Custom VS Hijinks: Rebooting the Legion, Part 3

Winding down now to the final installment of the Legion revamp, it’s time to cover all the characters I missed the first time around (I hope):

Salu Digby may be tiny most of the time, but she packs quite a wallop as one of the Legion’s most formidable fighters.  If you can keep her around a few turns to when the Press chains begin, she can really do a lot of damage attacking up the curve.  I realize she should have Concealed-Optional, sorry!

I figured that Chameleon boy should work a bit like Beast Boy, except that he only gains the counters on defense.  Given the Unity mechanic, it shouldn’t be too difficult to increase his size.

By herself she’s a vanilla Concealed-Optional 3-drop, but in the context of a Press Chain she can set you up to strike back with maximum prejudice during your off-initiative turns — which is a tactic more suited to the term “From the Darkness”.

Dirk Morgna hasn’t seen much mainstream action lately, but he’s no less of a scorcher, which is the essence of his power.  If you can keep your board preserved into turn 6, you may want to forgo a turn 6 Press chain in favor of that extra crispy burn potential.  Sun Boy and Lightning Lad for the win!

With enough of a board presence, Mon-El can singlehandedly remove your opponent’s biggest threat from play, at the acceptable cost of losing him, as well, which is in line with his great sacrifice in the comic series of wiping out the Dominator threat with a Phantom Zone Projector powerful enough to transport a planet.  You can also use him in conjunction with Sun Boy to burn the opponent twice over.

I’m not sure how Superman fits into the new Legion storyline (the trades don’t go that far yet) but he’s wearing the signature ring, so what the hey, let’s go with this image.  A game-winner as far as 8-drops go when it isn’t your initiative, he can stonewall attack after attack with the combined might of the Legion working together, abusing Unity to its full potential.  What more can you ask from the Man of Steel in the 31st Century?

I realize that he should be rare, all things considered.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a search card that functioned like Bat-Signal, and it seemed that the team-stamped plot twist of the Legion was an appropriate fit given the Press swarm mechanic that the Legion seek to abuse.

A bit like the Legion of Super-Pets, but with a slightly larger kick, and the advantage that it can be used on defense as well with a little help from a Unity teammate.  In a pinch, it’s a +2 ATK pump in combat, which allows for more fight flexibility.

A simple defensive ongoing plot twist, Legion Channel One is best utilized in multiples, where the use of Unity will trigger a mass DEF boost to all defenders.

This plot twist assists with the Press mechanic by facilitating the return of characters to hand, and provides an additional ATK bonus in exchange for the supposed field presence subtraction.

Fury of the Legion is the finisher card of the team, allowing the player to rip the opponent to shreds after a Press chain on-initiative.  If the attack didn’t go quite as planned, Fury returns all the attackers to hand for more Press magnificence.  Oh, that last part on the card should read “that attacked this turn” for clarity.  I realize this is most definitely overpowered, and maybe could be tempered by “once per turn” wording.

The Live Kree or Die/Hala of the Legion is pretty straightforward, amounting to as much as a Savage Beatdown by turn 6.  Better or worse than the Kree primary combat plot twist depending on the situation.

Lastly, we come to the one location I managed to template (simply because I couldn’t find any images of any important Legion locations), and it really serves mostly to help with the Press chain, although the added reinforcement bonus should be welcome in conjunction with Unity.

Next week, I’ll look over the Fatal Five and the rest of the Future Foes, and study how the card discard mechanic, which proved to be devastating in other card games, can be improved for competitive play in the VS universe.

Happy Mother’s Day to all your moms!

The Science of Search, Part 9

Before we proceed, I’d like to offer my warmest gratitude to Mr. Rian Fike, the insurmountable Stubarnes for graciously acknowledging my articles on the Mothership.  It is indeed an honor to be singled out as one of the Reservists of the VS online blog community, and I hope my writings continue to interest my fellow VS card floppers for the foreseeable future.

Legendary Aspirations

By the release of the Marvel Team-Up expansion, it seemed that search technology had pretty much peaked.  Enemy of My Enemy and Mobilize were the primary search cards for toolbox and mono-team builds, respectively, Ahmed Samsarra was the greatest location search engine ever printed, and equipment was even easier to search for now between Cannibal Tech, Dr. Fate’s Tower and the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle.  Plot twist search was still stiflingly limited, but this was perhaps the last bastion of chance in a game where the luck of the draw would continue to provide moments both bitter and ecstatic.

As such, MTU began taking search cards in a different direction, though not one previously unseen — that of specialization.  Search cards would now complement the team’s tactic instead of merely being based off of it.  This had been the case with the Kree’s Stargate, since the Kree player wanted to return characters to hand anyway, and also with Hero’s Welcome for the JLA, drawing out both a character and a power-up.

Death’s Embrace was just such a card, and arguably better than Mobilize in the Underworld team, which benefited from dumping its characters in the KO pile, for the same cost.  For the Spider-Friends, for whom a Spider-Man in play was a powerful asset, this card searched for him easily, and if you already had an extra Spider-Man in you hand, you could pitch him to get some other Spider-Friend instead.

This trend continued in the World’s Finest expansion, where the ubiquitous Bat-Signal returned to circulation, followed by other search cards keyed to their respective teams.  The most significant contribution of DWF to search tech, however, was to ongoing plot twists what Ahmed Samsarra was to locations:

Ruin was the glue that held the revamped Revenge Squad together, boosting its consistency significantly and ensuring that an already threatening RS roster would more easily.  Even better, the good Professor’s effect wasn’t team-stamped, and he could basically be splashed into any deck that needed some important ongoing plot twists to get its act together.  I once squared off against a RS/X-Men team-up that used X-Men Assemble to grow its characters to ridiculous proportions.  Ruin didn’t quite make as much of an impact as Ahmed Samsarra, of course, since his effect required that he get stunned to trigger, which meant he would have to leave play sooner or later.  However, if the player got even two good searches out of him, he would have more than paid for the cost of his recruitment.

It is interesting to note that Marvel Legends didn’t contribute anything at all to search tech, considering how it pushed the concept of the Legend character to the forefront.  Not even something akin to Vicarious Living or Costume Change (which would have been perfect for the set).  Instead, a bunch of old staple search cards made their appearance, along with the re-launch of Mobilize only three sets after it had first been released.

DC Legends was a somewhat different story.  Although some of the mainstays of the re-featured teams returned to circulation via DCL (Straight to the Grave, Optitron, Secret Files), a couple of new, intriguing character search cards appeared to entice casual deckbuilders everywhere:

Heroes of Two Worlds is a curious fit in a world populated by Enemy of My Enemy and Mobilize, where fewer and fewer copies of a character are becoming necessary to ensure consistency.  First of all, in a curve deck, its high threshold cost means it will be used only to search for 4-drops or higher.  Most people now run less than 3 copies of their 6 and 7-drops, and at times not even that many copies of their 5-drops, so HoTW functionally only works to get you your 4-drop unless you decide to underdrop instead.  In off-curve, it has slightly more utility to fetch a key low-drop.  In army, it does grab you one of your army characters but ends up nuking two copies of them.  In the first two instances, one will observe that the character searched for will only ever be fetched once by HoTW, since it becomes impossible to search for that character again given HoTW’s effect.  Overall, it’s a severely limited card whose utility in the current environment is questionable.

Mirror Image is really just pure fun, not tournament tier by any means, at least not from what I’ve seen thus far, but makes for loads of enjoyment in multiplayer and other casual play.  The ability to search an opponent’s deck for the character you will recruit is hilarious, and if your deck is set up to take advantage of it, could lead to some janktastic strategies.

And… that’s pretty much it for search tech and its ramifications on VS gameplay, as of the present.  Just around the corner, of course, lie the uncharted waters of Marvel Universe.  What will the special search cards for the re-featured teams and newcomers be like?  Will plot twists receive a generic search?  Will the Illuminati sport their very own legendary character search card?  Like the rest of you, my fingers are crossed and my hunger for previews remains unsated.

Custom VS Hijinks: Rebooting the Legion, Part 2

Sorry for being out of circulation for a while, work and the weekend piled up like a swarm of Infernal Minions and I’m still plenty exhausted. A blog is as much personal discipline as it is the sharing of random thoughts, apparently. Almost midnight over here, but I really needed to see this launch off the presses before I caught some much needed slumber.

Mr. Brian Rutty commented that he was curious to see where I was going with this revamped Legion concept, and I’d have to say I’m still undecided about that, since I’d want to give fair card presence to as many Legionnaires as I can, but also pay homage to those who’ve distinguished themselves a little more than the others. Well, considering the nature of the Legion and its focus on equal treatment of its members, that’s probably just one character in the Waid version (although I suppose a high-drop Brainiac is also perhaps in order): Supergirl.

(Disclaimer: I realize this should be Kara Zor-El <> Supergirl, but the templating on the card wouldn’t allow the full name to display properly, so I went for aesthetics over accuracy.)

Headlining the comic book for about four story arcs, and hailed as the most powerful Legionnaire for the time that she spent with them, Kara Zor-El had the unfortunate fate of standing out without ever fitting in, finding herself a thousand years in the future in an age that worshipped her as a legend. As such, it seemed appropriate (and really, just big fun) to crown her as the Legend character for the Legionnaires.

4-drop Supergirl is a formidable addition to the Legion’s ranks, with the full complement of Press, Unity, flight, range and above-average stats, balanced out slightly by her Loyalty. Given the core strategy of the Legion, however, it won’t be difficult for her to be flying high as a 9/10 beast with Invulnerability. At a full Press with 5 resources, she keeps things comfortably on-curve, outsizing a fair number of 5-drops.

She’s tough stuff, but hardly the finisher that the Legion would need to seal the deal. Enter her 6-drop version, which does sport Press but could just as easily come down by herself to wreak havoc under the right conditions.

We all know by know how potent a +2 ATK bonus across the board is, and Supergirl gives it to everyone, even herself, making her a monstrous 15/13 while everyone else gets more dangerous under her leadership.

Being the Legionnaire Legend, it only makes sense that she would receive Legend plot twists that function best when she’s played in her own team, although not without their uses in other instances, with other incarnations of Supergirl:

Might of Krypton serves two purposes in a Legion Press/Unity build - it makes Supergirl HUGE for the turn to really slam into the opponent, perhaps after all of her teammates have attacked, and be really difficult to stun on defense, and it allows you to return your other Legionnaires to hand, either for another Press chain or simply to avoid massive breakthrough. Note the tension it creates with the 4-drop Supergirl, who loses her +2/+2 and Invulnerability if Might of Krypton takes away too many Legionnaires from the field.

And if she wasn’t hard enough to stun already, Last to Fall makes it downright impossible. It has its obvious use on the attack to help preserve your board presence, but of course it is much more potent on defense, stopping one attack cold, but unlike Indestructible, Supergirl can attack right back if given the chance. I was going to template it like Last Stand to make it more fair, requiring two or more stunned characters, but what the heck, it’s Supergirl.  You can only play Last to Fall once each turn, if that improves balance matters somewhat.

Hoping to fill out the rest of the Legion curve tomorrow, get into the skinny of their plot twists, locations and equipment, and round out the rest of this discussion. Pleasant dreams until then.

Custom VS Hijinks: Rebooting the Legion, Part 1

I’ve been horrendously disappointed with the Legion of Super-Heroes expansion for the longest time, partially for my own pathetic luck at pulling Mobilize (zero in four boxes!) but mostly due to the set’s failure to do justice to what is one of the most iconic superhero teams in the DC Universe, the Legion.  I admit I’m more a fan of the Mark Waid reboot than the original Legion incarnations, but I would have been just as happy representing the 31st Century’s youthful do-gooders if their counter-popping Cosmic tactics had actually amounted to some competitive potential.  Really, why did they even have to be Cosmic in the first place?  Because they span the galaxy and therefore, the Cosmic keyword has to feature heavily into their theme?  It’s just a word for a game mechanic, after all, and doesn’t have to be slapped onto every extra-terrestrial that finds its way into VS.

Which brings me to my own ideas for the general direction in which I’m hoping they’ll take the Legion when (if?) they finally relaunch them in the now mega-delayed DC Universe VS release.  I tried to figure out some iteration of the “remove Cosmic counter to generate X effect” mechanism that would actually kick butt in a tournament, but that particular endless quest continues.

Instead, I decided to use another couple of keywords that I felt would be more characteristic of a team of native-powered flying teenagers, and, in keeping with the Waid reboot’s essence, any other teenager of any race who believed in the Legion ideal.  The first one is Press, the undeniable strength of which was exhibited and abused by the Kree, but seems just as appropriate on the Legion.  Does this immediately make them too powerful a team to make it past the drawing board?  Personally, I believe they deserve it far more than the Kree, given their sustained popularity in comics, which has now penetrated the mainstream with the release of their television cartoon.  I did attempt to temper it by giving the Legion average to mediocre stats, though I hope in the end this does not do quite enough to neuter them for so-called “play balance”.

The other keyword is an invention of mine, based on my concern that when characters attack in VS, they can strike as a team, but when they defend, they defend alone.  Sure, there’s reinforcement, but that only limits the spillover.  The defender is essentially on his own.   Well, not so the Legion, all of whom will be sporting the keyword Unity.

Basically, characters with Unity can “team defend” against an incoming attack, combining their strength to take out the attacker while trying to minimize collateral damage.  Whenever a character becomes a defender, the controller of that character may exhaust any number of his characters with Unity who share an affiliation with that defender, who will now become defenders as well.  Upon combat resolution, the combined ATK of the defenders will be matched against the DEF of the attacker (or each attacker in a team attack), and that ATK is greater than or equal to the DEF of the attacker, that attacker becomes stunned.  As usual, when defending against a team attack, only one of the team attackers can be stunned this way.

Conversely, the ATK of the attacker (or combined ATK of the team attackers) will be matched against the DEF of each of the defenders, and any defender with a DEF less than or equal to the attacker’s ATK may be chosen to be stunned.  The attacking player can only choose one of the defenders to be stunned.

When computing breakthrough, the TOTAL DEF of the defenders will be taken into account, and any ATK higher than the total DEF of the defenders will be the breakthrough endurance loss.  The primary defender can still, of course, be reinforced, to prevent any breakthrough.

At the end of the attack involving Unity defenders, all the defenders do not ready unless an effect provides otherwise.  The primary defender does not become exhausted by combat resolution, as normal.

Now, I don’t claim that this is the ideal method of representing team defense, and I’m certain there are a lot of interactions with existing cards that I didn’t quite take into account.  Ideas over execution, folks.

Anyway, on to the individual Legionnaires.  You’ll note that I am utilizing the Waid reboot version of the characters, as this is the Legion I know best.

Brainiac is the Press card draw bomb of the Legion, designed to be dropped once at the end of a Press chain to net the player a whole slew of plot twists and extra character cards for the next turn.  If he can be returned to hand and played again the following turn to display his superior intelligence, he’ll pretty much seal the deal for his team’s victory.  The hand discard prior to the draw effect is a balancer.

A mediocre 4-drop on his own, of course, but since he’s meant to Press, he should be an 8/8 on the average, and could be even larger if you can manage to maintain board presence.

Cosmic Boy has magnetic powers, so it made sense for him to come with an exhaust effect that is quite powerful considering the Press mechanic.  It was supposed to be an activated power, so it would be an out-of-combat off-initiative trick, but I felt this was too imbalancing.

I really wish I’d found a better picture of Dream Girl.  Anyway, her foresight allows you to see what your opponent may have in store for you, and screw around with his plans accordingly.  I guess this one’s rather too powerful for her cost, but that’s the general idea.

Element Lad’s a bit subtle in the use of his power.  On his own, he’s a 4/6 when defending, which isn’t bad for a 3-drop.  However, with the use of Unity, he can grant that +3 DEF bonus to any other defender, allowing for an opportunity to brickwall.  This ability is intended to represent his temporary matter transmutation powers.

This guy’s meant to be a real sneak, foiling your opponent’s attack by slipping in with Unity to contribute to the defense and then slipping out without a trace.  If the primary defender won’t get stunned on resolution but needs a bit of extra ATK to stun the attacker, Invisible Kid’s the boy for the job.

The ability is supposed to represent the fact that Karate Kid probably has a countermeasure for any punches your opponent would throw.  The rarity is off; I figure anyone with a plot twist negation ability should be at least uncommon, if not rare.

Gah.  Another character with the wrong rarity.  With that ridiculous ability (in the context of Press), she should definitely be rare.  Consider that at least she isn’t abusable with Unity since she has to activate for the power to trigger.

Pretty straightforward, and could actually end up burning the opponent for quite a lot even if he only manages to attack twice a game, due to the swarming nature of Press.

Phantom Girl is meant to take full advantage of the Unity mechanic by being able to contribute to the defense in every attack unless the opponent decides to stun her.  Considering her diminutive size, however, would an opponent really bother?  Sigh.  She should be uncommon, at least.

Dr. Minerva she isn’t, but she may actually be a little better in most situations.  If you need a character in a pinch to help with the Press chain, Projectra’s significant wealth (or her illusionary prowess, you pick what aspect of her the power represents) will do the job.

The ability of Saturn Girl to read your opponent’s mind is a key game asset, and although her Leader ability is superfluous to her own team, she hands out the Unity keyword to facilitate that team defense goodness to another affiliation.

Not the flashiest of abilities, and only good off-initiative, but I feel it represents Star Boy’s gravity manipulation powers more accurately than his DLS “pitch me to put a Cosmic counter on someone” version.

Timber Wolf is basically a walking (flying) Nasty Surprise.  A really, really Nasty Surprise.

Fun with Unity!  Triplicate Girl multiplies whether your opponent wants to or not, since she can just enter the fray and spawn copies of herself on defense.  Hmm.  Perhaps her copies should come into play ready.  Or not.

Although you’ll be forced to pick awesome ATK or monumental DEF (since Ultra Boy only has one superpower at any given time), both will serve you very well if he’s at the end of the Press chain.

Whew!  I know there are quite a number of Legionnaires that haven’t yet been featured, so I’m hoping there’ll be space for them in the next installment of this discussion.  I also haven’t put up or thought out the plot twists or locations yet, so if anyone out there has got any suggestions, I’d be happy to hear from you.

Long Live the Legion!

The Science of Search, Part 8

Exploring the Galaxy

The Heralds of Galactus expansion, trumpeting the long-awaited arrival of the purple world-eater, has long proven itself as perhaps the best VS expansion due to the vast number of powerful archetypes that it introduced and the flavorful diversity of its teams, all somehow miraculously compressed in a regular-sized set of 220 cards.  Representing a sort of culmination of previous VS design efforts and a crystallizing of attributes that made teams competitive and distinct at the same time, it should be no surprise that the search tech in MHG wasn’t all that revolutionary.

Which is not to say that the search available wasn’t formidable.  The Heralds team, for example, received the first character search card that searched for up to two character cards, with the drawback of having to place them on top of your deck instead of actually placing them in your hand.  Silver Surfer also had quite a useful search effect tempered by the fact that it was, like Kindred Spirits, more card draw arrangement.  This was not so bad for the Heralds, of course, considering that card drawing was one of the team’s themes.  Creation of a Herald was either the most powerful search card in the game or a little worse than DSM’s The Exchange, depending on whether you had a Galactus in hand to pitch.

The other MHG teams received search tech appropriate to their theme - the Inhumans had a location search card that keyed off the number of face-up resources the player had, Doom’s search was based on KOing one’s own characters, the Kree required that characters return to the player’s hand, the Infinity Watch needed the player to reveal one of the coveted Infinity Gems, and the Skrulls had an easy way to pull out their primary team-up card.  Nothing game-breaking by the standards of VS at the time, but all solid options that helped support each team’s main victory strategy.

It is worth noting that, in a field where the Fate Artifacts had raised the importance of equipment to a whole new competitive level, the MHG card Cannibal Tech provided yet another easy search option for the assembling of the artifacts, particularly for teams that weren’t inherently search-savvy.

The follow-up to MHG, the Legion of Super-Heroes expansion for DC, was by contrast a towering disappointment.  Stricken by the same affliction that apparently plagued the DSM set, seemingly novel team themes turned out to be severely underpowered, leaving the Legion and its ilk trampled into the space dust by the overwhelming might of the Galactus-fueled sector of the galaxy.  In fact, the set may have turned out to be a complete waste of cardboard had it not been for the redeeming quality of the Darkseid’s Elite relaunch, and the generic mono-team search card we had been waiting for since DC Origins:

Mobilize immediately drew comparisons with Enemy of my Enemy for power and utility, becoming the must-have-4-of for mono-team decks, simple and reliable in practically all situations where character search was required by such a deck, with the one drawback that you had to have a character in play to be able to Mobilize another into your hand.  This would result in some skewing of the numbers for character cards of each cost in decks that used Mobilize, which would now be heavier on 1 and 2-drops so that Mobilize could assist with the acquisition of later drops.

There is no doubt that Mobilize is powerful and useful, and stands out as one of the best search cards in the game, arguably the second best.  The reason why Mobilize bridesmaids out to Enemy of my Enemy is that Mobilize, while improving consistency substantially, still requires a player to stay on-team, and deal with all of that team’s strengths and weaknesses.  It will make a champion affiliation much better, but it won’t plug the holes in a lousy affiliation.  EoME, on the other hand, opens up a wealth of toolbox strategies and silver bullets for certain match-ups, and allows a player to compensate for deficiencies in his curve with the appropriate complementary guest star.

Nonetheless, I will be happy to see EoME leave the tournament scene (except for Golden Age and BYOS, anyway) if only because the departure of EoME, which conversely leads to the ascension of Mobilize, means that people will start playing mono-teams or tight team-ups again, and I feel that this is part of the true essence of a card game that features larger-than-life comic book characters and the partnerships and enmities between them.

Before I wrap up this article, I must point out one curious DLS entity that was predicted to make a huge splash in the tournament scene, but turned out to be a dud because the rest of his team stank:

In a tournament field where toolboxing and engine decks ran rampant, Time Trapper should have been a gamma bomb.  Since most search tech required card discard in the first place, the additional discard spelled massive card disadvantage for the opponent.  Ahmed Samsarra forcing a discard every time he went off to acquire a location, for example, would give a Checkmate player palpitations.  Regretfully, the Future Foe discard theme was so weak that on his own, Time Trapper didn’t have quite such an impact, and he soon faded into obscurity, much like his team.

At this juncture in the history of VS, search tech had pretty much reached its zenith as far as character search was concerned, and was already quite developed in the search for non-character cards.  Was there anywhere left to go from here?

Next: Legendary Aspirations

Stark Raving Mad

Why are you still reading this?  Go watch Iron Man.  Nownownow.  It’ll be one of the finest comic book cinematic experiences you’ll ever relish.

Seriously, though, it’s been a while since the debut of a comics hero on the silver screen was done so right; with just the right amount of fan service for the comics geeks like myself, and enough of more conventional fare to satisfy the mainstream audience.  If you’d never heard of Iron Man before the movie trailers started showing up in theaters, this movie would probably have you careening down the street looking for the nearest comic book shop in a frantic effort to dig up all the information you could about this now-prominent billionaire playboy turned S.H.I.E.L.D. director.  Or not.  Possibly.

If you want a proper review of this film, I point you in the direction of the Rotten Tomatoes site (www.rottentomatoes.com), where you can find links to the minced words of the professional critics, whom you’ll find mostly have the same thing to say about Iron Man:  the movie is not without its flaws, and kind of veers into superhero cliche territory in the third act, but overall, it rocks hard.  And I’m certain any person who’s caught the trailers and has an IQ above room temperature can figure out the basic direction of the story, which is mostly origin but not without its thrilling action sequences.

I’m not going to gush (or at least try my darnedest not to), but I will unabashedly admit I was thoroughly entertained and will try to watch this a few more times before it rotates out of theaters.  Here’s why:

Robert Downey Jr. IS Tony Stark. Take note of that qualification; I didn’t say Iron Man, because at the end of the day it doesn’t take too much acting chops to play a guy in a flying metal suit.  But the moment Robert appears onscreen, he embodies the reckless genius in all his swaggering glory, equal parts ego and fun-loving socialite, who has enough awkward moments and Dexter’s Lab mistakes to endear him to all but the most cold-blooded of mammals.  My girlfriend didn’t have a clue who Tony Stark was before the film began, but when it ended, unequivocally stated that she couldn’t think of anyone else who could have pulled it off.

Oh, the Fan Service. Scattered everywhere like it was Easter Sunday are references to everything you could have asked for in an Iron Man movie without threatening to alienate the non-enthusiasts.  There’s S.H.I.E.L.D., Happy Hogan, War Machine, and… something too cool to spoil.  I beseech you, WAIT UNTIL THE END CREDITS HAVE RUN.  WAIT UNTIL THE END CREDITS HAVE RUN.  WAIT UNTIL THE END CREDITS HAVE RUN. If you’ve ever, ever made yours Marvel, you’ll be glad you stayed behind.

The Incredible Machines. The Iron Man suit undergoes a variety of iterations, all of which are believable enough given the state of today’s technology, and each of which is spectacular in its own way.  But the scene stealer of the film, of which a friend of mine wanted her own, is the fire extinguisher droid.  You’ll see what I mean, and you’ll want one too.

A Top Notch Supporting Cast. You’d think that all that star power, with Gwyneth Paltrow as the almost unflappable faithful assistant Pepper Potts, and Jeff Bridges as the sly, manipulative Obadiah Stane, would have ended up suffocating the film.  Instead, they enhance it thoroughly, as each member of the supporting cast delivers a solid performance that complements Robert’s Tony Stark brilliantly, playing off of various facets of the main character’s personality.

I’m not going to say Iron Man was perfect, of course - the typical superhero showdown that happens at the film’s climax came off somewhat cliche and too Deus Ex Machina for my tastes - but that didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the movie.

Well, there you have it.  Iron Man’s awesome.  Get thee to a theatre!

Custom VS Hijinks: Experienced Versions

Having played other collectible card games prior to VS, I have sometimes wondered if certain elements of these other games could be translated or interpreted in some form in VS System.  One of the most flavorful concepts that I have seen is the idea of overlaying more “Experienced” versions of unique characters to represent character growth, both physically and in other aspects, which was most prominent in the card game Legend of the Five Rings and has also been seen in games such as Pokemon.  Such a concept seemed like a perfect fit for VS thematically, since the heroes, villains and supporting cast of the Marvel and DC comics universes have, in most cases, developed a rich and eventful history that almost always involves an evolution from a certain origin story to the sum total of what the character is today.  Superman wasn’t always the Metropolis Marvel, Wolverine wasn’t always the best there is at what he did, and the Hulk had a long, convoluted road to travel before becoming the mighty king of Sakaar (albeit briefly).

From a game mechanics perspective, however, the concept of overlaying experienced versions is rather more difficult to balance out.  The tight curve employed by VS, where characters a resource point cost apart tend to be significantly different in stats from cost 3 upwards, makes it impractical to allow the overlaying of higher drop versions even if the resource cost between versions is only one resource point.  By way of example, if I had a 3-drop Batman and wanted to do an overlay of a more “experienced” Batman on turn 4, I would effectively have two 4-drop sized characters on turn 4 simply due to the overlay.  If I decided to do it again on turn 5, I would be entering turn 5 with two 5-drops and a 4-drop (assuming no losses), for the mere cost of my 3/4-drop and a couple of cards from hand.  As such, the overlay would end up being superior to other resource bypass mechanics such as Substitute and Press, with less setup necessary to facilitate the effect.  While I suppose this would make the Legend characters much more desirable to play, all that curve breaking would get degenerate in a hurry.

Besides, I felt that an Experienced version of a VS character ought to be earned by the player, perhaps requiring some level of active participation on the part of the inexperienced version of the character to work towards becoming more proficient at his craft.  Also, I figured that VS was ripe for some radical new keyword that actually did something on its own (Evasion, Reservist, Substitute) rather than simply put a name to a certain class of powers (Leader, Backup, Vengeance).

Enter the highly experimental keywords Rookie and Veteran.

Basic Training

As we all know, a rookie is someone who is new to his chosen discipline, maybe showing tremendous potential but needing to hone his abilities to really take advantage of his giftedness.  In VS, the Rookie keyword represents that stage in a character’s life, but also reflects his or her inevitable ascent to a status of greater renown (or infamy).

As a mechanic, what Rookie does is allow the character with the keyword to accumulate Experience counters.  Every time a character with Rookie:

a) Stuns an opposing character (once per turn?  not sure);

b) Uses an activated power (once per turn); or

c) Exhausts to pay the cost of a non-ongoing plot twist effect (once per turn)

the Rookie character gains one (1) Experience counter.  An Experience counter can be removed from a Rookie character once per turn during the combat phase to give the character +1 ATK or +1 DEF during an attack.  From a flavor point of view, the character has gotten a little better over time at what he or she does, and can use his or her improved skill to gain a slight advantage when fighting an opponent.  It’s not much, but it isn’t meant to be more than just a minor edge anyway, and sometimes the difference between winning or losing hinges on having that extra +1 ATK or +1 DEF, which the Rookie character will almost always have waiting to be unleashed.  As an example, let’s go with one of DC’s most popular coming-of-age characters, Batman’s original trusty sidekick, Dick Grayson.

Rookie characters aren’t meant to be strictly worse than their non-Rookie counterparts; after all, the independent advantage created by Experience counters is weak enough not to imbalance the character.  Robin here seems just about average for his cost, and maybe even slightly better to his Concealed status.  He also gains an Experience counter whenever Batman shows up on the player’s side, which is also not a significant advantage, and is appropriate flavor-wise.

That’s all well and good, but eventually, all boys have to grow up.

Graduation Day

Experience counters grant one more benefit, which goes to the heart of the overlay mechanic.  During your recruit step, you may remove a ready Rookie character you control with X Experience counters from the game.  If you do, you may put a Veteran character card from your hand with cost X or less into play with the same name as the Rookie character you removed.  Use this ability only if you control X or more resources.

I realize that wording is a bit complicated, but necessary to preserve the all-important game mechanic balance.  Yes, Rookies can eventually develop into combat-hardened Veterans, but they have to work for the promotion.  Moreover, to avoid the problems with resource acceleration, you can only put a Veteran character into play with a cost less than or equal to the number of resources you control.

Naturally, the Veteran version of the character has got to be worth all the effort spent training up that Rookie, which is why it seems appropriate for Veteran characters to be somewhat tougher or more powerful than other characters at the same cost.  To offset this, perhaps an additional rule would be that Veteran cards cannot be recruited normally from hand - they can only be put into play through the Rookie removal method.  They can still be used as power-ups, of course.  If this seems like too much work for too little reward, maybe the mechanic can be tweaked so that the Rookie removal will allow the player to search his deck for a copy of the Veteran card instead of having to possess the card in hand.

Or maybe the Veteran character can be nerfed a bit.  I haven’t decided yet.  I am leaning towards the solution above though, since it makes it more exciting to play Veterans by nurturing them from their Rookie counterparts than simply to recruit them.  Anyway, here’s an example of Dick Grayson, after years of kicking bad guys around with the Bat.

Should Veterans be allowed to continue accumulating Experience counters to be used in the conventional manner?

Lastly, I figure it would be helpful to have non-character cards that have a generic benefit for play in Limited, but have an additional effect specifically for Rookie characters.  Below is a hasty example of such a card.

I realize there’s only so much comic book flavor you can represent in a collectible card game, and if we wanted this much character development, we’d be playing a role-playing game instead.  Still, the idea of characters getting better over time due to activity rather than just sitting around waiting for your resource row to grow is highly appealing, and I feel that it would make for a more immersive play experience.

Until next time.  May your Galans eat enough planets to become Galactuses.

The Science of Search, Part 7

Locate Your Fate

Considered by most to be the finest DC expansion produced for VS, the Infinite Crisis expansion introduced the concept of Identity, finally providing relevance to the character alter-egos that appeared after the diamond in the name box on the character cards.

How did this affect the constantly evolving discipline of search?  Not much, actually.  Identity was an interesting mechanic from a flavor perspective, but did not significantly affect competitive VS play.  The Hawkman/Hawkgirl JSA search component was not much more refined than the original JLA Hawkwoman/Hawkman interaction, and relied on the same Ally abuse tactic to get the edge over the opposition.

Search tech in DCR was instead catapulted forward by what is today the most efficient search card in the game, period.

The White King came with a hefty drawback that was perhaps meant to balance him out and dissuade players from using him due to the risk he presented.  What the designers didn’t take into account was that a 6/6 3-drop with Concealed-Optional, being oversized and able to hole up in the hidden area for the rest of the game, was already very difficult to dispose of, without even taking into consideration the wealth of defensive and preventive options available to Ahmed’s Checkmate team.  Moreover, the power of Ahmed was truly phenomenal — for the cost of a simple activation, which could be performed at any time (curious, given that his team had a heavy Backup complement), Ahmed could not only search the player’s deck for any location, but also immediately place it into the resource row so that it could be used at once.  Between Brother Eye Satellite, Brother Eye and Checkmate Safe House, Ahmed provided character search, a massive ATK pump or limited KO pile recursion, a team-up and a turn-long DEF boost.  The vast assortment of locations now available meant that other toolbox mechanics, such as the ability to attack hidden characters, more KO pile recursion and static ATK pumps could easily be placed into the deck and yanked out by Ahmed when the occasion arose.  For practical purposes, Ahmed’s game text may very well have read “Activate -> search your deck for any character card and put it into your hand, or any non-character card and put it into your resource row” with no significant change in power levels.  Best of all, since Ahmed was a character, he could use his incredible search ability turn after turn after turn.  The peerless utility of Ahmed Samsarra has never been matched by another character since his introduction to the VS universe, and he may well be the best character in the game because of this fact.

One of Ahmed’s most infamous search targets is itself a search card of sorts, notable for ushering the threat of equipment to new levels of abuse.

At first glance, Dr. Fate’s Tower may seem like a poor equipment search card, and you would be right based on this parameter alone, since it only searches for a particular type of equipment, the Fate Artifact (of which there are three).  Considering, however, that the three Fate Artifacts, when assembled, form the greatest equipment enhancement to a character in all of VS (+4/+4 with flight, range, untargetability, some deck sifting, and the Dr. Fate identity), and that the Tower is presently the only location card capable of searching for them without costing a player resource points or something similarly unpalatable, it becomes a far more potent deck component for Ahmed to work with.  More importantly, it has the added benefit of being able to transfer the Fate Artifact set to a new character during the build phase each turn, meaning that its hefty bonus never gets outclassed by the increasing size or numbers of your opponents’ characters.

Although its search aspect could only be used once, Ahmed could simply replace a “used” Tower with a fresh one, so that in the worst case scenario the Fate Artifacts could be assembled over a few turns.

Ahmed and the Fate Artifacts were and still are hailed as DCR’s most prominent contribution to VS, serving to reinforce once again the importance of search tech to the game.

Next:  Exploring the Galaxy

Iron Man Movie Day!

Curiously enough, we here in the Philippines get to watch Iron Man a few days earlier than in another parts of the world, on April 30, 2008, which is set conveniently before Labor Day, so we expect the theaters to be flooded with film enthusiasts and comic book mavens alike to catch the feature length movie of one of Marvel’s oldest and (presently) most controversial heroes.

Iron Man is, to me, the Marvel/Avengers equivalent of Batman in DC/Justice League, as the one member of the group whose powers are not conferred by some supernatural origin or inherent in the character’s physiology, either naturally or through artificial enhancement.  Take away the suit and Tony Stark is just a man with excellent business savvy and astonishing intellect,  who would be even less effective in a fight than Bruce Wayne due to the latter’s martial arts background and constant workouts in the Batcave.  I realize that the Extremis upgrade has invalidated that premise somewhat, but it’s a fairly recent innovation that has not diminished the gripping humanity of the man in the iron mask.

More to the point, just as some people love the Batman character for the fact that anyone could be Batman if they had similar resources and some trauma-driven drive to combat crime, the same could be said for Iron Man, at least once technology catches up (if it hasn’t already been developed in some top secret military facility somewhere in the world).  I also appreciate how Iron Man’s constant struggle with alcoholism is a recurring issue in the comics, and handled realistically instead of simply being provided as a character flaw to make him more “interesting”.

Advance praise has been heaped on the movie by reviewers who were lucky enough to sneak into preview screenings.  So I’m keeping my expectations sober but also secretly hoping to be wowed.

I’ll be posting a review on the movie once I’ve watched it, so stay tuned.

The Science of Search, Part 6

Finding your Enemies

The next couple of expansions represented significant strides forward in VS search technology, the latter of which introduced what is undoubtedly the most influential search card in the game’s colorful history.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

At last, the expansion DC fans had been waiting for had finally arrived, as Justice League of America featured the greatest assembly of heroes in the DC universe and their villainous counterparts, along with a number of interesting themes and improvements on existing themes.  No less awe-inspiring were the search cards in this set, which came in droves, and interacted with excellent synergy.  The now-famous Good Guys archetype, which relied on strong power-up/Ally effects and extensive search options, functioned mainly due to the following cards:

As close to a combat engine deck as one could get at the time, the Good Guys deck sported consistency that VS players could only dream of until then, assembling its plan of action with staggering diligence.  The 1-drops both searched for the 2-drop of choice, although Ted Kord was of course preferred for his ability to fish out equipment and re-use his ability each turn.  Hawkwoman was relatively easy to draw or search for with Hero’s Welcome, and herself searched for the prime 4-drop or equipment whenever a character powered-up.  It was a smooth short curve all the way to turn 5 or 6, the deck’s kill turns.  Kooey x3 was the clincher card, granting the Good Guys player access to his entire deck, either to search out an extra combat trick or power-up, or to get a one-of silver bullet card to deal with whatever was in the metagame at the time.  Rather than simply improve its odds with search tech, the Good Guys archetype actually won mainly through its search, devoting a full third (at least) of the deck to search in one form or another.  It was the Faces of Evil formula, but refined to be tighter in execution.

Not to be outdone by the forces of good, the Injustice Gang featured its own combat search engine concept, this time an off-curve army build, that bred army characters like rabbits on Viagra.

As a location searcher, Poison Ivy was the most versatile of the lot, not strictly confined to searching for 1-drop Army characters, which allowed her to operate far beyond the boundaries of the IG army infestation archetype.  It is important to note that the search costs for all of the characters above did not involve the discard of cards, which helped prevent the hand depletion problems typical of any deck that runs off-curve.

And then, we have the generic search cards of DJL, one of which being not quite as powerful as it looked, and another turning out to be a most flexible search option:

Secret Origins was, sadly, not the generic character search card VS players had been eagerly anticipating, since its search parameters were dependent on the cost of the opponent’s characters, which was problematic whether the opponent was playing curve (if you had the initiative, you could only search for a smaller character) or off-curve (as you could only search for a weenie).  It had its uses, certainly, but was too difficult to use reliably in actual games.

Straight to the Grave, on the other hand, brought any character out of your deck, regardless of affiliation (or lack thereof), requiring only a card that returned cards from your KO pile (such as Slaughter Swamp) to fish it out and into your hand to play.  It wasn’t as straightforward as other character search, but the two-card combo was recognized for its unlimited utility, and remains a top-tier search option even today.  It wasn’t the Holy Grail of character search, though, a distinction that belongs to the premier card of the following expansion.

Matches Made in Hell

The X-Men expansion featured a nifty trio of character search cards that, while somewhat team-stamped since they required the discard of a character card of a specific team, were actually rather flexible in the characters they could acquire.

Bloodhound, Join the Club and Sovereign Superior all gave the player the option to search not for a character of the team featured by the search card, but for a character with a particular keyword (Evasion, Concealed and Reservist, respectively) that just happened to be the featured keyword for the team.  This of course allowed the featured teams to delve outside of their roster for guest stars who would happen to be more effective than the on-team options depending on the situation, and facilitated team-ups between the featured team and another team that utilized the keyword heavily.  Thus, the Morlocks could be blended with the Spider-Friends, the Hellfire Club could play nice with the Marvel Knights, and the Brotherhood and the Avengers could work towards a common goal.

The greatest team-up search card of them all, though, even today, would be this card:

Enemy of my Enemy created shockwaves throughout the VS community as players immediately realized that, while perhaps the original intention for EoME was to provide team-up decks with a more reliable character search card that could find components from either team, the potential of this mighty card was far, far more outrageous.  Since EoME functioned as an “anti-team-stamp” searcher, players could stuff their decks with characters from as many different teams as they wanted to achieve a specific objective, without being bogged down by consistency concerns (since only Straight to the Grave was the only other card at the time capable of even coming close to EoME in that regard, and it required a KO pile returner to work).  While it was a godsend for top-tier players whose focus was simply to cram the best tech into one archetype, EoME had the unfortunate side effect of making team balance virtually obsolete for a time.  Prior to EoME, players had to figure in the strengths and weaknesses of each VS team, which ideally made for excellent metagame tension.  With EoME, players could throw characters from 12 different teams together and still assemble a winning deck.  In fact, the more diverse the team roster, the more effectively EoME could search.  Toolboxing had reached its pinnacle, team loyalty was a thing of the past, and the game would never be the same.

EoME will be rotating out of Silver Age come Marvel Universe, which should shake things up as much as its arrival a couple of years ago, as players will now have to cope with the lack of such an amazing search card to expand their deckbuilding horizons.  Time will only tell, barring the return of EoME in MUN, how the VS gameplay environment will evolve after mourning its loss.

Next:  Locate Your Fate