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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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There are only a few days left before you can get your hands on the hot new Web of Spider-Man set. Better still, you will get to play in a Sealed Pack tournament to do so. That means you will almost certainly have to play with or against today’s preview card . . .
In the Spider-Man mythos, Harry Osborne was one of Spider-Man’s earliest and most enduring villains. He was also completely insane, as much a danger to himself as he was to Peter Parker and those around him. Come to think of it, he did murder Gwen Stacy. In the movie, that storyline was replayed with Mary Jane standing in for Gwen, albeit with much happier results. I guess he was actually much more dangerous to enemies, in that case, and you will find the same is true of the cardboard incarnation of the character.
The qualities that make Green Goblin as much a menace to himself as to those around him are captured nicely with his ability—pay 13 endurance to cause your opponent to lose the same. It is a symmetrical ability, and those can often seem off-putting to the novice card player. However, as anyone who has ever played any card game for any amount of time can tell you, symmetry is not what it’s cracked up to be.
The biggest advantage to playing with symmetrical card effects is that you know when they are coming. You can play for them, build your deck around them, and most importantly, win with them. Green Goblin is a common, and it should not be hard to find ways to use and abuse his ability. You probably don’t even need to pick him up early to make a deck around him. You can expect to see him circle the draft table at least once, just like the 6-drop Ra’s al Ghul in DC Origins draft. Big characters go much later than they did when Marvel Origins first hit the draft tables.
The biggest trick is figuring out how to draft around Green Goblin. The most obvious strategies involve you gaining endurance during the course of the game so you are far ahead of your opponent once you get to turn 7 and can activate your Green Goblin. If you were playing with DC Origins, a great example would be to draft a couple copies of Spoiler and gain your edge that way.
I haven’t seen too much action in the way of crossover formats, although the one I saw take place at Origins seemed like a blast. Fortunately, there is a 1-drop in the Web of Spider-Man set that not only allows you to gain endurance, but beats down on your opponent in the process. Don’t get too excited—you aren’t getting a two-for-one preview here. You already know the card I am talking about: Vulture, Adrian Toomes.
Vulture starts working for you right away and is another common card, so you can go into a Booster Draft or Sealed Pack tournament and plan accordingly. How times have changed since Marvel Origins. Can you ever imagine taking Ant-Man as an early pick? Yet in DC Origins, I know many people who pick Pantha first—Steve Sadin even made that claim in the PC coverage from PC Indy. Vulture will almost certainly follow suit and be a very high pick.
With Vulture, you will see tremendous endurance swings between you and your opponent. If you have any combat tricks or ATK-boosting equipment, it can become downright gaudy. You only need to look to the Card of the Day sidebar that featured Goblin Glider to find a good way to do this. If you are swinging for 6 endurance per turn, come turn 2, you will find yourself in an excellent position to activate Green Goblin a couple of times over with endurance to spare. I know that if I were going to playing this weekend in a Web of Spider-Man Sneak Preview tournament, I would certainly be drafting Vultures early and anticipating Green Goblins late. (Unfortunately, I can’t play in one because I will be running them this weekend at Neutral Ground.)
One of the other things to remember about the Green Goblin is that you don’t have to use his ability! He is still a substantially powered 7-drop with flight and range. His DEF is not so hot, but something has to give somewhere. If you have the initiative on the turn you play him, Green Goblin is a devastating attacker who can strike anywhere in your opponent’s arrangement. If you don’t have the initiative, he can still work to your advantage if you are ahead on the endurance front. Even if your opponent can stun him, you can still activate Green Goblin and cause your opponent to lose 13 endurance. You will probably be losing 20 endurance (assuming you reinforce your Green Goblin) but if you are far enough ahead, that’s fine. Again, if you’re not ahead, you don’t have to use Green Goblin’s ability. The problem is that Green Goblin can be stunned by many of the game’s 6-drops. You should keep your eyes peeled for DEF-boosting plot twists when playing with Green Goblin and his glass chin.
 There are many other ways to play around with Norman Osborne. Many of them will not become apparent until the tournament this weekend, but we can look to past sets for the types of cards to keep an eye out for. One thing that is definitely on my shopping list is anything that readies a character—Bart Allen ◊ Kid Flash, Cosmic Radiation, and Teen Titans Go! type cards. If you can get in an attack with Green Goblin and then ready him, you have a bunch of options. You can attack again, you can get in the way of your opponent’s attacker and activate Green Goblin, or you can just activate Green Goblin. If you can attack a character and then ready and activate, you are talking about close to 30 endurance loss for your opponent for your 13 endurance loss to activate Green Goblin.
Then there are cards like No Man’s Land and Puppet Master, which exhaust characters. If you can control the tempo of the early game with cards like these (and I don’t know if similar cards exist in the new set—we’ll all find out more this weekend), then Green Goblin should be an especially potent threat. You can keep your opponent’s offense back on its heels while your team picks apart his or her defense. Again, your goal is to take less endurance loss than your opponent until Green Goblin hits the table and finishes off the game.
All will be revealed by this weekend when players all over North America get their first full look at the third set to be released for Vs. System. If you attend one of these events, don’t let the unstable nature of Green Goblin put you off from playing with him. Remember to keep an eye out for some of the |
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