Stu-vivor Finals update

Managed to get some time in writing last night, finished three of the four portions of OrangeSodaMan’s challenge. For your reading pleasure… after the split of course, it’s a looong post.

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ROUND ONE REVAMP The challenge: Ramble on about a card you really like. Why you like it, how you feel about it, where you would get it tattooed, etc. - The original entrant: Techn0range - The original card: Cosmic Radiation

People know I love the Fantastic Four decks. People know I love equipment cards. Does it really come as a surprise that I like a card that, back in the day, turned Human Torch: Hotshot, Flamethrower, and Advanced Hardware into a combined 26 pt burn?

Such an incident occurred back in the day against my esteemed regular opponent, CaptainSpud.

Spud plays Etrigan. “Lose your resources, or eight endurance!” says he, in rhyming fashion as he is wont to do. “Okay. Burn with Johnny. Flip Cosmic. Burn with Johnny. Flip Cosmic. Burn with Johnny. Flip Cosmic. Oh, and what the heck, burn with Johnny…“
… I guess you had to be there.

Regardless, Cosmic Radiation, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways….

1. Human Torch: Hotshot
2. Alicia Masters : Blind Scultpress
3. Franklin Richards: Child Prodigy
4. Ant Man: Scott Lang
5. Crystal: Inhuman
6. Mr Fantastic: Reed Richards
7. She-Hulk: Jennifer Walters
8. Spider-Man: New Fantastic Four

And that’s just from the Fantastic Four portion of MOR. Toss in all the other activated effects in the game, even back in the days when MOR was all we had available to us, and Cosmic Radiation was beauty in a small cardboard rectangle. Dazzler, Forge, Gambit, both Jeans, Longshot, Moira, both Professor X’s, 4-drop Rogue and Shadowcat can all benefit from a free activation based on their character card text boxes alone.

It’s not even like it’s usefulness is limited to activated abilities – need an extra reinforcer? Want to get extra use out of Fastball Special? Want to stymie those Shadow Assassins? I don’t even want to THINK about how devastating Cosmic Radiation could be in a properly turned Marvel Defenders team-up deck…

As an added sentimental bonus, it took me a while to track down a playset of Cosmic Radiation’s… and by sheer quirk of fate, all four in my playset are foils. Mmm foily goodness.

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ROUND TWO REVAMP The challenge: Espouse the wonders of a favourite three-card combo; then take a card that makes your toes tingle, and come up with some fantasy cards to support it. - The original entrant: Alec - The original combo: Cable/Bodyslide/Wolverine: Bloodlust - The original toe-tingler: Nightcrawler: Man of the Cloth/Brimstone ‘port/Martyr for the Cause

It’ll come as no surprise to many that I love getting multiples of the same unique character out at once. Don’t we all? Spider-Clones! Super-Clones! Darkseid-um… Clones!

Army characters most often aren’t as spiffy keen as non-army characters at the same drop because they’re, well, army characters. They’re designed to be used en masse. Unique characters can have stronger individual effects, since by and large you’re only going to have one copy of the character in play.

MVL gave a wonderful new toy to those of us who like twins… triplets… quads… oh my, the mind boggles. Yup, MVL-040 Bodyslide.

Now, we saw a similar effect to Bodyslide back in DLS, with DLS-117 Curse of Darkness. Both cards remove a non-stunned character from the game, only to return later, after you’ve had a chance to recruit a duplicate of whatever you removed.

Curse of Darkness: As an additional cost to play Curse of Darkness, discard a card. Remove target non-stunned Darkseid’s Elite character you control from the game. At the start of the next combat phase, put that card into your front row.

Bodyslide: Play only if you control Cable. Remove target non-stunned character you control from the game. Its owner puts it into play at the start of your next attack step.

Why does Bodyslide reign over Curse of Darkness? It’s stamped to Cable, but not limited to Darkseid’s Elite characters. Yup, you can toolbox the bugger all over the place, so long as you’re packing a Cable. And no, that’s not an invitation for innuendo. Minds out of the gutters, boys, there are ladies present.

In fact, the only advantage Curse has over ‘slide is that the character comes back at the start of the combat phase rather than your attack step. This could be seen as a disadvantage if you’re wanting to guarantee yourself an attacker, but personally, I like having walls.

When it comes to having attackers though, it’s always nice to look at a character who has nice juicy stats and a potentially cool effect… or, in the case of Wolverine, a portfolio of butt-kicking Legend cards.
For the sake of our point, let’s harness the fury of MVL-032 Wolverine: Bloodlust.

Wolverine: Bloodlust: 17/16, X-Men. Stun Wolverine -> Stun all opposing attackers and defenders. Use only if Wolverine is in combat and only if you recruited another Wolverine this game.

In himself, 17/16 isn’t embarrassing stats for a 7-drop, but thanks to the power of Bodyslide (empowered by Cable), we can get two of the bugger in play on turn 8. On turn 7 you bring out the first. On turn 8, ‘slide the first out and recruit the second. All of a sudden you have to 7-drops with VERY healthy stats, each counting as “having recruited another Wolverine this game”.

You have the initiative on turn 8? Punch through two 17ATK attackers! Your opponent has an 8-drop? Hit him with one of the Wolvies, and use the textbox to stun the 8 – no matter how big it is!

You opponent’s charging you first? Well, the Wolvie you just recruited on turn 8 says that no matter what he hits you with, be it a larger attacker or a team attack of lowbies, they’re all getting stunned… and then your clone Wolvie hits the mat at the start of your combat phase for a little retribution!

Cable + Bodyslide is a toolboxer’s dream. Adding Wolvie into the mix for late game carnage is your opponent’s nightmare.

On to fantasy card niftiness!!!

Continuing to dabble with MVL, let’s take a peek at one of the most popular X-Men who doesn’t have claws

MVL-022 Nightcrawler: Man of the Cloth: 5/4, X-Men. Whenever Nightcrawler stuns a defender while team attacking, ready Nightcrawler.

Not an embarrassing 3-drop by anyone’s standards. No Wolverine for curve decks, but the X-Men have a long-standing tradition of team-attacking. He’s a slight variant on another team-attacking specialist who gets around, MAV-020 Quicksilver: Mutant Avenger.

Nightcrawler wins though. He’s a swashbuckler, a hit with the ladies (even if his one-time girlfriend did take the name Daytripper), has been in a movie, and there were even cabbage patch Nightcrawlers back in the day (Bamfs… check out his first limited series if you don’t believe me).
As the more popular of the two, let’s see what we can add to the mix to make him that much better…

The most obvious difference between more recent Nightcrawlers and the MOR versions is the lack of any way to imitate flight. Swashbuckler can move characters, Teleporting Teammate can reinforce anyone, and now Man of the Cloth can participate in multiple attacks in a single turn (Yay X2 White House scene!), but are you seriously telling me that he can’t teleport over the heads of his opponents to strike at their squishy white underbellies? Or at least, their support row?

Ideally I think I’d represent this by means of a Leader ability, but we’re looking to support the Man of the Cloth card for the purposes of this challenge, so howsabout:

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Brimstone ‘Port Ongoing Plot Twist, Threshold 3 Discard a card -> Target Nightcrawler and one adjacent character can attack hidden characters and protected characters this turn.

Nightcrawler only tends to teleport one person (if at all) with him at once; the more he carries, the more it taxes his strength. Discarding the card represents the teleporting of extra folk – you can do it multiple times a turn, since he’ll (in theory) be readying each time the team attackers stun a defender, but the more you do it the more it’ll cost you – much like Kurt wearing down teleport after teleport.

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Martyr For The Cause Plot Twist, Threshold 3 As an additional cost to play Martyr for the Cause, stun target Nightcrawler you control. Target X-Men character you control cannot be stunned this attack.

Nightcrawler is, as stated, a man of the cloth. He’s also ridiculously brave/heroic/stupid, and likely to throw himself in the path on an oncoming train to save his teammates. Sure, it’s a trait a number of the X-Men have, but other than Wolvie and Colossus, most of ‘em really can’t take the hits that well, and that just leads to yet another dead Jean Grey. In this case, that tendency is represented by Nightcrawler sacrificing himself to save his pals – a theme that’s been part of the X-Men team since MOR.

What makes this interaction spiffy keen?

Man of the cloth auto-readies. Brimstone Port guarantees that you can team attack into your opponent’s weak spot. Martyr for the Cause lets you use that precious Jean Grey: Phoenix Rising in the team-attack without having to worry about Nasty Suprises.

As an added bonus it’d even potentially let you turn that 12/12 Colossus: Tin Man into a 16/16 monster on turn 6! Team attack w/ Nightcrawler and Colossus, ‘Porting them into that hidden character that’s been annoying you, and then Martyr Nightcrawler for an unstunnable 16/16 attacker! Mmm tastes like victory.

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ROUND THREE REVAMP The challenge: Build a deck using cards either every Marvel expansion and EHB, or every DC expansion and EHB. - The original entrant: Tchalla - The original deck: Marvel Knights/Hellboy Concealed Niftiness

Why is it every time I go to look at a deck I find myself drawn back to the Marvel Knights?

Oh yeah, it’s because they rock my socks.

The constraints of this challenge mean the deck will be Golden Age. I’m sure you could make a Silver variant thanks to reprints, but heck, I like me some older cards, donchaknow.

We all know by now that I’m an equipment junkie. Hello? I revamped the Midnight Toystore for this challenge, rambled on about the joys of equipment and MXM Black Panther on Lost Hemisphere, and even referenced the joys of Advanced Hardware and Flamethrower in my Cosmic Radiation post. It’s up there at the top. You’ll find it if you look hard enough.

As such, I was especially tickled when EHB was released and the BPRD team had an equipment theme. I was even happier when MVL came out and brought with it a heapin’ helpin’ of concealed-optional equipment! Mmmm hidden toys. That’s not a terrible deckname actually… so let’s run with it.

First, let’s see what’s available to us.

BPRD equipment themed cards: Ben Daimio (4), Lobster Johnson (5), Sidney Leach (2), Thomas Manning (3), BPRD Signal Device (0), Concussion Grenade (0), Dual Sidearms (0), Weapons Lab (3)

The immediate concern here is that, well, all the characters are visible, and only the Signal Device is Concealed-Optional. The Weapons Lab is gold though, combining the effects of Pier 4 with a slightly stronger Baxter Building (though at the cost of a discard).

Marvel Knights equipment themed cards : MXM Black Panther (3), MMK Blade (2), Marvel Boy (3), Nick Fury (1), MMK Punisher (4), MMK Punisher (5), MVL Punisher (4), MVL Shang Chi (2), Quentin Carnival (2), Titanium Sword (1), War Wagon (1), Brass Grill (0), Desert Eagle (0), M60s (0), Scattergun (1), Wheels of Vengeance (0), Reload (3)

Okay, here we have a few more toys to play with, but again most it the characters are visible. We’re going to have to be choosy here, and I do believe we’ll be calling in the assistance of a certain blanket-wearing master of shadowy things…

• MOR – Salvage
• MSM – Flamethrower
• MMK – Midnight Sons
• MAV – Ape X: Xina
• MXM – Black Panther: King of Wakanda
• MHG – Mind Gem
• MTU – Astral Projection
• EHB – Lobster Johnson: Ghost

Characters:
- 2x Dagger: Child of Light
- 4x Ape X: Xina
- 2x Sidney Leach: Human Metal Detector
- 4x Blade: Eric Brooks
- 4x Black Panther: King of Wakanda
- 2x Cloak: Shadowmaster
- 3x Punisher: Guns Blazing
- 3x Punisher: Jury
- 4x Lobster Johnson: Ghost
- 1x Dr Strange: Illuminati
- 1x Punisher: Angel of Death

Non-Characters
- 4x Midnight Sons
- 2x BPRD HQ
- 2x Weapons Lab
- 4x Wild Ride
- 4x Astral Projection
- 4x Salvage
- 4x Desert Eagle
- 1x Mystical Sigil
- 4x Mind Gem
- 1x Scattergun
- 4x Flamethrower

Okay, so the basic idea is to play with equipment cards – dig ‘em out with Ape X or the Weapons Lad as needed. Use Midnight Sons to get your teamup with BPRD (teaming with Defenders as well when you’re ready to start hiding people, to enable Astral Projection).

When you _are_ ready to hide people, be mindful of that you’ll only be keeping the Desert Eagles. Mystical Sigil is there for Black Panther to dig out for free, the Scattergun and Flamethrowers are there for Punisher: Jury since he’ll grab them for free too.

Ideally we’d be running more of the concealed-optional equipment, but the constraints of the challenge mean I have to include stuff from older sets when equipment room is at a premium. I’d also like to have included Reload, more Weapons Labs, and God knows what else… but then we’d be running a 100 card deck.

So I’m thinking the optimal curve would be:

1. Ape X (Dagger’s there to tutor Midnight Sons)
2. Blade (Sidney’s there as an alternative equipment searcher)
3. Black Panther (Cloak’s there as an alternative means of hiding peeps)
4. Punisher (… or Punisher… either way, really)
5. Lobster (Just cos it’s always fun to have shellfish in a deck)
6. Dr Strange (Heck, we’re running Astral Projection, may as well enable the secondary effect)
7. Punisher (… if I have to explain this, you haven’t read the card. He’s nifty)

In terms of a revamp, this is way off from Curtis’ build… his deck is likely approximately 237% more competitive/effective, but in the end both decks are Marvel Knights/BPRD, and thanks to Astral Projection, both can have a hefty concealed presence… and I like equipment cards. Live with it.

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ROUND FOUR REVAMP The challenge: Build a story deck, using cards in the narration - The original entrant: TheDerangedBear - The original theme: A personal story from real life, told in small cardboard rectangles

Coming soon