When it came time for assignment of the Metagame previews, we were told that we would get cards that appealed to each of us personally. Clearly, this raised the level of excitement just that little bit further beyond the typical lip-licking stage. Not only would we be getting cards before everybody else, but they would also come with our own particular appraisal from the overworked editorial team.

At first glance, I knew that Ms. Moondragon and I shared something, but I couldn’t quite put my hands on it. Given that I was unfamiliar with the life and times of Heather Douglas at this stage, I immediately went to those ever-present Sneak Preview tools: Google; the old Marvel Directory; and the new Marvel Directory, Luke Bartter. Following a link Luke sent me and feeling the weight of his digital snickering at my back, I found the answer in the very first line I read:

Moondragon’s most notable characteristics are her shaved head and her arrogance.

Heh. Got me.

All jokes aside, Moondragon is a complex card with a lot going on. As she is part of a small team in the set, the Infinity Watch, she is probably not as well known as the other characters. As a small child, Heather Douglas and her parents were traveling through the desert when the came across the spaceship of Thanos. With Thanos being the private type, their car was blown up and Heather was the only family member to survive (the corpse of her father, Arthur, would later be reanimated to become Drax the Destroyer). Heather was discovered by Mentor, the father of Thanos, and taken back to his home world of Titan to be raised. At the Career Development Office at Titan Junior High, Heather insisted on becoming a superhero, and was subsequently fitted out with the necessary martial arts skills, nunchuk skills, telepathy skills, and other psychic manipulation tools. On top of all that, she can levitate, but overall you get the picture.

Moondragon has had many adventures. She was a candidate to be the mother of a celestial savior, she took control of the minds of an entire planet’s population, her obsession with the Protector of the Universe Qasar almost led her to become a stalker, and she even made an appearance as a clone (the mark of true superhero greatness). The name Moondragon comes from Heather herself but refers to a powerful entity named The Dragon of the Moon that Heather believes she has resisted but that has possessed her. The Dragon has been known to influence her for evil ends on more than one occasion, though for the most part, Heather is able to stave off its more megalomaniacal demands.

The version of Moondragon we see above results from her stay on the Infinity Watch. The Infinity Watch was a group of self-appointed guardians invested with the power of the gems found in the Infinity Gauntlet, which was originally held by Thanos. The gems held great power but could also corrupt their possessors. Moondragon was granted power of the Mind gem, as her card denotes. While her incarnation of the Infinity Watch ended when Rune stole all the Infinity gems, the original members of the team had been assigned the gems based on their inability to use the gems at their full potential. The Mind gem allowed Moondragon to communicate telepathically with anyone else holding an Infinity gem but would not allow her to read minds.

When thinking about the card in actual game terms, it may come as a surprise to you that I am a fan of small team cards. When you think of teams like Secret Six, Fearsome Five, or even Kang, you must think of cards that are a little more offbeat and conducive to combinations than your regular big team beatdown. Moondragon fits this bill perfectly.

Most 6 ATK / 8 DEF 4-drops tend to be below the norm in both Sealed Pack and Constructed. However, you would be hard pressed to find a character from a recent set that has stats like that without a significant ability or set of abilities. A card like Kimiyo Hoshi ◊ Dr. Light, Starlight Sentinel was an identically built card with an amazing power. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you enjoy finding new combinations of cards or building decks around novel ideas, then you should actively search out the cards with the odd-looking stats when sets first come out. These are the cards on which R&D has slapped a big warning sticker. Essentially, 6 ATK / 8 DEF says to me that there is something dangerous about this card’s text.

The text in question is not really anything we’ve seen before. Sure, Moondragon has similarities with Sage, Tessa and even The Science Spire, but the method by which Moondragon goes about the business of card advantage is unique. As far as I know, there haven’t been any card-drawing cards that have referenced the phases before. Even superficially, we can see great potential for abuse in this card. If we count an extra card for each phase (draw, build, combat, and recovery), we could be drawing up to four cards per turn. Without the need for discard or any other built-in disadvantage, I don’t think I need to explain to you how powerful this could be!

The trick will be how we go about tapping into such enormous potential. Because the character doesn’t come online until the build phase of the fourth turn, we need to crack the whip and get moving if we are going to bury our opponents under an avalanche of card advantage. At this stage, not knowing anything about the rest of her team or the set, I would think that the place to start would be with plot twists and equipment cards that provide effects that draw cards. Cards like Laser Watch and other team-stamped effects like Q Field and A Moment of Crisis come to mind. The reason that I’m separating plot twists and equipment from locations and characters is because you can play those categories of cards straight away, whereas the others are limited to particular situations, and worse, phases. The card drawing still requires a bit of work, so we would need to ensure that we can time our draws to occur at least once per phase.

Of course, characters and locations that draw cards are not useless to a plan involving Moondragon, especially if they are able to draw their cards at any time during the game (like Barbara Gordon ◊ Oracle, Bird of Prey). The focus with this card should be to keep the cards ticking over, slowly but steadily accumulating more and more. Even if Moondragon were KO’d on the fifth turn, she still has the potential to draw you five or six extra cards.

Any Constructed deck that aims to have Moondragon in play on the fourth turn will not only want to find ways of maintaining the flow of cards, but also ways to use those cards. If we are focused on plot twists and equipment, there will definitely be opportunities to use them, but every deck needs characters, and a great deal of the cards we hope to draw will likely be characters. In this sense, a card like Brainiac, Earth 2 or Bastion, Leader of Operation Zero Tolerance could be complementary to the overall strategy.