There has been much debate over which card is better in a generic curve deck; Acrobatic Dodge, or Nasty Surprise. Both come with pros and cons, and both are near-staples in any combat-oriented curve deck.

The question is, which one is better?

im a dodge fan cos i prefer saving my guy rather then trading stuns even though its alwas good to punish someone for trying to swing down the curve

i like to get nasty!

dodge won't save you from much, only if the opponent attacks without a pump, savage beatdown's +5, is greater than a dodges +3

Circle Defense! Oh wait....Liberty Island ba...no thats not right either.

Acro-Dodge. But then again the worst combat pumps I have to worry about are Flying Kick and No Man Escapes The Manhunters.

Plus nasty suprise doesnt help keep your characters around.

Nasty Surprise all the way. Most decks run at least some form of ATK pump, which will render an Acro Dodge useless. NS, on the other hand, allows your smaller drops to stun back higher drops. but that's just me :)

i don't care if my guys die, as long as they take the opponent down with them.

Definitely Nasty. Most decks run 4 Beatdowns, so Acro won't do anything unless they are attacking up the curve.

I use Acro Dodge. People say Acro won't do anything, but it often forces someone to use that Savage prematurely. Later in the game that +3 def on your 13/15 6 drop looks mighty huge without that Savage

Depends on my deck's goal. Nasty Surprise is awesome for decks that run KO'ing effects too. Wait until you see the look on your opponent's face as he runs his 5-drop into your unreinforcible 3-drop... you play Nasty Surprise, stunning the 5-drop back, and then proceed to exhaust your untouched 4-drop to Finishing Move him. Priceless.

Acrobatic Dodge is nice, but I only really recommend it for a few reasons:

1) Your characters have high ATK values and low DEF values. This helps to throw off 'risky' attacks against you. The Man of Steel set seems to offer a lot of these.

2) You're playing characters with Cosmic. It's more valuable to shrug off the attack than with most other characters in this case. Again, look to the MoS set, especially Team Superman.

3) Your build is highly offensively based, non-concealed, and you can make the room to attempt to steal the initiative away from your opponent. Tough to say. My friend runs Shape-Change in a BBH deck to act as both a DEF boost and a way to cycle a little deeper into the deck. Darkseid's Elite may again be a team to use it properly.

4) Your deck is defense-based and attempting to stall to a late-game win play. Spider-Friends make a good team to play this way, as can X-Statix Loner.

Okay, here's the deal. If you play finishing move, you need an easy way to stun your opponents characters on their initiative, therefor Nasty is better. But if not, Acro is pretty useful.

As what Canamrock pointed out, it actually boils down what your deck plans to achieve. Here's a good question, is it optimal to run both cards in a deck?

I can't think of a really good reason to run both in most decks, as they serve cross purposes. If you're running NS, you're looking for other ways to make an opponent suffer for attacking you. That means KO'ing cards and possibly reinforcement tricks, along with probably a lot of ATK pumps. If you're running AD, your characters are of particular importance to your deck strategy, and your goal is to win with recovery and defense, so your character effects can do the heavy lifting for you. A case CAN be made for running both, but I think you're typically using one or the other in conjunction with other related cards, rather than crossing wires.

I know what you mean. But wouldn't it be nice to be able to use 1 or the other during situations that call for them in a game? IMO, and I think y'all would agree, every deck has the capability to attack up and down the curve. If the opponent would be attacking up the curve, or say team attacking to put down a character, acro dodge would be a better defensive card. Now should the opponent attack down the curve, NS will then play its part. But I guess the problem in running both cards in a deck is how to ensure you get the right defensive card at the time it is really needed. Hmm.. I wonder.. do you think that there's a deck with enough space to utilize both cards on defense?

That's why the Crime Lords have "Face the Master", no?

If you want to try runing both, I'd probably go Acro Dodge and No Fear... that way, you have a more versatile card that serves the same real purpose as NS.

I'm not so familiar with the MMK cards as that was the time when I took some time off VS. But yeah, Face the Master serves that purpose. Too bad it's team stamped.

And yeah, No Fear would be a better choice for the same purpose intended. Thanks.