I've been forcing myself to churn out deck idea after deck idea lately and something has made itself clear to me. (it was clear before but now it's blatant)

Having some kind of draw power is nearly vital for a team to be able to do well.

Remembering that draw power includes tutors without discard cost, and cards that outright let you draw cards, This seems to me to be a big thing holding back several teams.

Cycling helps, but unless it's reliable cycling it usually only proves a hassle to the player, and seems like they are shooting into the dark (cerebro and Osborn industries anyone?)

But teams that have straight draw power, MK, Gotham knights, F4, Titans (using argus tricks), Curve sents with Mags. and others. No matter how well the team performs they are seen as a strong and viable team.

In single team strategies, especially curve based ones, is it really only possible to run a team that has some way to replenish their hand?
Are all the other teams doomed to shrivel up and die?
(Not much of a question I know, but I was reaching for something to pose)

Funny you should mention "Doom". I think it is still a viable team, and it lacks the "draw power" you're referring to (Boris is 1 resource and 1 card for another card, hardly advantageous). I have had large amounts of success with Doom strategies, mostly based around the off-curve theories of Evil Medical School, just more purebred and with the killer 7-9 drops that deck can put out.

In general, though, I think that card draw is VERY important to a deck. It is quite amazing in this game, honestly; drawing twice as many cards in every turn as in other games, and yet card drawing is so much more important. The reasoning: VS has done a nice job of NOT flooding the game with card drawing effects.

Want to make a fun deck? Heroes United/Common Enemy/Unlikely Allies (4 of each) card draw deck with Valeria, Longshot, Boris, Mr. Fantastic (2), Antarctic Research Base, Cosmic Radiation, and a killer turn 5 w/ Mr. Fantastic (after a turn 4 Torch) and a bunch of Advanced Hardwares. It's a burn deck that does nothing except for draw immense amounts of cards to almost guarantee a turn 5 burn to death with Cosmic Radiation. Try it, it's fun. And it can really show the power of card drawing.

In Magic, a cantrip is a card that draws you a card when you play it. They flood the environment. In this game, cards like team-specific team-ups are considered precious, and anything that fills up your hand and costs less than 7 resource points has GOT to be good.

Statistically, I'd rather play with a 48 card deck. Gives me the better chance to see what I need.

Maybe that's just me, though.

Interestingly, the Arkham Inmates have access to the most easily powered card drawing effects in the game. Yet, they're one of the most maligned teams in VS. Drawing more cards is not going to assure victory.

Curve strategies support the notion of hand advantage because by its nature, the ATK strength and defensive value of a single character of cost X almost always exceeds that of two cheaper characters, meaning that it's normally advantageous to get more characters into play at curve.

It's notable that several card drawing and card searching abilities cost resource points. The best ones (Alfred, Boris, Boliver Trask, and Optitron) are popular because they can make use of the single resource point gained on the first turn. Other resource-point-to-draw effects (Barbara Gordon (2) and Midtown High School) are less popular because they force a player to go off-curve in order to get extra cards... and it's good to note that you'll usually need to play more cards to compensate for going off-curve in the first place.

Overall, the remaining true card-draw powers are pretty conditional. Bat-Signal and Wild Ride are essentially a card-for-card exchange with an additional costs. In a pure curve deck, both can end up being costly in the late game, but Bat-Signal ends up being the superior of the two in some off-curve strategies... the Officers make this a particularly useful card. The Gotham Knights and Fantastic Four both have equipment-based drawing effects... but Babs can be halted quickly, and the Antarctic Research Base only gets a card per equipment card, essentially cycling the card cost of using equipment.

So far, I think the best simple card drawing effect is Lex-Corp. If you have a way to see what's going in, it can quickly let you mill into useful cards. Of course, it requires that less useful cards are placed into the resource row for a while, but Avalon Space Station provides an easy way to stow away early high-drop character cards for later, while aiding in the milling process.

Considering that, Avalon Space Station and Reconstruction Program can become the biggest card advantage granters when combined with milling tricks. I've seen a Brotherhood deck run Shape-Change for this purpose, and it helps it a good deal. I'm a little suprised that Curve Sentinels builds don't use much early-game milling, since they can easily afford tossing Army characters into their KO'd pile just to get them back later. I'm tempted to try Osborn Industries in my CS deck for precisely this reason.

Draw power is useful (providing it doesn't come at too high a cost), but it's by no means necessary.

What is necessary for a curve deck is a tutor - Sentinels has army redundancy and a bad tutor, the other tier 1 curve decks all have good tutors.

Aggro decks can rely on redundancy rather than tutors (in fact this suits their purposes better).

Combo decks typically want draw and tutoring.

Lastly, you categorise Argus as drawing, whilst I would argue it is actually limited tutoring. It only gains card advantage if it's destroyed the same turn, and if it see's two build steps then it's definitely used as tutoring and not drawing (card disadvantage in fact).

@kelanen- Saying that argus is only card advantage if it's destroyed is like saying TTgo is only good if you can team attack. 90% of the time the titans are going to have that down and use it to advantage.

@all- But what about stuff like off curve decks, any chance at certain teams off curve strategies being possible are quickly destroyed by lack of card draw. If the team doesn't have a tutor on top of that (like X-men, sorta SF, and Syndicate) their off curve ideas are useless at best.

Card draw or lack of.(Considering that I do consider tutor hand advantage, the non discard type atleast) can crush the chances of some teams to operate.

I'd try to make an syndicate deck, but I have to make it so character heavy that I can't play all the plot twist I may need. Then I can't play vital deck protection/hate outside of my decks initial combo/amp. Then there is still the chance that my hand will either dry up, or I will outright miss a drop.

Syndicate and Arkham are probably on top of this list, but they aren't the only ones.

I'm still relitively new to play VS, but how is argus advantage? I agree with kelanen that its limited tutoring.

Just doesnt make sense to me thats all.

You draw 2 cards, then you flip and pick a card from Argus. That's you gained 1 card advantage (or you're breaking even because Argus is a card too). Use Terra to replace it on the same turn and you don't miss any drawing, plus you potentially gain more card advantage if you get a new location or plot twist.

And, in most cases if it's a card you really want in your hand, then you can KO it with Roy, and retrieve it with Garth

Terra and Argus are good, but overrated. Red Star is the man.

Back on topic, card drawing is good, important yes. But card efficiency is arguably more important. Tamaran provides less card advantage* than Moving Target, but is by far a much better card as it can be used every turn, on both attack and defence and has synergy with aforementioned Red Star.

I'm not dissing card advantage at all. But to assume it is the be-all and end all is wrong.

(* ignoring the whole, "I have three hands concept. My hand, my resource row and my KO pile. And Tamaran draws a card into my third hand. cf Garth")

Drawing is very important in any card game. U can have the best deck in the world, but lose from lack of cards. But I have to say it, because you guys are sleeping on it.

ESC SCIENCE LAB.

It may only be one card, for every 2 SF you exauhst, but how many times do people find themselves with low drops that have no use. I learned this when playtesting my SF for a tourney. Those one or two cards a turn add up. Use it on the defence with all your characters then power them up for reinforcement with the first effect. This also makes slingers a good card.

P.S. Red Star is the Man... or the Teen in this case.lol

Card advantage is hardly that big of an 'advantage' in this game. More often than not, the extra cards you draw will just sit in your hand because they cannot be played, whether they are a low-cost character or an extra copy of a location. I have made decks that use Negative Zone to KO characters with all of the useless cards that pile up in my hand, and they worked. I turned unplayable cards that would normally just sit in my hand until the end of the match into fuel for my KO'ing location.

But I digress. This isn't YGO where every single card determines the outcome of the game and when you lose your hand you lose the match. Most of the cards you draw will have little impact on your current situation since there are so many cards in each deck, so while cards like Avalon and Recon Program are good, cards that let you draw randomly off the top of your deck really aren't that great. The only kind of deck that needs that kind of drawing is a weenie rush deck, and if thats the deck you're playing, you're going to need a TON of cards, not just a few extra here and there.

Woah... I just got an idea...

Tell me. Tell me. lol :)

card drawing is power because u can get the cards u need to win

Where the heck did that list your rares thing come from?

Anyway, Yes card advantage isn't the be all end all, but that's because some teams have certain tricks they can use to replace actually having a large hand.

Teams like the titans have an imaginary "third hand" the Underworld love the idea of their hand being small as they dump more and more into their graveyard.

But some teams "tricky utility" run off of cards in hand. sometimes you need to be able to draw a combo peice if you team can't search for it (not everyone has a boris-esque tutor). The only way the spider-friend tutor works (costume change) is if you've managed to draw up someone with the same name.

Utility may trump the draw power, but being able to get through your deck quicker, or getting what you want from your deck, has empowered some teams and left others crippled.

Now as for useless plotwist, you gotta cycle through a few useless ones to get to the one you may need to win.

Look at Titans and evern Curve Sentinels (putting genosha aside becasue it is still viable without it) THos decks do not have much draw power but they have consitancy and powerful effect/combo's without those, drawing is only good to a certain degree, card power and consitancy is the realy key to VS. If draw power was so important then every deck would be playing genosha's and magneto, or even jsut genosha.