Editor: James Kong. Sunday 26th September 2004.
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Editor: James Kong. Sunday 26th September 2004.
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Fearsome Five With the Sydney 10k behind us and Spider Man on the shelves it’s definitely time to finish up the DC review. We take a peek at an affiliation that many, including myself, overlooked. Fearsome Five hybrid decks have finished top 8 in Chicago and won the most recent 10k event here in Sydney. So it’s fitting that they’re the last team off the DC rank. Fearsome Five - Card Review
Listed above are all the cards that make up the Fearsome Five. With only one character per drop, none of which are common, and one plot twist, means that mono Fearsome Five isn’t a viable deck in limited or constructed. In addition to this there is no clear relationship between the seven characters, but what each character provides is a unique ability that seem to benefit or take into account other teams in the VS universe. The smallest Fearsome Five is Gizmo a 1/1 flyer for 1 with ordinary game text. Basically, he activates, you ditch two cards of which the first must be an equipment card and then you get to draw one. Yes, two lines of this article have already been wasted so let’s move on. Shimmer has one of the most abusive abilities out. Best used when teamed up with weenie control decks, she activates to make your opponent exhaust characters equal to the number of Fearsome Five characters you control on the table. Even though you can only use this on your attack step, it still slows the game down to a crawl, letting you set up your game winning combos. She’s a 2 drop for 2/2 which isn’t good for bashing but that’s not what she was made to do. Someone who was born to bash is the overpowered 3 drop, Mammoth, a natural 8/8 on turn 3 that makes Marvel green with envy. So why isn’t this guy played in every deck? It’s because the cost of getting him into play is much more than his benefit. You have to show a Fearsome Five from hand to get him into play and when he does hit the table you lose a resource until he gets KOed. This means you lose tempo and that ain’t cool. (Sorry if I jump the curve here but I have to move onto Neutron because he has some backwards relevance to Mammoth). The text on Mammoth makes less sense when you read Neutron's ability. At the beginning of recovery everyone KOs a resource and being a 9/7 for 5 (with loyalty and range) means that this wouldn’t regularly happen anyway. So if we assume that Fearsome Five hit the curve and Mammoth was on the table, then Neutron would hit the table on turn 6. If your opponent hits their curve their characters are going to be bigger which means this combination would actually disadvantage you. This also means that you don’t get to your 6 and 7 drop star players. The Fearsome Five four drop is Jinx. A location searching and burning machine, I’ve heard that she does that a lot in drafts (the burning bit that is). Being a 7/7 with range and no loyalty, she’s a decent splash into any limited deck. She’s also handy in a location needy deck (if any become viable in the Metagame), but being a 4 drop you’re going to want to do something better than searching for locations on turn 5. Dr. Light is another abuse geared character. Just like Shimmer he has “use me in a weenie deck” all over him. His ability to activate and stun a character whose cost is less than the number of Fearsome Five on the table is Roy Harper like and can be brutal at times. His boost ability also has potential. If your control deck does its job and gets you to turn 9, you can chain his ability, play a team-up, and get all your characters back from the KO pile! Imagine bringing back Psimon, 4 drop Dr. Doom and 6 drop Dr. Doom (droolz). Being an 11/11 with range and no loyalty, Dr. Light is OK in limited but like everyone else, is geared towards constructed play. Last but not least is the 7 drop 12/13 with loyalty, Psimon. With terrible numbers like this you’d think his ability would be broken. Well ……………. IT IS. A bigger threat to Teen Titans than 7 drop Thing, Psimon can shut down an opponent’s strategy as soon as he hits the table. He does rely heavily on Dr. Light taking out threats so that his ability can continue wrecking your opponent. I think we can conclude that Fearsome Five curve won’t work as a deck. They simply don’t work well together and often step on each others toes. The ones that work together work together very well, but they still need another team to get them to the later turns. Fearsome Five in Draft |
