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The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017
While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
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On a basic level, most Vs. System games come down to stunned characters. Any player who is playing a deck that intends to win through sheer force is going to tell you that the goal is to stun at least two characters whenever possible. Though a single attack and single character being stunned each turn can mean endurance loss (often a great deal if the stunning character is huge and the character being stunned is not), it usually won’t mean actual card advantage. Barring a handful of effects like that of Finishing Move or Punisher, that one stunned character is probably going to be recovered. In order to dominate the game, you need to KO characters, not just stun them, and in the grand scheme of things, that’s going to mean stunning multiple characters in a single turn more often than not.
Of course, there are several cards that can stun characters from effects instead of from attacks, as well as a couple that are triggered by attacks and thus go hand in hand with the other cards. In fact, there are 25 cards that stun characters, and those 25 cards are the topic of this column and the next.
Looking at this rather sizable topic, I decided to break it into two pieces. This week, I’ll cover all the cards that stun single characters through effects without a definite cap on the recruit cost of the character being stunned. Next week, I’ll look at stun effects with a single target that have definitive cost-based restrictions, as well as the few cards that use single effects to stun multiple characters.
There are three sub-categories in today’s group of stun-effect cards. Cards in Group One stun any character of their controller’s choice, usually a character in either the front or back row. Also, it’s important to note that only one card allows a player to stun a character of his or her choice without a row-based restriction. There are six of these cards; four are characters and two are plot twists.
 The four characters are Blackfire; Blastaar; Annihilus; and Dr. Octopus, Doc Ock. Blackfire’s a 5-drop, Blastaar’s a 6-drop, and Annihilus and Dr. Octopus are 7-drops. Their stats are about average for their cost levels. Blackfire, Blastaar, and Annihilus all have effects that can be used at the start of your attack step, and Doc Ock’s effect requires him to attack and stun a support row character. Three of these four characters are affiliated, and all four are free of loyalty or loyalty-like cost restrictions that curb the use of their effects.
However, Blastaar and Annihilus require Negative Zone to be in play—they can be an off-center focus of a Constructed deck, but it’s unclear as to how effective they can be in Limited. Doc Ock is somewhat splashable in Constructed, but his true place is in a Sinister Syndicate deck. If you’re playing an unaffiliated deck, you’ve got far better options for 7-drop characters, and if you’re playing the kind of deck that needs extra stun power for control purposes, you’re definitely going to need it before turn 7. In Limited, he’s a playable character regardless of what you’re running. No loyalty and no loyalty-like restrictions render him a potential game-breaker.
 That leaves Blackfire. Like Doc Ock, Blackfire has no loyalty requirement or restrictions. At 9 ATK and 8 DEF, she’s just a single defense point shy of the standard 9 ATK/9 DEF turn 5 character, and with both range and flight, she can always be hidden behind a defender if necessary. Her effect is great, and the fact that she’s splashable has allowed her to be played in a lot of very interesting decks over the past few months. Doom Control decks have toyed with replacing Robot Destroyer with Blackfire, resulting in varying degrees of success; many players have found that Blackfire is better. Blackfire’s less restrictive effect, flight, and range are worth more Robot Destroyer’s team affiliation. Arkham Inmates decks, which are generally bent towards early-game control and lockdown strategies with Firefly, have also seen a lot of success when splashing Blackfire. She can dominate the game in the slower play environment that Firefly creates, and since her effect can hamper an opponent’s development beyond turn 5, the deck can be reasonably unbalanced away from turns 6 and up. A player can rest safe in the knowledge that Blackfire can provide insurance against threats larger than herself, should the game continue into higher turns.
In Limited, Blackfire is incredibly good despite the importance of cohesion between team affiliations. Formations are often less intricate in Limited than they are in Constructed, meaning that you’re often going to see more big characters in the front row than you’d see in a Constructed environment. More key characters in the front row means that Blackfire gains utility. She’s a definite first-round pick in a normal draft (although she sends no real signal when picked first in Rochester), and she’s a non-intrusive complement to anything you might run in Sealed Pack.
The first plot twist in Group One is Fastball Special. Like the character effects examined above, |
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