From:  [jeskaldthestampede@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 10:52 AM
To: marvelstaff@pojo.com
Subject: Lets talk X-Men! (Marvel Strategy Article)
                                X-Men: How to Play "Em Part 1
                                         By Jason Toro
 
 Let me start of by saying hello and stating that I am very nervous as I write this, and hope this helps anyoe who wants to play the Marvel Vs. TCG, and hopefully, design that person a very nice deck.
 
 
 Okay. The X-Men.One of the most formidable team of superheroes ever. Gambit, Cyclops, Wolverine. the list is endless. All of these mutants have spectacular powers, which have all been ell translated into the Marvel Vs. system. Most of the X-Men have pretty nice abilities. They all have characters from the 1-10 resource costs, and a myriad of plot twists and locations that work well in certain situations. I am going to explain which of these charactres you should use and why, along with nice supprting plot twists and locations to run as well.
 
 The character breakdown for the X-Men is fairly clean cut. Heading up the 1 resource slots are Dazzler and Longshot. Dazzler is a 1/1 with a nice ability at the cost of dicarding an X-Man. Longshout is even better as a 2/1 with the ability to put those crucial cards in your hand, if you feel lucky. I would suggest running 2-3 characters in your 1 slot, so I would suggest that 2 of them be Longshot, and one of the be Dazzler.
Now for 2, we have Beast,Bishop,Archangel. All three of them are very nice, but IMO, Bishop and Archangel are best to run over Beast because they can dish out some nice damage early, while Beast only lowers the cost of your plot twists, which wouldnt come too in handy when you need that crucial eraly damage. So I'd suggest running 2 Archangel and 2 Bishop. The X-Men that you would want to consider running in the 3 spot are Wolverine, Psylocke, and Havok. Wolverine and Havok for the nice beatings they hand out, and Psylocke for her hand disrupting ablilites. I would go 5-6 characters here, so 3 Wolverine, 1 Psylocke, and 2 Havok. The most important slots are the 4 slots, IMO, and you should consider running: Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Jean Grey. Storm also is fairly good, but a little under powered compated to these guys. Rogue with het ability theft and Nightcrawler with his ablitly to make another one of your characters to have flight range, is nothing to pass up, and to rund it off Jean Grey KOs those Characters you had to use for resources and puts those miceplots twists and locations there. Here I suggest running 2 Jean Grey, 3 Rogue, 2 Night Crawler. Spot 5 is faily simple, the only character I would consider running here is Professor X. Hes a breatstick with hand disruption and he can attack safely from the back row. So 2 Xaivers here, and some one else fom another afilliaton like Mystique or She-Hulk can round out the 5's
The 6 slot characters are quite easy: Rogue and Collossus. These bad boys dont let anyone stay on the board for long, as Clolossus and eailsy be 16/11 with 5 X-men in the KO'ed pile and Rogue KO'ing anyone she stuns is awesome with attack like hers (12/11, Flight). The final slots for characters you should be running is 7! Do not go into 8-10, because you probably wont be playing that long. With that said let me introduce you to these two powerhouses: Professor X and Wolverine. Professor X shows he is no slouch, being a 16/14 with the ability to exaust any of your opponents characters with a 5 cost or less, THEN making them lose endurance equal to its ATK. On the flip side of the coin, you have Wolverine, Berserker Rage. He is probably the savior of the X-men, because with the ablilty to ready after he stuns characters with a cost of 4 or less, he is bound to win you the game right then and there.
 
 So you should try:
 2 Longshot
 2 Arachangel
 2 Bishop
 3 Wolverine (3 cost)
 1 Psylocke (for teching purposes)
 2 Havok
 2 Jean Grey
 2 Nightcrawler
 2 Rogue (4 cost)
 2 Professor X (5 cost)
 Either 4 Rogue or Colossus(Preferably rouge or you can run 2 of each!)
 2 Wolverine (7 cost)
 1 Professor X (7 cost)
 
 That uts us to a grand total of 24 characters in the deck with room for more of your own choice ( She-Hulk, Magneto, Master of Magnetism, Hulk) The combonations are endless and up to you to explore.
 
 Thats a lot of writing up the, so I'm going to sign off for now. Next time I will give the rest of my article to all of you, showing which plot tiwst and an indepth look at the locations, and which ones most suit the deck. 
 
 Until next time, have fun, and keep on rollin'.
 Jason
 
 jeskaldthestampede@yahoo.com 
 Email me if you have any questions!