One of the most exciting things about the new X-Men expansion is the fact that it does something that’s never happened before—it re-features teams that haven’t been seen since Marvel Origins. The challenge you’re presented with as a Vs. designer when you bring back a team is the need to have a fresh new look while making sure that it still feels like the same team. The X-Men had a multitude of themes in Marvel Origins, but one of the strongest strategies involved recovery and trying specifically to abuse what many people consider the team’s most powerful plot twist, Children of the Atom. But the dizzying array of discard costs on that team meant that the X-Men player was frequently left with no cards in hand. Well, move over Children of the Atom, because there’s a new cool kid in recovery town. 
While it might look like the cost of this card is a little prohibitive, there are a ton of synergies with many of the present X-Men cards. One card in particular, Cerebro, is a vital part of any X-Men strategy. With no loss of cards, a player can easily fill up his or her KO’d pile with extra characters, and previously there was no way to use those cards except by turning on Colossus, Peter Rasputin’s ability. Early game power-ups now also turn into recovery fuel for the Phoenix, as do discard costs for cards like X-Corp; Gambit, Remy Lebeau; and Dazzler. Another thing to note is that Phoenix Rising only checks the name of the character you remove from the game, so the card will be played more easily on characters that have multiple versions. And that definitely will happen more often now, as there are new versions of nearly every X-Men character from Marvel Origins!
To ensure that drawing multiple recovery effects isn’t too redundant, you’ll soon find a cycle of X-Men characters with abilities only usable in the recovery step, and Phoenix Rising adds another way of making sure that your guys are not stunned during that step. There have been many new cards added to the team to ensure that the X-Men’s recovery theme is stronger than ever, while still maintaining a strong connection to what the affiliation represented in Marvel Origins.
An important thing to note is that, when you look at a team to be re-designed and re-featured (something that I have had to think a lot about of late, as I’m the lead designer for the set that follows the Heralds of Galactus . . . mainly so I can show up Andrew Yip), you need to make sure that new members of the affiliation carve out individual identities that are both distinct from and yet compatible with their Golden Age counterparts. It’s difficult to make cards that won’t automatically make a Golden Age team twice as good, since they’ll have essentially double the card pool available to them. At the same time, we want to make the play experience similar enough to the classic team that, when you finish the game, you say, “That felt like playing X-Men!” Phoenix Rising is a card that gives a nod to the old, even though it is very much made for a new generation of Mutant.
Finally, the best thing about this card is the gorgeous art, which is so good looking that we decided to feature it on the X-Men playmat.
So, if you want to see Jean Grey coming back from the dead every time you play a game of Vs. System, I suggest that you scoot to the nearest Sneak Preview event and get your hands on what I think is the coolest playmat we have ever released!
Tomorrow's Preview:
