Thursday (Yeah I Know) Thirteen - Week Four

But it's Monday! But I'm way behind! So let's cut to the chase. Four drops. You love them, I love them. These are my favorites and not necessarily the best, but just the ones I like best. Some are important to the history of the game, some are power brokers and some are just damn cool or even all three. I cut down from 24 this week, proving once again, that it's getting easier as I go along.

Here we go...








#13: You know I love No-Hand Squadron. He is a hell of a good reason why. He's a nice 7/6 and then you get his effect. Burn for 6!? Crazy! How can he do that!? Well, they gain one back for each card in your hand. Oh, okay... Well, wait, so if I just have no cards he burns for 6? Ooooh yeah.













#12: Little Bucky didn't die, he grew up Red. This version of the Winter Soldier is unaffiliated and falls into a very dangerous category of characters. His power allows you to directly KO a character. That's a nasty power. In a game won and lost on missed drops at times, KO'ing someone, effectively for free? Especially a character up the curve? Incredible. Unlike some other characters with this ability though, Bucky makes you work for it. I have this Turbo Bucky combo-ish deck in my head that I'll have to write up if it ever starts firing. I have a feeling Sniper Shot ala Eugenio is a much easier and more consistent choice, not to mention all ready developed, but options are good.











#11: Ahh, Poison Ivy, quite a regular on my lists so far. She's a bit further down on the list here, but she's just not quite as good at four as she is earlier in the game. Stealing a 2 drop or KO'ing a character is very nice, but her activate cost is a bit prohibitive. While Bucky kills things without having to do anything and other characters kill things by doing what comes naturally, she has to have a character stunned before she can use her ability. So KO'ing a four drop on 4 require a 3 drop to go up the curve. Why is she a favorite then? Well, it's Poison Ivy! Also, I had quite a few sealed decks that decimated people with Ivy Lock.










#10: Wow, I may be under rating this guy, but I'm still trying figuring him out. With the Iron Man support in Marvel Universe, just having the name is pretty good. Extremis Upgrade is ridiculous. Nimrod every turn? Check! Stark Armory growing him every turn? Check! I'm A Futurist doubles as a character search? Yes, yes it does! Better yet though, his effect is amazing. It lets you keep your board and they get bigger to boot! Your three drop is good as a 5/4, he'll be better as a 6/5. Your five drop is only a 9/9? Next turn he's a 10/10. That's using average characters! Imagine him teamed up with Thing: Heavy Hitter or Wolverine: Logan! Or my favorite pairing so far, Radioactive Man: Containment Suit.












#9: So John isn't obviously a powerful card. But he's on here because I have a really fun Willpower deck that uses him to power a few combos. His ally effect works great with Oa, Ultra-Humanite: Evolutionary Antecendent, Katma Tui, Wall of Will, Guy Gardner and Satellite HQ. Even The Ring Has Chosen sometimes is ably assisted by John. I've turned games around when I missed on 5, but powered up and searched out Sinestro-6.












#8: So drawing cards, nice defense and he grants team ups. You'd think they're be powerful in that order: most to least. But the ability to give adjacent characters the X-Men affiliation is what really put Professor X on the map. Drawing cards is always nice, but you have to make it to the recovery phase. Good defense helps with that, but even better is letting Xavier's School ready Puppet Master (or you know, Dr. Light: Master of Holograms before he was banned, who... got another Puppet Master usually anyway) to exhaust an additional character who is one more character who can't attack into the big chair end of Chuck. Oh, and then draw a card when they can't stun him. Hehe.







#7: My only cheat this week. Bullets or arrows, guns or bows, these guys will kill you dead. In that power group of 4-drops with KO powers, these are probably the best. Punisher KO's anyone he stuns at the low cost of playing equipment while making equipment better anyway! Merlyn requires locations and is a little more fragile, but his power has been proven in the past, having won a PC. He activates, sure, but he doesn't need a stunned character! Both are 7/7 with range and both play into a theme of their team. Marvel Knights are good with KO's and equipment, while the League of Assassins was the original Location hog. Both have great search, they're both uncommons, it's no wonder that with the addition of a KO ability they've rocked the house. And luckily both are very cool characters. Merlyn's appearances in Green Arrow's solo series which I recently caught up on are absolutely brutal in the best possible way.




#6: Rogue is the kind of card that makes combos you didn't think possible, possible. She allows you to copy an ability, like, maybe KO'ing characters based on your number of locations or exhaust a character like Puppet Master or any number of other things. My favorite Rogue trick was in a Heroes United deck. Rogue, Mr. Fantastic: Stretch, and Professor X: World's Most Powerful Telepath. Normal F4 burn got 9-12 off each Cosmic. With Rogue and Professor X you could get 18 with just the two of them! And on the occasion you faced off against Thing: Heavy Hitter...? 22 damage on their initiative turn 7 is usually insurmountable.












#5: "I bet you a fucking dollar The Captain makes Top 8 at Worlds." Well, I wish Guglio or anyone else had taken me up on that offer. And thank you to Brian Eugenio, local deck builder extraordinaire, who not only proved my prediction on The Captain right, but also went all the way to the finals and won the WHOLE event with the Nextwaver, becoming the very first VS Worlds champion. Which I also predicted after seeing the Top 8 after day 2. Congratulations Brian! You deserve it, big time. I could tell you a million things to do with The Captain, but I'd rather just build decks and show you later!











#4: This card just doesn't seem like it should work the way it does. I read it and thought for sure I was reading it wrong. Go ahead, take a look... Read it yourself. Yeah, see? She's direct burn that you can add attack pumps onto! How crazy is that!? Savage Beatdown? +5, direct to the face! But of course, like any deck that attack so efficiently, think Quickfate, you play Samantha Parrington on 5 and Elektra can attack twice letting you play for the turn effects like Flying Kick, Combat Reflexes and Tania Belinskya. I like to team her up with my favorite 3-drop Dr. Doom with Lust for Power to load up a huge hand of pumps before you smack the crap out your opponent!








#3: I think Sentinel Mark V is one of the most important cards to ever be printed. For good or evil, Curve Sentinels was the dominant deck in VS for longer than anything before or since. Strategies like Puppet Master and Rigged Elections have always been at the edge of the meta waiting to jump in and steal the event, but Curve Sentinels ruled supreme. They had the tools since Origins with Bastion, Nimrod, Micro-Sentinels, Search and Destroy and one set later the addition of Total Anarchy, but they needed a bridge to the future, and this four drop/five drop turned the dial to 11. I enjoyed my time with Curve Sentinels, but will admit I was very happy to see Avengers dethrone them. I think the reason many people felt smothered by the Purple Curve King was not because the Robots weren't a good deck, but because they were the Kings of Savage/Nasty/Overload too. Combined with an open ended deck list they could tech against and beat all most anything.






#2: I love assassin characters. Deathstroke is one of the coolest. He's so cool even Deadpool, who originally was just Rob Liefield's excuse to draw Deathstroke, is that much cooler by association. And Deadpool is cool on his own! This version is one of my favorites. He's powerful and will usually see play if he's your main four drop. The effect of burning your opponent whenever he stuns is simple, but very effective. He's practically got invulnerability, but instead of taking 0, you just even the playing field. This gave him a prominent place in the High Voltage burn deck that aimed to drop your opponent to zero very fast by Enemy'ing out the nastiest burn options it could get it's hands on. Besides effects though, the guy has his own team! And a sword too! (if you get that joke, congratulations, you have a good memory!)








#1: You knew this was coming right? How could you not? Dr. Doom won the first PC, he won the last PC. He was my first major VS love and to this day nothing thrills me more than dropping him, turning up a search card and turning it back down before clearing a board full of weenies with Reign of Terror. 7/9, 10/6, whatever flavor your Doomstadt it turns him into a monster and if you don't like attacking he can just remove people from the fight to begin with via Mystical. Best of all though, your opponent can't do anything about it. Locking the plot twists in your opponent's hands from being played can devastate their game plan. I've had people scoop on turn 4 in response to a second Reign of Terror that they're powerless to stop. Diabolic Genius, is probably the most successful card in VS history. I'd be very surprised if any character card has been in more PC Top 8 decks than him. And I bet he gives Beatdown and Enemy of My Enemy a run for their money.

-Mike Continue reading...

Thursday Thirteen - Week Three

Welcome to my third Thursday Thirteen. I nearly forgot, but thankfully I was browsing the VS Blogasphere and stopped by the Lost Hemisphere and saw their newest, which reminded me to do mine! Thanks guys!

I somehow started with just _29_ choices this week to whittle down. I don't know if I was just in a rush to get it done or if I actually am getting more concise at making choices in the first place. Or three drops might just be easier to pick out because there's such a wide gap between playable and unplayable, cool and uncool at that point. There's lots of marginal two drops that still see play, have cool effects and are workable, because after all you're only paying two resource points. But on turn three it's time to get serious.




#13: Then again, you didn't always pay two resource points. I've avoided listing banned characters in my actual 13 so far, but hey, Dr. Light is iconic in VS Lore. Talking about three drops and not including him is like... irresponsible. Sure, I wasn't against him going. It was long over due, but do I get wistful for him sometimes? Definitely. Do I think of him when I see cards like Captain America, Secret Avenger and think... Wow, am I glad Dr. Light is banned? Definitely. But he left an indelible impact on the game. I think for the better. Errata worked for a while, but he continued to make things go fantastically, cosmically awry. Puppet Master, Kyle Rayner, Mr. Fantastic, Rama-Tut whoever the target of his effect, Dr. Light was the star of The Show.








#12: I always loathed Cable. I thought he was such a terrible character for so long, but in Cable and Deadpool I was won over. He went from gun toting mutant bad ass to this strange messianic schemer who just wanted every to love each other. The main reason he's on the list is because of his legend support. Being the cheapest version of Nathan, with a sweet ability as a bonus, he enables Bodyslide. Bodyslide is like a plot twist version of Dr. Light. Much more limited, but anybody with a "comes into play" ability can take advantage. Two drops or not. It's a plot twist, not an activate ability so it's much more balanced, but I still find myself coming up with a hundred Bodyslide combos I want to try out all the time.












#11: Back before the Morlocks made Evasion Random Punk royalty, this guy made it playable. 3/5 wasn't that bad for a 3 drop and his ability was amazing. Overload? Not so scary when your whole curve can't be targeted by your opponent! His flavor text is very cool too. I love when VS puts the funky in the flavor. From this guy to Thor's Olde English and Bullseye's hitlist.











#10: So, I'm sure a lot of people disagree with me on this one. In fact I know quite a few absolutely hate this guy. To be honest, I didn't even play him in a tournament, but once. And he was a one of in my Brave & The Bold Equipment deck. I did plenty of off initiative sniping in casual play, because I always felt the best way to beat a deck was to play it and learn it.

Roy makes my list of favorite three drops, because he pushed me. He made me improve at the game. He made me learn things like, once you put a put a recruit effect on the chain, you have recruited that character. So before Doom comes in and gets sniped, you can play Reign of Terror on Arsenal and laugh maniacally. Or that when you play a plot twist it's on the chain until it resolves, so Garth can't target that Teen Titans Go! that was just played to ready again in response to you playing Overload a second time. Roy Harper made me a good VS player.






#9: If you want a big 3 drop you can find plenty of them. I think Black Panther is one of the quintessential 3 drops though. T'Challa over here was all most always a sick turn three play. On turn 4 and 5 he was just as fine, though Reign of Terror sucked. King of Wakanda found himself in High Voltage and search out Flamethrowers, but I like putting a Mindtap Mechanism on him and laughing at opponents who can't attack into the hidden area. There's a lot of great 1 cost equipments he can snag for you though.





#8: Two cheats in a row? No, see, I like Ruin but he's not a favorite three drop. And I know it's vogue to hate Ahmed, but I can't help it. King Kills, 6/6's that you all most always exhaust... He's the kinda of thing I LOVE about this game. That balance of opposing ideas and counter intuitive strategies. Ruin is here to show you just how awesome Ahmed is. Ruin? He's the "fixed" Ahmed. 'Nuff said.









#7: Never has a version been so keenly correct. Sage, the secret weapon that gave Ivy League fits. When your win condition has a threshold of 4 and you have to play it out of combat for it to work, delaying it until turn 6 is a deal breaker. Enemy of My Enemy enabled decks to deal with Ivy and her pals. She also did a good job slowing down AGL's when combined with Bad Press. I really like the art here too. The color scheme stands out as very different from most other cards. Plus she's Mental, the one Mutant trait that UDE really nailed in development.










#6: If you're playing Random Punks in Silver Age without Barbara Gordon <> Oracle... That's one hell of a three drop you have. She's so amazing, you can even sub her over Ahmed if you're afraid he's gonna lose your game. The two faces of Barbara both draw cards. Sure Batgirl isn't as good at it, but I love her too. As linked above, my B&tB equip deck used her to the best of her ability and like Oracle, that often meant a giant hand.







#5: As good as drawing cards usually is, this guy made it a scary prospect. Coming down on turn three, his ability doesn't activate until turn 4 and that lead to many games where an opponent facing Luthor (including myself) would desperately throw everything in their arsenal at the Nefarious bastard to try and stun and/or KO him at any cost. Especially since even if you KO'd him on 4 after his ability triggered, it still locked you out for the rest of the turn. With IQ on the table the turn before, he could pour on the burn in Injustice Gang and anything that somehow makes Dr. Doom: Diabolical Genius better is damn powerful.











#4: While She-Hulk was usually the main drop in most Common Enemy decks, I played 3 of her and 3 of Purple Man. His ability put pressure on decks to waste tricks and against the mirror he even let you call your shot on turn 4 when they flipped something. Wanna reuse that Beatdown? Nah. I'll take that. In one PCQ he won me multiple games. First he stole the only two Heroic Sacrifices a B&TB player had in his deck, on back to back turns. (...and now I didn't KO one to steal the other. No, Garthing them either!) And better yet in another match against a Fantastic Four deck (piloted by a young Carlos The Dwarf if I remember correctly) I stole a Signal Flare just in time to search for Thing: Every Loving Blue Eyed Thing after replacing Diabolic Genius with Victor Von Doom.









#3: Look at that face. See that? She's enjoying this way too much. Bad girls always have more fun, don't you know. She breaks the rules brazenly. Riddler: Riddle Me This is good once, how much better is he in triplicate? Yeah. That's much better! She lets you reuse Chemo: Toxic Waste every turn. She makes Dr. Polaris: Polar Opposite pretty dandy too. Without even teaming up, that all ready earns her a spot. Now just think about team ups. Tattooed Man lets you bring in 2 characters for free every turn, Terry Sloane quickly turns your 1/1's into 3/3's and 4/4's attacking up the curve, gain 12 a turn after you hide your new Valeria: Children of Light and Darkness, Technocrat team attacking to draw cards? And that's just a few ideas.










#2: I've kept an Arkham deck together since DOR because of this guy. Sonic Guns and Sucker Punches just made it better with MSM. I haven't really updated it much since then, I probably should, but it's come to hold such a special place in my heart. I don't know if I could change it. It actually works quite well when it goes off. Maybe Mobilize should worm it's way in. But with cards like Fear and Confusion, Crushing Blow and Kidnapping, it's hard to make cuts. They're the kind of cards that just blow out games when they hit. Plus... "You're food now, fleshbag!" is easily one of my favorite phrases to shout out as a I attack into a 6 drop with Fear and Confusion and a 5 drop.








#1: This shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me. I could play Dr. Doom in any deck if you give me half a reason. "Man, I hate getting King Killed... Oh man, replace Ahmed with Dr. Doom!" Okay, no, I wouldn't do that, but I have found him in my X-Statix Little Deck, my Squadron Supreme No Hand, of course my Doom Crisis Little Deck and I have plans for a couple A Child Named Valeria decks with him. Search for a plot twist, KO a useless lackey and put it into your row. You can exhaust him to bring a Moloid in play without shame. You can KO HIMSELF to get out of a bad attack when you know you'll lose him anyway. 5/4, range, he's amazing. And with the support he has across the ages he just gets better. Attack or Defense boosts from Doomstadt, Latveria makes turn 3 Reigns of Terror possible even if they aren't as powerful as you'd think, Mystical Paralysis lets him neutralize all the way up the curve no matter how late your game goes. There's no downside to him. With Crisis on Infinite Earths you don't even lose him when you play the 4-drop Doom. How can you not love this guy? God, I could rant on for hours and hours about Richard's Rival. But I'll just leave it at this, if they make a nice 4-drop Cable, I'll be dreaming of Bodysliding this little bad boy.

-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...

Thursday Thirteen - Week One

So, my first Thursday Thirteen starts with 45 cards. I guess 32 won't be making the cut. Unless I cheat, which I think I'm going to do. Today I'm sharing my very favorite 1 drops in the game. Some of them just go together or are so similar though that I have to give them a single entry. Now there aren't the BEST one-drops or the most used one-drops or anything like that. These are just straight up my favorites.

I have three cheats, I'll admit. That is, three pairs of characters that just go together in my mind so much that It's impossible to separate them. First though, an honorable mention. This was a tough list for me. Like I said I picked out 45 cards before I started cutting it down. This card would have made the final list most likely except for one problem...





The chimp was banned. I never got to really play with the fun stuff he did, but he was so cool. Far too powerful, without a doubt. Kent Farm Faces decks were insane. Chimp Rigged was far too easy. I don't think there was much he couldn't make better. I had ideas like... Play 4x Bat Signal with Chimps to search for any character in my deck... In every deck. Imagine getting two of the little bugger in play with Changling, Poison Ivy or Clash of Worlds?
















#13: Tommy is screaming to be broke. Constantly on the edge of being so, really. Free characters are cool. I've always liked Evasion and Evasion 1-Drops can always find an interesting use. Plus you'll probably notice that a lot of my favorite one-drops have 2/1 stats.















#12: Hope comes from the Man of Steel set. Yet she made it into a Top 8 of a PC that _wasn't_ modern age. I always thought she'd break something one day. Justice League of Arkham became a game ender with her in the Ivy League deck that terrorized PC San Francisco and the next few 10k's.















#11: What can you say about a 4/4 one-drop? Uh, "Awesome!" That's what. Sure, AGLs die at the end of your turn, but only if they aren't stunned. And between Blinding Rage and Chomin that became a standard procedure on turn 2 going into the similar gigantic Xallarap. And then when Felix Faust spammed 3 of them out? You got a swarm of nastiness very befitting of the art.













#10: Before there was Rat's Laugh. Before there was even Evasion. There was Stone Age. My friend Paul build a deck with Longshot, Ratcatcher, Last Laugh, Thuggee and Random Punks that aimed to build a big board, Flame Trap itself and Last Laugh you to death. Sadly the one thing that made it semi-playable was Gone But Not Forgotten and we quickly realized it didn't trigger before you lost the game. Killing the Cindarella come backs that it was becoming infamous for.












#9: Speaking of Rebel Freedom Fighters, this guy's name couldn't be less fitting. He was one of the first rares I ever pulled and Wild Vomit was always a favorite to play, though I never had my own build. The best part, to me, was always that point in the game where you start calling Wild Sentinel/Cover Fire and revealing 2 of each because you've cycled through the deck. Also the magic behind the Michael Jacob Force deck that I've always wanted to have a build of, but never quite have had the cards to put together. Plus, if it wasn't for Longshot, would the Realms have fallen so completely for StuBarnes?











#8: "Play hard, but play fair." I love that flavor text. Mr. Terrific helps your little guys stand up to the big bullies across the field. With his Legacy Michael Holt each of your upcurve attackers/downcurve defenders gets a full on Lost City power up. That turns most characters up a full resource point in general. The deck that really made me love Terry was Hidden Faces. One thing I will say though... While nobody has to get hurt... They usually do.












#7: I've always been kinda fascinated by Shadowpact. I think Mary is best utilized for her ability to let you get her (BIG) Brother into play on 8 without having played a single Shadowpact character before hand. Something that was very useful towards the end of Glock's life cycle. And the art is absolutely cool. The flavor text makes me think of a bit more... "mature" version of Mary, but that doesn't take any of the power away from the image captured on the card.














#6: For a while the nastiest thing in the world was a turn 2 Poison Ivy: Deadly Rose fully Fated up and I'll be honest. I absolutely loved doing it. Ivy has always a favorite character of mine and so seeing her rock house was great. Ted also found his way into many of my equipment decks and of course World's Greatest Heroes or "Good Guys." I never loved that name, but I never knew why it was so reviled by some people. lol














#5: If his team hadn't sucked so bad, he woulda been one of the most powerful one drops in the game. He basically doubles the value of every attack pump to the face. Put a Goblin Glider on him turn 2 and it gets absolutely disgusting.















#4: My first cheat. These two servants fulfill such a similar purpose it's hard to choose one over the other. I guess I would go with Boris if forced because Doom was so much more playable than Bats for so long. But I have some great memories of turns 1-3 filled with old man fist fights.













#3: Here's a character that has a great effect and enabled an even better plot twist. With her hubby Reed around and A Child Named Valeria, your board became either an untouchable horde of attackers or a reinforcement effect away from an impenetrable fortress locking your Endurance total completely away from your opponent. Plus Alex Garner art is always awesome to look at.











#2: The Riddler is like Prankster only made uber-playable. And I tried to play Prankster anyway. With Poison Ivy: Intoxicating you can get out a few of the little guy in green and really hurt your opponent. I'd love to get Edward and Oswald together though.













#1: My favorite play ever is rowing Golden Archer, dropping Ape X, searching up some Dual Sidearms and equipping them. Surprise Attack. Row Albert Gaines, drop Joystick, equip her with an Atlantean Trident and smash for a counter. It's even better if you can play out those last two cards in hand. I'll take my chances missing a three drop when my Joystick is going to be a 9/6.



So, there's my first foray into Thursday Thirteen. Next week I think I'll do my favorite two drops! See you then.

-Mike Continue reading...