The sneak peeks are over and we’ve had our taste of Green Lantern, and now we must wait another week and a bit until we can buy packs and boxes and cases from our various hobby shops. (Support your local hobby shop! Down with internet retailing!) While everyone wants to be a prophet and predict how this set will sweep the metagame off its feet and become the first true new powerhouse set (or at least raise some more DC teams up to Tier 1), I thought I’d explore only what the sneak peeks showed me last weekend.
So, this week I’ll be looking at some specific, non-rare cards you’ll want to consider for your Sealed or Draft decks. Some may seem obvious to you and others may seem overly risky, but all of them have contributed to notches in the win column. Why non-rares? Because you’re more likely to get your hands on them and they will therefore have more impact on solid Sealed Pack builds.
We’ll start with Fiero; she is an absolute game-breaker. Pop her in the hidden area and she’ll deal 6 endurance burn per turn, and since she’s hidden, it’s not easy to get at her. She’s also a 4-drop with 9 DEF, so even if you choose to play her in the visible area, she can take a lot of punishment before going down and she won’t be a defensive liability . . . and she’s still burning for 3. But you really want her in the hidden area—6 endurance burn per turn is simply vicious!
When you toss in Black Hand, you suddenly have the makings of a very interesting Burn ’n Earn deck, as you can burn for 6 with Fiero and then gain some endurance through Black Hand when the recovery phase rolls around. His ability makes him a target, but there are several ways to avoid losing him. After all, you’ll want him around when you drop Ch’P, a 6 ATK/6 DEF 4-drop with willpower of 6!
Ch’P’s willpower is devastating, and you will want him as your primary 4-drop ninety percent of the time. There are very, very few 4-drops in this set that I’d consider playing above Ch’P for a variety of reasons, all of them focusing on his willpower. Black Hand is the first example; gaining 6 endurance in a single shot is never a bad thing. The second, even better combo is Ch’P and Emerald Twilight.
Emerald Twilight is a plot twist that allows you to KO a stunned character if its cost is less than the total willpower of your characters. With a non-stunned Ch’P included in that total, you can take out just about anyone. The drawback is that you need an Emerald Enemy in play, but Black Hand fits that bill nicely.
So, how do you keep these characters around to use their effects or to exploit Emerald Twilight? There are several ways, and one of the best is Lanterns in Love. Lanterns in Love is a plot twist without any form of team stamp that allows you to exhaust two characters to recover another. It’s also a construct, which makes it searchable. And if you think that the cost is too high, you’ll change your mind when you’re on defense and you recover a character that completely alters the state of the board.
As well, the game has a lovely “little” 1-drop who can help you to power Lanterns in Love, and its name is Qwardian Watchdog. Qwardian Watchdog is a 5 ATK/5 DEF 1-drop. Yes, you read that correctly. However, it can’t attack, and if it gets stunned it is sent to the hidden area (where it still can’t attack). So what use is it, you ask? Well, for one, it’s a 5ATK/5 DEF wall that you can stick in front of your other drops, and since nearly every character has range, you won’t lose attack advantage. Granted, there is a lot of flight—a lot of flight—in this set, so that will only help a little. But if you stick a Catcher’s Mitt on your Watchdog (giving all characters auto-reinforcement), then he becomes a big, furry target. In fact, Catcher’s Mitt is a fantastic card to use in late game scenarios when you can drop Sonar with a Catcher’s Mitt, for example, and exploit his effect without fear of major endurance loss.
Either way, even if your Watchdog can’t attack, it can still exhaust to power your other cards in the hidden or visible area, and that includes using it to help power Lanterns in Love and recover another character.
Lanterns in Love is also useful if you miss a drop. If, for example, you miss your 5- or 6-drop and are forced to play multiple smaller drops, you can use them to power Lanterns in Love and maintain your full board to swarm your opponent in later turns.
And while we’re on the subject of the late game, this set has the best drop distribution that I’ve ever seen. It will be hard not to get your hands on at least a couple of 7-drops in Sealed Pack or Booster Draft, and some of them are backbreaking. There are common 7-drops, like Alan Scott, Ganthet, and Krona, that have low ATK and very high DEF; there is Highmaster if you like more traditional 7-drop stats; and if you’re lucky enough to get one, there are some very powerful rare 7-drops—Two-Face; Sinestro, Enemy of the Corps; Hal Jordan, Reborn; and Nero.
However, there are two characters that are easier to get ahold of and should be the 7-drops of choice in almost any deck.
The first is the common Ultraman. He’s the other, other Superman who prevents the character he’s protecting from being attacked. The fun starts when he stuns a defender, however, and that defender is KO’d as a result. While you’re not likely to want to see turn 8, it’s never a bad thing to eliminate potential threats while you have the chance.
Still, there is a better choice at 7, and it is Azrael. With 16 ATK, Azrael is a beatstick that can take down just about anyone without breaking much of a sweat. And if you don’t have the initiative, he becomes a very difficult target, as your 7-drop will cost you 14 endurance if he doesn’t avoid Azrael’s fist. Azrael is an uncommon, so you run a fair chance of grabbing one, and there are few finishers who are as potent on O and D as he is, especially in the non-rare category.
Ultraman and Azrael aside, when it comes to board control, it’s all about Sweeping Up! For the low, low price of exhausting a character with willpower of 1 or greater, you can return a stunned character to its owner’s hand. And it’s targeted. This means that you can stun your opponent’s biggest drop, exhaust a weenie, and poof, the character is gone. Combine Sweeping Up with Fatality and you can absolutely devastate your opponent’s board. And if that isn’t enough, Sweeping Up also lets you look at the top X cards of your deck and reset them in any order (X being the willpower of the exhausted character). So, you not only remove the biggest threat on the board, but you also get to prepare for your next turn or three at the same time. And the card is a common! It’s almost too good!
Toss in Battle of Wills, which saves an attacker from being stunned if its willpower is higher than the defender’s, and you have the makings of a Sealed deck that will prevent your opponent from keeping up with your drops—a Hounds lock without the Hounds, as it were.
Moving on to combat cards, two of them are particularly brutal—Uppercut and Living Ink. Uppercut boosts your attacker’s ATK by its willpower, allowing you to attack up the curve rather easily with the right characters (hello, Ch’P!). You can’t deal any breakthrough, which can be an unfortunate drawback, but the ability to give a character an ATK boost of 3, 4, 5, or more means that Uppercut is possibly the best ATK pump in the game.
Close behind is Living Ink, which pumps your attacker’s ATK by the number of face-down resources in your opponent’s row. While this may depend on your opponent’s build and the ratio of blue and green to characters in his or her deck, I find that one usually garners a pump of about 3-4 ATK with this card. It’s situational, especially so in Constructed, but in Sealed Pack it has the potential to lay a heap of black and blue smackdown on your opponent’s endurance total.
Also, both Uppercut and Living Ink are constructs, which means that they, too, are searchable. Why do I keep mentioning this? Because there are cards in this set that specifically allow you to search for constructs. Tomar Re, for example, whose double discard payment power might seem steep to you at first. However, once you’ve used it a couple of times, you’ll realize that the ability to search out a construct is invaluable, especially in a deck where your characters will most likely outnumber the rest of your cards by a two-to-one margin. With 6 DEF, Tomar Re is a solid 3-drop anyhow, and few 3-drops are naturally able to match him in combat.
A few final cards to lookout for:
Book of Oa is like a personal Gravesite that you can use to sift through additional cards.
There are a couple of generic character search cards, but The Ring Has Chosen is the best of the bunch. Ch’P comes in handy with this card, as well, as you can essentially search for any character in your deck when Ch’P is in play (depending on the rest of your field).
You’ll probably want to play every team-up you can get your hands on, but if you need to choose, then Hard-Traveling Heroes is the best team-up in the set. I was actually able to use it to triple team-up twice, and I saw one player quadruple team-up with it. And you get to draw a card. There is no better team-up in DGL Sealed Pack.
Blood in the Dark is a Gotham Knights card, but its non-ongoing effect gives you a one shot attack on hidden characters. Remember Fiero? Well, this is one of the few ways of mulching her. And Harlequin is another tasty target for your attackers while using this card.
Speaking of Harlequin, you’ll definitely want to use her on 2. She’s one of the best Manhunter characters for Sealed Pack play and she should net you at least one or two discards. Forcing early game discards can really hurt your opponent’s curve.
Finally, In Evil Star’s Evil Clutches seems not terribly useful in Sealed Pack at first. After all, being able to replace face-down resources is often fantastic in Constructed, but in Sealed Pack you don’t play that many plot twists. However, it removes flight from an opponent’s character of your choice and it doesn’t target, which means that you choose on resolution, not on announcement. Since so many characters in this set have flight, removing Flight can really change the face of the game and help you to protect your support row characters. Also, popping down a Sleeper Agent in the late game could add a nice, last-turn swarm explosion.
All in all, this is the best set yet for Sealed Pack play. The distribution of cards, and especially the characters, means a nice, friendly pool for Sealed Pack. It also means that there will be many good targets in Booster Draft, even in the later rounds. This set trumps Marvel Knights and slaughters Superman for Sealed Pack, and I look forward to the next round of PCQs so I can play me some DGL. Gotta teach ’em not to mess with no mean-eyed furballs!
Also known by his screen name Kergillian, Ben Kalman has been involved in the Vs. community since day one. He started the first major player in the online community, the Vs. Listserv, through Yahoo! Groups, and it now boasts well over 1,600 members! For more on the Yahoo! group, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Marvel_DC_TCG.