So, I know some cards are better than other cards. That's a given.
I also know that some cards are intentionally better than other cards to allow for a range of efficacy in Draft. That's fine.

Now, then, Ultra Boy:

Ultra Boy, Jo Nah
Cost 5, Legionnaires
Flight, 9 ATK, 6 DEF
Remove a cosmic counter from a character you control >>> Ultra Boy gets +2 ATK this turn or has invulnerability this turn. Use this power only once per turn.
Cosmic

This is a hard one to understand. Consider that base stats for a 5 drop are roughly 9/9. Jo has Flight, so that can account for some of his low stats. His ability is always on, rather than tied to having a cosmic counter actually on him. He's Cosmic, which used to seem like a drawback, but now apparently serves to increase costs.
But... 9/6? There are 3-drops who can beat him up. Virtually all 4-drops. Every 5-drop I can think of. It's a good thing he can gain invulnerability, because he's going to get stunned all day long with DEF like that.

Let's compare in team. Lightning Lad - I'm sorry, Live Wire.

Live Wire, Garth Ranzz
Cost 5, Legionnaires
Flight, Range, 11 ATK, 7 DEF
Whenever one or more characters you control with cosmic counters stun a character, its controller loses 2 endurance.
Cosmic—Surge

For the same cost you get both higher ATK and DEF. One of Ultra Boy's triggered powers will give him 11 ATK, which would equal Garth's ATK here -- but Live Wire's getting it for free. And as we commented above, U-Boy's going to need the invulnerability, and he can't have both the + ATK and the invulnerability on the same turn. Live Wire also offers range (which a lot of the Legionnaire characters seem to be lacking) and an abiilty that costs nothing but opportunity. Given, Live Wire's power can only net you 2 endurance per stun, and Ultra Boy's invulnerability can save you 5 endurance per stun. That's a plus.

Outside of team - Computo.

Computo, Rogue Program
Cost 5, Future Foes
10 ATK, 9 DEF
Reservist
Whenever Computo causes breakthrough to a player, that player discards a card and you draw a card.

Okay, first thing to notice - 19 total points of ATK and DEF, as opposed to 18 on Live Wire, and 15 on Ultra Boy. Second, Computo's ability - even though it relies on your opponent failing to reinforce and thus not entirely within your control (Blindsided tricks notwithstanding), is great. If it was just "draw a card" or "your opponent discards a card" it would have been acceptable. But, both? And an ATK large enough to cause breakthrough is nice in conjunction with his special.

So, the upside of Ultra Boy is his invulnerability. The +2 ATK power is essentially worthless - you would just play Live Wire if that was your intention. But that 6 DEF... it may just be that a DEF that low in a set featuring so many reinforcement negation effects is like an invitation to massive beatings. It's hard to support his 9 ATK, as well, with big DEFs on cards becoming more common (Batman springs to mind - wow).

Maybe I just wanted Jo to be the second most powerful Legionnaire again. : )

--on a team with Mon-El, you're always going to be second best.

Tsa'good post.

Yeah, Ultra Boy's minimally versatile cosmic-removal ability doesn't make up for his stats. /shrug, maybe one of the Legion Legacy cards in DWF will be Ultra Boy if you're a fan of him as a character.

Not too late to petition for it.

Low defense + Invulnerability isn't anything knew. See: Superwoman.

The big difference vs. the Future Foe guy is the fact that he's got flight. [plus his cosmic counter can feed other Legion members].

And, you can't really compare characters from those on other teams, especially not in this set. Each team is so much about synergy you can't really compare the two evenly and equally just by looking at them alone. But still, in the case of the Future Foe ... Computo's ability is rarely going to work off initiative, and even on initiative, without flight, you need some sort of trick and or good 'other' characters to support him. Ultra Boy on the other hand works on either initiative, and has a bit of versatility. If he's attacked by someone with say ... 10 defense, he can choose to stun the person back. If someone attacks 'up' at him, he can get the invulnerability to lessen the damage you take off initiative. Off init > On init.

The comparison to Livewire is apt ... rarely would you want to go with Ultra Boy for his +2 attack if you could use Livewire instead.

However, the option to give yourself invulnerability [even if you plan on using his +2 attack at some point] may be better than Livewire's effect. If you are stalling ... Ultra Boys invulnerability [which you can get turn after turn] may be useful.

Again, off initiative, your opponent could attack Livewire first to minimize the impact of his ability. On the other hand, you can always make sure that Ultra Boy has his ability working regardless of how your opponent attacks characters [since Ultra Boys ability lasts for the turn, and thus you can remove the counter of a character about to be stunned if you need to. Similarly, Livewire's ability is dependent on your characters keeping [or having] your counters. Ultra Boy could act as a splash outside of a cosmic heavy team and at least get a one time use out of his ability off of his own counter.

For a stall theme though, at least personally, I'd prefer to try to go for brickwalls then to go for a character who will almost invariably become stunned but saves me the 4 endurance.

I'm not saying he's useless, but I still don't see him seeing much play outside limited ... where he may see play just because he's a 5-drop, he's common, and he's not horrible.

Good points, gentlemen.

Walter: The versatility Ultra Boy offers is absolutely useful. I just wonder if it's 9/6 useful. : )

Do you really think that cost analysis has to take into account DLS's focus on in-team effects? I know it's hard to figure a cost for Ultra Boy's power when it can draw off the cosmic counter on any character you control, but, still... You may have something there. (Consider Saturn Girl's cost - average stats, flight but no range, additional cosmic counter cost to recruit - but is her ability worth it?)

Access: I'm saving up my petitioning for Matter Eater Lad.

--you heard me.

Lol ... ts'probably the best call. ;)

I think you're underrating invulnerability. Even though VS is a game of board position, what determines what you lose is your life total. Especially on the critical turn seven, it's not just an issue of making the best attacks, it's also making the attacks that will deal you the least amount of damage - since you're probably going to be signifigantly lower on life since they had the nish.

Swining with an invulnerable attacker is a net loss of 5 END loss for your opponent. If your Computo trades with your opponent's 5 there is no net END loss. Since you walked into this turn already lower on life their your opponent, this situation isn't that favorable for you since you're looking to end the game. For me when I play limited, on the last turn I subtract my life from my opponents life total, and then add that with their life total. That's the amount of damage that I need to deal more then in order to win the game.

Does that make sense?

Finally, with regard to Computo's ability: The card discard/draw part is often less important then you think it is. Certainly, he would be ridiculous if he was on... say an aggressive three drop? However, I think it's pretty fair since it's on a 5 drop. As the game progresses, if you are a curve deck, more and more cards become obsolete since what you want per turn is just a needed drop and a twist. Consequently, what this means is that you have more bad cards to draw and they have more bad cards to discard.

There's too many gaps right now to petition for Ultra Boy #2 (and I agree that the Ultra Boy in DLS is a horrible rendition of one of the Legion's traditional beatsticks).

What I want to see from DWF for the Legion is:

Matter-Eater Lad
Tenzil Kem
1-drop, 1/1, Flight
Cosmic-Surge
Remove a cosmic counter from target character you control -> KO target equipment. Use this ability only once per turn.
"A neutron blaster array? That gives me an appetite... and you don't want to give ME an appetite..."

Lyle Norg <> Invisible Kid
Espionage Squad Leader
3-drop, 3/6, Flight
Concealed-Optional, Cosmic-Surge
Remove a cosmic counter from a character you control -> move target character from the visible area to the hidden area or to the hidden area from the visible area. Use this power only once per turn.

Gates
Ti'julk Mr'asz
2-drop, 2/4, Flight
Cosmic
Remove a cosmic counter from a character you control -> Legionnaires characters may attack as if they had range this turn.
"Oh, you need a teleport? One day the working classes will rise up against the non-teleporting bourgeoisie, you know!"

Shikari
Lonestar of the Kwai
4-drop, 7/7, Flight
Cosmic
Remove a cosmic counter from a character you control -> Target character is not protected and cannot be protected this turn. Use this power only once per turn.

Hope Remains
3-cost PT
As an additional cost to play Hope Remains, remove two cosmic counters from characters you control.
Exhaust target Legionnaires defender. Remove all attackers from this attack.
"Are we still alive? Then there's hope."

Funny... I was thinking of this same issue (Ultra Boy) earlier today. He really seems understatted, simply put. At a base, he's essentially a theoretically more easily activated She-Hulk, replacing the 'half-draw' with a counter drain. It's too bad her power's cost is actually something of a benefit for just about any constructed deck that she'd see play in, because that just makes UB sad. The possible ATK pump instead of the invulnerability is nice, but it's not generally going to be especially relevant without some other trickery to supplement it.

Comparing him to Computo isn't quite fair, though, because for what he does, Computo (5) is pretty ridiculously overstatted compared to what's come before him. Catwoman and Whipser A'Daire both have weaker powers of that type than his, and they're below the baseline for stats. Computo's a straight upgrade like the MXM Wolverine was to Sandman.

It seems Ultra Boy is more or less a combination of a draft character and a possible 1-of for a non-Faces-style swarm deck where being able to play him and some filler on 6 or 7 can help to get a stun on a larger character without much other support.

While weighing the positives about Ultra Boy, there's also this: he's a Cosmic character (which means he comes into play with a counter and thus may help with team synergy more quickly) while Live Wire is Cosmic-Surge and has to wait until the end of the turn before getting a counter naturally.

But since both have low DEF ... I doubt either goes into turn six with a counter at all.

So we all agree: We want Matter Eater Lad.

A few points.

1.) Ultra Boy's Cosmic counter will disappear by the end of the turn he shows up because he WILL get stunned. More often than not you're just using his cosmic counter for his ability

2.) The Legion are an upcurve swarm team. You don't play Live Wire on off-init turns; you play him on your on-init attack turn, regardless of whether that's turn 5 or 6.

now im just a collector, but out of the 5 drops in this set, my favorite is :

Darkseid, 8th Century
Character, Darkseid's Elite, Cost: 5
9 ATK/9 DEF
Ranged

Substitute
Whenever Darkseid stuns a character, its controller loses 1 endurance for each face-down resource he controls.
DLS-098 - Common

Interesting. May I ask why?
Not trying to sound condescending, I'm actually curious.

compare ultraboy to she hulk, and you will easily see where his stats come from. a flying she hulk deserves one less power and toughness I suppose.