My last two articles were a team-by-team breakdown of the new Green Lantern Corps set and a look at what to consider when using DGL for Sealed Pack play. This week, I’m going to look beyond the teams and focus on some of the generic cards that everyone can play. Here’s my look at what the newest unaffiliated characters and generic plot twists have to offer, focusing mainly on those that don’t rely on willpower.
Affiliations are for Sissies!
Unaffiliated decks get a lot of love; cards such as Reign of Terra, Mosaic World, and Guy Gardner, Warrior show that Danny Mandel has some love in him. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more of Mojo in the near future, and these cards help non-exclusive unaffiliated decks. Negative Zone, for example, becomes much less risky. Skrull decks can also benefit, as can solitaire and Big Men decks.
Reign of Terra is the backbone, as it makes your characters lose all of their affiliations. This means that decks like Skrull or Solitaire can splash in and benefit from cards like Mojoverse. When you combine Reign of Terra with Mosaic World, you allow all of your characters to team attack and reinforce each other. This is particularly vicious in strong Solitaire decks that usually contain a hodgepodge of affiliations, as their one weakness is generally the inability to reinforce. It’s also vicious in unaffiliated decks that can bring in outside strongmen and make them unaffiliated to boost Mojo and benefit from Mojoverse.
Hal Jordan ♦ Spectre is also a nice addition to the unaffiliated ranks. Most decks that usually use Apocalypse or The Demon, Etrigan will now have a strong, offensive character to throw onto the fire whose ability makes him a force to be reckoned with on either initiative. On your initiative, you can go all out on attack, knowing that your opponent will take a heap of extra endurance loss if he or she manages to take you out. On defense, you can hide him in the support row, and even if your opponent (rightfully) attacks Hal first, he or she will still take 8 endurance.
Finally, Solomon Grundy, with his above average stats and boost, makes a solid 5-drop addition to any unaffiliated deck. Blackfire is still your best bet at 5, but Solomon Grundy weighs in nicely as a secondary drop alongside Lady Deathstrike, depending on your strategy.
Next up, we have the constructs—three characters at rising drops (3, 4, and 5) that are there specifically for offensive or defensive aid and can be used as plot twists. The cards are Space Bears, Mouse Trap, and Light Brigade, and although they won’t fit into an unaffiliated deck (namely due to the willpower cost to play them from your hand), they certainly do a nice job of providing an extra punch. In a willpower-heavy deck, they’re magical; Light Brigade provides you with a nice offensive burst on your opponent’s initiative and Mouse Trap provides a huge defensive buffer. Space Bears is particularly interesting because you can play it on your initiative on turn on 3 or 4 as an extra 3-drop and get yourself a heap of early board control. And remember that if the construct stuns, its triggered effect doesn’t trigger at the start of the recovery phase and you don’t KO it.
In fact, it may be possible to build a construct deck that revolves around recruiting characters and then exhausting them to play constructs. Since the construct characters are not recruited when played via their in-hand effect, there is no uniqueness check. So, you have a good shot at a massive, early-game swarm that can simply devastate your opponent with constructs on the attack and let you keep your recruited drops.
The Plot Thickens!
There are a ton of generic plot twists in this set that should help a variety of factions and decks in all formats. First and foremost is Armies of Qward. Just when you thought that Sentinel decks were powerful enough, we now have a card that allows you to splash army characters from other teams into the mix and have them all counted as army Sentinels. It goes two ways, however, as the Manhunter faction is filled with army Manhunter effects, and as such, is also well suited to splash foreign army cards. Sentinels and Manhunters meld together nicely, as each have a variety of tricks to promote recursion from the KO’d pile, recruitment from the resource row, and the pumping of characters by using army characters (either by stunning or KO’ing them on the field or discarding them from your hand). Also, a Sentinel deck can certainly benefit from the Manhunter Spacecraft, which is essentially a Manhunter Optitron.
There are many other decks that can benefit from Armies of Qward. It’s a boon to Skrull decks that can now splash army characters from other affiliations, including the unaffiliated Random Punks! Armies of Qward will give Random Punks the Skrull team affiliation when there are Skrull Soldiers in play, and therefore it will gain from the Skrull Soldier’s effect as well as Super Skrull’s effect. Wild Pack and GCPD decks also just got more interesting, as there are now a ton of splash characters that can be thrown in for good measure.
Another ongoing plot twist that has some great possibilities is In Evil Star’s Evil Clutches. The Green Lantern set is rife with flight, but decks centered on non-DGL factions aren’t necessarily so flight-heavy. A card that can continually remove flight from an opponent’s character can be invaluable. The bonus is that the card doesn’t target the character, meaning that none of those tricky effects that prevent characters from being targeted will stop it. It’s a great card for hiding characters in your support row, as it stops your opponent’s top flier from hitting them.
But that’s only half of the greatness of this card. In Evil Star’s Evil Clutches also allows you to return a face-down card from your resource row to your hand and then put a card from your hand into your resource row. This opens up a billion different chances to be evil and sneaky (just like Evil Star). For one, if you’re stuck putting a character card or two in the resource row (due to a bad draw, for example), you can bring them back when you get locations or plot twists. Also, if you have a location or ongoing plot twist (like a team-up) that you’d like to get down into the resource row but can’t, you can return a resource from an earlier turn that you haven’t used yet and pop the important one in.
As well, Manhunter decks can use it to pop Sleeper Agents into the resource row in later turns and then use their ability to bring them out. Sentinel decks can also take advantage of this card to place army Sentinels in the resource row to feed those Underground Sentinel Bases. And if you decide not to use those face-down characters, you can always use them to feed In Remembrance and power up a defender.
On the flipside, Trapped in the Sciencells can really burn a deck that relies on face-down resources, and dealing 3-5 burn a turn is a nice bonus for any deck. So it may fit nicely into a burn deck, especially Brotherhood, which will have many face-up resources ranging from Avalon Space Station to War on Humanity. Just remember that the burn affects you too, so be cautious in its employment.
For the non-ongoing plot twists, we’ll start with Yellow Impurity. This should be popular in DC Modern Age, as it’s essentially a willpower hate card that may become a staple in non-willpower decks (and maybe in some with willpower, as well). Its selling point is that it not only reduces a character’s willpower, it also reduces said character’s DEF by 2 while defending and for the remainder of the turn. Since there aren’t that many generic offensive and defensive pumps in Modern Age, this fits nicely alongside I Hate Magic! as a prime DEF reducer.
No Man Escapes the Manhunters also drops a character’s DEF by 3 while defending and is the better choice against a deck that has no willpower—its secondary ability to bring hidden characters into the open can be a lifesaver, especially when playing against a Hounds deck or the evil Fiero. You can also employ Lantern’s Light for that extra anti-hidden oomph.
Shock Troops is another pretty card for two reasons. The first is that it gives a character +2 ATK and +2 DEF, making it a truly versatile attack pump. The second is that it works on an attacker or a defender, making it an even more versatile attack pump. Sure, it’s restricted to a character that has the same cost as another character you control, but remember all that talk about armies and stuff? Well, this is a vicious army card! Pop four of them into an army deck that’s full of characters with the same cost, and it will really shine. It will also wreck in Sinister Swarm or Brotherhood Blitz, where you’ll be playing a ton of 1- and 2-drop characters.
And if you like Shock Troops, you’re bound to like ¡Óle!, which gives a funky +3 ATK (with the same limitation as Shock Troops) to attackers or defenders. Manhunters should love this card, as it’s a construct (and searchable) that rewards them for popping a handful of characters into play through their Excavators, Engineers, Guardsmen, Soldiers, and so on. If you play an off-curve Manhunter deck, then ¡Óle! is the card for you, as you’ll want to swarm, attack up the curve, and be able to make a defensive stand when your opponent is on the attack. In either scenario, +3 ATK is a nice boost, and without any other form of limitation, this card is one of the top ATK pumps in DC Modern Age.
Finally, let’s look at a card that has caused great disdain on the boards and lists—Battle of Wills. It is one of the best plot twists in the set and can come in very handy when playing a willpower deck, especially in Golden Age where willpower will be at a premium. This Bamf! for willpower characters, though limited to a single attack, should be a staple in any Green Lantern or Emerald Enemies deck. It allows you to capitalize on the heavy willpower your deck will have. It won’t be as strong in Modern Age, where there will likely be a flux of willpower decks, but even so, it should provide a great way to gain some board control against decks that don’t.
In two weeks, I’ll examine Green Lantern’s generic locations and equipment and also take a peek at a deck that uses some of the DGL splash cards.
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.