Kate Bishop <> Hawkeye

I was excited when I heard that the Young Avengers just might be in Marvel Universe. I don't get excited about a lot of the standard teams, because I know that we'll see them again...and again...and again. Doesn't mean I don't like them, but it's nothing to get excited about. The Young Avengers, though? We'll see them once, with random support popping up rarely and without warning, I suspect.

Anyway, I was further excited, as I've said, to learn that the Young Avengers would carry the bulk of the Avengers team-attack theme. In the previews, we saw Vision, Young Avenger - and he blew my mind. He blew a lot of minds, I think. Then we saw Kang <> Iron Lad - and thank goodness we got that errata - and he's solid. Patriot, Hulkling, Wiccan, etc...overall, the Avengers have an extremely strong lower-curve that lends itself well to team attacks, though they have nothing even comparable to Quicksilver, Mutant Avenger + Legendary Battles, sadly.

Still, Kate Bishop <> Hawkeye was a card that caught my eye pretty quickly. I understood that free-stuns were powerful, but her ability is so extraordinarily costly, especially in the age of Pathetic Attempt, that I was curious as to why she was made rare. It didn't seem that there could be a draw engine worth her cost, and while there were some rare occasions where you'd want to stun someone with cost 3 or more, that would be extremely rare.

The more I thought about it, though, the more powerful I realized she was - when she worked with the rest of the Young Avengers to help Captain America during the Civil War.

Cost: 3 Patriot, Elijah Bradley * Young Avenger
Team: Avengers
Ranged
ATK: 5
DEF: 4
Leader: Whenever an adjacent character stuns an opposing character, rally for a character card.

Cost: 3 Liberating Number 42
Whenever an [Avengers Icon] character you control stuns an opposing character this turn, rally for a character card.

Two common cards that make Kate Bishop go crazy - fitting given her on-and-off crush with Patriot and her ceaseless loyalty to fighting against the Registration Act. Think about that. Let's say you have 4 characters surrounding Patriot. Three of them team-attack. Kate stuns one with her ability, and the three team-attackers stun one - that's 4 rallies - and 3 more for each Liberating Number 42 you can play. The further Kate gets into the revolution, the more she's inspired to keep going.

The more I think about the modern Avengers Team-Attack deck, the more I think that mono-Avengers can't work. However, I've heard some fun things about Bring Your Own Team Golden, and I think Avengers will be my team. I'll try and get a deck up soon.