Swing Into Action is not a bad card. It actually would work in my deck. Mystic Seigal is good too, or have we forgotten about Common Enemy? You see, Dr. Doom is always going to be hidden now and that +3 and flight, in addition to the cars are going to make him ridiculously strong now.

In response to the casual play remarks, not all decks are Tier One and not all decks are horrible. The cheapest deck in my opinion is Common Enemy, it just bothers me. Things like Diplomatic Immunity, I would consider jank because Doom has enough PTs already, after all, he is the PT king. Jank could be Weapon of Choice. And that Brotherhood location, call it jank if you want to, but when you run a Brotherhood deck against Turn 5 loop B and B, you'll wish you had one. In case you never seen it, I Foiled and Ka-Boom you stuff to stay on turn 5 and beat you down with Batman, BB, and the happy couple(Dawn and Hawk) and hit you straight with Garth, Press x4 and you're done. The irony is that is a tournament deck.

Wow, I'm surprised to hear that from someone who believed Sentinels could be competitive when everyone said they were crap and decked himself with Primary Directive.

Personally, I agree with B98 and Canamrock. It's far too early to tell whether these will make an appearance in competitive decks or not.

And isn't "jank" just "junk" with a bad accent? I'd imagine it spread through gaming circles similar to the way "teh" its starting to creep into spoken English for some online gamers...

Have a good one!
Cap'n Jay

(Shhh... it works better when they are not expecting it.)

Team Spirit really sucks too, you know?

It's only useful in a couple decks really.

(a) Rigged Elections type of deck [or any tons of GCPD officers to soak up the damage type of deck]. They stun five cops, you get to keep 3 [in the case of Rigged, you Arkham Assylum one back as well].

(b) Evasion swarm. This is the important one. You take less damage by not evading [as much], but one you've taken three attacks [and hopefully reinforced] or attacked into your opponent getting stunned back, etc, you can evade a couple of guys to recover the whole board.

Not great, but in an evasion deck it could be a way to keep those characters out.

As for Justice is Blind ...

The only way I can see using that card is with 8-Drop Mephisto, where you purposely drive your own endurance down [before giving it to your opponent]. I guess a team up with Syndicate could work [use Dangerous Experiment to drive your endurance to insane lows and then give it to your opponent].

Of course that's not 'good' but it would be funny.

I would draft Drive By Shooting and be fairly happy to play it. It's not really massively far behind Circle Defence in limited, and Circle Defence was the bomb. All these cards are clearly big stains in constructed, but in limited I'm not so sure.

jank (n.) - deck wreaking of combo(s) utilizing cards that leave a fan of the characters a little dead inside.

examples:

'Wild Vomit' - great idea: weenie rush/swarm sentinels - right on! except you have to use a jankie longshot as a search engine. blech.

'Big Bat / Cosmic Cops' - great idea: weenies that can't be stunned or suffer breakthrough, with batman showing up on 7 to get pumped to huge proportions - add in the 'counterspells' like fizzle and detective work, and you have a cool deck idea! except you have to use mr. f and invis woman for the non-stun aspect of valeria and the readying aspect of cosmic radiation. still, better than wild vomit since it uses a number of aspects from the ff for the team-up.

'Curve Sentinels w/ Magneto & Genosha': great idea. use magneto as the preferred 7 drop (since sents are weak in that area) with the added benefit of card drawing from genosha to fuel bastion. unfortunately mags and genosha are strangers in a strange land in the deck.


Now, I am by no means a 'mono-team only' type player. I love the idea of non-standard, and unique decks. The problem I have is that this game isn't magic - where the 5 colors are abstract, and the characters and cards are abstract. since this game is based on the rich history of marvel and dc (for now), it is slightly unsettling to deal with drastic 'non-thematic' decks.

I have heard the major argument for said decks: Money is on the line! Screw everything else when Money is on the line! It is all about the Money! Greed is Good!!

Ultimately it rests on the shoulders of the designers to give us cards that allow us to do powerful and varied combinations with our decks, while still keeping the flavor and theme of the characters and comic universe. I believe they are moving that direction based on a number of cards from the MK expansion. Maybe one day we will have a generic plot twist or location that allows for drawing power such that longshot and genosha will not need to be splashed. Or readying effects that don't rely on the FF showing up with your arkham inmates.

I had the pleasure of pulling 2 in my first sealed. Four of my rares are complete junk and I still get second place. That just shows how good the set is for sealed.

lasuther

I have to disagree on Shelob. Underworld thrives on having characters in the KO'd Pile. Getting up to four there, and getting Endurance potentially sounds good to me. With a little help (Base of Operations) Shelob can get exactly who you want into the Ko'd Pile.

Hijack of the Year underway...

foilball is the jankmeister supreme on the team, although erick may be the mastermind behind the scenes. Here's what they have to say on the issue:

erick:

From urbandictionary.com:

jank

adj- broken; unnecessarily redundant, superfluous, or meaningless; stupid or ridiculously moronic; bootleg or of questionable quality

Any deck that uses the archetype's strengths in a conventional manner is not jank.

Wild Vomit: Borderline jank (only because of Longhot)
X-TOGIT: Not really jank except for putting in Mimic
Curve Sentinels: Explain how this is jank to me.
TNB: Quick beats and burn... no jank here.
Matt's X-Men: Mono X-men... not janky either... that's actually cool tech.
Solitaire: Epitomy of jank (3 teamups and using mechanics from different archetypes to form a "synergy")

foilball:

basically, any mono-team deck is not jank. playing something like the "big men" deck from the UK 10K is. while for the purposes of this cup we can consider playing unplayable mono-team decks as janky, like CS or x-men, which i think we should, it is really only janky when you play something like doom/negative zone and you play power cosmic with blastarr out. and you win. lol.

does that make sense?


playing LOA is not. playing LOA/Doom for the purpose of dual naturing and having both dooms out is.

playing x-men is not. playing x-men/sents for the purpose of decking yourself is. (like stu)

playing TNB is not. playing TNB with a buncha splashed 1-drops to create more burn and also playing last laugh is. (you were so close to this one stu! lol)

playing CS is not. playing sents with skrulls in order to pump the #### out of little wild sents and send them in for like 30 damage each like little atom bombs is. (i love that deck)

playing unafilliated is not. playing the biggest guys at each drop whether they are on a team or not is.

playing arkaham is not. playing arkham/ff/gotham for the purpose of rigging an election or massive burn is.


so basically finding unusual synergies between disparate groups is jank. taking advantge of natural synergies within groups is not.


Now, I might get The Punishment for spilling that tech from the team forums... but "jank" is worth it.

Vicariously yours,

Stu

ok didnt want to read every post, but whats the point of the card that gives your opponent the initiative?

drive by shooting's name... lets think about that. What is the benefit to a drive by shooting, as opposed to a drive-in shooting. It's that you get away before you get into trouble. By the time the cops get there, you're gone. That is the purpose for a drive by. This card allows you to do that. Let's say you attack with a dude, he's the driver, and all his crime lord buddies in the back that have range bust out with their chrome pieces and shoot up the joint, and your attacker gets away without being stunned (arrested/shot back). I agree, that when the character is on defense it is kinda hard to justify why it works, perhaps your crime lord gun-toting buddies drive by and shoot some of the family members of who's attacking you, sending them a strong message that you shouldn't be messed with, I don't know, but it does make it game-mechanically better that it's so versatile. Where as from the shadows doesn't see constructed play, cover fire does. Perhaps this will be the first time it's worth playing a purely defensive attacker only twist.

I definitely don't think it's bad enough to be on the list of bad. It seems like a solid twist in limited for crime lords, and it isn't out of the realm of possibility that it could see some play in a crime lords constructed deck, supposing there is one.

you are right about mechanix, right about monument to a madman, right about sigil and sharon, right about supporting role, but you are wrong about mephisto, swing into action, and shelob. I don't believe they bad-list worthy. I am impressed that you did not name King takes Knight. But some of those cards you listed I still like more than Frogman, the Slingers, or team spirit.

Time will tell which cards will be death in the family, and which cards will be bamf.

ps. I bought like 15 death in the families online for less than a dollar a piece when they came out. Same for terra and argus. Sometimes you just have to be patient though, I've been wrong about plenty as well. I thought have a blast was crap when it came out, and it turned out to be better than I thought. (but still not as good as hyped).

jason hager

I'd assume the point was that if you got evens and wanted odds or vice-versa, this would let you switch things up. Obviously you're taking a risk though. You could end up giving up the initiative on 1,3,4 and 6 and losing the game right there, really only controlling the init on 1 important turn of the game (5).

The point of that card is the following:

(a) The Crime Lords have tons of cool stuff they can do while defending/reinforced [they have a card that works as either a nasty suprise OR a spider-senses if they target defender is reinforced, plus Kingpin 3-drops ability, that four drop guy, Mr. Fear and Damage shifting the attacks around, plus the Armed Escort and of course the big 7-drop Bullseye, etc]

(b) They have ways to guarantee reinforcement without having to exhaust [the Family, their Underworld dual alligned guy, The Estate, etc]

(c) If you can survive the opponent's iniative [which a and b should accomplish] you now get to attack back without worry of leaving people to reinforce, etc.

Also, I believe someone pointed out that, much like Power Cosmic and Silver Surfer... it doesn't mention anything about 'returning' the iniative to the normal order of things after it's done. So likely this could mean [not sure, someone correct me if I'm wrong] that you can change from having 'even' iniative to 'odd' iniative ... at the cost of giving your opponent another turn with iniative.

It's a strategic move. The card alone doesn't do anything ... it's what you DO with it that defines it's worth.

If the Crime Lords are packing a defensive for attacker plot twist, it's no Rest for the Wicked. Speaking of Jank ... Bizzaro attacking up the curve while protected and teamed up with the Crime Lords ... becomes 7/19 until the discard makes him 19/7.

But that's one of the biggest problems with Drive By. Not only does Cover Fire 'beat it' as a defending defense twist, but another card for the same team 'beats it' as an attacking defence twist. At best it's like packing no fear instead of flying kick or nasty suprise. It's one card that does both [but not as well]. It's a matter of if the versatility makes up for the loss of power.

Frogman was, much like Drive By a 'WTF?' for many at the draft because the question became why pack someone who's ability is less useful than 3-Drop Spidey's but essentially the same thing.

But, just like Drive By can be used to boost an attackers defence, there is a difference with Frog Man. It doesn't say that the person stunned has to be team attacking, only that they were stunned in a team attack. Would this work to bounce someone to hand that WAS team attacked? If so, that would be nice [the 'instead' means no damage taken, and no BEL from the team attack, and it's after the attack caused the stun, preventing the attackers from readying] Wouldn't be too useful [unless they team attack with most of their characters and then you use the bounced character to 7-drop Spidey to exhaust who's left or something.

Not that he doesn't suck, but Frog Man [and El Guapo] are probably my favorite cards for completely illogical reasons.