Developer Update
Back to the lab! This season is all about the most fantastic family ever. Old characters but fresh new looks and designs. All inspired by Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Could the movie be as good as these cards?
Season Pass Variants
Oh two different art styles in the season pass. It’s been a while since that happened. We have the classic Invisible Woman and Human torch brought to life by the amazing talent of the Hildebrandt brothers. While Mr. Fantastic First Steps and his Pedro Pascal likeness is brought to us by Adi Granov who continues to give us amazing pieces.
Season Cards
Spoiler warning: These are all fantastic cards! End of Turn effects are the heart of this season and we’ll see how powerful they can get.
Series 5 - Season Pass
Starting this season is the Super Scientist Reed Richard, also known as Mister Fantastic. He is a 2-Cost 2-Power card with the End of Turn effect of either giving +2 Power or -1 Cost to a random card in your hand. That's fantastic! He is like a cheaper Phastos that targets cards in your hand. As we have seen with Surge, 2-Cost is the sweet spot for cards like this and I believe he’ll be a great card!
Series 5 - Seasonal Snap Pack
Say hello to Highly Engineered Robot Built for Interdimensional Exploration or H.E.R.B.I.E. for short. H.E.R.B.I.E. is a 2-Cost 3-Power Activate card with a nice twist. His Activate effect changes every turn, making it quite versatile but quite unreliable to get the effect that you want at the right turn.
Let’s see his potential effects:
From extra Energy to different flavors of extra power on the field. Cool Robot huh? I must confess that I’ll try to get extra Energy every game.
Ladies and Gentleman, Jonathan Storm! We all know the Human Torch by now but this is from the MCU timeline. He’s blazing through as a 3-Cost 2-Power card with the End of the Turn effect of gaining +1 Power. However, if his location is full at the end of any turn, instead he’ll double his total power. That includes his buffs from any source. Could he be another powerful inclusion for Surfer?
Benjamin Grimm is made of rocks but has a heart of gold! The Thing First Steps is Clobberin’ in as a 5-Cost 6-Power card with the End of the Turn effect of gaining +2 Power. Also, once per game if his side of the location is full, he’ll destroy an opponent’s card with less power than him. Spider-Man 2099 is crying in a corner somewhere. What decks could benefit the most from having this big guy on their team? Dunno but I suspect he’ll bring Human Torch with him.
Invisible Woman has many more powers than just being invisible but Light Manipulator Force Field Generator Woman doesn’t work quite as well as a name. Invisible Woman First Steps is sneaking in as a 3-Cost 5-Power card with the Activate effect of triggering every single one of your End of Turn effects a second a time on that turn. She’ll work greatly with her family and perhaps she can bring back High Evolutionary back into the fold?
Series 4
Something weird is going on, these Series 4 cards are arriving during the Fantastic Four Season but we don’t necessarily know how they’ll arrive. It might be safe to assume that they’ll be part of Series 4 packs but it wasn’t confirmed on the Dev Update video. No matter, let’s take a look at the cards:
That’s so silly,it isn't even a car! Fantasticar is rocket powered as a 4-Cost 7-Powered card with the Activate effect of giving every one of your End of Turn cards +2 power. That could be quite a lot of power with the entire “First Steps” family. Is there anywhere else we could feature this card?
Is this the villain of the week? Mole Man is digging himself a spot as a 3-Cost 3-Power card with the On-Reveal of banishing the card at the top of your deck. Then, he’ll place two rocks into your hand with their power set as the cost of the card that was banished. What a weird and interesting card. If you manage to banish Death, you’ll get two 8-Powered rocks. For sure the Mole Man will be a good card, right?
Okay seriously, where are these guys coming from? The Mad Thinker is pondering really hard as a 1-Cost 1-Power card with the effect of gaining +2 Power at the start of every turn if your hand is full after drawing. If you somehow play him on turn 1 and manage to fill your hand every turn after that. He’ll become an 11-Powered card! How realistic is that though? I can’t see many decks that would love this card. Can you?
Grand Arena
New Game mode alert! This time around will be choosing between different champions and their powerful skills and building a deck around it. However, if you’re lacking cards to make a powerful deck on your own, you’ll have the option of playing with pre-built decks even if you’re missing the cards. How neat is that? Some would dare say it’s fantastic.
We don’t know any of the rewards but we can observe that this event will feature a Shop not unlike Grand Sanctum. So expect at least a few goodies. When we get more info on it we are sure to share it with you.
New Locations
Four is the magic number during this season.
I can already tell that Reeds Lab will be one of my favorites but Rocket Pad is no pushover either.
Stay tuned for my Location Lowdown series where I tell you all about these new locations and the best ways to maneuver around all the treacherous stuff.
New Albums
We have a couple of Albums scheduled for this season but there was no confirmation on the Dev Update so take it with a fairly large grain of salt.
Conclusion
Fantastic cards for a fantastical season. My feelings for this season will entirely depend on Grand Arena, if they try to pull another Kid Omega-like stunt in its store. It will sour the entire season for me. But let me be optimistic and consider that they are trying to make the player base happy, right? What about you, dear reader, are you excited for this season? Any cards that you can’t wait to get your hands on? Let me know in the comments!