Editor: Keh-Gan Hau. Saturday 21st August 2004.
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You are: Home -> Articles -> Columns -> Tech Upgrade
Editor: Keh-Gan Hau. Saturday 21st August 2004.
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DC Series – Part 2: Gotham Knights Welcome back VS fans. Today’s article takes a look at the Gotham Knights. Batman, his crusading crew and the Police have joined together to take on the forces of evil. So let’s get on with the BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! Adam West style. Gotham Knights I liken Gotham Knights to the popular group in the school playground. Everyone knows who they are, the star players play for ‘em and they get all the chicks, wait ……………… scratch that last one. Gotham Knights have some of the best characters in the set. Not just for their numbers but also for their abilities. They’re very tempting to draft as a team, unfortunately everyone else on the draft table thinks so too. It’s also unfortunate that some of the best characters are splashable i.e. key drops may be missing in your deck ‘cause others can take the card and play it as an off affiliation card. Five drop Batman is the best example of this. Batman, Caped Crusader, does an extra amount of endurance loss equal to the stunned characters cost, an ability that accelerates the game. You can pin point the exact time he hits the table on the score sheet ‘cause endurance starts to plummet, especially when he swings up the curve (which isn’t that difficult with Gotham characters like Tim Drake @ Robin, The Boy Wonder and Huntress, more on them later). Who needs break through? Not this man. He has a game winning ability, no loyalty and his numbers are on the curve, a definite candidate for a 1st pick even if he is only a 5 drop. Another character in this category is Dick Grayson @ Nightwing, Defender of Blüdhaven. Though not as game breaking as his former boss, this card has some very useful abilities. This version of Nightwing is a 6 drop 12/12, has no loyalty and two abilities. The first is a triggered ability which draws you a card whenever he stuns a character (yes, this works on offense and defense) and the second is a payment ability that allows you to discard a Gotham Knights character from hand to give ANY defender reinforcement. So what happens when you open a six drop with numbers on the curve, built in card advantage and turns Gotham characters (especially those useless small drops) into burn rubbers and/or fast getaways that can’t be Fizzled? You generally take it. As good as the last two common cards are; there’s plenty left in the Gotham arsenal. Here are non rare cards to watch out for, listed in order of draft priority.
The top three are cards I consider game breaking i.e. they can either turn a game your way and/or win it outright. The other cards are there to show which utility cards should fill the other slots in your deck. Dynamic Duo and GCPD HQ are great cards. Each card is game winning in a concentrated Gotham build, together they are broken! (Wow, I think I heard everyone say “DUH” from here). Thank goodness they’re both uncommon. GCPD HQ is spot removal for those troublesome 5-6-7 drop characters and the secondary game text isn’t too shabby either. Got a problem with pesky small drops hanging around until late game? Reinforce them with GCPD HQ, swinging at small drops never looked so bad. Dynamic Duo reduces the amount of endurance loss for you on your initiative; during your opponent’s initiative try to flip it back down. Dynamic Duo lets you get back board control and/or retain dude advantage over your opponent. Oh yeah, it has an alternate use, WINNING THE GAME! Now onto the cards that do the hard work. Gotham characters overall have good numbers and abilities that are down right awesome. The synergy between cards like Tim Drake @ Robin, Huntress, Batman and Dick Grayson give Gotham some nifty combos. Cassandra Cain is the closest DC will get to a Sabretooth, Feral Rage. Sabretooth is basically a two character recruit (incl. the discarded brotherhood character). With that cost in mind Cassandra is basically a four drop 9/8 (normally 8/7) that can utilize dead cards in your hand. These are all well and done but consider all but one 5 drop in DC has defense greater than 9 (Killer Croc who has 10) and besides herself all 4 drops have power 6 or 7. That equates to having a character that dominates her field and can swing up the curve easily. Her only drawback is loyalty. On a 4 drop this game text can be dangerous, but if you draft and play smart you’ll be alright. Meaning you draft smaller drops (depends on what else is in the pack), play more of them in your deck (just be careful you don’t play too many and jeopardize your late game) and sacrifice bigger drops if it means you get Cassandra on the table 4th turn. It’s definitely worth it, besides if you draw the smaller drops they become power ups for Cassandra. Some great Gotham small drops that feed Cassandra’s loyalty are Huntress and Tim Drake @ Robin. Huntress limits the number of options you opponent has to foil your attack. She’s great for team attacking later on in the game; she can nearly guarantee the success of the attack. When you need to stun a guy, when you really need to stun a guy, use Huntress in a team attack. Tim Drake @ Robin has one of the greatest abilities for a two drop in the game. If you analyze recruit cost vs. defense and attack values for DC, you’ll see that this Robin’s ability translates to “Target character can bash up the curve this turn”. This is especially brutal when used in conjunction with cards like Cassandra Cain and Batman (5). He allows Batgirl to swing up and bash 6 drops (with her ability to power she could stun 7 drops) and Batman does his best work when stunning higher cost characters. Speaking of higher cost characters, I’d like to introduce Azrael. He will be your designated 7 drop for this deck. The other 7 drop for Gotham is the rare Batman, The Dark Knight. This card has been an ordinary 7 drop in draft but proven himself in constructed when surrounded by GCPD Officers (more on that in the constructed portion of this article). Getting back to Azrael, although a 6 drop on print, he can become a 15/13 with flight and range. His ability to knock out reinforced characters is quite neat but flight and range buys his spot in the deck (no Gotham characters have these naturally; I’ll get to why in a sec). His loyalty shouldn’t come into play if you draft and play smart. Utility Belt along with Batplane is the main reasons why Gotham character cards don’t have those pretty little wings on the left hand side (a poor excuse I know). These are 0 drop equipments which can grant flying and/or range to Gotham characters. Focusing our attention on Utility belt; I’ve seem this card become huge factors in games which just proves how huge flight and range are in this game. Watch out for these they’re equipment specific to Gotham so they get passed very late in packs. I put Clocktower in the list because it has served me well in draft. If any of you have drafted Marvel Origins then you’ll remember the location Base of Operations. This card was crucial because it allowed you to get out of potential bad draws and dig deeper into your deck for cards you needed. Clocktower is the DC equivalent with some distinct differences. The card is obviously geared towards use on defense. When a support row character is going to be stunned why not get some use out of it and look at your next card. The neat thing about it is its ability to put the card you looked at into the resource pile at the cost of a face down one. It’s a good way to dig through your deck and provides a way to get answers on the table. Card advantage; get it anyway you can. Draft Strategy Gotham Knights is by far the best team to get into with draft. With three team up cards, My Beloved, The Brave and the Bold and World’s Finest, to choose from the only dilemma is which other team should you ally with. In my previous article I covered the reasons why Gotham Knights and Teen Titans work so well together, so I won’t go into them in detail. Here are the main points;
If you want to stay out of the dogfight for Teen Titan cards, another possibility is to draft League of Assassins. I would only take this into consideration if key cards for League are being passed to you (I’ll go into these in the next article), because despite of My Beloved. There’s actually no synergy between the cards in both teams. It’s likely that if you run Gotham and League that you’ll be running a deck with key cards from League and using the Gotham cards to fill out your curve. Things that you should consider taking early are Dick Grayson (6), Batman (5), Dynamic Duo and GCPD HQ as they are rarely passed. Most of the other cards are common so you might want to collect some good plot twists before you start raking them in. Don’t take Utility Belts early, they’re not as vital as other cards and good plot twists, and they will be passed late. Gotham Knights in Constructed There are multiple builds for Gotham Knights in constructed. One card that’s in all of them is the powerful plot twist Fizzle, the VS equivalent of Counterspell. Fizzle counters the effect of any non on-going plot twist by discarding a Gotham character from hand. Get four of these ASAP if you have any aspirations of playing Gotham in a constructed tournament. Here are the three types of builds that I believe will do well in tournaments.
Like most deck, Gotham Aggro aims to hit the curve and overpower your opponent with characters and tricks. The characters look like; The key turns are 4 and 5, these drops are crucial to the strategy. If you have 1st initiative you want to end the game on turn 7. Cassandra can be used to stun higher drops and Batman will swing up to cause maximum damage with his ability (going first means Batman attacks on turn 5 and 7). So play a lot of offensive plot twists to guarantee the stun and use Dynamic Duo to optimize turns when you have initiative. On your initiative (assuming things are going your way) your 7 drop is Azrael. I’ve included the second option characters to fill out your curve and boost character count (keep in mind that you can have a low character count because of Bat Signal). They’re also there to give you options on games when you have initiative second. Lady Shiva is an excellent 5 drop on defense, it also means that you don’t lose a character when you drop Dark Knight on turn 7 who is great on defense because guys draw you a card before they get stunned. The main components of Gotham Control are GCPD Officers, Commissioner Gordon and Batman, The Dark Knight. Here’s a list of characters that you should use. Gotham control, is true to its name. The deck is based around card drawing and board control. Half of your characters are GCPD Officers which means that you should never miss dropping characters. You can use Clocktower and Harvey Bullock to activate they’re abilities. Harvey is insane! He’s like a Mystical Paralysis on a stick, a great way to ruin your opponent’s initiative. Barbara is there for card advantage, so protect her and use resource points early to draw cards. Commissioner Gordon allows your team of cops to take out early threats in combination with >Dynamic Duo and GCPD HQ. The deck wins when you have your 7 and 8 drops. Protect your overgrown Batman from Overload with Fizzle and Superman will take care of the rest. By this time you should be able to use Batman’s ability to draw into an answer or already have it in hand. Note: All credit for this deck goes to Cool Zero, great deck dude. Shows how far ahead you are of everyone else. Cool Zero will be covering this deck in more detail in a future article. Gotham Vomit combines the ideas behind Gotham control and Wild vomit. Instead of Barbara Gordon as card advantage you run Longshot. Here’s the list of characters; This deck runs a lot of GCPD Officers (20+) and 12 copies of Batman, so go for them with Longshot. Apart from that the deck runs along the same lines as Gotham control. Teen Knights combine the most powerful team attacking cards in the game. Here are the vital cards that make the deck; Plot Twists
Location
Imagine Batman, Garth, Dynamic Duo, Teen Titans Go! and GCPD HQ all working together in one turn? The thought brings tears of joy to my eyes. Another specific component to the deck, is delay. I’m talking about running Ka-Boom! and possibly Foiled to restrict your opponent’s drops and make sure they don’t drop anything you can’t handle. Delay won’t hurt you as much because of the large number of characters that are recruit cost 5 and below in your deck. I’m going to leave some choices for decks to you. There are some obvious plot twists and locations for some decks, but play test and see what works for you. Thanks for your time VS Fans. See you next time! Combos with Gotham Knights cards:
Attack with Azrael and use Dick Grayson’s ability to reinforce defender and KO it. Reinforce your dude and look at the top card of your deck. Honorable Mentions
Up next………………..League of Assassins Ray Isais [ Email the Author | Discuss this Article ]
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