Vs. System.org

SeventhSoldier here to write about the next major team in DFC.  Around the time Final Crisis had taken over most of the DC Universe, another event was going on that would effect a fair chunk of DC’s character base.  While Reign in Hell was much smaller in scope than the other late summer mega-events, it nonetheless gave us an opportunity to do something we’d very badly wanted to do: refeature Shadowpact.

Since Infinite Crisis introduced the most well-known iteration of the Shadowpact roster, there hasn’t been a whole lot of change in the magical community of the DC Universe.  In the Shadowpact comics, there was a small bit of team-shuffling, but when the book got cancelled, it seemed unlikely that there would be much of a reason to refeature the team.

Fortunately for us, Reign in Hell happened.  Satanus and Blaze went to war with Neron for control of all Hell.  To augment their already formidable forces, each side began calling in favors and making bargains, quickly sucking DC’s magical community in and forcing them to pick sides in a war no one could win.

Magician fought magician at the behest of Hell’s warring leaders, so we thought it only fitting that Shadowpact get a new roster and flavor that not only reflected the changes in the magical community, but also their new ‘allies’.  You’ll see a few unexpected faces filling out the ranks of Shadowpact, without a doubt!

Shadowpact’s most recognizable theme has stayed – given that their entire team was built around paying endurance for effects, it had to – but the more we all talked about the team and how it performed in the past, the more we liked the idea of changing what that theme might mean to them.  Shadowpact always had the potential to be a powerhouse, but as opposing decks got faster and trickier, knocking yourself down to 25 or even 10 endurance became… counterproductive, to say the least.  With so many decks packing answers to Shadowpact’s best tricks, and with those tricks coming at such a high cost, we opted to try and come up with a way to change the downside to that cost.

Most of this is pretty simple, albeit perhaps a little mindbending – Shadowpact now has an alternate lose condition.  But if you want to reign in Hell, you’d better have plenty of people to throw to the ground in front of you as you fight, because you aren’t going anywhere without your army.  In order for this card to work, you’ll need your board stunned AND have some spare characters to KO every turn.  While the ability to keep the game going a turn or two past your opponent’s kill is powerful, especially for a team that likes to play so close to death for so much of the game, it isn’t a permanent fix – the longer you depend on To Reign in Hell, the harder it’s cost will be to meet.

The one thing you might have noticed and not entirely understood was the version, however: Immutable.

Welcome to the last new ‘keyword’ of DFC.

IMMUTABLE

Some plot twists and locations in this set have the version Immutable.
An Immutable card can’t be targeted while in play.
An Immutable resource can’t be replaced.
If a player must select a resource to replace, he cannot choose to replace an Immutable resource.

Resource hate is pretty brutal for anyone to face down.  Not even team-ups are safe anymore.  That’s fair, of course.  Nothing lasts forever.  Until you start dealing with some metaphysical concepts… because as long as there’s a Hell, there’ll be conflict within.  Immutable is an extremely rare keyword meant to protect resources from even the game’s most potent forms of hate.  As you can see, that isn’t always a good thing – short of destroying all your resources, you’re going to have a hard time getting rid of To Reign In Hell when you can’t meet that requisite 3 KO threshold.

Of course, not everything offers so drastic a change as all that.  In DCR, Detective Chimp helped enable your deck to hit its drops without ever seeing play.  In DFC, he’s still enabling the Shadowpact, but in a different sort of way.

Detective Chimp, Telestic Council may be understatted, but if there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s making the rest of the team shine.  A 10 endurance drop could be pretty killer on turn three, helping to get our 2-drop June Moon (oops) or Rose Psychic (again!) online a turn or two earlier than you might’ve thought you could.  He even makes his old three-drop better, making his 25-endurance threshold easier to meet with less permanent sacrifice.  Yet another way to make the low endurance thresholds of some of Shadowpact’s strongest powers a little bit less suicidal.

Shadowpact has a lot of solid low-drops this time around – it isn’t just the aforementioned June Moon and Rose Psychic that you almost tricked me into spoiling.  I’m not saying they have a new and improved rush theme or anything, or that they have ways of dropping the occasional ‘free’ low-drop… but if they did, wouldn’t a card like this be remarkably helpful?

Despite being as close as we come to a reprint of Shadowpact’s signature Madame Xanadu, Linda Danvers more closely resembles Kyle Rayner, Last Green Lantern.  Of course, she has that extra point of attack, and her search reaches for a far wider range of cards than Kyle’s did.  But she also has an extra cost – each time you grab a plot twist with Linda Danvers, you’ll find yourself paying a pretty hefty endurance cost.  But Shadowpact has never minded paying endurance when the effect is worth it, and I think you’ll agree – Linda Danvers is worth it.

Shadowpact has always been adept at doing a lot with a little, and later today EvilDave will introduce you to another Shadowpact character capable of turning a little power into a lot of hurt.  Our favorite mystics will wrap up tomorrow to clear the way for the heroes of not one, not two, but three worlds.