Crime Lords Week: Let it begin!

And across the VS world there was a resounding “W00t!!!11eleventyone11!!!” as VSSystem.com opened the gates with the first official previews of the Crime Lords refeature!

Lordy, we’ve been waiting for this for a long time… no other Marvel team has had to wait longer for a refeature (though with the release of MUN, that honour will go to X-Statix), and boys and girls, it’s looking like a fine week ahead indeed.

Today we get spoiled rotten with a couple of new shinies, the first of which is the brainwashed sidekick of Captain America…

A concealed 5/3 with range, that feeds the whole Rally keyword beautifully (”What’s that? I have to Rally for a character? Well, whaddayaknow, there’s one on the top of the deck right now!”), and heck, he slots right into that old classic theme of the Crime Lords mooking attackers while they were defending. Beautiful… just beautiful…

… but I can’t be the only one to have noticed that Bucky will have some synergy with Captain America, who we already know packs rallying effects. I think that’s just neat; even brainwashed, on some level Bucky’s still thinkin’ of his old mentor.

Next up we see… Oh dear Lord, it’s equipment, hold me back… Death Warrant adds a whole new element to equipment decks, since you actively recruit it onto an opposing character. It then turns into a 0-cost reusable Finishing Move, since although it gets recruited onto an opposing character that that character’s player now controls the card, you still own it!

All the reusability of Marked For Death, without the END cost! Tell me you’re not going to slot this into a Marvel Knights Equipment deck and pull out a team-up, I dares ya… You can’t, can you. Hah! Of course, once we see the rest of the Crime Lords, we may just be too busy drooling over them to bother with some vintage MVL Marvel Knights… Punisher who? Pshaw…

TBS teased us further with hints as to a couple of other equipment pieces, but my attention’s caught by the hints of the upcoming previews.

• Tuesday, CarlosTheDwarf gives us an old Iron Man Foe…
• Wednesday, we see what we can fairly assume to be Red Skull on Read/Rant…
• Thursday,  the Crime Lords answer to the SHIELD Helicarrier shows up on VSRealms…
• Friday, we see a Red Skull Legend Plot Twist from the Fallout Shelter

Now, there’s some speculation as to what we’ll see for Thursday’s preview, whether it’ll be AIM or Hydra related… personally, I’m curious as to whether we’ll see the Dragon of the Heavens, which was of the same scale. I’d post a pic, but for the life of me I couldn’t find one. Sorry.

As for what goes up on VS-Blog at midnight, well… speculate all you want, but I’m thinking…

MANDARIN, BABY! YEAH!