Continuing First Impressions.

So we've now seen the entire set and I can't get over how amazing some of the cards are. I've got at least 3-4 different decks brewing in the back of my head. Things that just... Well, they're pretty cool in theory. We'll see if they pan out. If nothing else it's a lot of fun decks in mind.




Good: He draws a card every turn, including the first turn he's in play. He's also the new Bizarro. He adds a Legend to his bag of tricks every turn. Wolverine. Hulk. Captain America. Red Skull. Batman. Superman. The Captain is whoever you want him to be. A 7/6 reservist with flight, range and that amazing an ability?

Bad: Nextwave. I love the team, I love the comic, but he's gonna be off team in most builds. There's no Reservist search in modern. Thank God it's so each to team up. Avengers let you deputize anyone and everyone, War Bound says your on the team whether you like it or not and the Reg/Anti-Reg team-ups put everyone in your deck on the list. Otherwise it'd be strictly Straight To The Grave.





Good: First of all it's Spider-Girl. One of my favorite characters and one of the biggest stacks of books in my collection. I have about 70 Daredevil books, 74 Spider-Girl issues and Spider-Man may beat both if I count Ultimate Spider-Man, but I'm not sure.

The ability is great. At the cost of 3 endurance you can turn off everything that makes an opponent's character good. Even if she had to attack to use it, this would be good. But she has evasion!

Bad: Spider-Friends only. With Worlds looming and MTU out of modern, she probably won't be a major factor at the event. At the cost of 3, she also has to fight off notoriously strong characters like Poison Ivy: Intoxicating and Ahmed Samsarra for power slots.



Good: Everybody should know how much I miss Slaughter Swamp. Asgard looks to fill a bit of the gap between Slaughter Swamp and Soul World. For Marvel Universe I think it does nicely, depending on your team. For example the Avengers Rally so much that I think it's better than Slaughter Swamp because you're likely just increasing your hand size at will as opposed to discarding a card. There's even a location Alias Investigations that just lets you Rally for a card type of your choice for an activation. The two of them together are better than Slaughter Swamp.

Bad: The two of them together are better than Slaughter Swamp. Sure, Ahmed will search them both out in Silver. But that's a lot of row space to take up. Is the effect worth it? Probably. But what about now? Right now, it seems like a lot of effort for a non-rally based deck with not that much payback. You can still just draw it next turn, but if you need a card NOW, then it's troubling.



Good: Huge pump for Army decks. It also works very well in the swarm Secret Avengers build I wanna play. I don't know if it's Worlds worthy, but it seems quite good. So much card draw, so many good cards. If you swing with two characters, the bare minimum, this nets you +2 attack. That's okay. But then with 3 team attackers? It jumps to +6 attack. That's all most Wrecking Crew! Three one drops with +6 attack can hit most fives.

Bad: They have to share a version to pump. Though you don't have to have nothing but Secret Avengers in the team attack, you only your attack boosted if you have at least two characters that share a version. It's very nice, but it's definitely a niche card. Army decks love it.





Good: Built in Bodyslide. For a swarm deck, hiding a couple characters on a key turn until YOUR attack step could be key. 5/4 stats, range, reservist, lets you use the actual card Bodyslide and all that for just 3 resources. Also gives you the X-Men team. Very nice.

Bad: The built in Bodyslide costs 2. That's a bit steep for a swarm deck wanting to spam out characters and downright inexcusable for a deck that wants to curve. Why boost when you can just run Bodyslide anyway? Okay, you technically get two Bodyslides, but if you run 4x Bodyslide none of them cost you resource points.





Good: First of all, I'm VERY glad the 4-drop Bullseye isn't the only Bullseye card in the set. I was very disappointed by the 4-drop, who I think is rather unexciting. This guy however is damn nice. Starting turn 3 you get to stun their two drop just by exhausting. He's got Substitute so if you hit a different two drop earlier, Bullseye can always take their place. Or if you have a better 2-drop for the job at the time you play them and when the opponent's two drop becomes pesky, call up Bullseye to take care of it.

Bad: 2/2? If they don't have a two drop out he's kinda sitting in the hidden area hoping you have something to exhaust him for. And if they have hidden hate, he's gonna be a rail for the freight train to your face.




Good: Then again, maybe Bullseye is a 4/4. Exhaust to stun a two, play this, recover and he's a hidden Kyrpto with an ability instead of a draw back. Speedball is Dead plays very well with some of the Thunderbolt characters like Speed Demon who will gain reinforcement, Joystick who will gain Invulnerability and of course my favorite Radioactive Man who will lock up Plot Twists with a cost of 2. Plus it makes him as big as Hulk! You can also kills pumps with it if you're going to take breakthrough anyway, you stun your character, take the damage and recover them anyway, better than before.

Bad: It can start to get really costly if you try and use it on a 4 drop. Especially if you double dip like evasion with old Electric Eve. It's really just all in how you play it.

All right, that's it for now again, I'll be continuing this whenever the mood strikes me. Maybe even more tonight.

-Mike Continue reading...

Thunder Tactics - Little Deck Creations

Team Tactics is easily one of the most powerful cards in the game. I don't think it's ever gotten it's due, because (luckily, I think) it's a combo piece that needs a lot of work to pull off and isn't too hard to disrupt. Early versions of Tactics Abuse used Fantastic Four because they had very large stats to begin with, access to a great pump in It's Clobberin' Time and of course they had the best readying tech for a very long time, if not still, Cosmic Radiation.

Cosmic allows you to ready your entire team! You can't attack, but if you're all ready attacking, who cares! They also had a 1-drop Ant-Man who killed reinforcement, which is very important if the plan is to smash through somebody for lethal damage with Team Tactics. Basically they gave you eight cards to ready and eight cards to break reinforcement with while any other team would only have Press the Attack and Blindsided. The version I played also used A Child Named Valeria, the idea being to weenie up, draw a lot of cards with Antartic Research Base and play Thing, Heavy Hitter or Wolverine, New Fantastic Four on the kill turn. You attack with your unstunnable small drops, attack with the big guy, pump them to all hell and Press/Cosmic them into Tactics.

It was very fun. There was also versions with Doom as early as Marvel Origins. My friend Joe O'Brien built a deck with Doom-Bot, Doom's Throne Room and Tactics that played used a Doom-Bot or two to ready the Latverian overlord into a pump fueled Tactics kill. Boris was great at searching out the key plot twist, Doom-Bot being army made him easy to hit on three and Robot Destroyer on 5 was a good way of negating reinforcers.

The next major change to Tactics as a deck idea, that I remember was in the Avengers expansion. In that set the Thunderbolts debuted. A team of villains looking to get over as do-gooders that eventually decided they preferred the life of a hero had a sub-theme of being "ready" and thus had multiple ways to set an attacker straight ways.

So, this LDC is probably obvious by now, if it wasn't from the very subject line. I decided to build a Team Tactics deck that focused on the ability of the Thunderbolts to ready themselves. The first thing I did was pull out the super obvious choices. To me that consisted of 5 cards.

Speed Demon, Second Chance Speedster
Melissa Gold <> Songbird, Heroine Unbound

Blind Sided
Deadly Conspiracy
Team Tactics

Next I thought about what I need to make this work with the Highlander rule of Little Deck. Obviously you needs attack pumps and to make sure you get your Team Tactics the best solution outside of search is card draw. I also wanted ways of preventing reinforcement. With that in mind I set about building a curve.

At one, I chose two characters,

Count Vertigo, Werner Vertigo
Ogre, Weaponsmith

I'd play Dallas Riorden over Vertigo, but the only copies I have are in my Faces deck and I didn't want to replace her in there. lol He'll help out with reinforcement issues.

Captain Boomerang, George Harkness
Erik Josten <> Atlas, Kosmos Convict
Speed Queen, Female Fury
Tania Belinskya <> Red Guardian, Cold Warrior

Boomerang gets rids of two drops, Josten gets bigger and bigger and is just a nice attacker on turns 4 and 5. Speed Queen's readying effect is useful not so much for Team Tactics, but for card draw with Ego Gem. If Tania sticks around or you have to under drop, +4 attack for the turn is incredible.

Besides Speed Demon on three I have...

Dr. Doom, Richard's Rival
Hellcat, Patsy Walker
The Creeper, Jack Ryder

Doom will search out Tactics for you, Patsy is a pump that's likely to stick around even to turn 6 for Melissa Gold. The Creeper's card draw is very useful. He should net you at least 2 cards thanks to Evasion and he's only made better by being on everyone's team. And if I had any copies of Babs I'd totally play a copy of her over him though.

For four drops I picked 3 really strong card draw four drops.

Darkseid, Apokoliptian Opressor
Moondragon, Protector of the Mind Gem
Professor X, Headmaster

With luck, all of them will net you 2-3 cards per game. If you have an Ego Gem, Moondragon will guarantee at least one the turn she comes into play. And since you want the even initiative you can probably protect her until the next turn by making safe attacks.

As well as those three, I picked a card I've never really seen get used much, but I think is pretty good.

Dallas Riordan <> Vantage, Ionic Inheritor

She pumps her self at the cost of giving your opponents a card. But if you do you get a 10/7, which is pretty nice. It's too bad it only lasts for one attack.

Charcoal, Charles Burlingame
Paul Ebersol <> Techno, Man of Metal
Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist

Since 5 is likely off initiative Charcoal makes for a scary defender. He'll stun just about anybody attacking into him. Especially if he's Hellcat's +2/+2 bonus on him. Paul Ebersol lets you get back a pump you might have used to stock up for turn 6, or if you somehow lost Team Tactics, he's a second copy. Scarecrow is a nice five drop or six drop and if you keep letting your opponent fill their hand with things like Vantage, Win-Lose Deal or bouncing 2 drops, he can deal a nice little stack of burn damage.

Finally, I'm packing one seven drop.

Beetle <> Mach 4, New Team Leader

He's got okay stats. Nothing bad, nothing phenomenal, but his ability can be very nice. Did you have to under drop last turn? Well, put that character adjacent to Beetle and give them +3/+3. Flight and range make him a good option as a Tactics finisher too.

That's a total of 22 cards, 19 characters, 3 plot twists. I all ready mentioned, Ego Gem and Win-Lose Deal which rock for card draw so let's make that 19 characters, 1 equipment, 4 plot twists.

Ego Gem, Infinity Gem

Win-Lose Deal

And that's 6 cards left. Pumps!

Barbaric Brawl
Combat Reflexes
Flying Kick
Justice, Like Lightning
Mega-Blast
Savage Beatdown

The only one that isn't at least 3 attack worth is Justice, Like Lightning which also allows you to exhaust target character if you play it on a Thunderbolt. No need to talk about these, they're just chocolate syrup. Once you get the ice cream in the bowl... Pour it on!

-Mike Continue reading...

Radioactive Waste! - A Preview Inspired Deck Idea

Thunderbolts Week begins for Marvel Universe previews and the first card I saw was a new version of Radioactive Man. Instantly I had an idea in mind... Because I've always loved counters and this adds another thing I love with counters, Control.

What's the plan? I wanna lock my opponents out of plot twists on turn three and hide this bad boy in the hidden area. Doom Patrol is the obvious answer for counters and I think to hide him the best option is Charles McNider <> Dr. Mid-Nite. I think I'll call it...

RADIOACTIVE WASTE!

4x Elasti-Girl, Rita Farr
3x Atom Smasher, Al Rothstein
4x The Chief, Niles Caulder
2x Erik Josten <> Atlas, Kosmos Convict
4x Radioactive Man, Containment Suit
4x Charles McNider <> Dr. Mid-Nite, Golden Age Academic.
2x Holocaust, Age of Apocalypse
1x Robotman, Cliff Steele
1x Beast Boy, Freak of Nature

3x Dayton Manor

4x Enemy of my Enemy
4x Freak Out
4x Misfits
4x Heroic Effect
4x Forbidden Loyalties
3x Counter Terrorism
3x New Identity

55 Cards

I figure that leaves 5 cards for MUN to fill in, with Counter Terrorism and New Identity being easy to cut for better alternatives. The theory is simple. Put counters on Radioactive Man, immediately on turn 3. Lock out your opponent's twists so they can't get enough attack to stun him, hide him on 4 and keep adding counters to your board until you can just win out with Holocaust burn.

Heroic Effect, Counter Terrorism and Forbidden Loyalties all work on Radioactive Man whether you hit Doom Patrol or not, but obviously the idea is to team up Doom Patrol and Thunderbolts so you can Freak Out onto old Chen boy. Misfits lets you smooth the curve and Enemy is Enemy, no need to explain that one. Dayton Manor is perfect if you team up on three and is reusable every turn. On 6, and I can easily see even turn 5, you can flip another one without caring that it's going to KO a resource if you plan to win that turn.

Anyway, that's the idea. Can't wait to see how much better it gets during the week!

-Mike Continue reading...