Yes, I finally named the column! For the past three months, I’ve written about shared mechanics across large card groups. I’ve picked apart sizable categories of cards to discover which are best in which contexts, and all I could come up with were things like “Playing the Same Game” and “Column 12A9-2B.” Admittedly, there’s likely nothing in the Vs. System that will ever be totally freaking broken, but what can I say? It has a nicer ring to it than “Totally Better Than the Six Other Cards That Are Kind of Like It . . . Sort of . . . Kinda.” Plus, it looks better on a t-shirt.

So yeah, welcome to the first (named) instalment of the column, where every week I dissect a group of cards with a shared theme and try to figure out which are the cream of the crop. After looking at stun-effect cards last week, I think cards that allow you to recover characters are worth a gander now, especially since Web of Spider-Man has introduced some incredibly good cards that let you break the one recovery per turn rule. Heck, Web of Spider-Man has single-handedly revived X-Men as a viable team in competitive play, and that fact has made some players take a second look at the concept of recovery.

This column will deal with non-proprietary recovery effects: cards that can be used to recover stunned characters of any team affiliation. The follow-up column will cover team-proprietary recovery effects.

Overall, there are eleven cards that allow you to recover characters. All but four are team-proprietary, and though the ones with the most raw power and immediate utility are unique to specific teams, the four non-proprietary cards have a lot of subtle strengths and potential within certain frames of use.

Of the four non-proprietary cards, three are plot twists, and one is a location. We’ll look at each individually.

Each set that has been released has a single “recover anybody” plot twist. They always have a threshold cost of 2, but there are some distinct differences between each that become especially important for Limited play. Marvel Origins’s was Medical Attention. Medical Attention is the most basic of the three recovery plot twists. It allows you to exhaust any character to recover any character, but it has to be used during the recovery phase. If you can afford to wait until the recovery phase, which you’ll normally be able to do, it’s probably the best option when compared with Rise from the Grave and Home Surgery. It’s most useful in a Fantastic Four deck or anything running Teen Titans, since both teams have cards that can ready characters multiple times and make good use of multiple exhaustions per character. Depending on your metagame, Medical Attention can also make an interesting one-of in a Teen Titans deck. In some places it’s worth using in conjunction with Garth ◊ Tempest, while in others, Heroic Sacrifice will clearly be of more worth. Though Heroic Sacrifice in Titans decks was heavily tested in the months leading up to Gen Con Indy, Medical Attention was under-played, and considering its utility in the deck (especially to make Red Star even more of an unkillable pest), it’s really worth considering. Since the deck has three all-stars in sequence on the curve (Roy Harper ◊ Arsenal at 3, Red Star at 4, and Garth at the 5 spot), one of the most difficult parts of playing a Teen Titans deck is deciding which of those three to throw into the KO’d pile when two are stunned. It is often a game breaking decision; Medical Attention can save you from making that decision, so despite it being a rather innocuous choice in the current environment, it really can make a difference.

In Sealed Pack, its value goes up quite a bit. You’re more prone to miss drops, swings in field presence are harder to overcome, and your early drops are often of lower value than they would be in Constructed. The restriction of having to be used in the recovery phase, as opposed to the restrictions on the other recover-anybody cards, is light and doesn’t make it difficult to play. I’m hard-pressed to think of a Sealed Pack situation, whether it’s just Marvel Origins or a mixed set pool, where I wouldn’t want one or more copies of Medical Attention.

Next up is Home Surgery, which features the wonderful art of the upcoming 6-drop Alfred Pennyworth patching up Batman . . . Ok, so maybe I’m stretching a bit to make the art fit the card’s effect. But maybe, just maybe, Superman, Man of Steel will feature “Alfred Pennyworth, Gamma-Irradiated Monster Who Likes Sewing.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Home Surgery has a defined niche. The fact that you have to exhaust a bigger character to recover a small one means it’s not going to see much play in Constructed, but it shines in Teen Titans, where it can be combined with Heroic Sacrifice. The freedom of timing that you get from Home Surgery is built to work in conjunction with Heroic Sacrifice. Basically how it works is that if the opponent attacks one of your high recruit-cost Titans in play, you use Heroic Sacrifice to remove all the threatening attackers from the attack. To pay for Heroic Sacrifice, you stun a Titan that is smaller than the one you’re saving—it stuns immediately because it’s a cost of activation, not an effect upon resolution. You then add Home Surgery to the chain in order to recover the character stunned in payment for