So Bright & Shiny

Finally, I get to start writing about individual cards!  I've been keeping everything so general lately, because I want to raise the overall strategic quality of people's decks.  Of course, no CCG strategy section can be complete without single-card evaluations.  I really don't like doing individual cards for whole articles though, so I'll try to have a bit of a theme with this.  This week, I'm going to go over what I consider to be the best and worst Ultra-Rares in the set.  Maybe I can watch my ego inflate as my opinion ends up shaping card prices.

Rarity, Truly Outrageous

This card just ends up getting better every time I look at it, and I don't rank Rarity highly in my main character tiers.  You get 2 power for 3 cost, pretty average at that.  You only need 2 power, a pretty standard requirement (and given that so many white cards need at least 3, that's a bargain!).  What you get is 2 power you can contribute toward a problem and then move her back for the bonus points.  WHAAAAAAAAT??!!!  White is already a pretty solid color for control decks, so ideally, you'll find yourself in a situation where you can just come back to the same problem multiple times for lots of bonus points.  If your problem deck consists of many high-bonus cards, your point total is sure to skyrocket!  Why, just off of one 3-bonus problem, you can get a total of 7 points, 10 if you can win a faceoff (though you won't have her power for it if you do have one).  At a mere cost of 2 action tokens to move her every turn, Rarity is truly, truly outrageous!

Big Macintosh

It's really hard to choose best UR, because they all compliment certain strategies so well.  This one I guess is a good second place, because it's simply the beefiest thing in all existence so far!  4-power is the highest on any character yet, and I would not at all be surprised to see this alongside Full Steam in the same deck.  The Stubborn mechanic doesn't seem terribly great yet, but it does let you laugh at Flam.  The ability to just flip an additional card on any faceoffs with him, in addition to his base power, is just nutty!  An orange deck is likely to run a lot of power too, so your flips are going to be pretty strong on average.  The 5-token investment is hefty, but it's well worth it.

Fluttershy, Monster Tamer

I almost gave this spot to Princess Celestia.  Celestia ensures you will probably never lose a faceoff ever again.  However, the utility of this card trumps even her power.  Very few cards will let you address active troublemakers, and as I discussed in my last article, that can be a problem at all stages of the game.  Just to be clear, this card actually gives you control over the troublemaker, because you're the one playing it by this effect.  By the time you have the power to play Fluttershy, you probably have enough power to just not care about them (unless you used a boost event like Royal Guidance), but it can be a nice plus.  This is especially powerful against villains, which carry a lot of effect baggage just in their rules.  What really pushes her over the edge is that it prevents your opponent from locking you out of a problem late-game, allowing you to force that game-winning double problem faceoff.  When one of a card's key points is its unique ability to win the game for you, it's worth noticing.

Worst URs

While all of the Ultra-Rares are strong in their own ways, especially given there are no more than 2 per color, some are significantly less useful than others.  This is not to suggest they actually are not powerful, but these are the cards I'd reconsider giving card slots.

3rd worst: Zecora

I honestly don't understand why she costs so much both in tokens and in requirement.  Maybe I just don't understand purple all that well.  For a 3-token investment, what we get is a card with 1 power that can exhaust to give you a net +1 card, and lets you stack the top card of your deck.  To be fair, that's not terrible.  Exhausting to draw a card without paying for it would already be a nice effect.  Putting a card back on top is clearly most useful when you know you're about to have a faceoff, so you put the highest power you can on it.  Deck-stacking is certainly not unique to purple, so it clearly wants to do this.  My problem comes in that she's too expensive.  If she had more power or cost 2 tokens, I'd consider running her.  3 just seems inefficient, especially considering the power the other URs afford you.

2nd worst: Heart's Desire

I really want to like this card.  When I first got it in my very first box, I thought it was amazing.  The Black Lotus references bring a very powerful image.  However, this is a win-more card.  You have to already have a dominant position for this to end up being good, and even then, it's not a 4-token swing like the effect suggests.  You have to pay 2 to put it out, making it a 2-token advantage.  That's certainly good, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather give the card slot to something that would help me establish a good position in the first place.  This is what I call a "win-more" card.  It doesn't help you win, because you're already doing that.  It helps you win more than what you already were doing.  Those can be good, but I always place more value on cards that will swing a position from bad to good.

Biggest polished turd: Dr. Hooves

I can hear your cries already.  Again, none of the Ultra-Rares are terrible (I am also not a Whovian, but we're disregarding flavor here).  This one definitely has its use, but it's incredibly restricted.  Dr. Hooves is deliberately high-cost, because it's not intended to ever be hard-played.  Instead, you have to fulfill certain conditions to cheat him out.  That's where things start to get messy.  You have to expect discard effects to happen, and pretty much the only way to reliably do that right now (other than drawing massive amounts of cards, which is expensive in itself) is to play Nightmare Moon.  To be fair, I do play that, and intend on running said combo if I can get a playset.  You could also bait your opponent into doing it with Avalanche, but that's very limited.  Otherwise, it's a meta card to counter Yellow Parasprite and orange decks.  You also need 3 copies just to have a chance of making this useful.  It does have a fair amount of pluses, though.  When cheated out, it obviously does not have a color requirement, so any color deck can run this.  White can especially make use of it, since it has the power to bring back cards from the discard pile.  At the base of it, its cost is effectively 4 (2 to ready, 2 to move), equivalent to Full Steam if you want to run the two together without being orange.  It shines most with blue though, since that has both cheap/free movement and the ability to ready frightened cards.  Unfortunately, while these are nice pluses for the right deck, the restrictions are far too great.  I'd rather just run Full Steam and/or Holly Dash. 

 

It's important to keep in mind that these ratings are based on the way this initial set is designed.  All cards are only as powerful as their environment allows them to be.  For example, Magic's Ancestral Recall card is famously powerful for letting you draw 3 cards at one cost (we know what that's like).  However, if the rules let you draw 5 cards a turn and/or other cards let you draw more at the same/less cost, suddenly it becomes much worse.  In the deck building game Dominion, Smithy is essentially the same thing, but the rules of that game are vastly different enough to make it only average.  Interactions with new cards and potential power creep can affect the playability of these cards.  Dr. Hooves can get much better if you get more self-discard effects.  Rarity can become unplayable if new card effects can hinder her.  Don't necessarily use my opinions as an excuse to stockpile or sell off these cards, because you never know what the future holds.

Please forgive the shameless reminiscing of an old, dead game.  I just had to do it.

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This week's rules question

Q: I'm running Bunny Breakout as my starting problem. If I move Fluttershy, Beastmaster (main character) to it and play Forest Owl, does the +1 power from Forest Owl give me the 1 off-yellow power I need to confront it?
A: Power is never without color. When Forest Owl increases power to something, it only gives it power in the color it already had. Only through cards like A Touch of Refinement can a character get more power in another color to confront problems. Additionally, even if the bonus from Forest Owl did make it colorless, a character can only fulfill one requirement at a time when confronting problems (see the last page of the rule book). A character can't split up its power for both requirements.


Thanks for the question! If anyone else has some issues with the game, remember to contact mlpblogrules@gmail.com. All questions will get a response, whether they get featured in this blog or not.