Following Steve’s brilliant example, I put the preview card at the top of the page. This particular preview card is near and dear to my heart. Not only have I always wanted to unveil a preview card for Upper Deck, but I’ve particularly wanted the card to be a Cyclops or Green Lantern Card. Not too long ago our own community created a fantasy set called DC Universe, and was kind enough to let me preview a couple of Hal Jordan cards. Now the other half of my dream is coming to fruition.
Why did I want to do a Cyclops card so bad? It’s not because we both share the same first name (but that helps). It’s really about how “human” this mutant’s story is. He does his best to keep his team together despite almost constant disagreements from half his team. As a teacher who spends half his day trying to keep his class on track and working toward a common goal, I can really relate. It’s hard to get so many different personalities working as one.
Speaking of his leadership abilities, there’s a thread on vsrealms that compares Cyclops to Captain America. While it’s an interesting conversation, it’s not quite a fair comparison. The Captain leads by example, often charging into combat with his near-invulnerable allies all around him. Cyclops coordinates strikes with well-trained teams, most of whom couldn’t accomplish much by themselves. He teaches them to compensate for each other’s weaknesses, which makes him an outstanding leader. Therefore, I’m going to have to throw my vote towards my one-visored friend.
Also, despite how lame Cyclops’ ability might seem at first, it’s actually quite versatile. He’s not limited to blasting straight shots at bad guys. Actually, he’s got an innate sense of trajectory and an awesome awareness of his surroundings that lets him ricochet shots all around the area, often taking out multiple bad guys with one blast. If you want a good list of Cyclops’ accomplishments, head on over to Wikipedia or the Marvel character bios page. Both are good places to keep up the ever-evolving Marvel Universe. Even I frequent both of these sites since most of my Cyclops knowledge is based off of Astonishing X-Men, The Ultimate X-Men, and yes, the X-Men cartoon!
Enough digression, back to the actual card. Fearless Leader comes shortly after the release of Cyclops, Mutant Messiah and Cyclops, Man of Action. This is appropriate considering the great synergy that these cards have. Mutant Messiah combined with Fearless Leader means TONS of burn; activate him in response to an attack, ready him with his Energize ability, activate him again, play Fearless Leader on him, and activate him again! This will likely be 21-24 endurance depending on your opponent’s board (remember that you can keep targeting the same exhausted character each time!). After all of these burns resolve, you can add stun damage on top of everything! Man of Action combined with Fearless Leader essentially means that your opponent will have no board to speak of going into turn five. The team-attacking stipulation of Fearless Leader is completely ignored in both of these instances, all you care about is getting multiple uses out of Cyclops’ activated abilities.
Speaking of Cyclops and activated abilities, his Horsemen of Apocalypse version can also perform an out-of-combat stun when activated. Piling on counters early in the game may be a little difficult right now, but remember that The Horsemen are being refeatured! Only time will tell if this three drop will suddenly become more playable.
The other Cyclops card released recently was Concussive Force. This card forces an opponent to exhaust two characters of his choosing for one measly exhaust on your end. Mystical Paralysis, eat your heart out. Imagine Concussive Force combined with Fearless Leader. Your opponent would have to exaust four freakin’ characters to your one! That’s a great trade off in my book.
The only other Modern Age Cyclops before Marvel Evolutions is Cyclops, Fearless Leader. What a minute… Fearless Leader… Fearless Leader… Where have I heard that before? Oh right, the name of my preview card. It’s appropriate then that these two cards work so well together. After all, it’s kind of hard to ready a Cyclops that’s become stunned. Since the five drop Cyclops from MVL can’t be stunned while attacking from the support row, Fearless Leader will always be able to ready him.
As an interesting side-note: If you’ve ever wanted a pretty clear example of power-creep in Vs., take a look at Cyclops, Scott Summers from Marvel Origins and compare him to Cyclops, Fearless Leader from Marvel Legends. The Scott Summers version has been eclipsed in almost every way!
Speaking of Golden Age cards, it’s important to remember that one of the original X-Men themes was underdropping and team-attacking. It kind of took a back seat to their recovering theme, and their discard theme, and their copying abilities theme… you get the idea. This team is so hard to build right because they’re so convoluted with ideas. But if you remember well, many decks ran around with the now obsolete Blackbird and Cyclops, Slim beefing up their board (The Blackbird Vs. Blackbird Blue is another example of how much better a card can become once revisited). But I digress, I merely wanted to point out the Granny Goodness in readying a card like Slim, who can attack again with his beefy bonuses.
The final ‘old card’ I want to look at is Cyclops, Blue Leader. Obviously you would not build a deck that focused just on Blue Leader, but the X-Men team has tons of burn effects. Dazzler, Rock Star on two followed by Blue Leader on three means that after two team attacks with Cyclops (courtesy of Fearless Leader), your opponent will have lost eight endurance on top of his stun damage.
Finally, check out Checkmate Arcade on October tenth to see a card that will work pretty well with Fearless Leader. I don’t want to ruin the treat (also, I’m contractually obliged not to), but let’s just say that Cyclops’ cards have currently got me in a tizzy. I don’t know if I’ll be able to play any other legend after this! That is unless DC comes back on board with Vs. and Kyle Rayner gets legend status!
Thanks for reading guys, hope you’ve preordered your case already!
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