of unaffiliated characters in Evolution, which would be cool. He is listed as a "Generic" theme, after all.

All will be known very soon though. Previews start this week!

-Mike Continue reading...

Thursday Thirteen - Week Two

Only forty-one this week before the need to make cuts. Eventually I'll be picking my final Thirteen right off the bat. For this weeks edition I'm sharing my favorite two cost characters in the game. There weren't as many that jumped out at me before I started as there were with the one drop slot which to me is chock full of characters that really take hold of a space in your memory and defend it with raised swords and threats of carving a chunk from your motor skills. I think it's because two drops do work, one drops do magic.

For the longest time, most decks didn't want a one drop. So a one drop had to be incredible to see play. Boris, Alfred were just so good you couldn't NOT play them. Longshot filled your hand like nothing since. The Invisible Girl let you play A Child Named Valeria. Now one drops are much more common, but as key and powerful as many two drops are, I just don't get that same sense of crazy wonder from them. One drops had to have something special. A two drop just needed three attack. Still, here are my favorites.


#13: Beast seems so unassuming. Such little text and yet such far reaching implications. Gamma Doom ran Beast and Latveria to power out Gamma Bomb turns earlier than it was supposed to be played, but I never dug Puppet Master decks to be honest. I liked exhausting characters, but not with a little old bald man. So what I really like about Beast is the Dream. Xavier's Dream was a highly derided joke. Until Michael "Big Spooky" Barnes made it reality with an 11-1 record day one of PC New York. Beast made it all possible. Beast and a bit of Total Anarchy. Besides, look at him, he just looks awesome. Some people will always prefer the classic look or the CLASSIC look, but I like the Leonine version of Beast. Very regal.









#12: So, I still cheated this week. But... Tim Drake is where it's at whether it's the past or the present and probably the future. When else did you ever spend 4 resource points for a 2/3 and win a game? When else do you draw three and four cards for ATTACKING!? Tim Drake <> Batman, whenever that happens, is gonna be broken. Hehe.











#11: Nightcrawler is like the ultimate version of that "Two Drop" syndrome I described above. He's got three attack and he doesn't do anything to play into a grand strategy. All he does is not stun. BAMF! It's shocking how strong that is. And as all of us on VS Realms know thanks to CHDB, non-stunning attackers are broken.















#10: Hounds Lock. Dreaded words. Words that made you cringe in sympathy for fallen friends and sometimes even for falling foes. I only played one copy of Hounds in my Curve Sentinels, but you know what? I usually had them on turn two. Gotta love Boliver Trask. Hounds of Boliver? Not quite the same ring to it. Their ability to lock down a board once your Savage/Nasty Overloaded was ridiculous. Even without Overload they sometimes turn what should be a close match into a routing.












#9: First of all... Hot! The art is great, I love the scarf and the shadow and the leather and the improbable body pose. Not quite Rob Liefield, but hey, I can't see her feet either, now can I? Hehe. Her effect is so good it got Dr. Light issued errata. She was Light Show 1.9! After all, only once per turn doesn't matter if you KO her to Devil's Due, bring her back into play, ready Xavier's School, ready Dr. Light and KO her again. I've got a Hidden Faces deck that at one point I tried to fit her and Ahmed into. I kept forgetting that pesky Loyalty--Reveal when testing. lol Her latest exploits include readying Four Freedoms Plaza and New Baxter Building. Very sexy indeed.










#8: Ahh, my beloved Merc with a Mouth. Deadpool is easily one of my favorite characters ever. Cable and Deadpool is one of my favorite series of comic books ever. While I haven't played this card very much, the flavor it captures is amazing. You see, Deadpool can't die. Kinda like Wolverine. And others. But he's also very annoying. So... He's a 4/2, two drop who NEVER goes away. That's annoying enough for your opponent. But better yet, he's annoying to you too eventually! After all that's a breakthrough avenue a mile wide. So just like the comics he annoys EVERYone! Friend, enemy, random passer by.












#7: THIS is how I like my 2-drop exhausters. Forget one at a time, I wanna sap the energy out of your WHOLE board! Call it Shimmer Pigs, KnightLight or, my favorite, Evil Medical School, but any way you slice it Shimmer, GCPD Officers and a team up are absolutely brilliant. Harvey Bullock: GCPD Detective and Alfred certainly didn't hurt. And it enabled one of my favorite characters in the early days of VS. Dr. Light: Arthur Light. But he's for the six drops!













#6: Now if my favorite one drops were Joystick and Ape X, it shouldn't be surprising to see this guy in my list of favorite two drops. I don't love this guy quite like I love Joystick, but he still cheats the curve like a mutha. On two, sure, he usually has a couple -1 attack modifiers from your hand, but on turn five? He's usually a 6/6. Even on turn two his defense is three, which is damn good, but it just gets better! Turn three with an Airskimmer after you Tridented Joystick on two? It's all most not fair! Shape like friends? We like you too buddy.













#5: Much like Black Thorn before her, Sage is the real deal total package. Drawing cards, perfect body (3/2, though I love the pale look too), hidden and extra copies are useful as more than just power ups! Hell yeah. Plus the story behind the character is pretty awesome. Spying on the Hellfire Club for Professor X, she was his "secret student" and spent a very long time under cover. Sure, it was a retcon, but it's one I like.










#4: To me, Faces of Evil is all about these two. Yellowjacket and Beetle are probably more of a "pair," but this is about two drops. He's the engine that made things run smoothly and she was the backup that made sure games ended. Burning for 8 or so a couple times was often a deal closer. And Beetle made sure you got her when you wanted her. I could probably add Kyle Rayner to make this a trinity, but I'm cheating enough as is.







#3: I couldn't begin to tell you how much I've burned for with this guy. Some people preferred Captain Boomerang, but I loved IQ so much that even seeing Captain as a my backup made me grimace. I took DIG to a PCQ way back when DJL was pretty new and though my record wasn't Top 8 quality, I had a match against Glock that gathered quite the crowd. On turn 7 I boosted a new Scarecrow out onto the field and burned for over 20 before I ran out of endurance. At the end of the turn... We were both tied at negative seventeen! We played the final turn and he got himself a Mogo. This sucked, but still I somehow only lost by a couple points. After all, my attacks were All Too Easy. I sure coulda used Circe: Evil Enchantress.








#2: Talk about sexy. Poison Ivy has always been my favorite femme fatale from Batman's gallery of rogues. Probably from comic books in general. I'm probably an environmentalist partially because of this characters influence on me early on. Watching the Batman: Animated Series as a kid I would always feel conflicted about episodes she was in. I knew she was on the wrong side of things, but I was sympathetic. I wanted her to get some kind of moral victory. Let's not forget she was best friends with Harley Quinn too, another favorite of mine. All that, plus great stats and an ability that is ridiculous. She's been the dominate diva at multiple PC's, including the deck that got Justice League of Arkham banned. Whether Fated up on turn two for Banana Hammock (such a great deck name) or just doing her thing in Ivy League she was killer. Also, one of the VERY few cards I've spent more than a couple bucks on. But I just HAD to have a play set, especially when I saw the EA.







#1: Also a distinguished player in the Banana Hammock deck that won PC Indy '06, Deadshot is a card I totally got excited about the second I saw it. KO a three drop? Nice! Three drops are often vital to a deck's strategy. Not to mention that when the next DC set came to town and introduced us all to Ahmed Samsarra, KO'ing a three drop didn't just hurt a deck... It won a game. I have a definite place in my heart for assassin characters, so that doesn't hurt either. Whether you call him Deadshot, Deadpool or Deathstroke, if his job is killing I'm probably willing to give him a shot. And his flavor text says it all on that subject. "Isn't it obvious? I kill people. For money." $40,000 is a nice chunk of change. The first deck I played when I returned from VS sabbatical was Punisher/Deadshot. I didn't get any King Kills like I always dreamed of, but I sure did enjoy myself.

So, there's my list for this week. It's funny, but i have to admit one of the single hardest cuts from forty-one to thirteen that I had to make was Quicksilver: Inhuman By Marriage. He's so soundly hated by most people, but... I WANTED to put him on this list. I just couldn't justify it. I don't love him. I fear him, I like him, but this is my list of FAVORITES, you know? Oh well, I'm sure he'll be on my list of best or most powerful two drops ever. Next time, I'm gonna head to three drops. I'll probably continue this up to Eights and then branch out into other topics.

Hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing it.

-Mike Continue reading...

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 Continue reading...

Happy Birthday To Me!

I turn 24 today. Whoo hoo! Gonna get a good... 7 and a half hours of sleep, go to the flea market, hopefully pick up some old random ass comic books, come home read those and the back pile I'm starting to build and hopefully play Halo 3 online with some friends all night.

Been reading quite a few comics lately that I acquired. About halfway through Cable & Deadpool. Deadpool is easily one of the greatest characters ever, in spite of his rather... unsavory creation. Stupid Rob Liefield.

If you don't have Rob, here's a very good 40 Reasons you should! And to wash that taste out of your brain I've got perhaps the single best page out of Cable and Deadpool so far! From issue 20, where Deadpool is clashing with Black Mamba, Asp and Diamondback (the B.A.D. Girls!) over a thievery commission. Mamba did her magic and made Deadpool lapse into his darkest fantasy... Which was apparently giving old Nate AKA Cable a rub down on a tropical beach. lol This follows as he wakes up and they all realize somebody has pre-burgled the item they both were hired to get.

Oooh, looks like the Deadpool solo series is all finished downl- I mean, is here...

...

Deadpool made me do it. Support comics, buy them if you can! I do, I swear!

-Mike Continue reading...