Team Strategy 101-MATT Hi there and welcome to Team Strategy 101. Today we'll be looking at the different attributes of the 5 core teams of Marvel Vs. So let's get to it, starting with ... X-MEN: The x-men are the premier recovery group. As much as your opponent will try and try, the x-men just can't be wiped from the board. Why you ask? The recovery cards of the series Moria McTaggert, Muir Island, Children of the Atom, and even Xavier's School keep the x-men coming back for more, recovering anywhere from 2-4-to however many characters each turn. There's also Wolverine, James Howlett who can avoid being stunned in combat, Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner, and Cyclops, Scott Summers who can't be stunned while attacking. The x-men are also the best at stripping cards from an opponent's hand with Psylocke and Prof. X, Charles Xavier along with Xavier's Mansion. The x-men are also good on the team attack with Cyclops, Slim leading the way. Then there's the card searching. With Longshot letting you go through four cards a turn for that game breaker, Forge sending himself back to his hand to find you the Blackbird (2 cost, characters you control gain flight, and x-men you control gain +2/+2), and using Xavier's School to give Longshot another run, it won't be long until you find a card you absolutely need. BROTHERHOOD: The Brotherhood is often used as rush in the early game. With the New Brotherhood plot twist pumping your weak characters up by 2 attack, you can put a serious dent in your opponent's endurance early. There's also a location you can use with the New Brotherhood to make it even more dangerous, at least for a turn. Hopefully more on that in a later article. Anyways, the Brotherhood also has the best direct damage effects in the game so far. Pyro can put away 3 endurance a turn, Quicksilver can take 5 if your opponent has no ready support row, and War on Humanity takes away 1 endurance for every unstunned Brotherhood character you control at the recovery phase. And as if that wasn't enough the Brotherhood has monster atk pump locations like Savage Land and Asteroid M, and can kill in the late game with Sabretooth, Victor Creed and Magneto, Master of Magnetism. Don't forget Global Domination which can shut down an opponent's locations. SENTINELS: The Sentinels are all about swarm and probably follow the Brotherhood or even surpass them in direct damage. Sentinels are expendable and as such you can feed them to your powerful locations like Orbital Sentinel Base which lets you KO a Sentinel to KO an opposing character. But as I said before the Sentinels are all about swarming the opponent. In addition to Army Sentinels costing nowhere above 4, Master Mold, Underground Sentinel Base, and other cards help you bring your swarm to the table to overwhelm your opponent. And remember, when your little Sentinels can't cut it you can always team attack or drop Nimrod or Bastion to the table. Sentinels deal direct damage through Senator Kelly, who makes an opponent lose endurance equal to the number of army Sentinels you have in play ( which will hopefully be a whole lot), Prime Sentinels, which makes an opponent lose 1 endurance each time they play a plot twist from their resource row, and Search and Destroy which will stun a character for its recruit cost and destroy any characters in the opponent's hand with the same name. Just remember, bring out army Sentinels early and often.... FANTASTIC FOUR: The Fantastic Four have a number of viable team options. The most notable though is their ability to find and use equipment to their needs, via Baxter Building (Let's you look at 1-2 cards from the top of your deck to see if any are equipment), Antartic Research Base (Each time you recruit equipment draw a card), and the various installments of Mr. Fantastic which make it so you can move equipment around, make it cost less to recruit equipment, and search for equipment. Oh, and what equipment they have. With the Fantasticar (1 cost, Fantastic Four characters you control have +1/+1, and all characters you control have flight), and the Pogo Plane (1 cost, equip only to Fantastic Four, equipped character has flight and is reinforced, discard a card, put Pogo Plane on the bottom of your deck, search for any location card in your deck) on their side the Fantastic Four might as well look for their equipment. But wait, there's more! Human Torch let's you pay endurance to increase his attack making him a heavy hitter, and Thing is one of the toughest characters in the game, and almost always ahead of the resource curve. Worried about defense? Don't sweat it as Invisible Woman can reinforce your characters for free, shield herself from attacks, or pay 6 endurance to make your characters non-stunnable this turn. Yeah the FF's got it all. DOOM: First off, let's just say this. If you're going to play a viable Doom deck you must have a Dr. Doom at your disposal on all turns. After all the team is named after him, so you're obviously going to need him in play to utilize the team. But how do you always have Dr. Doom in play when the earliest Doom is turn 4 and the next is turn 6? Why you use all the cards that substitute themselves as Dr. Doom. Doomstadt is a 1 cost location that makes it so you are considered to control Dr. Doom, Kristoff Von Doom also can sub in for Doom, along with Victor Von Doom II. So what's so important about Dr. Doom anyways? All the plot twists that are for specific use with Doom, such as Mystical Paralysis (exhaust Dr. Doom, exhaust target character), Micro Size (with Doom becomes a -2/-2 plot twist), and Doom Triumphant (As an additional cost exhaust Dr. Doom, target player with three or more stunned characters discards his hand). Then there's Doom himself, master of the plot twist. One Dr. Doom stops you from playing plot twists from your hand, one stops them from being played from the resource row, and one can turn plot twists face down so they can be reused along with returning a plot twist from the KO pile each time it attacks. Oh, and with Latveria and Doomstadt in play Dr. Doom is reinforced and gains 3 defense. Don't forget that Faces of Doom can search for a Doom card and the Power Cosmic can steal the initiative to win you the game. That wraps up this course of Team Strategy 101. Hopefully I'll be back again to explain a little bit more thoroughly on each team, starting with the x-men. Who knows, maybe I'll even design a deck. If you want to send hate mail, questions, or even good comments to me I'm at mj_423@hotmail.com. Once again that number is mj_423@hotmail.com.