Drafting Marvel Universe (MUN)

5 08 2008

So far there have been 3 MUN drafts in XP and it has been pretty cool. This blogger has placed 1st on the first & third drafts and 2nd on the second draft (did you follow the formatting?). The interesting thing with all the drafts so far is the teams that I have been picking have been the same since day 1. So I guess that my consistent picks is a winning or  competitive combination in draft, I honestly don’t know about sealed but limited play is limited play I always say.

As for the teams I pick, here they are: Crime Lords & Thunderbolts with a little Shield on the side. I pick these teams for their offensive & defensive tricks, with Thunderbolts as the offense & Crime Lords as the defensive. I honestly don’t pick alot of Shield but I love their Team-UP, Double Agent!. It gives you four (4) life just for teaming up, hard to pass that up if I must say given the limited plot twist cards out there to modify your character’s defensive numbers to avoid being stunned or stunned back. So there are alot of times you have similar life counts if attacking up the curve is not an option. With that being said, let me present to you the list of characters I would use with my first few picks:

1. Red Skull, Johann Shmidt - HYDRA

This character can split your head in many ways with his burning and defensive abilities. He can burn you on and off initiative if you play him right. He can also give you a headache with who to attack first especially with the number of defensive & recovery tricks that can be played. His pal Baron Strucker isn’t that bad either.

2. Any 2 or 3 Drop of Thunderbolts

This group of characters can go a long way to make your opponent go crazy because as turns go by they get better. These characters help you attack up the curve and improve your board control. They aren’t the right characters to get the stuff done, but they got “The Wrong Stuff”…wink wink (cheesy I have to say)

3. A.I.M Agents

You read it, A.I.M Agents people! A.I.M Agents! They are the wimpiest bunch of bitches but they get the job done. What job you say? Well that’s getting behind your characters and reinforcing them which by the way works well in saving you life and triggering effects like …

4. Baron Strucker, Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker - HYDRA

This guy is a walking defensive recovery that enables you to protect your board and can potentially win you the game. Imagine him in front of Red Skull while defending and your opponent has to go through him to get to Red over there in the support row, Ka-Booooooommmmmm!!!!!! potential twelve (12) points of damage heading your opponents way!  Baron Gangbang Von F@(k#r FTW!!!!!

5. Master Man, Max Lohmer - Raid & Kingpin, War Profiteer - HYDRA

If and when any of these cards come your way, snatch ‘em up people!!! These are awesome, once again awesome defensive character cards that can cause panic at the very least to your opponent.  If your opponent doesn’t have an attack pump then Master Man has a huge advantage and if your opponent fears that even he has stunned Kingpin that you may recover him with an effect. These are priceless looks that can make you smile even if you loose the match as like I said, “A look of panic is a consolation price”, if you ask me.

As for the Plot Twist…

1. Team -Ups Are Needed!

Team-Ups are a necessity in limited play unless you’re a lucky bunch of baloney! Anyway, just think of attacking up the curve, let’s say you have a 2 & 3 Drop and you wanna team attack a 4 Drop your opponent has…but wait… they ain’t teamed-up… Doh!!!! See, if you had drafted enough team-ups it wouldn’t be as frustrating, finding the correct team-up is another thing though.

2. Late Game Pumps

These two pumps can be used anytime but I prefer to use them in late game scenarios as wasting pumps early on can bite you bad in the long run. But if you gotta use it you gotta use it, or is that if you have to go you have to go? Whatever. Using these cards late game magnifies your characters stats in great ways, like having your 6 Drop a 7 Drop for 1 attack then Now I’m Fighting Dirty will enable that for you. How about giving your characters a +2 attack in a sense? Then Collateral Damage gives you that for just throwing your hand away, in the end it might not be so much of a cost.

The rest of the picks you get should be team specific and helpful. Don’t just get a team specific Plot Twist or Location just because they say Avengers on them and you’re building an Avengers deck. It may not work in the grand scheme of things and you will just be wasting a pick like say a drop that can help you since you should have enough team-ups to make it work.

As for generic locations and  equipment, there aren’t a lot of good cards to actually help you that much in draft, but if you want to get some just to fill a  space then its not the right mindset going into deck building. One thing I notice in limited play is that continuity and cohesion between cards you have can give you a great chance to actually win a lot of games or the whole thing!!!

What teams would you draft in MUN?





Top 10 VS System Character Cards (Rare Only)

2 08 2008

10. Mr. Mxyzptlk

Need to discard any card for any payment cost? Then this “Fifth Dimension Stud” can answer most of your problems. He can be discarded twice a turn if you play it right and can save you on the headache of choosing which card to discard!

9. Rogue, Power Absorption

I can’t leave MOR out of this list, so I picked the card which is the most used from MOR. This card enables you to combo with a lot of decks and gives you the ability to double the fun of any activated shit you want to cause your opponent or double your ability advantage. Wanna burn your opponent twice? Wanna look for a location twice? This is the card for you.

8. Alan Scott, Golden Age Engineer

This card can give you a lot of possibilities during your attack step and especially during your opponents’ attack step. Imagine having Alan Scott and Rogue and/or Mimic, if you have this on your board then basically you can have infinite defenders unless your opponent has a KO effect, return to hand or stun effect to counter it. If all goes according to plan, your other characters will be thanking you for giving them the best buddy they ever had while in combat.

7. Spider-Man, Ultimates

Spider-Stall is irritating! Spider-Heralds is sucking the fun out of attacking your opponent! Spider-Man cards stall the crap out off the game! Well, well, well… here is another Spider-Man to make you go, “I will just get something from 7/11, ‘coz I don’t wanna stare at your face for 30 minutes..”, Match Win for you!!! Spider-Clones is the best fit for this card and every time you put a look-a-like down it gets web-counters which you can use whenever you want. You can abuse Substitute with this ability and you can have two of these suckers down and have four counters every time a Spidey comes down. Okay off-curve, get ready to be bored!

6. Juggernaut, Weapon of Mass Destruction

Playing a slow deck? A deck that needs the 7th, 8th, or 9th turn to win? Tough! This beast of a character takes out your team-ups, your… what did you say? You have two team-ups? Sorry, I want the other one too bitch! As I was saying, ahem…. your two critical resources that can be any combination of an Ongoing PT or a Location, or your two precious resources that can get you to your kill turn. I have had my fair share of playing against this character and I can tell you, I hate him. I Hate Youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!

5. Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose

Outside of Ahmed this little lady can bring you to anywhere you wanna be. Wanna go to the Slaughter Swamp? She can bring you there. Wanna wine & dine at the Bat-Cave? She can make it happen. All for the price of a character. A steep price you say? Well, Haywire can help you out. Charaxes can die for you if you recruit a 5-Drop or higher. Since MUN came out, you can now use Quicksilver as your slave for a while and then KO him like the ragdoll that he is.

4. Iron Man, Mighty Avenger

Okay, let’s say you can’t live without all of your characters and you don’t wanna lose anyone of them as they are all critical to you winning. This card can bring them all back to you plus a +1/+1 counter to boot as he really loves you for playing him, since we all know Mr. Stark loves the spotlight. With all the recovery tricks out there, he can most likely be recovered and recover others as well. So board control with this card is almost assured as long as he’s not drunk again.

3. Superman, Last Son of Krypton

Invulnerability without actually having it printed on the card is awesome! No Cost so that it can’t be exhausted by most Spider-Men, that’s awesome! A card that looks like Brandon Routh? Awesome! Nuff’ Said!

2. Talia, Daughter of Madness

Broken?!?! Close… but not quite yet, unless UDE makes a 2-Drop that’s 25/25 and it’s ability is “This character cannot be recuited but can only be Put Into Play. This card cannot be targeted by opposing effects. Whenever this character attacks an opposing character, that character loses reinforcement.” Then this can be considered broken… Umm… If there was a 2-Drop like that, that might be my number 1 or 2 so I guess Talia might be bumped to 3 or something. But since there isn’t a character like that… here is my Numero Uno…

1. Batman, Cape & Cowl

This is my favorite character card from the world of VS for the fact that it can stomp Spider-Man’s abilities, counter Ahmed’s searching skills, and even prevent an Avalon or a Swamp from getting  you a KO’ed character you need. It can prevent multiple ability uses and can be either conceled or visible. It still is a draft pick favorite when choosing prizes after a Tourney or HL. So overall this can make your opponents either miss a drop or not pull off a combo or whatever, but imagine this for a while… Playing against a Batman & Spider-Man deck… Me? I would rather go stangle myself and puke all over the place than play for half an hour against a deck like that!

Excelsior!!! Nuff’ Said!





Hello world!

1 08 2008

This is the start of my wordpress blog, but this isn’t my 1st blog. I started out last year at my multiply site andrewfrancisco.multiply.com

I will get this going in a while, hope you like reading my posts.