Welcome back to Pyrahmancy! Once again this article is going out quite late on Thursday, but fear not it is all due to Vs. related reasons. I’ve got my finger in a few pies; organisation for the UK Vs Megaweekend, lead of the Community Committee rules team, a designer role in another Vs. set project, and recruiting players for the French Marvel Knights draft on the 27th. So anyway, here is the next part of the set review…
Rating guidelines:
5/5 – If I can I’m definitely playing this card, even if it doesn’t meet the main themes of the deck, heck I might build decks specifically to abuse this.
4/5 – If I’m building with this team I’ll probably play this card, definitely if it’s on theme too. (or visa versa)
3/5 – I’ll play this card if I’m running a specific strategy, or as passable filler for a poor selection of on team drops
2/5 – I’ll play this card if I have to but I won’t be happy about it.
1/5 – There is pretty much no way I’m playing this card unless I open it in sealed and absolutely need drops of this number…
64. Ulysses Armstrong <> Anarky, Chaos Successor
3/3 is respectable stats for a two drop, but this card has “card advantage” written all over it.
Without even playing him Ulysses replaces himself if you use him to pay a discard cost (say for Mobilize). This makes him pretty strong in any deck that run Arkham. But he nicely fills the role of Penguins 5-8 in migga city too!
If you actually do play him his card draw ability is usable pretty much every off initiative turn (when they exhaust to attack) and in the exhaust deck often on initiative too if you want.
Insanity decks love any on-team card draw sources to trigger Beside Myself so this guy will have no problem finding a slot there. I have nothing bad to say about this card, although if he were concealed he would be better than Oracle! The fact that he is team stamped means he misses out on the top rating but I can see him going into a lot of my Arkham decks even if I have no intention of playing him…
4.5/5
65. Ventriloquist <> Scarface, Peyton Riley
Now this is certainly a strong enabler for the exhaust theme. Her two defence makes her very fragile though; a good chunk of one drops can take her down. The fact that she means your 1-4 & possibly 5 drops can swing up the curve without the need for further pumps certainly makes it look like this paper tiger might be worth it though.
I would definitely choose here over Batzarro in my exhaust deck, I don’t think she really has a home outside of it though. Maybe if you team up for a concealed based strategy that can also move her hidden…
3/5
66. Whale, Tobias White
Targeted exhaustion usable off initiative, without a size limit is pretty good. Having to spend two resource points is quite a high cost though. In the days of Dr. Light this card would be unbelievably amazing, now much less so but I can see him being a strong play late game, preventing your opponent from swing with say his 7 drop on seven whilst you still have a Hush to swing back with… His combat phase and Arkham stamp limit his abusability but I’m sure you could do nasty things with him using Clash of worlds or Mimic.
3/5
67. Two-Faced Silver Dollar, Unique
If you check the last Thursday 13 installment of this set review you’ll see that for all of the Two-Faces I have pretty much said they have a very strong effect that is worth the risk of not having it work at all. Well this special coin changes the odds of success to 75% rather than 50%. Whats more if your flip(s) succeeds each subsequent one has a 75% chance of working too!
This is also great with the Coin flip plot twists in this set and of course with Beside Myself, it is however unplayable in a lot of decks.
1/5 or 4/5 (you can flip a coin to decide)
68. Ammo Depot
If you need to “switch this on” when it is your initiative the exhaust cost can be pretty annoying, but off initiative this cost is effectively free meaning you can probably active it on turn 3 or 4 without too much effort. If you are running exhaust tech anyway a blanket -1/-1 across the board can be very strong, making all your “trades” into “Safe attacks”. With this and Ventriloquist out even your 5 & 6 drop can probably attack up curve without need for more pumps. As with the Ventriloquist this can also probably find a good home in a concealed strategy.
3/5
69. Iceberg Lounge
A strange effect, moving a character hidden whenever you like is quite useful – but having that character being unable to attack or activate when you do is certainly limiting. Perhaps a good way to protect Ventriloquist off initiative – or just a way to gain 2 endurance every turn with a random 1 drop.
This is the only Arkham stamped Location in the set that actually interacts with the Penguin’s readying ability.
2/5
70. No Man’s Land, Non-Unique – Team-Up
A pretty straight forward team-up card. It is nice that it draws you a card, but being on a location means you can’t cycle it from your hand once you have one out.
It is a little bit sad that is shares its name with an existing location, like the Asylums you’ll have to choose which effect you’d rather have.
3/5
71. Cold Spell
Take that quicksilver! Oh wait he’ll probably be fated up…
In any case this plot twist is really nice against any of the speedster characters, just wait till they put their ready effect on the chain them leave them exhausted for the rest of the turn. Even against normal characters keeping the character exhausted for next turn is great for the exhaust deck and although -1/-1 isn’t great, normally at worst it saves you a point of break through and occasionally it can bounce an attack. I do think you have to regard this as an exhaust enabler that has a little pump thrown in rather than a pump with a bonus though…
3/5
72. Face Time
This card has a pair of strong effects that you can choose from to use every turn! Of course like the other two-face effects they only work half the time. The limit on only having one in play also makes for potentially a lot of dead cards if you play multiples in the deck. Like so many of the cards I’ve already spoken about, this probably means it has a place in the insanity deck (along with some extra two-faces to meet the flip requirement).
3/5
73. Feathered Friends
This twist is very similar to Glass Jaw, except it targets your guy rather than theirs. Like so many of the exhaust effects we’ve spoken about it is great with Charaxes and the DCX Hush but don’t fall into the trap of thinking it helps out Batzarro as he needs characters to be exhausted before he even declares the attack. A plus three “for the turn” attack pump is nothing to sneeze at by itself especially with a threshold cost of 1.
4/5
74. Flip of Fate
A constant finishing move effect that doesn’t require anything more than a stun is awesome, even if it is unreliable. I can see this card being amazing in a Crisis of Two-Face deck (with this set he has drops at 2, 3, 4 , 6 & 7 and you can always run Mystique at 5).
3/5
75. Heist Society
This card is only good if you have things that benefit strongly from your opponent having exhausted characters. I can envision very few situations where you opponent will chose to let you ready you biggest dude in preference to exhausting his smallest. Of course if you manage to exhaust your opponent’s board before or during your first attack, they won’t be able to exhaust anyone so you get a free attack! Well as long as you don’t get stunned yourself.
The large number of limitations on this card and the fact that usually it is just an exhaust that your opponent chooses means I don’t think it has a place in many decks, even exhaust themed ones.
2/5
76. Hired Hilarity
The Arkham Inmates don’t really have much of a team attack theme so this doesn’t add to any existing strategies. This card might allow you to choose who gets stunned when you’ve declared a team attack; but removing a team attacker from an attack doesn’t stop it from being a team attack so playing this won’t allow you to cause breakthrough. I love the flavour of this card but I can’t see myself ever actually wanting to play it.
1/5
Until next time…
