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!

By Guglio

“He’s going to lose. They all will. Trust me, Superman. I was there!”

Time travel is fun, wouldn’t you agree? You see, I’ve been exerting my power over time for awhile now, casually peering into the future to see what is waiting for me. Among the millions of dollars I will one day possess, one thing caught my eye in particular. It was this preview article. You will be reading this article on November 7th, but by that point I will already have seen it on front page of Vssystem.org and all the comments. I would tell you the number of comments, but that may change the future just a little bit, so I withhold that information for now.

Just like all things, time travel has a flaw. It has one thing that takes an already otherwise perfect object or event just a little worse. For time travel, it is the ability to change the future. For the card I am about to show you, it will be something else entirely.

RAWR is what I say to you, reader. I can already see you scratching your heads. You see, the Future Foes have seen the future of every game they play in, and know exactly what to do. In DLS, the Foes were what Ben Seck described as a “grief team.” They had effects that were moderately powerful, and then got drastically better unless an opponent discarded a card. While a great concept and a lot of fun, the team really never took off. This is was always because players could figure out what to discard to, and what not to discard to, and the Foes lost their edge. But no more.

The Future Foes still love to make you discard. In fact, they strive for nothing else, because a player with no hand has no options, and no ways to stop them. However, as perfect a plan it is, it still has a flaw. That flaw is requiring the opponent to actually pitch the cards. Like all good plans, the Foes have a way to do that.

Each Future Foes character with a Flaw power has an absurdly good effect and, in rare cases, large stats. This allows them to easily overpower any opposing character, which is fitting of their statures as Future war criminals. The opposing player can use the flaw power to “turn off” that character in one way or another for the turn. These flaw powers all have the cost of discarding a card. At any given moment, you could be facing down two or three characters, each with a good ability and a flaw power. This is where the true problems arise.

You have the option of discarding to all of them, making your opponent’s characters just regular guys, but that puts a serious drain on your hand. You could discard to none of them, and then get your face smashed in. You could only discard to the strongest guy, keep your hand manageable and at least shave off one threat.  The choice is yours, but be careful in choosing the discard.

There is one temporal anomaly left, though. When Superman-Prime busted the Legion of Super-Villains out of the prison planet of Takron-Galtos, he brought along some other friends who have their own time powers going on. They were called the Fatal Five. One of my stipulations for work on the DFC set was that my favourite Legion villain, Mano, had to be purely awesome. I think we achieved this.

Much like their DLS incarnations, each member of the Fatal Five (plus the Emerald Eye) have the exact same text template. They are all characters with stats that jump the curve, they all effects that remove them from the game for a turn and they all have effects that fire once they’ve been removed. For Mano, the sting caused by a punch from his Anti-Matter hand leaves a lasting impression during the recovery phase, when the character he hit takes more endurance loss. Then, when combat rolls around again, he flies back in.

Thus brings in two interesting points. First, this allows the Fatal Five to be non-unique in a sense. Because they will be removed from the game and returning during the recovery phase, you can recruit a new Mano next turn, and the original would come back. This is not unlike the time The Persuader used his Atomic Axe to cut dimensions and recruited the Fatal Five Hundred. Second, the balancing factor of the Fatal Five allows an opponent to send a low drop into them and have them fly away. Send your 2 drop into Mano and the 2 drop will stun, sending Mano into the removed from game zone for the turn.

Regardless of what way you play them, the Future Foes have seen the future. And I can tell you that this future includes many people enjoying the DFC set on Magic Workstation or in real life. Other things of course happen, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise . If you have any questions, call the Time Trapper, and he will get back to you (note: Guglio is NOT the current Time Trapper).

Travelling to your nearest future,
Guglio