Marvel Evolution - Previews BEGIN! My Thoughts

So early this afternoon a card image was released to the VS System facebook page. If you're not a friend of VS System, go become one now! This image features the ever popular Nightcrawler with what I'm told to believe is a member of the Power Pack. Now I know the Power Pack by reputation and ill repute at that, but whatever, the important thing is Nightcrawler. Well... Take a look...



In Ze Munich Circus... Zey Call Me The Nightcrawler!

I love this card. Nightcrawler legend? Yes please! Better yet, we have no idea just yet what it does. Why is this good? Well, personally, I love the rampant and wild speculation.

There's so many things that it could be. Attack protected and hidden characters, reinforcement, character movement, unstunnable attackers. Maybe even defense resetting? Or just remove attackers? He is a sneaky devil and as a legend plot twist it's likely to be powerful. As a rare, it's even more potentially powerful and complex.

Personally, I just am happy to see the fuzzy blue guy getting some legend content.




Mere hours later however, things hit the page that really started the ball rolling. Four cards, two sets of two cards that fit into two of the themes listed the other day. Cyclops and Multiple Man legends. These ones have text and... Yeah, WOW. The first is an 8-drop Cyclops. Cyke at 8! Who needs a 7-drop? Hehe. Okay, yeah, he still should have a 7-drop, but 8 is a sure sign of respectability. That's some rare air for Scott Summers. It also spoils Energize. Which is mind blowing, by the way.



So, Energize characters ready whenever they defend. That means when you attack them, they can use their activated abilities, which TBS has said most of them will have.

"The majority of Energize characters have an activated power, and this allows them to use it twice, or use it and attack (if your opponent chooses to attack it) and a few other tricks that will become apparent once you see the whole set!"

Cyclops, if your opponent is stupid enough to attack him, starts the combat with a 16 point swing in your favor. Their 8 attacks, you exhaust it, you ready, you hit it again Professor X style and ding another 8 burn on there. You thought double stun endurance was nasty? This, this is nasty. 17/17 is a slight downturn in 8-drop stats, so if you don't want to trade you can just exhaust their 8-drop before the attack and still come out 8 points ahead.



TBS also confirms that Scott has a 3, 4 and 6 drop. So... Your three drops locks down two of their characters, your 4 drop Doom (who else? Spider-man? Okay, sure, Spider-Man too!) locks down a third and you could even have Puppet Master for all we know. Yes, yes please! Two cards for two characters, this card is borderline. Not over the edge, but hell yeah, it's close.

Get this, apprently it STUNNED two characters before! Oh my god, how did that get past even FIRST draft? Hopefully TBS meant you stunned your Cyke to stun two characters. If not... Jesus. The Captain, 3-drop Cyclops, lots of way to get this off. This will really shine with an ability to buy it back. Black Manta? Is there another way? I know someone mentioned John Walker <> U.S. Agent on the Realms, but this doesn't target.

If this is any indication of Cyclops's theme and potential, he may be the new leader of the Control game. Cyclops, Spider-Man, Dr. Doom... It's becoming a crowded fight and with tools like this, Scott Summer may just clear the board. Or at least turn it sideways.



Very interesting ability.

Jamie ensures you keep your investment on the field. 5 resource points is a lot in this game. So losing them is brutal. If you have another copy of Jamie Prime, you don't lose anything except 5 stun endurance. That's very nice by itself. What really gets my motor running is the idea of swarming with him after you get him stunned. 5 1-drops? Well, he has more than one. And the name or identity work around solves issues with previous Multiple Man's who put copies of himself into play very smoothly.

What it doesn't stop is throwing 5 weenies down and with the right Multiple Man, you can double those and turn 5 points into upwards of 10! Yes, this requires a LARGE hand size, but hey... Stu? Longshot works if you call Jamie Madrox and Multiple Man now, huh? ;) Oh yes, yes he does. Sure it's golden, but Golden is for fun now!




So, you lost all those weenies too? Well, instead of just throwing them away, suck them up. Gain some life, draw some cards, be ready to flood the field again.

It's hard for me to say much about this card, it's just so self explanitory. I mean, what more is there to say? We all know drawing cards and gaining life is good.

At the cost of losing characters you likely lost all ready? Wonderful! It's like free card draw and life gain. If you do it on turns 3 or 4 before your five drop comes into play you may even be loading your hand with cards to replace those 5 points with 10 like we talked about above. You've got the KO'd pile full of replacements after all.

Well, that's all for tonight, more as we're granted the info. And don't forget to keep checking back for an exclusive world premiere preview here on RSVSB!

Hey, that doesn't sound half bad.

-Mike
Continue reading...

Would You Look at That?

We made it to the Mothership!

A big thank you and thumbs up to Mr. Fike AKA StuBarnes for the shout out. It's great to know somebody appreciates what I do and I'm sure many more fine people will head this way and appreciate what I do thanks to the link. Hehe.

I'll have another update along sometime tonight, just figured this was a bloggy kind of thing to and as a blog I should be doing more of that!

-Mike Continue reading...

Fantastical Zombies! The Marvel Zombies Essential Collection.

Little late, um, oh yeah, I meant to do this Monday... LOL Yeah. Reason being the DC announcement kinda depressed and scared me to be honest. BUT! Soldier on, is my motto.

So, the theme of the Marvel Zombies is weenie rush with lots of dead bodies sticking around. You've seen Hawkeye, I flirt with broken-ness a bit more, but not a LOT more, I promise. Hehe.

So Loyalty - Hardfast prevents you from playing Zombie Thing with anyone but the FF and MZ, otherwise you KO him. Zombie keeps you in play if you're recovering somebody else in the recovery phase.

His other restriction prevents him from having greater than 3 attack. This builds in a limit to how much damage he can do. The reason is because, obviously, he's free. What is his real purpose if you can't even play a flying kick on him?

He's there to be a body. There are multiple effects for the Marvel Zombies that care about bodies. KO'ing bodies most specifically. There are also costs that require you to control stunned characters or give you bonuses based on the number you control. So Thing and his 0 defense are very friendly to the deck.






Zombie Invisible Woman is the best bet to keep the deck on track. She searches for your key plot twists she grabs characters and she fulfills the stunned character requirements that fuel some strong effects.

A nice 2/3 for a 2-drop with concealed-optional. I've always loved Concealed - Optional. You can either protect her and use the ability every turn or you can put her out on the lines and attack with her... And if the attack goes bad, use her effect to go set up next turn. Or, if your opponent's attack goes a little too well, then you can use her effect and negate the effects your opponent has played on an attacker.

I'll make sure to show one of the awesome Ongoing plot twists she can snag next week!




Continuing up the curve is Zombie Human Torch. Human Torch usually is a burn character and he usually has good attack and bad Dee, so he was rather easy to design. 6/3 is good, but his real power is in the ability!

"Activate -> KO a character you control, target opponent loses endurance (uh oh, typo!) equal to that character's attack. Use this power only once per turn."

Is your attack about to go south? Did somebody negate a lot of your attack long pumps by killing a defender? Are they going to remove an attacker? Force Field Projection, Science Spire? Kill that attacker and do all that damage straight to the face! Characters still have attack while stunned too, so remember that zombie sitting around, doing nothing for you? Kill it, hit the face, make use of them! Hell yeah!

Flight and range make him a good attacker, but I think you'll often find yourself activating instead of attacking. And obviously make Human Torch a very strong defender. Again he's Concealed - Optional, so that you really have the choice of what you want to do with him. I think it adds a very interesting and fun level of strategy to your rush decks having a lot of Concealed - Optional.

Thematically Concealed works well for zombies, but I thought at the time it worked especially well for these four because they end up coming across the divide and into the Ultimate Universe. They do this when Zombie Reed tricks Ultimate Reed into building an interdimensional teleporter that then brings Ultimate Reed to Zombie Earth and allows Zombie Reed to take his Frightastic Family to the Ultimate Universe where they do battle with the rest of the Ultimate Fantastic Four.


What is the cost of 3 resource points? You can get 1 for free many ways. Including the new, awesome, previews of MUN that StuBarnes revealed on his blog (see link to your left!) where Squirrel Girl pops out a one drop friend when she comes into play. Shadowpact lets you pay 15 for 1 resource point up the curve and it's restricted to only Shadowpact character cards, period with it's "printed" restriction. But down the curve is much less expensive, your 3-drop Nick Fury can bring in 2 characters each turn for the cost of an exhaust! With a team-up for Anti-Matter that's a pair of 4/4 Anti-Green Lanterns! 8 damage a turn!

By limiting Zombie Mr. Fantastic's effect to Zombies, as well as forcing you to bring out 3 characters, it makes it much harder to just power out a sick 3-drop. Ahmed? No need to apply here, buddy. This is another reason for the 0-drops. It rewards you with the ability to bring out the undead Torch (...or Wolverine! More on that later.) with his buddies Thing and Mr. Fantastic. Still, there's plenty of good 1-cost targets for this ability.

And there you have the Zombie Fantastic Four! Please feel free to comment here or if you want to start a thread on VSRealms and link it in the comment section!

See you next time, when I show you some Zombie plot twists!

-Mike Continue reading...

Spent The Night Playing Vs... With A New Player

That picture, is a picture of VS doing it's magic.

Once again I got somebody new to play VS and I'm hoping I can get them to stick to it, because if I turn this play group over to VS... Well, it'll be a bunch of new VS System players, that's what!

While teaching Matt with a couple test games, another gamer who went with me to a few VS tournaments, Charles, called "next" and played 3-4 games against Matt while I got my hands on Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the first time.

VS is so fun though I kept finding myself forgetting Brawl to look over and correct little mistakes like the amount of defense given by a Cover Fire or reminding Charles that Oa only works on attackers.

I think there's hope for converting Matt, after all, how can you resist the lure of Hounds Lock? Or realizing that Total Anarchy is about to hose an Arkham deck! Or Savage Beatdown on a Mark II into 4-drop Poison Ivy followed by Hounds Lock!

You know, I'd forgotten how cool Sentinels were since I last played too. Hehe. Hounds Lock, despite the later sour feelings, is a thing of terror and beauty.

-Mike

P.S. that's his 6th resource in his hand. Continue reading...

Returning To VS System

My name is Mike. I am a gamer, a nerd, a geek, whatever you wanna label me, it's cool. I know what I am. I am a traitor. I've betrayed my true love and bedded another. I've been playing Magic The Gathering for about five months with friends at home. I bought new cards. Singles. Packs. I even went in half and half on a booster box! I could have gotten an entire box of VS System for that price. I really regret it now that I realize Magic just isn't the game for me. It might be fun, but that's because I'm hanging out with people I like, not because I like Magic.

To be honest, Magic is a great game, but it's not VS. It doesn't excite me the way VS does. It's not as fun as VS. It's not as good as VS. It's second best. Plain and simple.

So Saturday I finally started the task of re-organizing all my cards. I spent pretty much all day sorting through piles that have laid on tables for months on end untouched. Wiped off the dust and lovingly remembered all the wonderful art, the quirky or cool cards I never got to play, but always wanted too (In The Hands of Qward! New Identity!), the banned cards that I used so often, but totally was glad to see go (Overload!) or didn't get to use enough before they got banned (Detective Chimp, who I received 4 of in the mail days after the ban... With 4x Valeria Von Doom) and of course the banned cards I still wish could be around, but I know it's for the best they're not. (Antarctic Research Base and Gone But Not Forgotten!) I can't mention the ban list without talking about Justice League of Arkham, which is oddly a sentimental favorite of mine.

I never played Ivy League and it cost me one my only two shots at making day 2 of a Pro Circuit (the other time the deck I played cost me my day 2 chance, hehe), but still I absolutely marveled at the ingenuity of that deck. Also it's got some of the best art on a banned card. Batman with his Rogue's Gallery of villains on stormy knight in front of the gates of Arkham Asylum? So awesome. Better yet, Batman is with them because he and Nightwing are about to TEAM UP with the Joker, Riddler, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, The Ventriloquist and Scarface? Hell yeah! Of course it doesn't hurt I somehow pulled off a win against it with No-Hand Squadron Supreme. Without Fate Artifacts. Yeah, that's how well prepared I was... And it wasn't against a bad draw.

Isn't that what we all love about VS System though? Even in the worst match up you always feel like there's a way to win if you just play better than your opponent. It's a really stimulating experience to sit down and realize you should totally lose this game, but stand up, shake hands and walk away the winner. I don't think there's a better feeling in the world. It's why I never feel bad when I lose in this game. There's times when you don't draw anything, but you know that and your opponent knows that. When you draw well and lose, it's because your opponent played better. I can respect losing to a better player. I can learn from losing to a better player.

VS System, in essence, makes me a better person.

I love VS System.

-Mike Continue reading...