The other tutors you listed all have one thing in common: a strong ratio of cost-to-benefit. Yes, Sovereign Superior is limited in that it only fetches reservists, but it fetches any reservist, not just a Brotherhood one, so it enables a degree of toolboxing. Ditto Bloodhound (for evasion) or New Recruits (for cosmic).

Avengers Assemble!, on the other hand, has a higher cost than most tutors (a leader character card, making it only semi-viable in monoteam Avengers) and a relatively weak payoff (+1/+1 counters and an on-team character card).

Bloodhound and Sovereign Superior and the like give you an extremely wide range of options and flexibility; Avengers Assemble!, in comparison, greatly limits your flexibility of deck construction, which is why it sucks.

I thought it sucked because the whole leader theme did not work out.... for any teams basically. It is otherwise a pretty good tutor, it's just that Leader as a theme is bad...... see also the 6 drop Cap.

that is 100% bull####.

both types of cards require a specific discard, Brotherhood for Soveriegn Superior and a Leader for Avengers Assemble. both will only get something specific Reservist for SS and Avenger for AA. SS requires you to run mostly B-Hood Reservist characters to use it to its highest functionality. AA requires you run mostly Avengers Leaders to run to its highest functionality.

Point by point comparison:

Threshold: 2 vs 3. Sovereign Superior wins.
Cost: Leader vs Brotherhood character. Stuffing your deck full of leaders isn't as synergistic as stuffing it full of characters of a given team.
End result: A Reservist vs an Avenger. Again, reservists are good at in-team synergy, or even cross-team synergy, and you can hit some silver bullers. Avengers? Not so much.

Let me try to explain again.

Sovereign Superior requires a Brotherhood discard (specific input) and gets you a reservist character (specific output). Likewise, Avengers Assemble! requires a leader discard (specific input) and gets you an Avengers character card (specific output).

However.

Sovereign Superior has - in Silver, let's ignore the Golden Brotherhood characters to provide a balanced playing field - 31 possible input cards (Brotherhood characters) and 140 possible outputs (reservist characters). Avengers Assemble! has 63 possible inputs (leader characters) and 32 possible outputs (Avengers characters).

The definition of a playable tutor card is one that has at least as many inputs as it does outputs. Signal Flare, for example, is the baseline of what a tutor card should be: discard any F4 character, go get any other one. This is the yardstick that matters, and on that yardstick Avengers Assemble fails miserably because it's bad all over the place. It's bad for enabling teamups (which cards like Sovereign Superior are excellent at doing), it's expensive and deck-specific and it provides little to no real benefit for all its additional cost. (+1/+1. Woo. Whatever.)

Sovereign Superior can even work just fine in a mono-Brotherhood deck of whatever stripe as basic drop insurance in the way tutors traditionally have been used. Just put one reservist drop at each rank in your otherwise non-reservist Hood deck, and there you go. AA! isn't any good for that.

ok, sure this is true. but out of those 140 outputs, how may of the non-Brotherhood would you play in the deck? very few.

see, i dont agree with this. if the Avengers Leader archtype have been viable, you would have put AA on the list. AA isn't a bad tutor, its just limited. you have the searchers that go and get Dr. Doom only on the list, which are MUCH more limited than AA.

the Avengers Leader decks isnt bad because it's tutor is bad, its bad because its character selection is bad.

cant argue with that.

other cards that really should be on the list.

*Time Breach: its as playable as Mysitic Summons, if not more so. X-weenies may not be the best deck, but it does work.
*Gathering the Watch: all it requires is you run at least some of the Gems. and you included Fearsome Five on the list.

I have a Quickfate build that uses Brotherhood reservists to fuel Sovereign Superior as an additional way to play Quicksilver on 2. It's just another example of how SS (and tutors like it) work more flexibly than AA does. Think outside the box, young Padawan.

The Doom-only tutors are on the list because for better or for worse the Doom tutors are bomb drops and for the most part very cheap (controlling Dr. Doom for a Doom, KOing a weenie you'd kill anyway for a Doom). And because the Doom faction is, rather uniquely in the game, all about Doom.

Time Breach is horrible. Quick, let's compare the two:

Mystic Summons: requires controlling two characters of the same cost to go get you a Masters of Evil character card. Never mind that weenie swarm decks naturally drop characters of the same cost; Mystic Summons lets you play curve Masters and run some of their boostable or resource-payment guys and it still works. (Not greatly, but it does.)

Time Breach: requires you to exhaust a character AND discard a card to only get up to two weenies with combined cost less than 3. Multiple costs on a limited tutor = bad.

fair enough.

just to be clear, though. i dont think AA is equal to SS and is ilk, but i do think i deserves to be on the list. the tutor in and of itself isnt "BAD". its not the tutors fault that Avengers Leader is bad.

ok, when you compair SS to AA you go largely vaccum streangth. here, vaccum streangth AA>FoD/MoD. please pick one standard for playability. if Doom wasnt so good would FoD or MoD be on your list?

i dissagree that Time Breach is horrible. in an off curve X-Men deck, it works great. yeah, its a little expensive. generally when i use it is off initiative, go and get a 2 drop i want and a 1 drop to discard.

isnt your biggest problem with Enemy that it isnt expensive enough? (to use, not to purchase).

even when i need to use it on initiative i will generally have a 1 drop to exhaust to it to go get something something i need in play more.

If a tutor read like so:

Ranngressions
3
Search your deck for a character card with the printed Rann affiliation and put it in your hand.

Well, right now, it would be /terrible/.

Yes, /if/ they printed a bunch of other cards Avenger's Assemble could be good.


As for non-Bhood characters you can search for with Sovereign Superior?
Hawkeye 4. Hawkeye 5. Qucksilver 2 (as mentioned). Kree Public Accusers (against Nega-Bomb, perhaps). A Kree or Avengers team-up might be solid. Haywire (0) or Katrina might be splashed in. Squaddies/Bhood could use Golden Archer and Nuke to good effect. Adam Strange is a Mikado and Mosha effect... there's a few ways.

They are almost the same.

That was an excellent point. I wish I had enough money to send you a playset of Eome or Mobilize

acctually that is a good tutor, just unplayable. even casually, you would play this card. there is only one card it could get.

hell, you dont have to discard for it.

i dont think AA is a "BAD" card. you could build a deck that could use it quite effectively. it wouldnt be the best deck, but its not the tutors fault.

i really feel your analogy is a poor one. a card that can only get 1 card compaired to a card that can get 32 cards. nice try though.

late to the party Ladies and Gentlemen...
Here's my two cents on the subject of what cards I think should be banned: NONE of THEM!
What I would like you the citizens of this Realm and UDE to consider is a banning of all Degenerate Combos. It is their negative effect on gameplay, thematic content and creative design that I find most distasteful.
We all know and understand that VS cards by themselves are created to provide a certain thematic perspective to the game. The card Overload is a perfect example. A new game hits the scene, it's in it's infancy, but shows great potential. Overload's cardart shows Scott Summers's mutant power awakening with a vengance. The card also provided another defensive jewel besides cover-fire for the deckmaster who was so inclined to do. Sometimes, we can get so much in a hurry that we miss out or forget the beauty-of-design that this game offers.
Not enough, okay...
Frankie Ray- Optimistic youth is a 1 drop. Her cardart, ability and flavor text are perfect representations of this time in her life. Perfect. She has just recieved the power cosmic and has been given release to explore the spaceways until Galactus needs her. Her new powers and youthful exhuberance are the equivalent of drawing cards, but of course with Galactus, there is always a price or discard. Again, it was and is a perfect translation of the that time in her life. There is no reason to ban, restrict or change the flavor of this card because it is not broken.
Still wanna ban, okay then...
Frankie Ray is part of the HOG set and Affiliation. UDE please understand that there are some of us who would like to make an all HOG's deck. Mono-teamed deck constrction has just recieved a better late than never shoot in the arm from the introduction of Mobilize. From a personal level, I started playing VS anticipating that I would get the chance to construct a Heralds deck. Please, and pretty please, do not ban Frankie Ray. Restrict her to an all Heralds deck (excluding plot twist and Locations). As much as I enjoy facing off against gumbo decks, deck creators of mono-teams have the right to create some vicious combos themselves and not have all the best cards banned by the time we get to the party. Save some of the best for us late bloomers.
P.S. why not give broken combos a respective name. Once the degenerate combo iteration is indentified and posted, deck builders could still utilize cards like Frankie Ray and Overload, but only in a more positive and skillful fashion. Creativity is still encoraged for both sides - mono and gumbo. Moreso, fair play and skill recieve a reward.

For a card to be good, it has to be playable in a good deck as more than filler.

I was going to disagree and preach about how much UDE looks out for VS. and such but, truth told, if UDE really looked out, some of the "big" rares would be in hobby league.

have i said ANYWHERE that AA was "good". what i have said is it isn't "BAD" and deserves to be on a list of playable tutors. in terms of overall playability in a vacuum it ranks a little lower than SS, Bloodhound and that ilk, and higher than FoD/MoD. and just so i am clear, that is in a vacuum where the actual playability of the cards it goes and gets are ignored.