I just want to know this ... Brotherhood Reservist, Morlock Evasion, and Hellfire Concealed ... all the main themes of each team got a character search ... I guess we're supposed to rush X-Men ??? How about something a bit more than 3 or less ??? The best combo out of the X-Men right now is Xorn, Havok, and Gambit ... how about a search for the 4 and aboves without teaming up and using Enemy of my Enemy.

i like the set for various reasons but i agree with your opinions.. art as a whole is subpar. (i think the art is pretty easy to control just look at the nitwits portfolio) the traits are an interesting addition to constructed but in sealed they are horrendous.. it makes my head hurt looking at their stats their affiliation then looking at their trait.. then seeing if their ability is good or bad.. so much to consider!

I think people have been a little quick to jump on Metagamer. He raises a lot of valid issues,


Art is, has had been said by many a poster before, is a subjective, fickle thing, but in my [i[ subjective[/i] opinion, I find the art to be comparably worse to Justice League and the Avengers. Perhaps it has to do with teams themeselves : Morlocks, Hellfire, and to a certain degree the Brotherhood all convey an underground, somewhat murkey image, something that could lead to drab, muted colors , while the Justice League dealt more with epic heroics and bright, eye-popping colors, which are in general more popular and appealing. I will say this however - Mutant Massacre is freaking sweet.

Ironically, I find the new Black Panther to be one of the best cards in the new set as well. But agreed about the mutant trait statement - there are no plot twists or synergies that make playing mutant traits in Constructed play-worthy. Xorn will have decks built around him, as will the Morlock bigguns. But the one thing that defines the set probably will not see much high level tournament play beyone the Limited formats.

I actually think both these teams have a lot of flavor to them ( gotta love the Artie picture ). It remains to be seen if the Morlocks evasion builds can stand up in the limelight ( personally, I don't think the Evasion trait is all that great to begin with ). Hellfire might have some interesting tricks to it, I just don't think it will be Tier 1 .

Disagree here. The comic power levels cannot always determine the recruit cost of a card. Whenever I see " [Insert favorite hero/villain] should definitely be an 6/7/8 drop because in the comics they are soooooo powerful and cool and I love them !" Well, everyone is someone's favorite hero, and you can't have an affiliation with no "weak" characters ( i.e. 1,2,3 drops ) . To me, a succesful character transition from comic to card means keeping the the flavor of the powers of the character in question in the design of the card.

I know it will be unpopular, but I believe Legacy allotments should be awarded to teams who are in actual need of help, or at least wait 2 sets to give the most popular affiliations legacy content. For example, teams like Avengers and Teen Titans would get 0-1 legacy cards in a new set, while teams like Crime Lords or New Gods would get significantly more, maybe 3-5 cards depending on the team.

Havn't played sealed MXM yet, so I'll reserve judgement here.

I've mentioned what I've though about Mutant traits above in point 9, no need to reiterate here,

Like I said before, I think all the MXM teams have a lot of flavor to them, and I don't find the mechanics to be the part that makes the set subpar.

Agree here, I think the "not enough room on the card" is a bit of a cop-out as well, and I think a direct result of UDE pushing out sets too quickly. I mean, if the set had gotten pushed back a bit, would it have been the end of the world ? Hell, has it even been three months since the release of Justice League ? That time flew by quick, and DJL hasn't even had a chance to be the star of the show yet, even though I thought it was the Strongest DC set since Origins.

I'll just say it one more time, I think the Mutant traits arn't a very good theme.

Whew, that was a mouthful ! Now to take a break, I think JLU is about to come on here on the West Coast :p.

that is so far from wrong its false. the new cards work fantasticly with any other set and the designers made sure of this, there are cards like brave new world where if your running even one mutant and another team (say superman) and you team them up, what ever trait that one mutant had now every character in you hand deck KO and remove from game pile has that trait. then theres district x which all you do is call a trait at the start of combat, and thats only namin two cards there are plenty more. Any idiot can read the cards and formulate a plan on how to build a deck combining new and old cards, ive got a friend at school whom i gave a bunch of commons and uncommons to build off of and get a feel for, and then he just bought a bunch of MXM packs and now he has a spider friends energy deck thats beast. then i came from my hobby league today and someone built a x-recovery deck that combined MXM characters and MOR characters that worked togather fantastcally and he had all characters from turn 1-9 on the board the entire time, AND all characters had a mutant trait, even the retired MOR x-men characters so for those of you whom say that this set is terrible and has no synergy with older sets perhaps you should stop scratching the couch sores on yer butt and and start given yerself baldspots from scratchin yer head cause like it or not this set has changed VS forever and has put our beloved game in a whole new direction. because no longer can you make a simple team deck with its theme already spelled out for you. like oh my god you might actually like have to think about what you do whoduh thought we might actually have to put a little brain power into our decks, perhaps with the options open now people will stop netdecking so much but hay you know there are only god knows how many options open to someone with this new deck considering that there are like 7 different teams within MXM but hay that would mean actually learning the game instead of just being competative.

you would think this...and you would be wrong. life is rarely that simple.

the fact that you think traits are that strong is hilarious :(.

hmm garth or emma? terra or gambit? the characters with willpower in current glee and glock, or characters with traits? like seriously the trait stuff is underpowered and OVERstamped :/. im not saying there arnt some fine cards for GA like mob mentality and chill out to an extent, but traits overall are honestly poor :/.

This is exactly what I am talking about. A set that (apart from legacy) might as well have ignored the rest of the game because it either team or trait stamped almost every single card that showed promise. Take Chill Out- why make it trait restrictive to play when all that needs to be restrictve is the ongoing, like NTZ is with Kang. It would make the card a good rare instead of a trash rare akin to Xavier's Dream- good in one deck that almost no-one plays. The rare power level in this set is kinda like the MOR DOOM rares that are nearly unplayable even as jank(excepting Robot Destroyer) I bought a box, and got a total of 4 playable rares, 6 maybes, and 14 that I contemplated just throwing away. The only thing that saved me was the reminder that a sucker learns VS every minute, so maybe someone would trade me good cards for the crap I pulled.

Well, its good to know that I'm not the only with concerns about MXM.

But because my love for Marvel has been questioned, and because I still need that dollar from Stubarnes, Here were my initial reactions to the MAV set. I'm not in the business to bash VS, i love the game. And because I do care, i will not hesitate to offer my opinion. Especially when I feel like the guys in charge of this awesome game are slacking off a bit! anyway...


10 REASONS WHY MAV ROCKS!


10. High quality art. While art is purely subjective, the quality of the art in MAV is undisputed. The art has always been a high point for the game, and it continues with MAV. You may not like HOW Gamma Rage Hulk looks, but you can't the deny the quality of the art work.

9. Powerful cards. Null Time Zone... War of Attrition... System Failure... these cards have serious implications on the metagame. And then, there's the team-stamped stuff... Other Earth(um, excuse me? -2 DEF and lost of reinforcement?) .... Avengers Assemble! ... Hard Sound Construct... really nice rares in this set!

8. Fantastic Teams. You have your premiere teams like Avengers and Masters of Evil, but since many characters are repeated with those 2 teams(beast, quicksilver, scorpion, shocker, etc), they don't feel completely new. So, the other 2 teams have to be interesting, OR else the set will seem stale. luckily, they are. Eventhough they are more obscure than the teams I was expecting, Squadron, Thunderbolts, and Kang give the MAV set a "Battle of the Super Teams," feel, that i like very much.

7. Great character and team designs. Non-uniqueness for the time-traveling Kang? Brilliant! Leader effects galore for the many leaders on the Avengers. They do it effortlessly it seems, but great job on translating the comic-book stuff into the card game! you guys never seem to disppoint in this area of game-design. It's good to know that this(seemingly) throwaway aspect is important to the R/D guys!

6. Newer strategies for older teams as well as more support for the weaker teams. A Doom deck without Doom? Zorba dares you to try! A good Spider-man and White Tiger for the Evasion heavy Spider-Friends. A synergistic Polaris to complement Aerial Supremacy and Archangel? Sweet. etc... All that really matters is that they didn't give Sentinels more broken cards, or even MORE PT hate for Doom. Nice!

5. Great Design for sealed play. Great teamups in Faces of Evil and Supreme Sanction, A strongly supported mechanic like Reservists in most of the teams will help as well. Also, cards like Earth's Mightiest Heroes, which may not be fully realized in constructed play are absolute bombs in sealed!

4. Great new mechanics. I'll touch on Reservists a bit later, but Leader, and to an lesser extent, Team-up(finally!) are great ways to tighten up the game. With Range/Flight featured more prominently in Vs these days(power creep, which is inevitable in card games), Leader is good way of making formation relevant! Not as game-breaking as Reservists, but not as useless as Cosmic either. A

3. Great new themes. I'm not sure how sucessful empty hand-based effects will be(wink, wink) but at least its a NEW concept! But the Reservist-heavy theme of the Avengers already looks solid. and I'm sure someone is already drooling over Kang's non-uniqueness and Lost City.

2. Willpower on Dr. Spectrum was awesome! And having a few constructs in the game is a nice way of keeping the newer mechanics from DGL fresh. No one would've blamed the UDE guys if they skipped over those features completely(since they seem to be more DC-inspired). But the fact that they were creative enough with the character and set design to include them in MAV is a testament to the amount of work being put in this set. Bravo, guys!

1. Reservist. THE SINGLE BEST MECHANIC TO HIT THE GAME SINCE BOOST! The game really needed this. Good job guys for realizing and coming up with this! Reservist is such a natural mechanic, and it will affect the game in such positive ways, dare i say? The game will never be played the same way again!

While I don't think MXM is as bad as, say, DSM, I do think it's about the same power level as DJL- not a completely unexciting set, but the new mechanic (Ally, Mutant Traits) isn't immediately impressive, and the set as a whole is not as powerful as the previous set released for that company. (DGL kicks DJL's butt, and MAV is stronger than MXM.)

As for the artwork, any set that has that many scantily clad hotties can't be all bad, y'know?

mutant massacre is the best card art there is so meh!

I like Mutant Massacre also, as well as:

Phoenix Rising
Sebastian Shaw
Emma and Selene Hellfire Art (of course)

And while I usually like the more realistic looking art (like the above cards or Alex Ross for instance), I am very impressed with the 'cartoonish' art of Leech and Join the Club (very different styles, but impressive to me) and Healer, which almost looks Japanese in its style maybe (I'm not sure of the exact style, so if someone more versed in art terminology could help it would be appreciated ;) )

Have you even tried playing emma? I pulled one as well as the new sabertooth at the pre-release lets see now garth = once per turn, emma well it really depends on how you made your deck and how many cards are in your hand.

Terra off init, but you kill a resource and exhaust, gambit not off init, doesnt exhaust, can use magnetic force to exhaust terra

emma is once per turn too?

wow can i see your misprinted emma? you don WANT your 5 drop stunning 3 drops only on your inititive. do you know how BAD of a power that is? it basicially doesnt exist if you have even inititive. he should be stunning 4 drops or something :[.

and dont even try to say gambit is in the same league as terra :(. gambit is like playing on a boys and girls basketball team, terra is like in the nba :(

and btw replacing =/= killing a resource

OH and is magnetic force some new GOD card? ever hear of entange? that card has existed for quite a while ;(

I think the discard turned a lot of people off, but you're right. Entangle has rocked for a while, now.