This is purely for fun, but it's a pretty tough one.

Anyhow, pretend you're trying to get a R&D job and they give you this topic on a job questionnaire:

"Design a flexible yet interesting card of any type that alleviates the problem of missing drops without using the word 'search'."

Son Of A Missed Drop!
Plot Twist
Cost 3
Effect: Name a Character and Version. Send cards from the top of your deck to your KO'd pile until a Character with the version you named is revealed, put that card into your hand.


Coolexplosion

All or Nothing
Ongoing
Cost 4
Flip only if all characters you control share an afilliation.
Ongoing: KO All or Nothing, Choose a number -> Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a character card with the chosen cost. Put that card into your hand and all other cards on the bottom of your deck in any order.

Too wordy?

Pot of Greed
Plot Twist
Cost 0
Draw 2 cards

The Bar with No Name
Location, Cost 2

To flip, discard a card and choose a number.

When you flip, reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal a character card with cost equal to that number. Flip a coin. If you win the flip, put that card into your hand. Otherwise, continue until you reveal another card with cost equal to that number, or have revealed the entire deck.

Good help is hard to find...

It's not perfect by any means, which is kind of the point. It's not as reliable as true search, but gives you a solid chance of hitting something; you just don't get to decide what, and you may even whiff. It certainly gets you the chance to find a card, even though you don't get to decide which one. It's not great for silver bullets. It may want cost 3 instead of 2, but I figured that the higher number of non-first-choice 2-drops might balance that, and without ways to replace resources, you can't run multiples too easily.

I also really tried to get the flavor of the classic Villain's bar, and a casting call for new flunkies. It even has Two-Face's coin-flip!

Upgrade
Location 3
Activate, Pay X resource points ---> If you have not had a character come into play on your side of the field this turn, place X +1/+1 counters on target character. If a character would come into play on your side of the field this turn, it is removed from play instead.

Single card? (Without actually taking the time to design a specific card just for the purposes of this thread) A better version of Phat.

I like Boost precisely for the flexibility it gives you in a curve, particularly the fallback it can give you for missed drops - let alone the flexibility it grants you in deck-building. Boost X is just taking that a step further.

If you wanted to shift the game away from so much search, but still keep it consistent in at least the "full-use-of-resource-per-turn" sense, liberal use of Boost would probably be the best mechanic to help alleviate the consistency problem. Consistently and effectively used, it is a way to vastly increase a deck's flexibility in the way it can spend its resource points on a turn to turn basis.

Mogo, Sentient Planet
2 Threshold, Location

Reveal a Green Lantern character card from your hand or resource row, pay X resource points --> Move Mogo from your resource row into your front row. Mogo loses the type location and gains the type character with 1 ATK and 1 DEF, flight, range, the Green Lantern team affiliation, and cost and Willpower X. Put X +1/+1 counters on Mogo. Place the top card of your deck into your resource row. Use this power only once per turn and only if Mogo is a location.

Activate --> Target character gets +1 DEF this attack. If that character is named Mogo it gets +2 DEF this attack instead.

---
Obviously a card like that is too complicated for a post Marvel Legends VS, but I think its a interesting way to hit a drop. To shorten the text a little bit, you could just have the Flight and Range icons on the location itself, but even then I dont think you could realistically fit all that on a real card. I like how the card has some meager utility as a location for the defensive bonus, but allows Mogo himself to get a bigger butt to fit in with his own theme of being a friggin huge planet.

2 Threshold
Search and Rescue...
Name a character card. Reveal the top five cards from your deck, if named card is revealed you may discard a card to draw named card. If named card isn't revealed put all revealed cards on the bottom of your deck and reveal the top five cards. If named card is revealed put named card in your hand and discard the remaining cards. If named card is not revealed discard the five revealed cards.

It could go on the new epic plot twists that read like epic poetry. With this you can look at the top five and say yep its there, I can either drop a card to grab it or wait for it to be drawn. If it misses then you get to look at the next top five. NOW you pay to find him but you get to add a card to your hand. Good trade offs? Possibly abuseable with underworld? YOUR call!

4 cost PT
This is kind of awkward...

Play only during draw step.
When you draw your cards for the turn during draw step, reveal them.
If you reveal a character card with cost one less than the number of the current turn, you may discard that character card. If you do, reveal the the top card of your deck until you reveal a character with the cost equal to the number of the current turn. Put that character into play and shuffle the rest of the revealed card into your deck. You can't play characters this turn.

"Story of my life..."


So that card probably doesn't make any sense. But I just hate drawing my drops a turn too late. Drawing a 3 drop on turn 4 is always awkward. Just want to get it out there.

p.s.: TDB, this is probably my 2nd longest post on VSrealms.
p.s.s: This card is insane with 3 drop Black Tom .;)

Better Late than Never
Plot Twist [1]
When you flip Better Late than Never, you may gain X resource points if it is your recruit step, you have recruited exactly one character this turn, and you have no resource points.
Ongoing: Pay X resource points -> Remove all resource counters from Better Late than Never, put X resource counters on Better Late than Never and turn it face down.

Essentially, you can hit the drop later rather than right now.

3 cost
Location
Activate >>> Put this card into play as a character readied. Put a card from your hand into the resource row. This character gain the team affiliation of all characters on your side of the field. When this character would become stun, KO it instead.
This character can't attack.
0/0

I really like the ideal of this card. Use it for protection or reinforcement.
The reason it cost 3 is so you cant use it very early to protect characters.
Also you dont take stun damage.
First version i was gonna post was a bit cheap. It could attack and it cost 0. It took the top card instead of a card from the hand.
How does it look, dont have a name for it but it seems like a easy card and some what playable.

I wanted to make an equipment, but couldn't think of any cool names so oh well, to the standby:

We Need Reinforcements!

2 cost PT

To play, return a ready visible character you control to its owner's hand during the recovery phase.

Reveal the top X cards of your deck, where X is equal to the number of resources you control. Put a character card that shares an affiliation with the character you returned into your hand, and put the rest of the cards on the bottom of your deck. Gain X endurance.

A way to reward someone for having a ready guy going into recovery. Fairly tough to pull off, but a possibly great payoff. Anyway, without being able to "search,", I don't see many ways to get a character without just using the Reveal method.

To Access, Boost had a few problems. The first was that 90% of them were horrible and not worth using in almost any way. If you had to Boost one of these guys, you lost anyway. Second, which kinda goes along with the first, is that most Boost effects were just ATK/DEF mods, which wore off after the turn was over, and often didn't even put the character on par for that drop. Combine that with abilities that weren't good for their level (boosted characters were usually lower-cost, so necessarily had weaker abilities), and again, you usually lose anyway. Third, Boosted guys always have the weakness of being an under-drop. There are lots of effects that target the cost of the character, and end up devaluing their usefulness. To take Phat as your example, no matter how large you make him, he's still a 1-cost. He can be Mikado/Mosha'd at any time (let's assume you don't have Star of the Show).

The best Boost powers we've seen are lower-level searches to fix your curve, like Yellowjacket, Olapet and Hawk/Dove, and I think if there were more Boost abilities along those lines, not just temporary combat modifiers, they'd be worth using again.

Agreed - but the "challenge" was not to use the word "search".

Also, on the Phat note ... you could make him untargetable or something else to try to balance such things out (not that I'm for adding untargetables). (Also, M&M is just Golden Age, no?)

I think there are potential ways to use boost that have yet to be explored - it is, in essence, a mechanic that gives you (something) for (number) resource points that has to coincide with recruiting a character. I find it hard to believe there's no untapped potential there.

(Random Untested Boost Idea Brainstorm: What about a 3-drop Boost 1: KO a 2-Drop?, or Boost 2: Gain 4 Endurance and you may recruit a 3-Drop for free next turn? or a 5-Drop Boost KO two resources you control: KO target resource at the beginning of the combat phase? or Boost 1: Target Opponent loses 1 Resource Point this turn ... just random ideas to show there are tons of unexplored things to do with it, obviously I'm not promoting forth there particular ideas ... although might want to play around with that last one)

Character
Cost 1
Activate >>> Gain 1 Threshold point.
1/1

Simple but a decent effect.

Location
Cost 2
Activate >>> Look at the top card of your deck, if it is a reservist character, you may replace a face down resource you control, if you do put the revealed character into your resource row.

Good reservist searcher.

Character
Cost 3
Activate >>> Move target 3 cost or less to your front row. Use this only during draw step and once per turn.
0/4

really good but you need to wait till turn 4 to use it.