Since I began this introductory series of articles, I’ve received a few emails from new players asking for a little help with some of the game’s keyword mechanics, and how they affect and interact with game play. Hopefully, this article will put you guys on the right road and help to clear up a couple of cloudy issues for you. I’ll begin at the beginning:

Loyalty

The first keyword to appear in Vs. System was loyalty. The new keyword debuted in DC Origins and placed restrictions on recruiting your characters:

“Recruit this card only if you control a character that shares at least one team affiliation with this card.”

While the keyword might have been a new feature, the mechanic certainly wasn’t. Powerful characters from Marvel Origins such as Thing, Heavy Hitter had already been shackled in this way. Loyalty does not have a major impact on game play per se, but rather impacts deck construction. If you are including characters that have loyalty, you want to be sure that you can meet the requirement. Missing a drop in Vs. System is bad, but missing a drop even though you have the correct character in hand is just horrible. In the early days of DC Origins, League of Assassins players often had this problem. Ubu, Ra’s al Ghul’s Bodyguard was a very popular 3-drop in the League of Assassins deck, but his loyalty could sometimes cause a problem.

When the Marvel Knights set was released, we saw the first interesting development in loyalty. Marvel Knights was the first set to introduce 1-drop characters with the keyword. Now, as an exclusively curve player, I found this a little confusing. Of course, I soon realized (after much abuse from the guys at my local store) that these new, loyal 1-drops were pushing for off-curve builds. Some of the characters in Marvel Knights had, in essence, double loyalty. For example, Professor X, Mutant Mentor was an X-Men 1-drop with loyalty that also required you to control an X-Statix character.

Recently, loyalty has evolved, and we have a new keyword that is not quite as restrictive: loyalty—reveal.

“If you don’t control a character that shares an affiliation with this card, then as an additional cost to recruit this card, reveal a character card from your hand or resource row that shares an affiliation with this card.”

While not quite as restrictive as its older brother, loyalty—reveal still keeps a leash on powerful characters. It’s just not quite as severe as the choke-chain that is loyalty.

Boost

Boost was another keyword to make its first appearance in DC Origins.

“As an additional cost to recruit this card, you may pay X resource points. If you do, this card has its boost text this turn.”

Boost was a welcome addition to the game because it gave us a way to maximize the use of resource points that might otherwise be wasted. The number next to the word “boost” represents the amount of additional resource points you must pay to use that character’s boost power. For example, Dawn Granger ◊ Dove, Agent of Order has the following power:

“While you control Hank Hall, Dawn Granger gets +1 ATK and +1 DEF.

Boost 2: When Dawn Granger comes into play, if you don’t control Hank Hall, search your deck for a card named Hank Hall and put it into your front row. Shuffle your deck.”

Dawn’s natural cost is 1, and the boost cost is 2 resource points, so the earliest you can recruit Dawn with boost is turn 3. See, you don’t need to go and read a Jeremy Blair article for advanced mathematics. I got you covered right here.

Equally, if the boost cost is open-ended and represented by an “X,” you can spend any number (0 being the lowest) of resource points to use the power. For example, Vic Stone ◊ Cyborg, Human Machine has the following power:

“Boost X: When Vic Stone comes into play, search your deck for an equipment card with a cost of X or less and equip it to Vic Stone. Shuffle your deck.”

So, when you recruit Vic on turn 4, you can boost him by 0 resource points to search out a 0-cost equipment. Fate Artifacts or Infinity Gems, anyone?

Evasion

Evasion was the first real gameplay–centric keyword. Introduced in Web of Spider-Man, it endowed the web-slinger and his pals with an interesting new power:

“Stun this character >>> At the start of the recovery phase this turn, recover this character.”

This was something else I had a little trouble assimilating at first. I mean, why on earth would you want to stun your own characters? After all, you spend half the game trying to stop your opponent doing just that. Surely, it’s just shooting yourself in the foot? Then it occurred to me—shooting yourself in the foot was a ploy of the battle-weary soldiers in World War I. In an effort to “cop a Blighty” (a trip back home to Britain) and get out of the firing line, front line infantry would frequently shoot each others’ appendages. Poor show if you ask me, but it often did the trick. Evasion can really get you out of a tight spot, and can help maintain your board presence for another turn at the expense of some endurance points. If your opponent is attacking your character and decides to play a few combat pumps, you can simply evade your character to remove the defender from the attack. The result is that the attacker (your opponent’s character) readies, but the ATK pumps have been wasted; the opponent does not get them back.

Here are a couple of important things to remember about evasion. If your character is stunned, it no longer has evasion. The rules on stunned characters can be found in the comprehensive rules in section 701.12, but the general gist of it is that a stunned character keeps most of the information it had before it was stunned (such as cost, team affiliation, flight, range, and so forth), but its text box becomes inactive, so all keywords and powers are “switched off.” This means that you can’t rely on something like Ricochet, Johnny Gallo to protect your stunned character from Finishing Move or other similar effects.

The other important thing to remember about evasion is that you recover all characters that have evaded (in whatever order you wish) before you get your natural “free” recovery that occurs every turn. So, for example, if you recruit Electric Eve, Live Wire on turn 1 and your opponent has no recruit of his or her own, you can attack directly for 2 endurance loss and then evade. At the start of the recovery phase, the character recovers (dealing 1 endurance loss), at which point you can evade again. You can’t recover Eve again as part of the evasion modifier, because the “start of recovery” has already passed, but you can recover her as your natural one recovery per turn, thus dealing another point of endurance loss.

 

 

Superman, Man of Steel was the set that introduced us to the cosmic keyword. Here is the excerpt from the FAQ that relates to cosmic:

Cosmic is a keyword that some characters have. The cosmic rules are as follows:

·         While a character has a cosmic counter, its cosmic text is active.

·         Cosmic characters come into play with a cosmic counter unless they come into play stunned.

·         Only cosmic characters can have a cosmic counter, and no more than one cosmic counter each.

·         As a character becomes stunned, remove its cosmic counter.

·         While stunned, characters lose cosmic and can’t have a cosmic counter.

It was generally thought that while the idea behind cosmic was sound, the characters in Man of Steel did not really have enough cosmic punch to compete on the tournament circuit. That was until Michael Jacob stormed into the Top 8 of Pro Circuit Indy 2005 (as he has a habit of doing) with his Superman Blue deck. Cosmic is a fairly tricky mechanic to use well. If your opponent has any kind of combat tricks, you can be sure that you’re going to lose cosmic counters quite frequently. So why play with cosmic? Well, some of the powers are ridiculously good (such as Zeitgeist’s, a personal favorite of mine). The most recent set, Heralds of Galactus, has seen cosmic undergo something of a renaissance. With new powers and plenty of opportunities to replace lost counters, cosmic has picked up in popularity again. And like loyalty, it also has a newer, younger sibling. Cosmic—surge has all the same rules as cosmic, except the character does not come into play with a cosmic counter. Rather, your character gains a cosmic counter at the start of the recovery phase each turn. Remember, though, that your character must be unstunned at the start of recovery to get the counter.

Concealed

Marvel Knights gave us a new mechanic that really turned combat on its head and introduced a whole new area of game play. A character with concealed comes into play in the hidden area, and hidden characters can’t be attacked unless a card says otherwise. This can be a little risky, but the benefits can be worthwhile. If you control no visible characters (all your characters are hidden), then your opponent can attack your endurance points directly. Ouch. The benefit, though, is that you will almost always be able to attack back. With your characters skulking in the shadows, waiting for the moment to strike, they often go unmolested. A common misconception among new players I’ve spoken to is that hidden characters can attack your opponent’s hidden characters. This is not the case unless a card says otherwise (such as No Man Escapes the Manhunters).

There are quite a few effects that allow you to move characters between the hidden and visible areas. There are consequences, though. If a character in the visible area has equipment attached to it, that equipment will be put into the KO’d pile as it moves to the hidden area. You can’t take it with you, bub. Well . . . that is unless the equipment has the keyword concealed—optional. The chaps at Upper Deck have a habit of improving things as the game evolves, and concealed is no different. Concealed—optional allows you to recruit a card to either the visible or hidden area—your choice. Characters and equipment can have concealed—optional, and this is what protects your gray-bordered cards from hitting the KO’d pile when your characters shift into the shadows.

Concealed can be very, very strong. The Anti-Matter team is a group that knows how to get their “ninja” on. The AGL rush deck uses lost of hidden guys that swell in numbers as the game goes on. Because they can’t (generally speaking) be attacked back, the AGL player soon builds a formidable force that is able to crush an opponent very quickly. The Hellfire Club takes the opposite route, drawing the game out to the later turns. For the vast majority of the game, the Hellfire Club will have just one visible character, but many lurking behind the scenes supporting the lone warrior.

Willpower

Willpower first appeared with the arrival of the Green Lantern Corps. Willpower is a little different from the other keywords in that it doesn’t actually do anything. Rather, it is a numerical reference for other cards. A character’s willpower can be increased or decreased by in-game effects. A card like Oa can be pretty devastating in an offensive willpower deck, and Guy Gardner, Egomaniac can create an insurmountable brick wall. There have been two really strong willpower-based decks that have had a major influence on their respective formats. GLEE was a Green Lantern / Emerald Enemies deck that totally dominated the DC Modern Age Pro Circuit Indy 2005. Just fewer than 70% of players in attendance used that deck in one form or another, and in the end, David Leader took the top prize with this build:

The deck aims to lock down your opponent’s characters by using Rain of Acorns. When the opponent is able to attack, Cover Fire and Helping Hand will normally be enough to withstand the strongest offensive. The game generally ends when you bring out one of your massive 8-drops.

Well, it’s getting late and I think we’ve all consumed enough information for the time being. Next week, I will continue our look at the keyword mechanics of Vs. System and we’ll start things off with one of my favorites, reservist. But before we go . . .

Deckbuilder Challenge Cup

While we wait for the votes to be counted on challenge #5, it’s time to get your gray cells working on a new challenge. Given the subject of this week’s article, I thought it would be a good idea to set you a corresponding challenge.

Deckbuilder Challenge # 6: Mechanics

·         You must construct a sixty-card deck that focuses on one of the game’s keyword mechanics. You may choose from one of the following: ally, backup, concealed (concealed—optional),* cosmic (cosmic—surge),* evasion, leader, Mutant, press, reservist, vengeance, or willpower.

·         You may only use two characters that do not have your chosen keyword. All other characters must have the keyword you chose.

·         You must give your deck a name and one paragraph of description.

·         All printed cards are legal, including Overload, Gone But Not Forgotten, Antarctic Research Base, and Justice League of Arkham.

·         Do not netdeck! I do not expect to see copies of Michael Jacob’s Avengers reservist deck. Have a bit of originality.

You can submit your decks to me via email or by posting on the dedicated thread on my website (www.the-kamiza.com).

*Cosmic and cosmic­—surge count as one, as do concealed and concealed—optional.

Cheers.

Steve

Steve “Kamiza” Garrett is an ardent supporter of casual Vs. play and has been an active member of the vast Vs. System online community since day one. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to email him at kamiza989@gmail.com or pester him at his website, www.the-kamiza.com.