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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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Last week, I went through the common character picks for the Arkham Inmates. This time around, I'll be tackling the Gotham Knights (GK). While it is true of the other lists I’ve made, it is especially true with this particular “order” that you have to adjust the order dramatically as you go from draft to draft or pack to pack.
 Depending on what you’ve drafted so far, and depending on how many characters outside this team you have, this draft order will vary significantly. For example, I’ve listed both of the team’s common 3-costed characters near the bottom of the list, and yet I recommend a minimum of four characters in your deck at that cost. So while I understand the importance of getting these characters and how poorly games will play out if you don’t, their power level in comparison to many of the other characters on this team is such that you don’t want to use high picks on them. When I draft, I’m hoping that I can get them as later picks in the pack, but if I’m in the second or third pack and I still don’t have many 3-drops, I will take them over many cards for fear of not getting enough by the end of the draft. Because GK is a team sporting a lot of loyalty, you can’t necessarily fill in your curve at the 3 cost with characters from other teams, either.
In my experience, the GK are a popular and a heavily contested team in Draft. The other drafters at your table are going to need to support their loyalty characters just like you. If you are playing with players that also have a strong predilection for drafting GK, then you may have to adopt a strategy that involves drafting their non-loyalty characters or drafting smaller characters sooner to support the characters with loyalty. Drafting non-loyalty characters would be my recommendation, since you can then mix the GK with another team in the event you aren’t passed many GK characters. Plenty of their non-loyalty characters are very exciting anyway. Ultimately, you will have to gain some familiarity with drafting GK yourself and learn what your opposition prefers to draft before you can make decisions on what order to take the GK characters. What follows is a general rule-of-thumb list for a draft aiming to run at least 75 percent GK characters.
1. Cassandra Cain ◊ Batgirl
Turn 4 is where the real action starts for you as a GK drafter. Ubu may have roughed you up on turn 3, but from here on out, I want the Knights on my side. Because she has loyalty and needs to discard GK characters, she is best in a very focused GK Draft. Her large stats means that she dominates the turn she comes out, and on later turns of the game, she gives you uses for characters you don’t figure to have the opportunity to play.
 2. Tim Drake ◊ Robin, The Boy Wonder
You might be a little surprised to see Robin up here so high. He ranks up here because he is rock solid and is great for your character curve. If you can play this guy on turn 2 and any of the 3-costed GK characters on turn 3, you should be off to one of the better starts that most teams can muster, and then things will hopefully only improve. His ability to pump up attackers is quite powerful, and you could make a case that along with his 3 ATK that he is about as powerful as the GK 3-costed characters.
3. Lady Shiva, Sandra Woosan
In reading around the web, I get a sense that there may me a camp of players who prefer Batman at the 5 cost instead. Aside from loyalty issues, I’d prefer Lady Shiva’s presence to virtually assure that she must be team attacked, given that she is a 12 ATK/12 DEF if she is not. Forcing an opposing team attack should be a way to increase the odds that you don’t take much breakthrough or have multiple stunned characters. She at least has the same stats as Batman on offense. Still, she is certainly no Batman when it comes to attacking, and the fact that Batman can expect to do bonus endurance loss somewhere in the range of 4 to 12 in a typical game means it can be a close call. Regardless, you are unlikely to have to choose between the these two characters in any given pack, and you probably want some number of each to fill out you deck and at least give yourself the option of who to play on turn 5 depending on whether or not you have the initiative.
4. Dick Grayson ◊ Nightwing, Defender of Bludhaven
Nightwing is one of my favorites. I’d have him up higher if you needed more 6-costed characters in a deck and if Azrael wasn’t also a good choice. He’s another outlet, besides Cassandra Cain ◊ Batgirl, to characters that wound up stuck in your hand. Because the GK have some card drawing in Nightwing himself, Catwoman, and others, you should have all the more characters in hand to spare. His ability to reinforce means you should either save a lot of endurance force your opponent to attack him first on any given turn or both. Since he doesn’t have loyalty and can reinforce any character he is a great addition to any draft deck with a roughly even mix of GK and non-GK characters. I also suspect I’m one of the biggest fans of Tag Team on this planet and once Nightwing hits play my turns without the initiative tend to go well.
 5. Azrael
You may not need to take this guy this high since his role will usually be as your turn 7 play although you do want to secure at least one of him fairly early in the draft. After that you might hope to get a second one late and focus on earlier plays instead. On turn 7 you should be able to do a lot of breakthrough with him. Alternatively, if you have Nightwing in play and the game looks like it will go another turn or two, you might want to go after your opponent’s largest character giving his defender reinforcement via Nightwing and take the victim off the board for good.
6. Batman, Caped Crusader
Batman is a very powerful character. As I discussed in the section on Lady Shiva, I prefer her to fill out most of my decks. One small additional reason, is that I’m always hoping to get a hold of the uncommon 3-cost Batman, World's Greatest Detective, and sticking with Lady Shiva means you don’t have to worry about those uniqueness issues. If you are concerned about being able to support loyalty, don’t hesitate to grab a couple Caped Crusaders.
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