I completely disagree. In combo with the various methods of exhaustion, this card lets you KO just about anyone with a good team attack. Sure, Ivy can have them stunned next turn, and Freeze slows them down, but neither are as powerful as a KO. You won't always draw what you want, and this is just another way of board-clearing.

Also to add to what Wrath said above.

You aren't always gauranteed to hit Charaxes on 3 with Ivy on 4 every game. The times you do miss one or both is when Arkham's vulnerabilities show. This card will help a lot when you do end up dropping guys like Man-Bat on 4 since you can still play board control with this.

you can still play better board control with a kidnapping. Plus the best backup 3 drop is arcade who can clear, often more easily than can charaxes. And while man-bat is a disappointment defensively he does a whole lot of BEL or swings up the curve. For smiles to work you have to 1) play some card to exhaust a guy 2) play smiles 3) stun that guy. Most decks aim to just do number 3 and prevent number 3, doing that requires lots of combat tricks, yet AI, which has trouble just hitting its drops is supposed to be able to do that and add 2 more cards to the combo? Its just really not worth the slot as it makes the deck even that much more unreliable. I've a fairly good AI deck myself (well can't call it all mine as captain carl built it first, then billy the jankmeister himself expanded upon it, before I got it and mostly just tweaked with ratios), that, when it hits its drops beats just about everything, owning doom decks and handling B&B pretty well. And this is not a card it needs, it needs a character tutor and some better characters at a few drops. Smiles is simply adding more complexity for little gain to an already unreliable deck. Plus it encourages you to play that exhausting location which just screams 'kaboom me' making the deck even worse than it has to be. I'm quite disappointed with the AI cards from this set (in terms of benefiting the team, i think the new joker is cool no matter how bad he is heh).

::sigh:: Joker was always my favorite comic character, i hate to see his team perform so poorly.

As much as i hate to say it i dont think Arkam can recover from its terrible deck type. R&D did such a terrible job on designing the team last time around i just dont see Arkam bouncing back with the release of MOS.

Arkam would need ALOT of additional support to make themselves playable. I'm not saying they will never see play, i'm just saying i dont expect to see them top 8 at a pcq anytime soon.

X-men had alot of good fundimentals before the bonus that came from WOS. They were just missing a few key elements that the later WOS filled. League of Assasins are the same way, good deck, just missing something....

Arkam needs a whole reconstruction to get them back on track. I mean like 5 GOOD characters and maybe 1 broken (bamf?) PT or Location. I don't see that happening.

i dont really agree w/ you Goop
i dont think AI was ever THAT bad

i can recall several games where i was beating my opponent
AI can be a very dominating deck if it:
1. is able to draw its more important plot twists
2. hit all its drops

i think AI has been mostly missing consistency
some powerful plot twists and characters wont hurt
but i'd prefer a cycling or tutor card for them
Killer Croc, Charaxes, and Mr. Freeze are all great characters
and Bane and Poison Ivy are pretty good as well
the agressive board control theme would work well w/ more consistency

this card will give AI some more power
which will hopefully make up for its lack of consistency
but i wouldn't say AI "needs a whole reconstruction"
they already have great stuff
they just need something to tie it all together

bTw, while talking about the tutor thing
something crossed my mind
couldn't Prison Break have been a tutor?
need some help scheming plans?
just break Joker or Penguin out of jail :)

Aaaahhh, it pains me to hear such talk about the Inmates. I like Smiles, I agree that it fits the current Arkham theme, and that having another powerful card that benefits from attacking exhausted characters makes the exhaust techniques Arkham already has more useful. It also looks incredibely cool. I _also_ agree that as things stand, mono-Arkham isn't going to be beating a path to the Top 8 anytime soon, which makes me sad. They should be the greatest!!
I really like the direction the game seems to be going in with Superman, with increasing complexity and more alternate win conditions. The biggest problem I have with the game is the way it revolves completely around the combat step. I would be thrilled to see the Chi-Death strategy blossoming in Revenge Squad bloom into a force to be reckoned with. I love the Emperor Joker, and think that with a few cards to supplement him, Arkham could have a good thing going (referring to my Calendar Man in the D&D forums), but considering the Holy Grail of the Millstone deck (which seems to be where UDE is going with this), making Arkham the deck-shredding team instead of the confusing, exhausting, discarding team is unlikely.

AI is not that far off from being a good deck, all it really needs is a character tutor. If it had a character tutor it'd be tear one. When it hits its drops it beats most every deck pretty consistently. UDE just needs to bite the bullet and toss them a signal flare. They already have some of the best characters, they just need a way to get em on the board consistently.

As for league, league is good, the problem is it gets destroyed by kaboom.

Shocker->exhaust one front row, exhaust one support row characater.

Crushing Blow-> +3/+3 while attacking exhausted defender.

There's your pump!

p.s. Sadly, i added this to my Arkham Beats deck (Crazies with guns!) and it didn't work for squat.

Nick- umm, how about Fear and Confusion, Puppet Master or No Man's Land??? Shocker=crap.

I have a great AI based deck planning to take to a PCQ, and I think it will work.

~Tombster212