Final Crisis Preview: Battle for the Cowl

I’m getting to old for this.  These young bucks keep making these amazing fan sets, and I’m constantly forced to come out of retirement and write preview articles!  Coincidentally, today’s card title implies retirement and a ‘carrying of the torch’ of sorts.  Batman ‘died’ a death that will be as permanent as all comic book deaths, and a whole slew of his proteges duked it out to become the new ‘symbol of the night’.  I present their Battle for the Cowl…

How does this card represent the battle for the cowl?  It’s actually quite clever if you think about it.  Batman, Cape and Cowl from the DWF set negated payment powers.  This card allows other Gotham Knights characters you control to emulate that power.  Almost as if other Gotham Knights were trying to be Batman.  If this were a coincidence I would be flabbergasted (yes I’m trying to justify my opening statement by using dated vocabulary!).

Negation is nothing new to the Gotham playbook.  They have cards that negate ongoing plot twists, non-ongoing plot twists, payment effects, and more.  But that doesn’t mean that this card doesn’t have a place in the Gotham arsenal; far from it.  Sure Utility Belt already did the same thing, but if you lost the character equipped with it, you lost its glorious effect.  You were also limited by Utility Belt to only being able to exhaust the equipped character.

That’s not to say that this new card doesn’t also have its limitations.  Like all balanced cards, when you’re given advantages, you’re also given drawbacks.  You have to gather 2 Charge counters before you can start using this bad boy, which means that if you need reliable payment power protection before turn 4, you’d better stick with Utility Belt (though you could technically use this card before turn 4 thanks to cards like Bat-Radia).

But the thing that really gets me excited about this card is that it can make other cards in your deck more powerful in addition to its crazy effect.  Cards like Batman, Zur en Arrh burn your opponent for each face-up resource containing charge counters.  It kind of reminds me of the face-up mini-theme that Gotham Knights had in DWF.  Cards like Kate Kane and Renee Montoya feel like they’ve almost gotten legacy treatment.  I’ve very excited to see what other Ongoings are in this set so I can start ‘charging’ things up myself.  That is if I stay out of retirement long enough

On a side note, I want to point out that our site (vssystem.org) just broke the 100,000 hits milestone yesterday.  By the time you’re reading this it will probably be a much higher number.  This is a monumental achievement for our community, and I hope we’re coming back here years from now to see what new fantasy sets are still be unleashed upon the world.  To celebrate this occasion, I’m leaking another card from the set (with Spud’s permission of course).  Enjoy this celebratory bonus.  No tidbits or insights from me.  I’ll leave it all up to your imagination…

DSM-2 Preview: Izaya Highfather, The Inheritor

When the Legionaires’ set came out everyone said that the Cosmic keyword was finally given a proper treatment.  Now, with the advent of DSM-2, the infamously bad Superman set will no longer have to play second fiddle to the other ‘Cosmic’-themed sets.  In fact, after being lucky enough to get a sneak peak at the finished product, I can confidently say that DSM-2 will knock your socks off.

My preview card today comes from the most maligned of all four DSM teams: the New Gods.  A team so bad that people often would build New Gods decks just to collect bragging rights over every person they managed to beat with them.  Of course they weren’t 100% unplayable.   I believe there was a Doom/New Gods deck played by Brian Eugenio that did very well at an LA 10k; but as a mono team, they were pretty atrocious and had very little cohesion.  All that is about to change, however.  That’s right ladies and gents, the… New… Gods… are… PLAYABLE!

 

Izaya’s stats remain the same, because they were already great, but notice the significant upgrade to his text box.  He used to read:

At the start of the recovery phase, you may discard a New Gods character card. If you do, recover target stunned character you control.

Not bad by any means, but not great.  His original incarnation used to only work during the recovery phase.  This meant you had to prevent Izaya from becoming stunned during combat just to use his ability; either that or run recovery effects just to use him (and running recovery effects to use a recovery effect seems oddly redundant).  His new text (for those that can’t see the image) now reads:

Leader: Whenever a [New Gods] defender adjacent to Izaya becomes stunned during your first defense each turn, recover it.  Cosmic

Similar to the Legionnaires, you’ll notice that while Izaya has a Cosmic Counter, he does not have a Cosmic ability.  This tells us that New Gods will share each others counters.  Another character or plot twist might say something like, “remove a cosmic counter from a character your control -> get target effect.”

Izaya also has a Leader ability that recovers an adjacent character on your first defense of the turn.  This ability stays true to the original focus of the character (recovery) but improves upon it significantly.  No longer do you have to wait ’til the recovery phase to reap the benefits of Izaya.  There is also no longer a discard associated with it, which means you’re preserving your board while preserving your hand.

Let’s look at ways this recovery effect can be useful with the New Gods.  The first thing I thought when I read this card was that you’ll need to force your opponent into attacking a character in front of Izaya.  Otherwise your opponent could just attack Izaya and prevent his ability from ever going off.  We could do this a couple of ways: Coast City and Kandor, City in a Bottle.  Whichever route you chose, you’ll want a character in front of Izaya worth recovering.  New Gods has a couple of great 3 drops to fill that role.  Himon would be pretty good.  He locks down 1 and lower cost plots, and putting him in front of Izaya means he’ll have to be stunned twice just to get his ability out of play.  It’s probably a safe bet that the new Himon will also lock down plots somehow; in fact, if Himon has been improved upon as much as Izaya, these two could be a deadly one-two punch.

Another great on-team option is Shiloh Norman.  If he’s in front of Izaya with a Coast City in play, he’ll nullify two of your opponent’s attacks with virtually no drawback.  After all, Shiloh’s evasion will recover himself during the recovery phase after your opponent has had to run through him twice.  This is a fantastic way to stall to whatever endgame you choose.

There are off-team implications as well.  One particularly broken combination is utilizing Echo, Masterless Samurai.  She’ll auto stun back anyone that attacks her – and Izaya will make sure she does it twice a turn.  This will make opponents’ attacks very no-win situations.  Especially if you have a way to give Echo permanent reinforcement (Framistat comes to mind).  You will just have to have the rest of your characters in the hidden area so that you can still cause damage while your opponent steams over his lack of attack options.  And I don’t think you’ll be lacking in hidden characters that are on-team with Echo!

Other things to consider: New Gods 5 drops worth recovering; Vengeance effects that you’ll want multiple uses out of; and powerful Evasion effects.  I’m sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg, but my mind is already on fire with the possibilities.  I cannot wait until this full set is released!  Thanks to everyone who worked on this project, and thanks for the chance to preview a card!

Vs Full Disclosure: Mjolnir, Hammer of the Gods [MEQ-021]

Last night I sat in front of my PS2 playing Guitar Hero, Legends of Rock with my wife. Mrs Kamiza was attempting Metallica’s “One” for the first time. I watched as my beautiful better half powered through the chords dropping the occasional note. All the time in the background Beelzebub sat in the background swinging a massive hammer in time to the thrashing guitar solo. As I followed his movements I thought to myself “That’s not a hammer. This is a hammer!”

Marvel Evolution exclusive preview: Back From the Dead

I know that some of the set has already been spoiled over at VSRealms.com, but here’s hoping that most of you have not yet seen the awesome, final preview that The-Kamiza.com has been blessed with.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Back from the Dead:

Marvel Evolution Exclusive preview: Three-Card Monte

Welcome back to The-Kamiza.com.  Seeing me two days running?  People will start to talk!  Today we’ve got another exclusive preview for VS. System TCG’s forthcoming Marvel Evolution expansion.  I think today’s card will really stun you.  Stun you!  Get it?  Do you see what I did there?  Because the card stuns .  . . oh, never mind.

Marvel Evolution exclusive preview: Master Thief

Welcome to yet another exclusive preview for the forthcoming VS. System TCG expansion  – Marvel Evolution.  This week we’re looking at the Marauders and we’ve got an interesting plot twist to cover. Once again the writers of The-Kamiza.com band together to give you our thoughts on the card below: