Kergy’s Korner #13: A Bat In The Belfry

Last week’s article dealt with the three new keywords (Boost, Loyalty and Transferable). This week I’m going to look at the characters who have been previewed, and speculate a little on what we may see in DC Origins. Since there is so much to say, I’m splitting it into at least two articles. This week’s is Akham Inmates and Gotham Knights. Next week will look at the Titans and the League of Assassins. If there’s room, I’ll take a sneek peak at the potential of the Fearsome Five and possible unaffiliated characters, otherwise I’ll write a third article dealing with them, the week after.

ARKHAM INMATES

The Joker: Laughing Lunatic
Cost: 4; ATK: 7; DEF: 6
Whenever The Joker is attacked, target opponent chooses a card from your hand at random. Reveal that card. If you revealed an Arkham Inmates character card, that opponent loses endurance equal to that card's cost.


This is the only card we’ve seen so far. We know that Poison Ivy will be on the team, and it’s strongly rumoured that Riddler (and his cronies), Killer Croc, Harley Quinn, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, Two-Face – and perhaps even the Penguin – will be on the team. (And Bizarro – I know that Penguin is not an Arkham prisoner – but remember the Lizard!). There will also surely be another Joker – perhaps two. And there are plenty of other Arkham crazies (or ‘alternative minds’ as the PCers like to call ’em) to lock up – er – lock INTO the set, from the Film Freak to the Ventriloquist.

We also see that this Joker has a nasty little power, and one which has two important aspects to it. The first is randomness. Randomness fits in beautifully to the Arkham mentality (or lack thereof…). Two-Face’s coin, Riddler’s riddles, Harley Quinn – all fit nicely with randomness! Even the Mad Hatter’s monkey fits! Well, okay, maybe not the monkey – but the Hatter certainly has his moments of crazy randomness...

There has been a lot of speculation on various boards and sites about what random effects these characters might have. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that Two-Face will have a power that the player has to flip a coin for – ‘Activate --> Target a character. Flip a coin. Heads: that character is stunned (or KO’d); Tails: Two-Face is stunned (or KO’d)’. Riddler should have a guessing effect – ‘choose a random card from your opponent’s hand. Guess what it is. Opponent reveals. If you guess it correctly, opponent discards the card.’ In fact, it would be even more amazing to be able to guess the card and force our opponent to not only discard it, but to search their deck and discard every other card of the same title (ie: Wolverine: Logans but not Berzerker Rages). Night Vision would make a sick combination with this card idea, and lord help a Wild Sentinels Candy Corn deck…

The second aspect of the card is the insane one: a team aspect. Using Arkham Inmates cards in tandem with one another – having them perform as a team – is so crazy that it ironically fits perfectly! This leads me to believe that the speculation over the Undefeated picture of Echo and Query may have some truth to it – that they may be an Army character rather than a plot twist.

One final tidbit of speculation on the Arkham Inmates is the possibility of the Arkham Asylum itself as a location. What would it do? Something random, I would think. Perhaps giving a bonus to a random character? Or doling out a random effect – maybe, like the Two-Face idea, an effect that may or may not be beneficial depending on the result.

In the end, Arkham Inmates will probably be a very powerful team, but with a lot of randomness, and a lot of luck needed. Like the Joker: Laughing Lunatic – all randomness has its drawbacks. Sure you have the chance of dealing a nice BEL boost, but your opponent gets to see a card – regardless of whether it’s actually an Arkham character…

GOTHAM KNIGHTS

DickGrayson*Nightwing: Protector of Innocents
Cost: 6; ATK: 12; DEF: 12
Whenever Dick Grayson stuns a character, draw a card.
Discard a Gotham Knights character from your hand ‡ Target defender has reinforcement this attack.

Bat Computer
Plot Twist; Cost: 2
Text: As an additional cost to play Bat Computer discard 2 cards from your hand or 1 Gotham Knights character card from your hand. Negate target plot twist effect

Museum Heist
Plot twist; Cost: 2
Discard X cards. Then draw that many.

Utility Belt
Equipment; Cost 0
Text: Equip only to a Gotham Knights character. Equipped character can attack as though he had flight and range.
Exhaust Utility Belt -> Negate target payment power effect.


Now, it is known that these cards are merely previews, and that the game text (and in the case of the Bat Computer, the name of the card) will change before the set is finalized. The reason I left them all in is that they give a sample of the sort of effect we will see in the set.

The first thing that I notice when comparing all of these cards is that three of the four involve drawing and/or discarding cards. A this point in the game, there are very few cycling cards (though if Madame Web is any indication, Spider-Friends may add to this number). Deck and hand manipulation would be ideal for the Bat-team, as research, knowledge, detection – these are all important characteristics of all things Bat. Let’s not lose sight of the Dark Knight’s start in DETECTIVE COMICS – and that he is, in fact, as much a detective as a vigilante.

Starting with Dick Grayson, we have the strongest draw ability in the game – stun and draw. This Grayson is the rare, super-huge Grayson – 12/12 for a 6-drop is above the average 12/11 or 11/12, and puts him on par with the Hulk. So he’ll definitely do some stunning. His ability is better than Madame Web’s for various reasons – it doesn’t need exhaustion as it’s part of the attack; his other ability doesn’t need activation; it can be used on attack OR defense; you get the card in your hand, and not on the top of your deck. Add his 'discard to reinforce effect' and Dick Grayson*Nightwing: Protector Of Innocents becomes one of the best 6 drops I’ve ever seen! He will be a must-play for any GK deck.

Bat Computer is indeed a little sick for a 2–drop twist. Being able to negate ANY effect is brutal enough, but a simple discard on a cheap twist makes it worse. I’m glad they’ve decided to edit this one. However, I like counters. A pure counter-deck will not be viable in this game, but I wonder to myself whether or not this will be a beautifully delicious addition to my Burn Baby Burn deck. It will also make cards like Blind-Sided and Savage Beatdown a LOT easier to swallow.

Museum Heist is, again, VERY powerful for its cost. A 2-cost twist that allows you to arbitrarily reset any or all of your hand is vicious. I wonder if it will end up as ‘discard your hand and draw the same number of cards’. This would be much more balanced, as one is forced to decide whether or not it is worth dumping multiple cards just to get rid of one or two that may not be so useful in the present predicament(s).

Utility Belt follows the Bat Computer on the theme of counter/negation. But it is perhaps the most broken/undercosted of the three. I say this for three reasons: a) at 0-cost, it gives any and all GK characters free flight and/or range – but without the actual abilities (ie: no Bishop effect on them); b) A free payment power negation per turn? -OUCH-!!; and c) in what looks to be another new mechanic, the equipment exhausts but the character doesn’t. I hope this changes, because I think this is WAY too brutal. In fact, this card wouldn’t be quite so nasty if the character had to exhaust to use its power. But having equipment exhaustion means that the character can use the negation and still attack. Now imagine it on the Dick Grayson – you try to Dazzler him and he negates it; then he attacks your Dazzler for the stun and big BEL, drawing a card – which just happens to be a GK character, allowing him to reinforce when your beast comes pounding towards him…

Now imagine Pyro with Advanced Hardware, which echausts for its power rather than Pyro needing to exhaust. Now we have 6 burn per turn. Need I say more...?

So what else do we have in store? We know that Alfred is in the set – wil he be a Batman/Robin Alicia Masters? Catwoman will be interesting – maybe she could steal equipment. Oracle might be a GK Longshot, or have some form of deck manipulation ability. And both the various Batmans and Robins should have good stats and a solid ability – also likely to be deck and hand manipulation and/or negation. I wonder if every Batman, Dick Grayson or every Robin and/or Nightwing will have the draw ability – would be cool if everyone had a different draw effect (exhaust a character you control to draw a card; pay 2 endurance to draw a card; every time X attacks, draw a card; etc.).

NEXT WEEK: The Teen Titans and Ra’s al-Ghul’s League of Assassins!

a very insightful look into the batman portion of the DC origins set, well done

Already got my boxes preordered :) Can't wait to see what the true A.I. team does.

Kergy, I believe Omeed confirmed in a thread here that Bat Computer was completely out of the picture. Maybe I've gone crazy though.

Great article in either case. Looking forward to some of those Inmates. :)

Your Museum Heist is slightly off, you have to exhaust a Arkham Inmates character as part of the cost also. A friend works at a store and they sent a little miniposter type thing to help advertise for the new set.

What Omeed said was that there will be a card, with a different name, that has a similar efffect to the Bat Computer.

If that does change, the very fact that the card existed at some point with that effect still adds to a pattern of effects that they planned for the set...

Thanks for the comments, guys =)

-nods- thanks for the tip. The poster text s the most recent we have - but remember that it's not final text (as I mentioned in my article).

BUT AI exhaustion makes it a little easier - it also changes it from a Bat card to an Arkham card which makes sense by name but skews my pattern. Ah well, such is life =)

Kergillain, I missed you most of all.

-grin- why, did I go somewhere? =)

No, I've been gone for the past two days (which felt like an eternity).

-gasp- (reaches for the methadone to help ease Biazrro's withrdrawal)

so what are your thoughts on the Spidey starter and DC previews?

Not much to say on the Spidey Starter. It is what it is. (Have you ever noticed sets become somewhat less fun to talk about after they come out?)

I have made some comment on the new DC previews thought. Let me gather them up for you.


About Batman...

Yes!

I think a seven cost Batman pretty well means there won't be an eight cost version (unless they go all Magneto on us, and it definitely makes sense for Bats to be more spread out than Mags).

So who will the Gotham Knights 8 drop be? Superman? Etrigan? Bat-Mite? I can't wait to find out.


About Hatter...

Well it's about time somebody lets you take your opponents characters. I'm surprised this mechanic wasn't in the first release, but then again, I guess it suits Hatter better anyway, since his method of mind control is pretty different from all the psychics out there in comics today.


And then there's that new Joker...

This is such a bad pun, on so many levels. This card essentially turns your VS game into a little game of Poker, and, in Poker, Jokers are Wild, which also happens to be the this card's version, but that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that a pun is a type of joke, and the character this card represents is, that's right, The Joker. It hurts my brain!