Hey all!!

 

  Bet you thought you’d seen the last of me eh?  Well I’ll have you know that I’m not that easy to get rid of.  Truth is I get bored really quickly and around the time of my last article I wasn’t getting to many decks that really interested me enough to take the time to fix.  So to all of you who sent me a deck and I never replied I offer my sincerest apologies.

 

  Well anyway, I’m back for at least a little while to bring you a nice series of my very own personal TOP TEN LISTS!!!!  This time I’m going to be rolling out my Top Ten underappreciated rare’s (excluding characters) from across my trading binder.  These will be some of the best of the worst rare’s that almost everyone makes a groan over when they pull one from a pack.  People I implore you.  Look at some of these cards, play with some of them, and appreciate them not for the toilet paper we all once considered them but for the awesome combo potential they may hold.

 

  Without further adieu, I give you #10 – The Blackbird

 Equipment cards with a cost of 1 or more often get a bad wrap. Most people are just not willing to pay extra resource points for what is often a small and usually negligible boost to attack of defense, or for a near useless effect.  This is doubly true for equipment cards with a recruit cost of 2.  Time Platform suffers from the same syndrome.  Even Fantastic Four equipment based decks can’t really make good use of 2 recruit equipments unless the 7-drop Mr. Fantastic comes into play.  Yet therein lays the genius of The Blackbird.  Personally I think Heroes United is a far underplayed but awesome deck with incredible potential.  With Bamf!, Signal Flare, It’s Clobberin’ Time, and the fun combination of Mr. Fantastic (7) and The Blackbird it’s a force to be reckoned with.

 

  9# - Dual Nature

 I know that the League of Assassins have had a little success in the past, mostly in the My Beloved form, and more recently at the 10K in Charlotte where a player took his Gamma Doom deck and decided to team the League up with Doom.  And while we are on the subject of Doom, a very good Vs. player I play with named Jesse loves the League/Doom deck.  In one variation he seemed very fond of having his 5-drop Bane and 6-Drop Doom on the field, then letting Bane get stunned and KOing him to Dual Nature to get the 4-drop Doom on the field.  Believe me folks, you do not ever want to be on the receiving end of a double Dr. Doom lockdown….total suppression.  ::cringe::

 

  #8 – Murderworld

 The new Green lantern gave lots and lots of support to those who want to play a deck full of unaffiliated characters.  If you take a look over to your left and click the link to Scott Gerhardt’s link you can find an article back from around the time when Web of Spider-Man was released that pretty much said Murderworld alone was enough to make unaffiliated decks viable.  Now Scott may have jumped the gun a little, (or have been a little ahead of his time) but I think now the deck really has a place.  Murderworld will provide you with something of an ongoing finishing move against affiliated characters.  It’s would be kinda cool to splash some affiliated characters into your non-affiliated deck and once they get stunned and your opponent tries to capitalize on Murderworld (yes, they can use its effect too) flip your Mojoverse to strip it of all affiliations.  Your Opponent just exhausted a character and discarded a card for nothing.  Don’t be surprised if you start seeing this card pop up once in a while.

 

  #7 – The Power Cosmic

 See, there’s this thing about this card.  I can see more potential in this card that almost any other card in the game.  Why is it only #7 you ask?  Don’t ask me, maybe I’ll explain it somewhere further down in this paragraph.  While I can see this as one of the most game breaking cards currently in print, it is probably the card with the steepest cost to activate.  If you’re using this card you better have a solid game plan firmly in place.  Koing all of your resources as a cost to play this card is amazingly steep and you really need to be sure you can win on the turn you flip it.  I think it’s generally not played because people are simply scared of it.  Sheep, you’re all sheep.  J/k I’m sure.  I actually have an idea in place for this card working with the Emerald Enemies.  If I ever get a chance to build it perhaps I can be persuaded to share it with you.

 

  #6 – Concrete Jungle

 Very situational and I know it, but I can’t help but like it anyway.  Sure, Concrete Jungle will never make it’s way into most mainstream deck unless the metagame mysteriously shifts to the point where everyone decides to start playing League of Assassins or a location heavy version of Fantastic Four, but that doesn’t make it bad……it has Poison Ivy on it.  Well I like it dagnabit, I don’t care what everyone else thinks.

 

  #5 – Untouchable

 Crime Lords haven’t made a huge impact on the Golden Age format at all, I don’t think anyone could argue with that statement and while Honor Among Thieves was a tremendous force in the Marvel Modern Age format it was all about quick kills.  Untouchable is a very nice piece of tech that the Lords have going for them.  If anyone had stopped to think about it, Crime Lords may have stood a very good chance against the huge swarm of purple robots that invaded PC New York.  Untouchable could save their characters from being Overloaded or Hound locked, especially if Untouchable is played in multiples.  Target your characters with it or your opponents.  The effects this card can negate are to numerous to mention….just to bad its Crime Lord team stamped.

 

  #4 – Hidden Surveillance

 Your opponent cannot flip a Plot Twist or Location on the turn it is placed into the resource row eh?  Why is this just screaming at me to be flipped as soon as the 4-drop Dr. Doom hit the field?  Oh right, cause it would be a very nice lock if you can keep your Doom non-stunned.  Anyone ever tried this?  I don’t play Doom much so I don’t know.  Drop me a line if you’ve tried this and let me know how it worked out for you.  Just seemed like a good fit to me.

 

  #3 – Daily Planet

 Our second and last Location on the list.  Am I nuts or is this effect just sick?  Activate the Location to look at the top two cards of your opponent’s deck and completely screw up their next draw.  That sounds good to me.  When used in conjunction with Phantom Zone you can totally screw up your opponent’s game plan if they are benefiting from some sort of Ko’d pile recursion effect.  Now I’m a big fan of the Superman deck and know there’s not really much room or use for this card in a standard build, but if you’re one of those great card players who like to divert from the normal, try this card out next time you break out the big blue machine, you just might be surprised.

 

  #2 – Political Pressure

 Overload’s dead.  Welcome back to the age of super swarm decks and huge attack pumps.  So Political Pressure can’t stop the attack pumps, but it handily shuts down those pesky swarms.  That Green Lantern/Emerald Enemies rush getting you down?  Put some “Pressure” on it.  New Brotherhood giving you the bums rush?  Put it under “Pressure.”  Wild Sentinel Vomit making a resurgence in your area?  Well, you get the idea.  Any deck that relies on playing more than one character per turn is going too feel the squeeze by this card.  Political Pressure will almost definitely be a dead draw in most match-ups, but any deck that can search out Plot Twists like Gotham or Doom could do worse than running a copy just for a little extra support.

 

  And the #1 way to overlooked rare card is…….Team X-Change.

 It’s no secret if you’ve ever read one of my articles before that I love X-Statix.  The team is just so different and has this insane strategy that on paper shouldn’t work, yet does and does very well.  Giving me an opportunity to team them up and giving me a card that rewards me for doing so just makes me shiver all over.  Honestly, at first I couldn’t see any synergy between the two teams.  It eventually came to me one day while thinking about the 5-drop Anarchist, 2-drop Cyclops, a thought of Grandstanding in there, and good ol’ Bamf!!  I’ve had very good results from a version of the deck that revolves around team attacks.  The added bonus of getting a free card named Professor X is great at the very least for slimming your deck down, and not to mention for setting up your drops.

 

  I guess I have a little more room for some honorable mentions.  Web Shooters, Brainiacs Ship, Remake The World, and Time Platform were all considered, but fell short of these other choices. 

 

  I have one question for everyone out there.  Why does Blind Justice have a threshold of 2 if you have to pay 9 resource points as a cost of activating it?  Help a very confused guy out.  If anyone can give me a reasonable explanation of this choice by Upper Deck I’ll send you a fresh crisp one dollar bill!!!........maybe.

 

  So there you have it, my first Top Ten list and first article in over 3 months.  Like I said at the top of this article, I stopped writing due to lack of interest, so if you read this and would like to see another one please send me an E-mail to Tinkerer21@aol.com.  It doesn’t even have to say anything if you don’t want to write, just write Tinkerer in the subject line and blast it off. I just want to know how many people read this.  And as always send me your deck fixes, if one peaks my interest you may see it in this very column.