Today, we will round off our look at the keyword mechanics in Vs. System. Our first port of call shall be:

Reservist

Reservist was first introduced as a mechanic in the Avengers set, and it really shook things up. As I stated last week, reservist is one of my favorite keyword mechanics because, like concealed, it takes a relatively mundane aspect of the game and spices it up quite a bit. A character with reservist can be recruited from your resource row as well as from your hand, which in its own right can be quite advantageous. There are often times when the god of card draw is frowning down on you and decrees that you will draw nothing but characters. It is a sickening feeling to miss your 4-drop after you earlier drew a copy but were forced to lay it as a resource thanks to a lack of suitable alternatives. With a reservist character, there is no such heartache. Simply reveal it from your resource row, identifying it as your recruit, and then choose whether or not to fill the hole in your resource row with a card from your hand. On its own, this is a very useful function, but that is not all she wrote. There are teams and decks that thrive on reservist characters.

$10K Gen Con UK 2005
First Place, Karl Bown

Characters
4 Rick Jones
4 Beast, Furry Blue Scientist
4 Natasha Romanoff ◊ Black Widow, Super Spy
4 Dane Whitman ◊ Black Knight
4 Black Panther, T’Challa
4 Quicksilver, Mutant Avenger
4 Carol Danvers ◊ Warbird
4 Hawkeye, Clinton Barton
4 She-Hulk, Gamma Bombshell
4 Wonder Man
4 Hercules

Plot Twists
4 Call Down the Lightning
4 Heroes in Reserve
2 No Man Escapes the Manhunters
3 Savage Beatdown

Locations
3 Avengers Mansion

Karl was not the first person to gain success at a major event with the reservist deck; that honor goes to Michael Jacob, who won $10K Orlando 2005 (he keeps popping up, doesn’t he?) with an Avengers build. As you can see, Heroes in Reserve; Call Down the Lightning; and Avengers Mansion are all enhanced by face-down characters with the reservist keyword. Other highlights of the deck are Black Panther, T’Challa; She-Hulk, Gamma Bombshell; and Wonder Man. All rely on having reservist characters in abundance and all are more powerful for it.

Recruiting a reservist character from your resource row can have other strategic benefits. Placing a card from your hand into your resource row (filling the void left by your recruit) is entirely optional, and it is often advantageous not to do so. There have been versions of The New Brotherhood deck that use reservists as a way of smoothing your recruits and managing the resource row. Something to bear in mind from a rules perspective is that placing a card from your hand into your resource row is done upon announcement of the recruit, and therefore before any costs of recruiting are paid. That basically means that you cannot use as your “new” resource a card in hand that you are required to discard or reveal as part of the recruit cost.

Leader

Leader was another keyword mechanic to appear in the Avengers set, and it produced some very interesting choices. The text following the leader keyword describes a character’s leader powers and involves characters that are adjacent to the leader character. For example, if your field looked like this: 

If we assume that all characters are teamed-up, we have sufficient face-down resources for Doctor Druid’s ability, and the character is defending, then:

·         Captain America would be 12 ATK / 14 DEF. He is adjacent to Black Bolt and Beetle ◊ Mach 4. He gets +2 DEF from Black Bolt’s ability, but nothing from Beetle because Cap’s recruit cost puts him out of range. He gets nothing from Doctor Druid because he is not adjacent to him.

·         Beetle ◊ Mach 4 would be 18 ATK / 19 DEF. He is adjacent to Captain America and Doctor Druid. He gets +2 ATK / +2 DEF from the Super Soldier and +2 DEF from the good doctor. He is not adjacent to Black Bolt, so there’s no bonus from him.

·         Doctor Druid would be 10 ATK / 13 DEF. He is adjacent to Beetle ◊ Mach 4 and Black Bolt. He gets +3 ATK / +3 DEF from Beetle and +2 DEF from Black Bolt. He is not adjacent to Captain America, so he gets no enhancement from that quarter.

·         Black Bolt would be 11 ATK / 12 DEF. He is adjacent to Captain America and Doctor Druid and gains the benefits from that fortuitous position. He is not adjacent to Beetle ◊ Mach 4, but he would be ineligible for the stat boost anyway.

As you can see from this example, the leader mechanic makes the formation step even more important than before. Remember, though, that as with all other text-box abilities, leader is switched off while the character is stunned.

Ally

The Justice League of America set brought us another powerful keyword to play with. Ally powers trigger whenever a character you control becomes powered-up. Most ally powers will trigger off any character you control becoming powered-up, regardless of whether it has the keyword itself. Ally, as a mechanic, gave birth to the powerful Good Guys deck. A team-up between JLI and JLA proved to be the most consistent and effective way to utilize the ally keyword, and the union has worked well, featuring highly in all the top-level tournaments since the mechanic hit the streets.

Pro Circuit Indy 2006

Third Place, David Leader

“Good Guys”

Characters
4 Ted Kord ◊ Blue Beetle
4 Sue Dibny
1 Maxwell Lord, Financier
1 Booster Gold
1 Connor Hawke ◊ Green Arrow
4 Shayera Thal ◊ Hawkwoman
4 Katar Hol ◊ Hawkman, Thanagarian Enforcer
1 Oliver Queen ◊ Green Arrow, Emerald Archer
1 Oliver Queen ◊ Green Arrow, Hard-Traveling Hero
1 John Henry Irons ◊ Steel, Steel-Drivin’ Man
2 Fire, Beatriz DaCosta
3 Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster

Plot Twists
4 Blinding Rage
3 Trial by Fire
4 Hero’s Welcome
4 Magical Lobotomy
4 World’s Greatest Heroes
4 Magnificent Seven

Locations
4 Kooey Kooey Kooey

Equipment
4 Nth Metal
1 Amulet of Nabu
1 Cloak of Nabu

The keys to this deck’s success are consistency and synergy. For example, you have three characters capable of searching out further characters. Two of your characters can find the oh-so-powerful Nth Metal, making it far easier to trigger ally powers. Here’s a scenario for you:

You have Connor Hawke ◊ Green Arrow; Shayera Thal ◊ Hawkwoman; and Katar Hol ◊ Hawkman. Katar Hol is equipped with Nth Metal, making him 8 ATK / 8 DEF. He attacks your opponent’s 5-drop. Nth Metal triggers, powering him up to 9 ATK / 9 DEF. His own power triggers, making him 11 ATK / 9 DEF. Connor’s power increases his stats to 12 ATK / 9 DEF, and then, to make matters all the sweeter, Shayera uses her ally power to fetch another copy of Katar Hol that you can use to power-up again. After the standard power-up bonus of another +1 ATK / +1 DEF, Katar’s own power takes him to 15 ATK / 10 DEF. Connor sticks another +1 ATK in there, and then Shayera can search again to start the loop once more. That is just one example of how well the ally powers can work together. Power-up decks tend to suffer from a shortage of cards in hand, but in this particular deck, that issue is addressed by the presence of Mr. Mxyzptlk and some additional card drawing from the plot twists. Ally is a very impressive addition to Vs. System.

Mutant

Introduced in The X-Men, Mutant is a class of character rather than a game mechanic, and much like willpower, it doesn’t actually do anything. Mutant is a reference point for other cards in the game, and there are currently three Mutant traits in Vs. System: Physical, Mental, and Energy. Unless a card specifically states that it is a Mutant or has a Mutant trait; it is not classed as a Mutant by game rules. You cannot play Homo Superior on your Wolverine, James Howlett, because he is not a legal target for the card. You could play it on Skrunucklehead, though. Sentinel Mark VI would not get its ATK and DEF bonus while in combat with Magneto, Master of Magnetism, but it would be enhanced while attacking or defending against Magneto, Acts of Vengeance.

There are a few non-character cards that have Mutant traits. These are clearly identified by their card text. One example is Pack Tactics, which is classed as a Physical card and can be used as such. For example, Pack Tactics can be discarded for Immovable’s effect.

On characters, the Mutant trait is not part of the text-box, so it is not “switched off” when a character becomes stunned. If you control a Rachel Summers ◊ Phoenix and a stunned Exodus, Rachel’s power is still in effect because you still control another Mental character, even though it is stunned.

Vengeance

This keyword appeared in the last DC set, Infinite Crisis. Much like ally, it is a keyword that triggers off an event. In this case, the trigger is when your character becomes stunned. In the vast majority of Vs. System games, characters are going to get stunned—there’s no two ways about it. Vengeance enables you to make the most of this bad situation. Because vengeance is such a new keyword, it has had little time to develop and establish itself in the game. As of yet, the only team to feature the mechanic heavily is Villains United. Using vengeance is very simple. When your character becomes stunned, it triggers the power. You still suffer the usual stun endurance loss, and the recovery of characters still works in the same way. There are no evasion-esque rules to complicate things.

Backup

Another keyword to come out of the Infinite Crisis set was backup. At the moment, there are only a few characters that have access to this mechanic, so like vengeance it hasn’t really been exploited yet. A backup power is an activated power that must be used during the build phase. Just to remind you of the order of things:

Draw Phase

Build Phase (consisting of resource, recruit, and formation steps)

Combat Phase

Recovery Phase

So, you must use backup powers after players have passed from the draw phase and before all players pass on an empty chain in the last formation step.

Press

The last stop on our journey through keyword mechanics is a new feature that arrived in the latest set. Heralds of Galactus brought us a new team (the Kree) with a very interesting off-curve mechanic. Some characters have the press keyword and it endows them with the following ability:

 When you recruit this card, your next character costs 1 less to recruit this turn for each press card you recruited this turn, but no less than 1.

Press opens up some very intriguing possibilities, but it can confuse people. To help understand exactly how it works, here is an excerpt from the official FAQ:

Example: You have 6 resource points to spend in your recruit step. First, you recruit a 2-cost press character. That character doesn’t reduce its own cost, so you’re left with 4 points. You then recruit a 4-cost press character, but you pay 3 (1 less, because the last character you recruited this turn had press). You now pay 2 less to recruit your next character, so you can use your last point to recruit

·         a 3-cost character; or

·         a 2-cost character (although you must still pay the minimum of 1); or

·         a 1-cost character, as usual.

As you can see, this gives you some great opportunities to play multiple characters of a reasonable size per turn.

Well, that covers the important keywords to date. I hope this has been at least a little bit useful for the new players out there. If you have any requests or suggestions for topics that you would like covered in future editions of Basics, please feel free to email me at kamiza989@gmail.com.

Deckbuilder Challenge Cup

It’s time to announce the results for DBC#5—Batman’s pants.

The results were compiled from email votes and the poll over at VsRealms.com. The votes cast were as follows:

Mike Mullins, “Iconic Identities”: 28%

Onyxweapon, “ME AM FATE #1!”: 26%

George Shafer, “Shadowpants”: 23%

Brian Foley, “The International Checkmate Villains Injustice Society”: 13%

Alapai Michels, “Vngnc (Vengeance without the Filler)”: 10%

That means the points are scored as:

Mike Mullins: 5 points

Onyxweapon: 3 points

George Shafer: 1 point

Let’s have a look at the leader board to see how things stand overall:

1. Mike Mullins, 6 points

2. Nick Seaman, 6 points

3. Brian Herman, 5 points

4. Techno, 5 points

5. Tom Reeve, 5 points

6. Jin Yi Huang, 3 points

7. George Shafer, 4 points

8. Ian Vincent, 3 points

9. Onyxweapon, 3 points

10. Tombster212, 3 points

11. Zach Luster, 1 point

12. Sam Roads, 1 point

This win moves Mike to the top of the leader board—congratulations, Mike! Be sure to get your submissions in for DBC#6—Mechanics (see last week’s article).

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