Most of my preview articles for this site have been about the power levels of cards and the new mechanics featured on them. As a developer, I suppose those are my areas of expertise. My job is mostly about asking questions (“Do we need to team-stamp this?” or “Is this team brickwalling in Sealed too often?”), as opposed to actually coming up with the flavor for characters or wondering if their powers are well represented on the cards. As such, it would be easy to imagine that I’ve never picked up a comic book in my life, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, as I type this up, my desktop is the cover of Amazing Spider-Man #10, with Fancy Dan, Montana, and Ox giving the business to Spider-Man. I spent a good portion of my adolescent life reading comic books, mostly those involving Spider-Man and the Sinister Syndicate.

Being a Spider-Man fan isn’t exactly atypical, and my story of being a Spider-Man fan is probably similar to the stories of thousands of people out there. Something about him just resonates with me. Godly characters with unlimited powers and unwavering convictions—like Superman, Thor, and others—never really appealed to me. I found the struggles of Peter Parker and Spider-Man much more interesting. Peter Parker struggles with friends, with money, with his job, with the ladies, and with his family just like any young, nerdy guy does (not speaking from experience or anything . . .), and Spider-Man struggles with the villains, with the media, and with the responsibilities of using his powers and protecting innocents. Fundamentally, I think Spider-Man is a pretty accurate representation of what would happen to any of us if we were granted great powers, which is what creates the connection for me.

But for all that I like about Spider-Man, I find the Syndicate much cooler. Part of it is the throwback to a time when a villain didn’t need to have the powers of Onslaught to be dangerous or compelling. Also, none of the Syndicate had visions of world domination. They weren’t even dictators of their own former Soviet bloc Eastern European countries. For the most part, they were interested in robbing a few banks, making a couple of bucks, and (of course) getting revenge on Spider-Man. Lastly, there was a perfect mix of campy and cool with the early Spider-Man villains. Again, I think the part that resonates best with me is that the villains seem to personify what most of us would be like if we suddenly had four extra mechanical arms—or were granted mastery over electricity, or were turned into a lizard, or sand—and went mad with power and greed.

 

 

Spider-Man Robot highlights alternate boost, one of the new features of Marvel Team-Up. Previous boost costs were restricted to just resource points, but a whole variety of boost costs have been opened up in Marvel Team-Up. The Syndicate has a lot of these new options across a wide range of boosts, and this mechanic should introduce a lot of interesting decisions during deck construction and play.

Of course, with me at the helm, the Syndicate won’t be straying too far from its aggressive roots—that should be pretty obvious from a first glance at this card. The stats encourage attacking, and its low DEF and non-reinforcement drawback encourage you to try to end the game as quickly as possible. While it wouldn’t be a total disaster, I don’t expect many people to recruit Spider-Man Robot on turn 3. The Other-Earth-style alternate boost is the big payout on this character, and I expect him to end as many games as his Squadron precursor. His boost also highlights another Syndicate theme, which is KO’ing its own resources (among other acts of self-destruction) to further its goals. KO’ing your resources is a pretty steep cost, but for the right payout (for example, a dead opponent), no cost is too high.