The Coolest Kids in School: Marvel Origins

Marvel Origins. The Set That Started It All. It's weird to think of everything that's come since, of how long Vs has been going on, and how long Marvel Origins was still considered to be THE power set. There were a lot of great cards in MOR: Flying Kick, Blind Sided, and Savage Beatdown, to name a few famous, potent generics. And then there was Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius and his suite of destruction. Those cards were fairly brutal - and long-lived. Many of them have seen recent reprints, due to their popularity, power, and flavor.

But none of those will be the focus of this update. Nope. Because this is about the underdogs that I ended up loving. The cards that made me WANT to build a new deck, or the generics that I included whenever I had the room solely to dick over my opponent. And in Marvel Origins, that, for me, was...

BURN RUBBER



Burn Rubber was a generic that I could get behind early in the game. I had the Flying Kicks, but I never saw a Savage Beatdown or Blind Sided in my packs. But Burn Rubber, that I had a good 5-10 of. And, frankly, looking back, I'm glad I did. Burn Rubber is a great card to put in a learner's deck. Why? Because it lowers the punishment for forming incorrectly, and good formation skillz are one of the harder things to acquire in Vs, it seems.

It even lets new players be clever. They can purposely form wrong, luring an opponent into an attack. The opponent knows that you're new, sees a situation they can take advantage of. Little do they know that flying into your lonely 3-drop in the support row isn't going to matter at all!

It also allows you to fix formation errors on the fly with its 'move characters' clause. You can falsely telegraph a Mega Blast with it...or you can make it so that you don't have to telegraph it. You can move a front row character to the support row to reinforce another character, thus getting two reinforcements out of it and severely minimizing your damage.

All-in-all, not a particularly powerful card, but a versatile one, and one that helps new players get a handle on things at their own pace, while still contributing to their deck and letting them surprise a more experienced player. And isn't humiliating other players what playing a game is all about?