Limited Resources 858 - Marvel Superheroes Set Review: Common and Uncommon

Luis, just to set the stage, uh, from a bigger picture perspective, we wanted to talk a little bit about some of the mechanics and archetypes that are present in this set, and then we'll get into the, uh, card by card discussion.

So maybe we'll start with the mechanics.

Yeah, so mechanics, uh, for this set, they, uh... [laughs] Well, k- kicking things off, power up.

I mean, that's a pretty, pretty natural one for a superhero set.

So power up is a, an ability that is, uh, you pay a bunch of mana.

Like for example, on Human Torch, it's, you pay six and a red, and you put three plus one, plus one counters on it.

You can only activate the ability once, and the cost is che- is made cheaper by the mana cost of whatever has power up if you enter that turn.

So y- you have this kind of expensive power up thing.

It's, it's a little bit like monstrous, where you're spending a bunch of mana to put a counter and/or do something else.

Like, for example, Kang the Conqueror, another example, they had, it's two blue, blue for a four-five flying.

Power up is five blue, blue, blue.

Put a plus one, plus one around Kang, plus one, plus one counter on Kang, and take an extra turn after this one.

So [smacks lips] you, if you p- activate this the turn you play it, it, instead of costing eight, it actually costs four.

Mm-hmm.

So it's an interesting, like, hybrid between an enters the battlefield ability and just, like, a big, like, kind of like monstrous or level up ability.

Um, as always, a lot of mana sinks.

You know, like, they, they do include a lot of those in sets.

And, uh, for some of the power up abilities, there's gonna be some interesting combinations of, like, costs on the creature and costs on the power up, where you really wanna, like, hold this creature to try to play it in the same turn as the power up versus some, it's like a very cheap creature with an expensive power up.

You're not really gonna worry as much about it.

So, uh, from the start, it just looks like another ETB/mana sink/late game thing or mid-game thing, but we're gonna see how that plays out.

Next up, we've got teamwork, another very superhero [laughs] mechanic.

So teamwork says, it's on spells, so it's against instant sorceries.

As an additional cost to cast the spell, you may tap any number of creatures that you control with a total power of X or more, where X is the teamwork number.

So for teamwork four, you're tapping four power worth of creatures or more.

Think of it like crewing a vehicle.