Rocket Racer was the preview card given away at Gen Con Indy, which makes it the only new Web of Spider-Man card that players have their hands on. After receiving the card, most people asked, “What’s evasion?”

Evasion

Evasion is a keyword you’ll find on some characters that represents the following payment power:

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

At any point, you may stun the character with evasion, and at the start of the recovery phase, the character automatically recovers.

Note that the character can be exhausted when you choose to use its evasion power—you don’t have to activate it. Also, the automatic recovery does not count toward your regular recovery at the end of the turn. And, as always, when you stun your character to use its evasion power, you will lose endurance equal to its cost.

Now you’re asking, “Why on earth would I want to stun my own character?”

On the first turn that your opponent has the initiative and you both have multiple characters in play, you may be accustomed to KO’ing your smallest character during the recovery phase, since your opponent will often be able to stun more than one of your characters. However, if you have two characters in play and one has evasion, regardless of which character is attacked first, you can use that character’s evasion power. This will ensure that you have two characters in play for the next turn—the character with evasion will recover on its own, and you can choose to recover the other character.

Don’t forget that if you use the evasion power of your defending character, the attacker will ready and have the opportunity to attack again. Thus, you may lose a couple more points of endurance that turn than if you had not evaded. For a few endurance, you are retaining a character to swing back at your opponent in subsequent turns of the game. Essentially, evasion lets you trade endurance for board control. Now that evasion is being introduced in Web of Spider-Man, you can keep your forces on the board where they have more chances to interact and show off their stuff. This should hold especially true for smaller characters who don’t often survive until the later turns of the game.

Not only will evasion keep your characters safe from attacks, it is also a great tool for dodging the effects of cards like Gambit, Terra, and Flame Trap. Because stunning your character is part of the cost of evasion, and because you create an effect that will recover it later that turn, your opponent is powerless to respond to your evasion.

When attacking a defender with stats similar to the attacking character’s, evasion can be a nice safety net if your opponent powers up that defender or plays a card like Tag Team. If your attacker would become stunned without also taking down the defender, you have nothing to lose by using evasion. While it is rarely exciting to make an attack that fails, you can at least make sure your character lives to fight another day.

Evasion can also help set up your formation. Evasion is powerful against someone trying to pile on large amounts of breakthrough endurance loss with Savage Beatdown, It’s Clobberin’ Time!, or Lost City. If you make your formation so that your characters without evasion can be reinforced, then you can try to force your opponent to knock some breakthrough endurance loss past a character with evasion. Maybe your opponent would like to play two Savage Beatdowns in a single attack, but if he or she does, you can just evade—the attacker will ready when the attack concludes, but all the bonuses it had for that attack will be lost. While your opponent may be able to make a good subsequent attack on another character, sometimes he or she might not. Either way, you can make it tough for your opponent to decide when and how to use offensive plot twists.

Ever have a hard time keeping your character with Advanced Hardware on it in play? Well, you won’t have to have Mr. Fantastic, Stretch in play to accomplish this goal any more! Each turn you should be able to cause your opponent to lose 3 points of endurance, though you will be losing 1 or more endurance yourself. Plenty of other equipment will find a happy home on characters with evasion . . . just don’t mess around with The Blackbird.

There might also be a few cards that reward characters with evasion. Once evasion hits the scene, be sure to evaluate cards with the words “stunned characters” in their text carefully. A Death In The Family and Finishing Move should start to look more impressive. I’ll be more than happy if Last Stand sees competitive play. There are plenty of others, but I won’t spoil all your fun.

Since evasion also makes it easier to keep multiple characters around into the later turns of the game, be sure to pay attention to cards that key off of having a large number of characters in play.


And Now, Back to Rocket Racer

Rocket Racer’s got your back. He zips here and zips there. Just when it looks like a character has found the hole in your defenses, Rocket Racer comes to the rescue!

Against a deck where many characters do not have flight, Rocket Racer is a huge nuisance. If you put all of your other characters in the front row, your opponent will not actually be able to get to Rocket Racer until all of your other characters are stunned. And if your opponent managed to get through all of your other characters, you can simply use Rocket Racer’s evasion. Until your opponent has a character with flight, you will be able to reinforce each of your characters for the bargain price of 1 endurance each just by moving Rocket Racer behind the character that’s getting attacked. If you can predict where your opponent will make his or her first attack, you will not have to pay any endurance to reinforce the first of your defenders. Due to his strength against ground-based assaults, it should be fun to include Rocket Racer in decks containing Storm, Ororo Munroe or any other effects that keep your opponent’s characters grounded. In the case of Storm, you might want to have Marvel Team-Up, since Rocket Racer only reinforces Spider-Friends characters.

With cards like Twist of Fate, you should be able to get Rocket Racer into the fray early in the game. You might also want to include under-utilized cards referring to reinforcement, like Tag Team. With such cards and the other good defensive options the Spider-Friends have, like Spider Senses, you shouldn’t have any trouble taking the sting out of your opponent’s attacks.

Rocket Racer was a unanimous hit in R&D. We hope you’ll feel the same way.


Dave Humpherys
DHumpherys@metagame.com