Granny Goodness is the first character to facilitate inter-affiliation team ups. Clone Saga, Forced Allegiance, and Sinister Six all have similar effects, but using Granny instead allows you to create teams ups without wasting slots in your deck on non-characters. The downside is that she is generally a little more fragile than something like Forced Allegiance. You may be forced to recover her each turn to ensure that your random crew stays teamed together. If you’re building a Granny Goodness deck, you may still want to include a few Forced Allegiances in case you don’t draw her or want to have the option of KO’ing her.

So, what does a Granny Goodness deck look like?

An off-curve weenie swarm using each team’s All-Stars with cost 3 or less. For example, you could have a crew of Ant Man, Black Cat, Master Thief, Granny Goodness, two Mysterios, Hank Hall ◊ Hawk, Dawn Granger ◊ Dove, and Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner out on turn 5. They could all set aside their personal differences to team attack, reinforce, and make use of Darkseid’s Elite’s plot twists and locations. Be sure to keep Granny in mind, as All-Star team possibilities expand with the release of each new set. Each new character is a potential member of “Team Granny,” and she doesn’t even restrict the membership to characters in the DC universe. She really is everyone’s favorite Granny!

If you’re trying to fit her into a deck that continues up the character curve, you might consider selecting characters than fit well at both the bottom and top of the curve. Specifically, you might try to find the best cards at a cost of 3 or less that have good boosts. Some possibilities are Kyle Abbot, Man-Wolf, Silvermane, Mysterio, Dusk, and Beetle. Including a lot of these characters will help you hit your drops each turn.

Alternatively, you could focus on just two teams, combining Darkseid’s Elite’s best weenies with those from your favorite team. This would make it easier to include characters with team-stamped costs (like Vulture). Granny would act like a team-up card that could also attack. She’d also be like a Shriek for all of your small characters.

If you are a loyal Darkseid’s Elite fan and find this talk of outsiders blasphemous, rest assured that Granny also has a place in mono–Darkseid’s Elite decks. Her 3 ATK and 5 DEF are reasonable for a 3-cost character, especially if you have other characters in play who will benefit from the +1 ATK she bestows.

Regardless of which approach you take, it’s important to remember that your characters will lose their initial affiliations. This means you’ll need to rely on generic or Darkseid’s Elite plot twists and locations to enhance your characters. I’m not allowed to delve into those cards just yet, but I’ll point you in the direction of Happiness Home and a number of cards in the set containing the word “Apokolips.” These cards fit well with certain swarm strategies, but be warned . . . some of them are double-edged.