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Image from Decipher

Roll, Hip and Cool

Power Up!

1 C 5

Date Reviewed: 10.27.04

Constructed Average Rating: 3.5
Limited Average Rating: 3.25

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst.
3 ... average.
5 is the highest rating.

Otaku

New Feature: If you think this review is too long to read, just skip straight to the scores and then read the summary for a concise overview! Yes, the summary now lives up to its name.

MegaMan is still a relatively new game. As such, some of my terminology may be confusing, as I plan on using the game specific terms to refer to cards. For example, Energy refers to cards in your deck, but Power refers to cards in your Power Gauge. Confused? You can download the current rule book here, from Decipher’s MegaMan TCG site. If something doesn’t make sense, make sure the game meaning is being applied to the word.

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Name : Roll

Title : Hip and Cool

Set : Power-Up

ID : 1 C 5

Type : NetNavi

Emblem: [Ro]

Strength: 1

Defense: 2

Blast : 2

Effect : Whenever you play a BattleChip, your Roll is defense +2.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*thunk* *giggle* *boom* I win. ;)

Keep reading, and that taunt will make sense.

I haven’t run Roll, nor have I faced her directly, but I have seen her in action as a by stander.

Stats : Roll’s name actually matters! There is an Ally card, Roll, Downtown Chaperone. You cannot play that Ally card if you are running Roll. The Title is mainly for identification purposes. Any time I refer to Roll throughout the rest of this article, it will refer to the Navi. ;) Roll’s Emblem seems to be a heart with a yellow back drop. Its looks like the heart was too big for the circle, and thus has been cropped, so that it doesn’t look like a heart at first.

As for the side stats, roll has the minimum but oh so common S1. This is the lowest Strength score in the game, but since it’s also on seven other NetNavi’s. A D2 is roughly average, though it does block two-thirds of the available NetNavi’s base Strength scores. Her last stat is her B2. This is also more or less the “average” Blast score. You could Blast every other turn if you wished, but it wouldn’t let you play a lot of high Power cards. It also means you can risk playing some low Destiny cards since you have to reveal two in order for your Blast Destiny to be puny.

Card Effect : This is why Roll is the Queen of D: whenever her controller plays a BattleChip, she gets a +2 to her Defense! This adds up pretty fast. For those who think she got a better deal than GutsMan, remember that his base Strength is balanced by his base Defense, so only his slightly elevated Blast was paying for the effect. Roll’s is paid for by her lowered Strength. If you remember a comment I made before (or have just figured it out for them self) that a point of Strength is worth a point of Defense, and that a point of either is worth “negative” two points of Blast. That is, if a NetNavi’s base Strength is three, it should have either a Defense of only one, or a Blast of four to compensate for the advantage. They could put a limiting effect on the card, but they haven’t done that yet.

Uses/Combos : Roll’s colors are Blue and Yellow. Before Grand Prix, most people I knew would actually run Roll as Blue/Red, as those are the two types that can boost Defense. We’ll come back to that later. Let’s check out Roll’s personal cards.

Bubbler is Roll’s personal BattleChip. You need [B][B][Ro] to play it, and that’s not too bad. You get +4 to Roll’s Defense, and the card has a good Destiny 4. Even better, it triggers Roll’s effect for another +2. So if nothing else has affected Roll’s Defense, she’d be at D8 after this. This is actually Roll’s only card to specifically bulk up her Defense. Run four.

Roll’s personal Event, Underestimated, didn’t seem so great at first. Once the nice people at Decipher showed me the light, I realized how great it is. Underestimated requires three Power and [Ro][Ro][Ro]. Whenever you are about to lose an Energy, you get to recharge an Energy instead, up to a total of five times. You can play multiple copies in a turn and essentially, they stack (the actual explanation is more complicated-don’t ask me for specifics XD). Now, recharging up to five Energy may not seem so hot, but remember, it’s instead of taking damage. So if you get the full five, it puts you a total of 10 Energy ahead of where you would be without it. Run at least two, and but it should be at three, though you could risk using four.

Roll’s remaining cards deal with manipulating her Power Gauge. This sort of completes the “passive-aggressive” theme she has going: she’s good on Defense, got some healing ability, and can Power herself. Channeling is a Blue Resource requires you have four Power and [Ro] to put it in play. When spent, it lets you place two cards from your hand into your Power Gauge. It has an average Destiny 3. Try to burn some Power after playing it but before spending it. I’d say to run three.

Data Scan is another Blue Resource. This one just requires you are running Roll. This thing has an interesting effect: you place all your resources in your Power Gauge (including itself) when spent. Thanks to Viruses, this has become a pretty useful card: you can get up to three Power with a Destiny 4 in your gauge.

Maylu, Sweetheart is Roll’s NetOp. She let’s you look at and rearrange the cards in your Power Gauge whenever you play a Roll card. Good, but a little sub par-it’d be really nice if it didn’t have the trigger and you could just chose to use it once per turn or something. Don’t get me wrong-it is useful. With a solid Destiny 5, you might as well run four.

Roll Blast is a Yellow Resource with a low Destiny 2. It only requires [Ro] to put into play, but you’ll need two Power to Burn when you go to spend it. When you do this, you note the lower of the two Destiny Numbers, and randomly place that many cards from your discard pile into your Power Gauge. As long as you don’t run a lot of Destiny 1 cards and can use Maylu, Sweetheart to ensure your lowest Destiny isn’t that low, this is a great way to power-up fast. Run three, maybe four.

The rest of a Roll deck tends to lean towards an assortment of defensive cards (usually BattleChips), and a few offensive BattleChips. This works well because of one simple, but sick combination: get a Fiery NetNavi into play, bulk of your Defenses on your own turn, and spend it. You’ll add all that Defensive Power to your Strength. Now does my Roll-specific taunt make sense?

Ratings

Casual : 3.5/5-Roll isn’t too bad here because there are a lot of common Defensive cards. Even her big offensive combo with Fiery NetNavi can be done sans rares. Still, the most spectacular combos will require you are more than just casually using her.

Tournament : 3.75/5-I took a bit off because, while Roll can pull off her own sick combos, similar to NumberMan. She also tends to be better at weathering damage than NumberMan. Unfortunately, in the end, she is still very defense oriented.

Limited : 3/5-Roll can be tricky here. On the bright side, every chip can be used defensively. Unfortunately, Roll has no exceptional stats to give her a leg up.

Summary

Roll’s ability allows her to increase her Defense to an exceptional level. She can manipulate her Power Gauge to Blast very efficiently. She can employ some seriously sick combos. Think of her as a more Defensive version of NumberMan.

tcorbett

1 C 5 Roll, Hip and Cool NetNavi

Rating: 3.5/5. Roll has below average Strength, average Defense, and average Blast. Also, she has a special ability that gives her +2 Defense whenever she plays a BattleChip. This makes Roll the Queen of Defense, so a lot of her strategies involve using Defense to win, one way or another.

Roll's colors are Blue and Yellow. She has two Blue Resources (Channeling and Deta Scan), two Yellow Resources (Maylu, Sweetheart, and RollBlast, a Blue Event, and a BattleChip that requires two Blue. Normally, this would mean that Roll decks lean toward Blue, but with Roll, that's not always the case.

Roll was the first NetNavi to be widely used with an alternate color scheme. The reason for this is that Blue and Yellow just didn't seem to work very well for Roll at first. So, Roll has ended up with several strategies. One of the most prominate is the "Fiery Roll" deck, which uses Red and Blue, or even Red and Yellow. The basis of this strategy is to use Defensive cards and Roll's ability to combo with Fiery NetNavi (Red Resource that lets you add your Defense to your Strength) to pull off massive amounts of Strength.

Another Roll strategy is the mono-Blue negation deck, which was one of the two major mono-Blue decks in Power Up. It would use canceling, negation, and Defense to stall out her opponent while chipping away with Blasting and BattleChips such as CyberSword
(+4 Strength for the cost of giving your opponent back a random card from the discard pile) and MegaEnergyBomb (+2 Strength for each of your Blue Resources for the cost of 1 Energy). This deck would also make good use of System Error (Blue Event that made your opponent damage himself INSTEAD of you).

With the introduction of Shrimpy2 from Grand Prix (Blue Virus Resource that lets you add your Defense to your Blast Destiny), the Fiery Roll deck has shifted back toward Blue. Also, the mono-Blue Roll deck can now splash in some Fiery NetNavis for good effect.

One last Roll strategy I'd like to mention is an attempt at having a winning Roll deck using her actual colors of Blue and Yellow. It used Yellow destruction along with Blue negation, and maybe even bouncing and discard, to make what sounds like an effective Control deck. It looks good on paper, but I haven't seen one in action yet since Fiery Roll and mono-Blue are the usual Roll decks.

As for her specific cards, her Blue Resources allow her to stack her Power Gauge. Channeling lets you place two cards from your hand into your Gauge. Not a bad effect, but it has a whopping FOUR Power Requirement. Data Scan places all of your Resources into your Gauge. Now, that's a rather BAD effect for two reasons. 1)With all of your Resources in your Gauge, you can't use them to meet Color Requirements. 2)Data Scan itself is a 1 Destiny. Unless you play with a lot of the Ultra Rare BattleChips from Power Up (nearly all of them require 5 Power), Data Scan almost never gets Spent. However, it has no requirements, so Roll decks using Blue will run it.

Her Yellow Resources give her further control of the Power Gauge. Her NetOp Maylu, Sweetheart, lets you look at your Power Gauge and replace it in any order whenever you play a Roll card.
This can be very effective in getting around the low Destiny that Roll decks tend to have. On top of that, it has no Requirements AND is a 5 Destiny! RollBlast lets you Burn two Power and place a number of random cards from the discard pile into your Gauge equal to the lower of the two card's Destinies.
This can be dangerous if you have low Destiny (RollBlast itself is only a 2), and more than once, I've seen a 1 flipped over by a RollBlast. However, Maylu, or Counting Down (Yellow Event with same effect as Maylu, minus the Roll part) can make RollBlast VERY effective.

Her BattleChip gives her +4 Defense. With her ability, that's
+6 Defense total. So, Bubbler is a very nice defensive Chip
that's usually found in the Fiery Roll and the mono-Blue Roll decks.

Her Event Underestimated turns damage into healing! For up to 5 damage, you can Recharge INSTEAD of taking damage.

The only real drawbacks to Roll are her low Strength and the fact that her Blue Resources are rather bad, but these drawbacks can easily be dealt with.