Vs. System.org

By SeventhSoldier

When we first began designing Checkmate, we had a challenge before us.  Checkmate was an age defining team – a game defining team, in many ways.  Checkmate was absolutely vital to the Final Crisis storyline – the organized and led the entire resistance against Darkside, after all, uniting all of Earth’s heroes under Article X (I wonder if that’s a card? hmmmm….) – but we talked long and hard about including them.  Once the decision was made, they went through a number of themes, with a roster ranging from a full 30 characters to roughly 10, having a lot of trouble deciding how we wanted to balance this vital team with their (overly?) powerful predecessors.

Obviously, we couldn’t leave them out, but something had to change.  Where Checkmate had previously had access to all the world’s resources as the legal metahuman resource of the United Nations, Final Crisis put them on the edge of destruction.  A loose conglomeration of heroes with nothing left to unite under, Checkmate’s operatives were forced to hiding in Watchtowers spread across the world, desperately afraid of becoming one of Darkseid’s Justifiers.

However, they did manage to call together the armies of man to confront the Justifiers – and then later, a new extradimensional enemy awakened during the conflict – in a few massive battles.  This was in part thanks to one of their newest recruits…

Renee hopped from dimension to dimension summoning the Superman of each dimension to the defense of this one.  Her power here is representative of this – yes, you have to hide your 3-drop.  And yes, you have to exhaust her, essentially taking her out of the fight.  But in return, you not only get a card, but a little life back as well.  Renee’s power isn’t nearly as mindblowing as Checkmate’s former staple 3-drop, Ahmed Samsarra, but as a power that offers card advantage and endurance, it’s an invaluable ability nonetheless.

Renee isn’t the only team-member focuses on armies.  August General in Iron, head superfunctionary for the Chinese government, is a good example of a character who combines both of the team’s main themes in DFC.

That’s right – Checkmate is given the ultimate underdog theme here: resource self-destruction.  But making him hidden makes him hard to hurt, and a board-wide +1/+1 on both attack and defense is a powerful incentive to play him.  Reservist gives him a little versatility, but August General in Iron specializes in making all your little guys big enough to pack a formidable punch.  At 3/3, though, he’s no slouch – if you need a two-drop to swing with, you could do worse than to be stuck with him.

But with few resources and small characters, Checkmate needs a way to resist the more powerful, harder-hitting characters of their opponents….

Resist is a powerful, powerful pump.  Even a standard +4 pump to attack, usable on either attack or defense, is a versatile, useful plot twist that would probably see some play.  Resist takes it a step further, offering a +4 to defense if you’re down a resource.  A +4/+4 on either attack or defense can change the tide of an entire turn.  Don’t dismiss Checkmate – even when most of their resources have been taken from them, they’ll still fight back with everything they have.

As I said, Checkmate was very, very hard for us.  It’s impossible to avoid comparisons to the game-changing original roster, but we think that their new style offers a lot of variation to the team without utterly abandoning their first iteration.  Hopefully, you’ll find new uses for those old, underused Checkmate cards as you see some of the team’s new tricks.  Checkmate’s powerful team-based combat focus is a force to be reckoned with, here.

With this, the DFC previews begin to wind down.  Throughout the weekend, you’ll see a few more of Checkmate’s key cards, starting today as VS Savant brings you the newest OMAC.  Finally, Sunday will see a few choice legacy and generic cards, and then you’ve only a brief wait before the set is in your hands.

Enjoy!