We all know what you came here for. You wanted to see a card from the new X-Men set, and I gave it to you up front. Now, before you run off to your favorite Hobby League or discussion forum to talk about your initial impressions, I have a humble request. How about taking a few minutes to read my take on this new card? Does that sound pretty reasonable? Good, I thought so. Let’s get started.

A few days ago, when I was first shown the card image you just saw, I had an immediate (and entirely unjustified) reaction. That reaction was, in a nutshell, “This card must be bad.” There’s a reason why I responded in this way. Specifically, the first thing that I thought of was what would happen if I cracked open a copy of Spiral in my Sealed Pack. Let’s go through the specifics of the card. First of all, it has 12 ATK and 13 DEF, and it doesn’t have flight or range. These stats, while once considered pretty spectacular, now seem to be only marginally above average. The previous set is a fair indicator of what the power level of the next set might look like, and Justice League of America contained five 6-drops with 12 ATK and 13 DEF. So, at first glance, I was interested but not impressed. To impress me, Spiral’s ability would have to be game breaking.

The final feature of Spiral is in her rules text. “Whenever Spiral causes 3 or more breakthrough while attacking a character, you may stun target character with cost 5 or less adjacent to that defender.” This gave me pause and had me running through different game scenarios in my head. Exactly how often in Sealed Pack, I asked myself, is this stun actually going to happen? Let’s think about it. Since your primary objective while trying to get Spiral to work is to cause breakthrough, the weakness you’re looking for in your opponent’s formation is a character that’s adjacent only to a front row character. If the character attacked by Spiral is adjacent to a support row character, your opponent can simply reinforce, and Spiral’s ability does nothing. This presents a bit of a problem, because your opponent can see Spiral coming.

So then, the answer to the question I originally posed—exactly when in Sealed Pack is this stun actually going to happen?—is never. Your opponent would have to be inattentive to allow you to get a free stun off Spiral.

All right, then . . . here’s why I was wrong. A day after this initial reaction, I took another look at Spiral, and something about the card hit me. In the sentence that describes what seems to be a marginal ability are the words “stun target character.” Those three little words warrant a double-take. Vs. is all about board advantage gained through stunning characters in painstakingly calculated combat. “Stun target character” means you get to skip all of that. Stun target character speaks of an abusable effect. Stun target character is the stuff that Roy Harper, Arthur Light, and Overload are made of.

Looking back, I was sure that my initial assessment regarding Sealed Pack was correct—Spiral’s is an ability that’s simply never going to go off. What I had completely neglected, though, were applications in Constructed. It’s certainly true that Spiral has weaknesses. Those weaknesses can be circumvented, however, by utilizing her in a deck packed full of cards that deal with them. In much the same way that an aggressive Titans deck can make Roy Harper’s resource KO’ing drawback negligible, playing Spiral in conjunction with certain other cards can make her a powerhouse.

Let’s think about a Constructed game. It’s turn 6 and you’ve just played Spiral. Your opponent will form in such a way that Spiral can’t do very much damage—you can be sure of that. Now, think of the same situation, except this time, you have Flying Kick and Blind Sided in your hand. No matter how your opponent has formed his or her characters, that player is going to get annihilated. There are dozens of cards that can augment Spiral to shore up her weaknesses. It would be both tedious and unnecessary to list them all here, but I’ll offer some quick suggestions about what type of cards you should be looking for.

Problem: Support row characters can reinforce the character that Spiral is attacking.

Solution: Exhaust characters that could potentially reinforce.

Cards: Magneto, Eric Lehnsherr, Dazzler

Problem: Support row characters can reinforce the character that Spiral is attacking.

Solution: Reinforcement? What’s reinforcement?

Cards: Blind Sided, Ant Man

Problem: Spiral can’t get to vulnerable support row characters.

Solution: Give Spiral flight.

Cards: Flying Kick, Air Strike

Before I go, there are two other areas that I’d like to touch on. The first is this card’s effect on Sealed Pack. Although I keep repeating myself that you’ll never get the opportunity to stun a character with Spiral in a Sealed Pack game, that’s not to say that she won’t affect the way the game plays out. A Spiral on the board will force your opponent to form in a certain way. This formation could very well be downright awful, exposing your opponent to a lot of breakthrough, but the opponent won’t have much of a choice because almost anything is preferable to having one of your characters stunned for free. Although forcing your opponent’s hand like this isn’t quite as powerful as stunning a character, it’s not a negligible effect. This is certainly something to consider.