Q's Universe

Card of the Week
Antarctic Research Base
By IQ

Hello there, = )

Each week I will be picking a card to do a detailed review on. The initial idea for this section was to pick a card out of the 5 that was reviewed during the week but I’m open for submissions about cards you feel should be reviewed and cards you would like to se a review on. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a pojo e-mail addy so I can get a chance to hear what you guys would like to see but until then I’ll keep checking the Marvel massage board as much as I can.

The card picked for this week is one of my favorite locations and since I didn’t get to review it when it was the card of the day I had to take this chance to give you my views on it.

IN DECKS IT’S MEANT TO BE IN

It’s needless to say how well this location works in Fantastic 4 (F4) decks because of cards like The Pogo Plane, The Fantasticar, and either one of the Mr. Fantastic's. There are also other equipments that work really well with this card like Dual Sidearms and Unstable Molecules. They both don’t cost anything to recruit, are useful and with this card in play they pretty much turn into a card that says draw a card and get a secondary additional bonus.

I like how this card can help aggressive and defensive decks and who can complain about the great card drawing ability? Even though this location is really good it’s still not a staple in F4 decks because there are some variants that go trough other means to get their attack modifiers, but I’m still waiting for an official Upper Deck ruling on weather those decks really work or not. ^_<

IN OTHER DECKS

You can call me crazy, point and laugh and do whatever else you want but I think this card works a lot better in the Alliance deck than in your average F4 deck. It was my love for this card and the Fantasticar that brought the Alliance deck into being and I really do think this card works a lot better in that deck than in a F4 deck and here’s why I feel this way.

The only hidden draw back about this card is that you need to have a lot of smaller characters in your deck to really be able to abuse its card drawing ability. Why must you have smaller characters you say? Well, in order to play a lot of equipments you need to have a lot of character to play those equipments on. The F4 affiliation does have a large amount of characters with a low recruit cost but you can not build your deck completely around them and ignore the curve because you will just get crushed by a Brotherhood deck.

The Alliance deck focuses on having the best low cost characters in the game and that’s why it can stand a chance against your normal decks. With a swarm of characters out there you can play a lot of equipments and cards like the Fantasticar and the Blackbird simply work a lot better because you’re getting a greater bonus out of them.

I do know that Alliance only runs a grand total of 6 equipments and I would normally agree with you that a deck with only 6 equipments shouldn’t run Antarctic Research Base in it but I have to disagree this time. What makes such a big difference you ask? That would have to be Forge who is an equipment tutoring machine in this deck archetype. Once you hit turn 5 and have Mr. Fantastic down you can pretty much tutor for every equipment in your deck and play it in the same turn. Once you combine Mr Fantastic, with Forge and this wonderful location you can get about 10 cards out of your deck and completely tin it out. Even after you have already gotten all of your Fantasticars and the Blackbird you still have the pogo plane to help you tin out your deck, and since you can use the same engine over and over again thanks to this location you’ll be going trough your deck like there’s no tomorrow.


I haven’t seen Antarctic Research Base used in any other deck archetypes but you can bet your allowance that I will be looking for more ways to use and hopefully abuse this card drawing monster of a location. >_^

Q signing off.

IQ

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