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The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017
While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
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I suppose I should start with an introduction. My name is Michael Flores, and I am a big geek. The Vs. team (and many of you reading this now, I'd wager) know me from the world of trading card games, where I have been a commentator, strategist, and sometime professional player for the better part of the last decade. I enjoy playing strategy games like the Vs. System, but probably not as much as I like thinking about them and discussing those thoughts. What many of you may not know is that I picked up the trading card habit at the comic book store of my youth, and as far as addictions go, I’m far more geeked on comics than I am on gaming.
Marvel Origins, therefore, represents a sort of Shangri-La of shuffling for me. Not only is it a fun, exciting, and many-layered game, but its motivations and source material are inextricably bound to concepts, ideas, and characters that I have followed almost religiously for many years. Omeed Dariani decided to tap my dual areas of obsession for the first Beyond Creative project, and then loop me in to work here on Metagame.com.
At least the first couple of articles I write for Metagame.com will be about my early experiences—both emotionally and in terms of learning curve—as I discover the world of Marvel Origins and the Vs. System. Like you, I am a beginner at this game, and I will have to learn (or at least re-learn) the skills necessary to advance and get more enjoyment from my playtime. For this article, I’m going to focus more on initial social interactions and observations, but as I play more and more Vs., I will share my thoughts on the experiences and the lessons of failures and discoveries.
So anyway, I was both puzzled and pleasantly surprised the first time I played Marvel Origins. I had just finished the long process of working on Beyond Creative (and thus had an intimate knowledge of many of the cards), but I had only a vague idea of how the game was actually played. I was pleased to discover how fun it was to tackle the X-Men with the evil Brotherhood deck. Doubly so, because I’d been worried that the Brotherhood would be nothing more than a punching bag—their lineup of Toad and Destiny did not quite inspire awe when tangling with legends like Cyclops and Wolverine. But as you probably know, the Brotherhood is a powerhouse team in Marvel Origins, blessed as it is with unparalleled speed. Particularly in the preconstructed starter decks, this speed gives them the advantage over our Uncanny heroes.
But what puzzled and surprised me even more than the pleasure of gameplay was the reaction my friends had when talking about specific characters and cards. "What I really like about the game," one of them said, "is that the characters they use are from back when I was collecting comics." Well of course they are, I thought, because different versions with the same name represent different eras in each card's development as a character.
I think the thing that Vs. does best—better than any other game of its type that I've ever played, at least—is to successfully mingle flavor and function. I love how Nightcrawler can attack with flight and range, even though he doesn't actually have either ability. His teleportation can put him anywhere on the battlefield, and then "Bamf" him back to his spot in the back row instantaneously. I love how Mr. Fantastic has range, even though he doesn't carry a gun or wield any kind of conventional energy projection . . . well, conventional for a comic book, at least, where everyone seems to shoot beams out of their hands. He simply delivers a fist from an elongated arm over the front line. And what I love most are the different representations of skill that different versions of characters have on their cards, and how those differences translate into game mechanics.
Two of the best examples, in my mind, are the Invisible Woman and the X-Men's Wolverine.
 Let’s look at Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl. This is Sue fresh off the space ship. This is Sue back in Fantastic Four #1, a far meeker woman than the one we have come to know, respect, and even fear. This game version of Sue is positively puny—a 1 ATK/1 DEF for 1—with a fairly unimpressive special ability. But this is how Sue was characterized during the early adventures of the Fantastic Four. She was the Invisible Girl. She turned invisible, and that was about it. She was defined by the men in her life—her scientist boyfriend, her attention grabbing brother, and her overly aggressive suitor, Prince Namor.
Now, not long into the Fantastic Four's career as comic superheroes, and certainly before they became the First Family of the genre, Stan and Jack decided that Sue's powers were a little on the pathetic side. Keep in mind that the same accident that allowed Sue to disappear also made Ben Grimm one of Marvel's burliest strongmen, and gave Johnny Storm the power to burn like the sun. Simple logic dictated that she pick up some more impressive abilities! So those gods of the Silver Age gave Sue the additional ability to create invisible force fields. Still, her skills were subtle, but with that addition, Sue's powers came closer to the same tier as her teammates’.
Invisible Woman, Sue Storm reflects this evolution. We get a beautiful Kevin Nowlan illustration depicting her force field, and we have, functionally, the fact that "Fantastic Four characters you control are reinforced." This ability speaks to Sue's force field, and by extending it to all members of the team, we get an additional idea of Sue as the emerging protector and mother figure. It's not enough that she is reinforced; Sue wants to take care of Reed, Alicia, and little Franklin, too.
 Lastly, we have Invisible Woman, Sue Richards. What a powerhouse! This is the Susan who’s gone toe-to-toe with Dr. Doom. This is the Susan who rebuilt the Avengers. This incarnation is a match, and more, for the men in her life, and the way in which her card affects the game illustrates that clearly. After learning to better manipulate her invisible force field, Sue can create slides and floating discs to transport herself and others; she therefore has flight.
Sue Richards’s printed defensive ability is also much stronger than that of Invisible Woman, Sue Storm. This version of the character doesn't just stem the bleeding when a character gets stunned. She keeps it from being stunned at all. This improvement in ability is not just an issue of intensity, but also control. Where before, we might have imagined Sue Storm calling up a plain invisible wall to defend herself and her family, now Susan Richards can summon a force field at will and in any shape or location of her choosing. She can drop it in front of a little girl in danger, like in the depiction on Personal Force Field. The brunt of such efforts can weigh on her, though. After all, Sue has collapsed more than once after deflecting a particularly telling attack. The game illustrates this with her steep endurance payment.
Moreover, Invisible Woman, Sue Richards also has range. Many believe that Sue has become the most powerful member of the team. She can buffet an opponent with force field bubbles, or use her acute manipulation even more aggressively to tear through armor and flesh or cut off air supplies.
Finally, look at those stats. Sue is now a 16 ATK/17 DEF. Does this mean that she is bigger and burlier than her 16 ATK/16 DEF teammate, Thing, The Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Thing? No one is going to say that Susan's physical strength can match Ben Grimm's ability to bench press a skyscraper . . . but combined with her range, we can imagine Sue using her invisible force fields to strike with similar ferocity. As for her 17 DEF stat, can we say that Susan is as sturdy as a human bulldozer made of orange rocks? Well, when hiding behind her invisible force field, maybe she is even more resilient!
All in all, I think that the designers did a great job of capturing the different flavors of the Invisible Woman throughout time, and representing them with clear game elements. If there were one thing I would want to tweak, it would be the various card art. I’d have liked to see Sue in costumes that were a little more different from one another. I know this is a tiny gripe because the Fantastic Four costumes have varied so little over the years, but you can see the same thing done quite well with the various Wolverine X-Men cards.
 First off, there is Wolverine, Logan. This card features my favorite artwork of the three, a Brian Stelfreeze illustration of Wolverine in what most fans probably consider the definitive Wolverine costume. As Logan, this is the Wolverine who is largely animal, with no memory of his past and his affiliation to the X-Men as his main link to humanity. He is a brutal fighter, which we can see from his 6 ATK/6 DEF stats at a cost of 3, but he is also fiercely loyal to his team.
I think this concept gave the designers a great out; they were able to produce an overpowered character for his cost, but still tag on the X-Men restriction to balance the card. Look at how different Wolverine, Logan's restriction is from Sabretooth, Feral Rage's. Both are large fighters for their costs, but while Sabretooth tosses aside one of his own teammates to move to the front—very mercenary, don't you think?—Wolverine's restriction is actually one of inclusion. Design doesn't want you splashing this card in your Fantastic Four deck, and to make sure you don't, they have Wolverine say, "Yeah, I belong," when you flash your Gambit. In my mind, this is a beautiful marriage of both flavor and function.
I think that I would have used the yellow and blue costume for the earliest incarnation of Wolverine, just because it was the original, but I can definitely see where Mark Irwin and his crew were coming from with their choice. Speaking of the original costume, next up is Wolverine, James Howlett. This is an interesting decision, because in real-life comics history, it’s only in the past couple of years that we (and Logan) learned who James Howlett is. And yet, we see Wolverine given the James Howlett name in the "middle" version, this time wearing the original yellow and blue. It makes sense, in its way, because Wolverine actually switched from the classic brown costume back to the yellow and blue one in an effort to reconnect with his earlier self. Even though this took place in an entirely different era, James Howlett is who Wolverine was ultimately trying to find.
Of the three cards, Wolverine, James Howlett is the only one that utilizes Wolverine's healing factor in terms of gameplay, but I think that’s okay, because these cards are all meant to depict different aspects of the same character. Wolverine, Logan speaks to how attached he is to the team, and what an awesome fighter he is, even at a tiny 5'3" (6 ATK/6 DEF for 3, I mean, come on). Last but not least, we have Wolverine, Berserker Rage, or, Wolverine at his most ferocious.
 I think that this uniform is an excellent choice for Wolverine, Berserker Rage, as it is Grant Morrison's Wolverine from New X-Men. This is Wolverine as the Zen Brawler—the rogue samurai who will completely cut loose but then meditate for days to cleanse himself afterwards. In a sense, Morrison's is the most evolved, most aware, incarnation of the hero, but also the most dangerous. Though he has spent decades trying to get past the "animal" Wolverine, he now knows, and even accepts, that sometimes he has to channel that ferocity in the service of his team and family. Evolved as he has become, Morrison's is still the Wolverine that stormed Weapon Plus, stabbed Jean Grey, and ended the terror of Xorn. From a functional standpoint, I love how the designers channeled the violence of the berserker Wolverine into a game mechanic. He gets in a fight and takes some lumps (but still walks away) . . . only to get into another fight.
The depiction of these iconic characters over different eras in their careers has really enhanced my experience while playing Vs. I don't know that I would like the game half so much without the connection I feel to the power of Ben Grimm, the leadership of Cyclops, or the swashbuckling finesse of Nightcrawler. If you feel the same way I do, and you like this kind of article, let the editors know!
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