Marvel Universe

First of all let me say that I think that the concept of a player influenced set is a great idea. Granted, not everyone got what they wanted (I was pulling for Annihilation and House of M) but overall the set ended up being great. The short print run has really limited my ability to see many of the cards played but between my small experience, the hours I’ve I have spent looking at lists of spoilers and the ranting of Vs. dorks, I think I have a pretty good idea of how this set will affect the larger game.
Overall I see Marvel Universe as a very powerful set, with some excellent commons and uncommons and some ridiculous rares (that will be somewhat hard to get your hands on). DC modern might have a rough time since it won’t get a set like this for a whole year. Lets start at the beginning.

AVENGERS – The Avengers haven’t gotten much love since the set named after them but these new cards were worth the wait for them. The Cap , being the “super legend” of the set has 4 versions(2,4,6,8) and 5 legend cards(4 plot twists, 1 equip), all of which are killer. The 4 drop Cap is going to be one of the most annoying things to attack into, “No you don’t attack my little guy, here fight this huge dude instead”. And Iron man is nothing to sneeze at either, especially with the Extremis Upgrade and Stark Armory. The 4 drop Iron Man is, well lets just say you’ll have a tough time choosing who to use, him or Cap. The classic reservist avengers strategy gets a nice boost in this set with many characters who have you replace resources you control to get good effects, as well as Avengers Reassembled, their tutor that puts characters directly into your resource row. The Secret Avengers, one of the mini teams also impressed me a lot, a friend of mine built a deck out of all commons from my box and it does surprisingly well against actual decks. That also goes to show that the commons in this set are really, really nice. I haven’t seen too much of the Young Avengers but I’m sure they’ll pop up. They seem like an alright group, especially with some of the older avengers cards like Legendary Battles and Monica Rambeau. To top it off they also got some great new plot twists like Thou art no Thor and Changing Sides.

ALPHA FLIGHT – Many people have been waiting for these guys for a long time, and when the y finally came they did not disappoint. Though they are a small team, they have some very powerful effects. They have a very obvious theme of playing as many plot twists as possible, often making them very, very big. Weapon Omega and John Walker – US Agent both have deadly effects that fit right into their strategy, and Sasquatch gets really big really fast even with the once per turn limitation. And of course Alpha Flight: Reborn allows you to get back that tutor or Savage Beatdown and use it again.

ILLUMINATI – First off I just want to say how much I like how they handled the Illuminati in MUN, It allows you to play all the old versions of the six of them with the new cards and doesn’t allow you to add other members to the roster. Can you imagine the Infinity Gauntlet in an army deck? Anyways the Illuminati are all about control, mostly through their own built in powers, you can exhaust two members of the Illuminati to: Draw a card, replace a resource you control and one your opponent controls, have someone put a card from their hand on top of their deck, put a card from you KO pile on top of your deck, exhaust a charcter your opponent control or negate a plot twist or payment power. They aalso have some powerful ongoing plot twists that really supplement their theme including the mighty Infinity Gauntlet. I think that this could be a very interesting deck that will absolutely slaughter sometimes and will fall flat on it’s face other times. It runs on very tight requirements and could easily totally fail, but when it works it really works.

SHIELD – Shield is one of the teams that I haven’t seen to much of in actual games. They certainly have some nice tricks, but there are so many ways of building a deck with them. Also most of their characters are dual affiliated with the avengers or with the T- bolts. I’m sure that soon someone will come up with a great deck featuring them, but I’m not sure what it will be about. They should go well with the Secret Avengers, for all their rally effects. And of course the Shield Agents burn deck will show up at the kitchen table.

CRIME LORDS – The Crime Lords of MUN continue their theme from way back in MMK of “No you really don’t want to attack us”. They also throw in a concealed and direct attacking theme. The Red Skull is their main man and he brings with him some excellent stuff, specifically Acts of Vengeance. The five drop Red Skull seems like it will be the one people use, as he has two very nice and annoying leader powers. They also have some pretty heavy draw due to Underground Laboratory as well as some nasty discard powers with Mandarin and Hydra Armageddon Carrier. One of their subteams, Hydra focuses on the concealed characters but with cards like The Gorgon, Tomi Shishido discourage people from attacking directly, and uses army characters. The other two mini teams are AIM and RAID. As a whole the team is pretty good, and can be taken in many different directions, I think they will see some competitive play.

D*** it! Why are there so many teams in this set.

NEGATIVE ZONE – The third team in this set that hasn’t been seen in a long time, and now they have an actual full curve as well as 4 new Negative Zones, all of which have nice effects(for an annoying discard cost). There low drops are mostly army cards with different side effects related to the Negative Zone. On Five and seven we have Annihilus and Blastaar (respectively), who can active activate to stun hidden or visible characters (also repectively) during your attack step and a new 8 drop Annihilus who destroys your opponent’s resources at the start of the combat phase. They do a lot of out-of-combat stuns but I don’t think they will see that much constructive play.

UNITED FRONT – While they have a full curve, they don’t have any plot twist support nor a theme other than Cosmic. Hopefully they will get more support in future sets.

PHLANX – BEST ART OF THE SET. I like the effect also, hopefully we will see more of these guys soon, with similar cool tricks.

WARBOUND – Bringing back the solo theme not seen since the X-Statix are the Warbound. The Warbound are all about making The Hulk as big and ridiculous as possible. 1-6 are characters than when they are stunned can be KO’ed to give all Hulks ever some ability. Hulk Himself Shows up on 3-8 and just beats face in almost all of them are above curve or have some ability that allows them to get bigger. Hulk also gets the biggest attack pump in the game Hulk Smash! Even when it’s your opponent’s attack you can still crush them with cards like The Great Arena and Bloodsport and The Strongest One There Is. Fighting these guys is going to be rough, and I’m sure they will see some play in tournaments

As for all the unaffiliated cards in the set many of the plot twists are excellent, Grudge Match, Losing the Argument, Trouble with Dinosaurs, Carrying the Torch, My Name is Peter Parker, Code White, Death of a Dream. Overall A great and Powerful set that should have had a longer print run.

-Ryan O’Conner