Is teleport tube really crap?

It seems to me like a good card for when opponent try to pull defensive shenanigans on you. Just drop this when they use cover fire, acro dodge, or even bulletproof from the new set, etc. Maybe a bit situational but certainly not crap.

You more or less just answered your own question there.

Powering up isn't exactly a feature, under normal game rules. You don't build your deck to abuse powering up, because +1/+1 kind of, you know, sucks compared to all the other card effects out there. Powering up was put in the game so that extra copies of the characters you already had in play that were in your hand didn't just sit there as dead cards.

"But wait," you say, "Lost City." To which I would respond "Lost City is excellent for two reasons. Firstly, it is a location, and therefore less easy to disrupt than a character with Ally. Second, turning a powerup into +3/+3 is better than any single Ally ability out there, and frankly it is better than a lot of the COMBINED Ally abilities."

Seriously. Let's go down the list of Ally abilities in this game.

Elongated Man
Faith
Connor Hawke
Aquaman
Shayera Thal
John Stewart
Katar Hol
Black Canary
Firestorm
Oliver Queen
Batman
Barry Allen (not technically an Ally, but he's got an ability that triggers off powering up, so let's include him)
Superman

Okay. Remember, this is the JLA here, the team that's SUPPOSED to be the dominant force in terms of the Ally mechanic.

Are any of these Ally abilities even remotely comparable to +3/+3? Not even close, unfortunately. They fit into three categories:

Abilities That Would Be Much Better If They Weren't Conditional Off Powering Up. Elongated Man (there are heaps of characters out there who do what he does and better), Batman, Superman, Katar Hol, Shayera Thal.

Abilities That Just Suck. Faith, John Stewart (maaaaaybe in a GL/JLA deck, but that doesn't strike me as a good deck anyway), Oliver Queen, Barry Allen.

Abilities That Aren't Bad, But Lost City Outclasses Them By A Country Mile. Black Canary, Connor Hawke, Aquaman.

And Firestorm, who actually manages to be quite playable all on his own! Yay Firestorm! The fact that his ability essentially amounts to expensive card cycling doesn't change the fact that he's at least playable.

Over in the JLI we add

Booster Gold
Fire
Ice
Scott Free

Now Fire and Ice have good Ally abilities. They are abilities you might actually want to consider playing extra powerup cards for. Scott Free is pretty weak. Booster is okay but nothing you want to go out of your way to use.

And then elsewhere there is

Lex Luthor, Evil Incorporated
Killer Frost
Hector Hammond
Henry King <> Brainwave
Bumblebee

Lex Luthor is excellent. Killer Frost is extremely powerful, but has a cost on her ability that is exceptionally expensive so you won't get to use it more than once per turn or twice if you're extremely lucky. The others blow.

So, totting up the list of Allies that are actually worth playing for their Ally ability, we have

Ice
Fire
Firestorm
Killer Frost
Lex Luthor

And now, getting back to Zatanna for a second - note that THREE of these five competitive Ally characters are five-drops. Zatanna is a five-drop.

And that is why Zatanna isn't very good.

The part I like about captain marvel, he seems a solid back-up plan. Although the affiliation seems suited to 4 resources, maybe the killer JLI deck will not go back to 4 at 5, but on 7. Having Cap around allows you to decide when to do it, depending on the situation.

If you consider Cap as a plot twist, it has the adventage of being discardable for effects that need affiliated characters (Um... is there any for JLI?), and can't be fizzled, locked by Doom 6 or nailed by Null Time Zone. Besides, in a team attack gives +4 to each character. Sure, it seems overkill, but some wall-like decks can get crazy on defense.

So far, I agree with the list of bad rares. Almost.

Anyone here who doesn't like Plastic Man, I'll take him off your hands (first 4 only please), especially if it's the alternate art foil version (Best Alt. art ever!)

Don't ask me why...I just like him as a character.

In order for a rare to be truly considered bad it has to be IMO neither good in limited or constructed. Captain Marvel is most certainly a good card in limited. In constructed nobody right now really knows how viable a JLI off curve deck really is so saying that Captain Marvel is bad because he doesn't seem to fit in JLI off curve is like saying Nimrod is bad because he doesn't fit into Wild Vomit. And people did used to think Nimrod was bad.

Then, if Zatanna was a Brotherhood character, she would be great because of lost city?

Guess we could work something out. Like, you know, a team up?

Teleport Tube is Decent. i dont know why thats on the list. it lets you reset attacks if they have tricks

You have fun with that. Look, I'm sorry if the truth that the JLA simply isn't a very good team hurts. I'm not happy about it either. But there are three whole other teams in the set and they might have some potential!

I agree with you saying that no ONE Ability of Ally is better than Lost City, but they dont have to be cause the All trigger and Help each other out. You dont build a Ally deck so you can just use one Ally power but 2-3 powers. Also aslong as you have a Guy you have a power-up effect (whih means you are far less likely to miss your deck which happens if you miss Avalon or Lost City in BBH) Also cause JLA support it They fill in the holes (like Unmasked)

You over Judge The Ally Mech, mainly cause the JLA have MANY outsideSide Ways to POwerup. With Hawkman and Conner out you Get +4/+1 While attacking up the Curve, Thats Better than BBH in my book cause you dont need to play Double of Characters (fewer Replacement Isseues) because you have 2 ongoings an Equipment and Other CHaracters that give power ups, not to mention pts and Doubles of Characters. Ally isnt As Good on Def as BBH but its much Better on Off, its also less fragile.

SuperGirl Still Sucks though.

CHDB--Great rundown on the ally mechanic. I agree +3/+3 is better than most ally abilities, but a 9/9 5 drop with range, automatic power-up, and no drawback isn't bad. Even when she loses her cosmic, she's still on curve. Is she a great card? No. but if I bust a playset of her I won't be disappointed.

Teleport Tube is soooo wrong.

Come on now--you say that like you need a 10 card combo to pull it off. Mulligan for Lost City and throw in a few extra team-ups/team-up searchers. Done.

Could you please take World War III off the list. This is one of my favorite cards in the set. In a team that can easily get more total cost in play than its opponents, this can Wrath the board on any turn where you have intiative.
Add onto that the fact that you can take out a key drop (i.e. Bastion, Garth etc) or prevent Loyal characters from hitting play (Terra, Garth, Nimrod's counter).

Accually Nth Metal will probally bring BBH back by it self.

Yes, I understand that, but here's the kicker - most of the JLA Ally abilities really aren't all that complimentary.

Lemme put it this way: say it's turn 5 and you've hit your curve exactly: Connor Hawke, Aquaman, Katar Hol and Firestorm. (As far as Ally decks go, this is probably the perfect storm in terms of drops.) Let's further say that you've kept all four of them on the board, which is extremely unlikely against most curve decks (Connor would probably be dead) but hey.

You attack with Aquaman into their 5-drop and power up. You get +4 attack from Connor and Katar, you remove a card from their KO pile with Aquaman (let's say that, despite it being extremely unlikely on turn 5, this empties their KO pile and boosts Aquaman to a 6/6) and you get to draw a card with Firestorm. Arthur is now a 10/6 attacker, and I'll grant you this is pretty slick.

But let's say Connor got KOed, which is likely. And let's say that instead of Aquaman you got Shayera Thal as your 3-drop. Now, when you attack with Shayera into their 5-drop, you get +3 from Katar, a card cycle/search from Shayera, and a draw with Firestorm. Shayera isn't stunning their 5-drop.

Now let's say instead of Shayera and Katar, you hit Aquaman and Black Canary. This is completely useless for jumping the curve. Aquaman and Black Canary's various Ally abilities - while not actively bad - don't compliment each other at all. They're just random things that don't actively suck outright.

Moreover, these things are entirely offensive abilities. As far as defense goes - and defense, not offense, is what wins most VS games - the JLA is just flat-out boned. You find me anything that works as nicely on defense as the 3 DEF you get every time from Lost City. (Hint: there isn't anything that works as well as Lost City.) And that counts for not getting stunned on the attack as well - the reason Lost City decks have always been present as a threat is their capacity to ram a smaller drop into your on-curve drop that turn and not take a stun back, because they're just that studly and pumped.

Finally, and most importantly, there's the issue of KO pile recursion, which the JLA desperately needs and doesn't have in any appreciable amount. Avalon Space Station is just as important to Lost City attack decks as Lost City is because it means you're not totally destroying your hand to win the game. The JLA's only recursion tech? Secret Sanctuary. Which requires Willpower. And most of the characters with Willpower don't have Ally! HA!

Don't even get me started on most of the powerup-effect plot twists in the set. They're worse than worthless. Nth Metal is really the only playable card out of all of them. The rest just deplete your hand and make your deck less flexible.