OK, first up, why musings of a scrub?

I'm not a noob to the game of versus, however I've never made an impression in any major tournament played. This, by all accounts, qualifies me for the label of a scrub. This could be attributed to a number of factors, the main reason probably being that I never playtest. I'd like to, but the commitments of family and work always prevent anything more than goldfishing a few hands.

I would like to point out though that I don't mind being a scrub. I love playing versus and that has always been enough for me. As a comic shop owner I always wanted to play a ccg based around superheroes and Marvel Overpower never really cut the mustard.

Current Objectives
In the shop we have had a healthy Yugioh scene going on for nigh on 18 months. We average 25-30 players per tournament with a real mix of ages. However Vs has been dead in the town for about 2 years. Over the last few months I've been giving away free starters in an attempt to drum up support for the game I love so much. To be honest, initial response was poor, but in the last couple of weeks we've seen a number of players getting interested and our inaugural tourney brought in 10 players.

Inaugural Tourney - Maidstone - UK
My wife organised a tournament in Maidstone for Monday 20th August.
OK, so we've had our first tournament, with a positive turnout, 10 people, NOT BAD AT ALL

Numerous play mistakes we're made, decks we're janky and makeshift, but hopefully everyone had fun throughout.

No-one walked away empty handed as prizes we're given from 1st to last place, with last place getting some added extras

I apologise for winning the event as I was only going to compete if we had an odd number of people, but as I didn't figure in the prize reckoning I hope everyone didn't mind.

1st = Graham Beadle (Good Guys - JLI/JLA) 3 Wins

2nd = Rob Mills (Spiderfriends Evasion) 2 Wins
Rob won a Batman T-Shirt, 8EA cards and 5 boosters

3rd = Ben Waghorn (Curve Sentinels) 2 Wins
Ben won a Ghost Rider T-Shirt. 6 EA Cards and 4 boosters

4th = David Moakes (Hellfire Club) 2 Wins
David won 5EA Cards and 3 boosters

5th = Vince Newman (X-Men/LofA) 2 Wins
Vince won 5EA cards and 3 boosters

6th = Jack Rutter (Morlocks Physical) 1 Win
Jack won 3EA cards and 2 boosters

7th = Brendan Whiting (Doom Control) 1 Win
Brendan won 3EA cards and 2 boosters

8th = Holly Humphrey (Chicken Supreme) 1 Win
Holly won 3 EA cards and 2 boosters

9th = Harry Streeter (?) 1 Win
Harry won 3EA cards and 1 booster

10th = Jordan Newman (FF) 0 Wins
Jordan received 3EA cards, 1 booster and a bundle of 15 rares from the DOR set

Hopefully we can expand on our initial success with this tournament and create a thriving VS community in the Maidstone area

Film Mention - The Bow
South Korean film running at a fraction under an hour and a half. Made for compelling viewing throughout with me left at the end nt knowing what opinion to take regards the events of the story. Set entirely on a small fishing boat the story revolves around an old man who has found and raised a six year old girl with the intention of marrying her upon her seventeenth birthday. Over the course of the film, we see his demeanour change from protective to out and out jealous and irrational. I won't give any more away, I'll just say watch this if you get the opportunity. 

Embarrassment
Bit embarrassed that my series of blogs on the original AI characters made the featured Vs Blogs for a week. When you consider the calibre of the other blogs out their....Guglio, T-Man etc. Oh well the $25 will come in handy.

Baseball
Great to see my team, The A's, finally putting it together. The injuries this season have been crippling, shame its all coming together too late for us to catch the Angels or secure a wild card berth

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During the week I was filling in my Diamond Comics order form which contained a lot of items due to ship around Halloween time. You know the stuff, lots of pumpkins, NBX stuff, Bats and Spiders.

It got me thinking of an article I wrote a couple of years ago, in which I asked a question, who are the most iconic characters within the two main comic universes, DC and Marvel?

Pop this question to numerous people and the large majority would probably say Batman for DC and Spiderman for Marvel.

In the aforementioned article I discussed my version of a deck originally run by Jason Scudder as a successful blip in a sea of Purple Toasters. With my return to the game after a long absence I took it upon myself to dig the deck out of mothballs and play around with it a bit with the new additions from DWF and MTU. And boy are them some good additions. The no-brainer that'll make the deck work better than before is the new three drop Babs.

This is what I've come up with.

4 Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend
2 Spoiler*Robin, The Girl Wonder
3 Tim Drake*Robin, The Boy Wonder
4 Barbara Gordon*Oracle, Hacker Elite
1 Batman, Problem Solver
2 Cassandra Kain*Batgirl, Martial Artist
1 Will O' the Wisp, Jackson Arvad
1 Dick Grayson*Nightwing, High Flying Acrobat
1 Spiderman, Peter Parker
1 Daredevil, Man without Fear
1 Lady Shiva, Sandra Woosan
1 Kate Kane*Batwoman, Katherine the Younger
2 Venom, Lethal Protector
1 Batman, Cape and Cowl
1 Daredevil, New Kingpin
1 Dick Grayson*Nightwing, Defender of Bludhaven
1 Azrael*Batman, Knightfall
4 Spiderman-The Amazing Spiderman
1 Spiderman, Cosmic Spiderman
1 Apocalypse, En Sabah Nur

4 Bat-Signal
1 Have a Blast
2 Nasty Surprise
1 Detective Work
3 Fizzle
1 Unmasked
1 Flame Trap
1 Acrobatic Dodge
4 Millenium
1 Enemy of my Enemy
1 Finishing Move
2 No Man escapes the Manhunters
2 Bat got your tongue
1 Blood in the dark
2 Flying Kick

This is very much a toolbox deck, as is often the case with decks running Alfred. As a rule I don't like running lots of 1 ofs in a deck list, but this particular deck always seemed to get away with it.

The deck relies on stalling the game out to turn seven and eight, then with the multiple card drawing elements chucking loads away to the 7-drop Spidey to shut the opponent down. Run the deck preferably taking even initiative. It is surprising how durable it is considering it has no out and out stall elements, but cards with evasion, plot twist negation in the form of Fizzle and Bat got your tongue tends to mean that your opponent can't finish you off by turn 7, whereupon the Spiderman is a game winner.

New additions to the deck include Blood in the dark and No Mans, where I used to run Savage Beatdowns. The main reason for their addition is to find a way to deal with decks running Ahmed Samsarra. Also new are a couple of DWF Batmans, hopefully providing more disruption of an opponents plans. Venom replaces White Tiger and the 6-drop Daredevil replaces Iceman, who I never liked in the build anyway. 

Unfortunately with me not having played for a couple of years I am unable to ascertain as to how this would perform in the current meta. The deck was always pretty consistent before and with Babs providing free card draw, substitution for multiple uses of that draw and being hidden so as to be more useful with regards exhaustion for the payment part of cards such as Millenium, Bat-Signal and Bat got your tongue I can only see this being better than ever.

I'm playing in my first tournament for a while on Monday night so will post on how the deck performs after the event. Originally I had planned to run a new revamp of Migga City but decided to run something a little more iconic for my return.

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Bipolar disorder is a psychiatric condition defined as recurrent episodes of significant disturbance in mood. These disturbances can occur on a spectrum that ranges from debilitating depression to unbridled mania. Individuals suffering from bipolar disorder typically experience fluid states of mania, hypomania or what is referred to as a mixed state in conjunction with depressive episodes. These clinical states typically alternate with a normal range of mood.

I'd like to point out that I don't suffer from the above condition, although playing with the inmates has brought about a state at time similar to the above effects.
Victories have been few and far between but each has brought about a euphoric feeling that could be described as unbridled mania. Defeats snatched from the jaws of victory have also brought about depressive episodes, so maybe Vs with the inmates is my own personal, localised, Bipolar disorder.

Loking through the numerous decklists on the web, few AI builds have met with any success, in fact only a handful of cards (Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose: Two-Face, Split Personality)have made an appearance in any major event top 8's.

The most famous tournament Arkham decks would have to be Alex Antonios' 10K Winning 'Migga City' (with kudos to deck designer Antony Macali) and Rigged Elections, piloted to 2nd place at PC Indy by Craig Edwards.
The rigged elections deck has also managed three 10K top 8 finishes.

Migga City - Alex Antonios - 1st Place, 10k Brisbane
1 Adam Strange, Champion of Rann
4 Anne-Marie Cortez, Acolyte
3 Blob, Fred Dukes
1 Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon
4 Harley Quinn, Dr. Harleen Quinzel
4 Mad Hatter, Jervis Tetch
1 Magneto, Eric Lehnsherr
4 Mammomax, Elephant Boy
4 Mastermind, Jason Wyngarde
1 Mikado and Mosha, Angels of Destruction
1 Mr. Mxyzptlk, Troublesome Trickster
4 Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose
1 Rogue, Anna Raven
1 Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff

4 Enemy of My Enemy
4 Ka-Boom!
4 Straight to the Grave

4 Avalon Space Station
2 Genosha
2 Lost City
3 Metropolis
3 Slaughter Swamp

Right, firstly I'd like to apologise to all the seasoned players once again for the very basic level of info in my Blog entries. In the UK we have struggled to get players interested in Vs and as I have just encouraged 8 new players in the Maidstone area to pay the game, these articles are aimed mainly at them, our first tournament is on Monday.

Anyway, on with discussing this great deck, the inspiration for my AI/Doom build that had such great aspirations.

The deck revolves around getting a set of three locations, Metropolis, Lost City and either Avalon Space Station or Slaughter Swamp (Avalon is preferable) in the resource row. It goes about fetching some of these if required by using Hatter to steal an opponents 2-drop and then KO'ing it with Ivy to search out a missing piece of the puzzle. If these pieces are in place by the recruit stage of turn 4 the deck is cooking. Playing Blob on 4 any attacks made to your side of the board have to come through him when your opponent has the initiative. The fcat that by this stage you can power any of your charcaters up using Harley Quinn, Dr.Harleen Quinzel, getting +3/+3 for the privilege is just brutal. With Kaboom on board to keep the opponents resource count low, you're 4 and 5-drops can cut swathes through the opponents line, stunning more often than not when defending then swinging back to an open board. I will be playing a variation on this deck in our tournament on Monday. Lets hope the end result is the up side of the coin.

For the quick review of Rigged Elections I'm not posting the 2nd place PC deck but I'm posting a deck from the same player that bagged a top 32 finish at PC LA the following year.

Rigged Elections - Craig Edwards - Top 32 PC LA 2005
4 Alfred Pennyworth, Faithful Friend
1 Barbara Gordon Oracle, Information Network
1 Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon
4 Dagger, Child of Light
4 Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl
1 Invisible Woman, Protector
1 Lacuna, Media Darling
4 Micro-Chip, Linus Lieberman
2 Mikado and Mosha, Angels of Destruction
4 Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards
1 Shimmer, Selinda Flinders
1 Spoiler, Stephanie Brown

4 A Child Named Valeria
4 Bat-Signal
4 Cosmic Radiation
3 Fizzle
2 Marvel Team-Up
4 Midnight Sons
1 Null Time Zone
1 Rigged Elections
4 Wild Ride
 
1 Catcher's Mitt
4 Utility Belt

The reason I have selected this version of the deck is because I found it to be more consistent with team-ups being facilitated by the Midnight Sons card, searchable by Dagger if needs be. There are still surprising omissions from the deck, Birthing Chamber and a backup Rigged spring to mind.

Anyway the main premise of the deck is to recruit as many low drop characters as possible whist abusing Alfred to fetch all the required PT's as and when required. A child named Valeria prevents low drops being stunned, Cosmic radiation allows characters to ready, allowing for a second exhaust, thus facilitating the play of additional counters on Rigged Elections. Utility belts add control to the board and Fizzle shuts down potential problems (Flame Trap, Foiled etc). I have to say that I met with little success when playing this deck or variants therof but enjoyed the victories more so than virtually any other deck. Alternate win conditions always appeal to me, I'm a big fan of honour running decks in L5R.

Next 5 Arkham Blogs
1) Two of my builds - here's where I set my self up for ridicule.
2) A look back at the AI team stamped PT's and Locations.
3) 1 to 5 drop charcaters from Worlds Finest.
4) 6+ drop characters, PT's and Locations from Worlds Finest.
5) MY Arkham build for Modern Age play

Graham Beadle
The Grinning Demon
www.grinningdemon.co.uk

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I run a small comic and gaming store in Maidstone, UK and every week we run an event for Yugioh which sees us getting an average of 25-30 people aged between 5 and 41 years of age.

The youngest player is my son, Cameron at 5 years and 6 months. He has been playing the game now for about 5 months and taking part in 10 of the last 12 weeks of tournament play.

Until recently he had only been bagging about 1 win per week, then 2 weeks ago I built him a deck running Normal Monsters. Prior to this he had played with Dark World and E-Heroes (theres a shock, hey!).

Things have changed a bit since then. Two weeks ago he came ninth, posting a 3-2 finish with his only losses coming against the players coming second and third. Then last week he managed to bag a fifth place finish albeit in a smaller field, only 17. Once again his defeats came against the guys coming 1st and 4th. Now this is where I have a confession to make. In the last round of matches I was praying that results didn't fall in his favour allowing for him to sneak into 4th place.

You might wonder as to why I wouldn't want my son to do the best he could, but a 4th place finish would have meant his qualifying for the Summer Cup Finals, a higher standard of tourney that I believe could, by its very competitive nature, put him off tournament play. Don't get me wrong, our tournaments are competitive, we have 4 players inside the top 350 in the UK but at five I think it would be asking a bit much.

The Yugioh tournaments are the highlights of Camerons week and I encourage any fathers/mothers out there to support their kids in their CCG play. I see alot of parents take a very begrudging outlook in the shop towards their childs hobby. I wonder if they'd feel the same if there little darling was interested in soccer, rugby or other less cerebral pursuits.

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In the three previous Blog entries we looked at the AI characters from their original release in DC Origins (DOR). In todays Blog we'll take a look at the cards they've received after this point in later DC expansions.

DC Superman, Man of Steel

Blockbuster, Roland Desmond
A 4/4 3 drop that has some punch when he comes into play due to his cosmic counter making him a 7/4. Once that is gone he's a vanilla 4/4. Not really better than Charaxes although a reasonable backup compared to the other fare at 3.
Straight AI 4/10

Maxie Zeus, God Complex
Underpowered, 6/6, yet has a great Cosmic ability, forcing an opponent to discard when breakthrough is caused. Doesn't work well with the Arkham 3-drop of choice though as he causes no breakthrough.
Straight AI 4/10

Joker, Emperor Joker
The Superman, Emperor Joker story is great, go and read it.
Requires a deck to be built round his ability, but is viable for play if done right. I built a Manhunter/Emperor Joker deck which was good in casual play. In a straight Arkham deck, other than the fact he is an 8 drop he wouldn't be your first choice.
Straight AI 3/10
Purpose built deck 6/10

The best card that Arkham received in DSM was the plot twist, Smiles, Everyone! We'll be covering PT's and Locations in a later Blog.

DC Green Lantern

Finally Arkham get a real stand out card. The only problem is every one else can run him as he is infinitely splashable

Two-Face, Split Personality
Wow!!! A 16/16 7-drop with range and an ability to die for. He allows selective mulliganing (is that a word?). He also has the ability to exhaust either odd or even characters at the start of your attack step, thus playing havoc with opponents formations. The only thing wrong with this card is the lack of loyalty as I hate the fact that loads of other teams just splashed him at 7.
Straight AI 9/10

Hush, Mystery Man
A decent ability, OK stats and concealed. An alternative to Poison Ivy at 4. Nice
Straight AI 5/10

Justice League

Now here is where things get interesting for the Arkham afficianado. A hatfull of decent characters to play around with.

Charaxes, Killer Moth
In the same way that the three drop version was good, so is the six drop. If you've still got combat pumps available and 3 AI cards in the KO pile, then he's your man. DEF is low but who cares if you've got even initiative.
Straight AI 7/10

Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose
Here she is, the girl that changed the face of Arkham decks all round. Above average stats for a two drop, 3/3, but what makes her is her ability. Ko a character you control and ko a resource, grab a location from you deck and replace the ko'd resource with it. Combine that with hatter and his resource point to nick an opponents 2 drop and you're laughing, especially if you can get that 2 drop to take out your opponents 3 drop first. Oh yeah, dual affilaition as well!!
She gets an incredible 9/10

Poison Ivy, Kiss of Death
Average stats for a 4-drop, 7/7, and a decent ability: either recovering and nicking an opponents stunned 2-drop or KOing target stunned character. A walking finishing move. Despite this being a good card she hasn't seen a huge amount of play in my builds, more often than not just a 1 of.
Straight AI 6/10

Scarecrow, Fearmonger
Dual Affiliation, Above average stats (10/9) plus two cool abilities. When Scarecrow stuns a character put a +1/+1 counter on him, plus he nicks counters and turns them into +1/+1 counters at the beginning of the combat phase. Nimrod, Cosmic counters, he doesn't care. I love this dude.
Straight AI 9/10

The Joker, Headline Stealer
Again, strangely for this affiliation, we get above average stats 8/7. And a decent ability to go with it, which is why the new 4-drop Ivy sees little time. Jokers ability prevents an opponent from playing Plot Twists from hand with a cost less than the number of cards in his hand
Straight AI 6/10
Injustice Gang 8/10

DC Infinite Crisis

Three new inmates in this expansion, none of which were bad, none of which were great.

Amadeus Arkham, Architect of Insanity
The man that started it all. As a 1 drop he's ok at 2/1 but with no in play effect will never make an impact. His in hand ability of swapping himself effectively for a location when a character you control stuns an exhausted character does fit in nicely with the affiliations theme.
Straight AI: 5/10

The Penguin, Arms Broker
Fat body, 5/5 for a 3-drop. His ability to cause self and opponent to draw then chuck two unless a location is binned can be quite effective in certain matchups.
Straight AI: 4/10

The Joker, Permanent Vacation
Better stats than the previous 7-drop Joker but his ability has no synergy with this affiliation but does benefit the second half of his dual affiliation. Never going to get the nod over Two-Face
Straight AI 2/10
Injustice Gang 8/10

Legion of Superheroes

Duela DentHarlequin, The Joker's Daughter
2/1 - OK for a 1 drop, Substitute - OK, Cosmic : Attackers you control with cosmic counters get +2 DEF - a bit more synergy with the other part of her dual affiliation
Straight AI 3/10

The Riddler, Brain Teaser
2/3 - OK, With regards his ability the jury is still out. I think it should have been Freereveal a character from hand or resource row to prevent PT's of that cost though.
Straight AI undecided/10

As the next release contained a host of new inmates we'll save that for later. In the next Blog we'll look at successful AI decks, and there aren't many, since the games inception.

Graham Beadle
The Grinning Demon
www.grinningdemon.co.uk
 

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Now we start getting to the dangerous lunatics rather than just the 'quirky' ones

Lets take a look at what DOR had to offer the Inmates at drops 5, 6 and 7

5 Drops

Matt HagenClayface, Man of Clay
Clayface should have got a better card than this, useless when you had initiative as a 5/5 body for a 5 drop is ridiculous even with his effect. When your opponent had initiative he'd swing at Matt first up with his 4 drop in an even match up, making you a 7/7. I'm sure there are ways to make this card work but the raw stats we're just too low
Straight AI 1/10

Killer Croc, Waylon Jones
Brutal on the offensive. 7/10 rather than the average 9/9 of a 5-drop. On the attack he becomes 12/10 vs 5-drops and 13/10 vs 6 drops. Quite potent, but not amazing. He was however the 5 drop of choice for Arkham at the time of the sets release
Straight AI 5/10

Scarecrow, Professor Jonathan Crane
The fact that Scarecrow gets returned to your hand if stunned when attacking made him a pretty useless drop if you had initiative on turn 5. However if you had evens he could be quite effective. Nasty Surprise forcing your opponents 4 or 5 back to hand was always a good play. The back up 5-drop. His boost ability was pretty damn effective against weenie stall or if you survived long enough, off curve decks
Straight AI 4/10
Situational match-ups 7/10

5-drop of choice - Killer Croc

6 Drops

Bane, The Man who broke the Bat
I loved Knightfall pt 1, shame the rest of the story didn't match up. What can we say about Bane. Loyalty, not a prob, Great ability, able to Ko a stunned character when he attacks. His boost made him viable as a slightly underpowered 7-drop. Overall not bad
Straight AI; 6/10
Teamed Up: 5/10 because of the loyalty

Mr.Freeze, Dr Victor Vries
At 11/13 with the ability to prevent characters from readying he was quite effective in some matchups but I always found that Victor failed to live up to his appearances.
Straight AI: 4/10

6-drop of choice = Bane

7 Drop

The Joker, Clown Prince of Crime
Poor Stats, 13/13, with a great ability. The main drawback was that I'd never have the cards to pitch on the turn he came into play. The "your attack step only" bit of his effect hurts also. Maybe if it could be used in the attack step, yours or your opponents it would make him OK.
Straight AI 3/10

So what do have regards the optimum curve when DOR was released?

Harley Quinn
Mr.Zsasz
Charaxes
Poison Ivy
Killer Croc (with initiative), Scarecrow (without initiative)
Bane
Joker

This would hardly scare the life out of an opponent. Compare the 4 and 5 slots to other teams in the set

Gotham Knights: Cassandra Cain, Batman
Teen Titans: Terra or Red Star, Garth
League: Ra's, Bane

Yep at this point the lunatics had been shafted. There abilities were in touch with the flvour of the comic books but they were underpowered on body and abilities compared to the other teams from DOR and definitely MOR.

In the next blog we'll look at the late admissions, the inmates from the next few DC releases. Finally the Inmates get some good middle order drops.

Up Next
Psychiatric Evaluation, Part 4 (Late Admissions)

Graham Beadle
The Grinning Demon
www.grinningdemon.co.uk
 

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Baby I'm ready to go.........

Sorry, singing along with the music whilst typing.

Lets continue our evaluation of those that require buckle up sleeves with a look at the three and four drops

3 Drops

Charaxes, Drury Walker
He was the must recruit character in a curve AI build. Overpowered Atk for a 3 drop of its time, albeit with a lower DEF, his ability to KO instead of stunning an exhausted defender was brutal. Arkham had numerous ways of forcing exhaustion so more often than not he was taking out opponents four drops, as long as I had succeeded in gaining the even Initiative. He was a 4 of in every build until Poison Ivy Deadly Rose's release.
In fact he was so good they re-released him in Worlds finest. Why no new art UDE.....grrrr.
Straight AI 8/10
Nowadays AI 6/10 as pushed aside by Hatter and Ivy

The Joker, Jokers Wild
Underpowered, OK so I can mulligan for 5 cards or recruit for 5 late game and draw 5 cards. Yuk..next
Straight AI 1/10

The Penguin, Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot
You do that to Apollo Creed, they'll put us in jail for murder. Oops sorry. The backup 3 drop in the AI builds. Arkham get a number of decent locations. Oswald here allows us to re-use them. He also allows surplus locations to act as a double power up. However his 3/3 body lets the side down a bit
Straight AI 4/10

The Riddler, Edward Nygma
Here is a character I'd like to see a better version of. With a 2/4 body his ability would have been ok if you could use it in your attack phase but with it being relegated to the recovery phase, more often than not he wasn't around to use it.
Straight AI 2/10

4 Drops

ManBat, Dr. Robert Langstrom
With average ATK and just below average DEF. His ability increasing his ATK was OK. Flight allows for formation breaking so overall he wasn't bad.
Straight AI 4/10

The Joker, Laughing Lunatic
Again with the 7/6. Jokers ability caused burn, if you were lucky which made him less of an attractive proposition than ManBat or Pamela
Straight AI 3/10

Poison Ivy, Pamela Isley
Below Ave ATK, average DEF. Pamela's main asset, other than her ample curves, was her ability to prevent KO or recovery, causing opponents headaches in later turns. However she would see less play now because of conflicting with the 2 drop Ivy that combos with Hatter
Straight AI 5/10

4 drop of choice = Poison Ivy, Pamela Isley

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OK. So in my blog before last I mentioned I'd put up my thoughts on new Arkham deck ideas incorporating cards from the Worlds Finest expansion.

Whilst I'm still collecting my thoughts I decided to do a review of the AI cards from their original release, DC Origins. This is mainly for the benefit of the guys in my shop as all the players there are new to the game from the last 3-4 weeks. We've finally got enough people together to start a tournament scene in Maidstone.

So here it is, a Psychiatric evaluation of the DOR Arkham Inmates:

1 Drops
Harley Quinn, Dr Harleen Quinzel
In a straight AI build Harley makes it in but only because she is better than the other 1 drop options. However when the Inmates are teamed up with other affiliations this is where Harley can really shine. With the Brotherhood or JLA/JLI her discard to power up anyone ability is great. Combine that with Lost City and you're laughing. Her ability to reinforce whilst in play gave her the edge over Query and Echo
Straight AI 4/10, teamed up 7/10

Query and Echo, Double Trouble
The ability to discard to give +2 ATK. Mmm, combined with a 1/1 body and no in play ability. Occasionally got chucked in as a 1 or 2 of in my early builds. Not great though, but early on there we're very few great AI cards.
Straight AI 3/10 

Ratcatcher, Otis Flanagan
Otis didn't really see much play in Arkham builds but again saw more play in team up decks relying on swarm and early game pressure. His 1 point of burn damage whenever a character gets stunned often pushed a deck through for the extra points of damage needed for an early game win.
Straight AI 3/10, Teamed Up 6/10

VentriloquistScarface, Arnold Wesker
A 2/1 in the front row or a 0/1 in the support row with the ability to give all attacking Arkham dudes +1 ATK whilst in the front row. Arnold never saw any play in a build I had created.
Straight AI 2/10

1 Drop of choice = Harley Quinn, Harleen Quinzel

2 Drops

Mad Hatter, Jervis Tetch
Prior to the release of Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose the Hatter didn't really see much play. Despite having a pretty reasonable ability, more often than not you wanted to play Charaxes on turn 3, therefore you never had thae spare resource to kick his ability into gear. His subpar stats, 1/2, meant he rarely saw light of day.
Nowadays however with Ivys ablity to KO a character to search out a location he works really well as part of an early game control plan.
Originally 2/10, Since Deadly Rose 7/10

Firefly, Garfield Lyons
3/1 with flight and range. An ability that was OK if you were playing an off curve deck, which didn't really work for the inmates, especially being as you had to discard a card to use it. I have however toyed with him as a 1 of in my Arkham City build.
Straight AI 3/10, Teamed Up 4/10

Mr Zsasz, Victor Zsasz
One of my favourite Batman foes. In game terms he was probably the best of the Arkham 2 drops. A 2/2 body that gained a counter  when it stunned a foe. Also with boost he could come into play as an underpowered three drop (3/3) whilst stunning a character at the same time. Again this was rarely used as I was nearly always trying to drop Charaxes on turn 3.
Straight AI 4/10

Professor Hugo Strange, Psycho-Analyst
Maybe he should be doin this job instead of me because he certainly never found a job within one of my decks. A feeble 1/3 that prevents an opponent from playing a character with the same name as one already in play. Could be useful against Kang or Supe Blue or Crisis Doom but other than that a no go. His boost ability forcing a discard was no help as it meant paying 3 recruit points for a 1/3 character. Maybe if he also got a +1/+1 counter it would be ok.
Straight AI 1/10, Situational Matchups 5/10

Two Face, Harvey Dent
On a par with Mr Zsasz. An OK ability only ruined by the luck element, but I love that because of it being in keeping with the character. 2/2 body with the chance of being a walking finishing move. 
Straight AI 4/10

2 Drop of Choice (when DOR released) Two Face/Mr.Zsasz
2 Drop of Choice (post Deadly Rose) Mad Hatter 

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Hoping that with the upcoming marriage of Ollie and Dinah within the DC Universe, we'll see a couple of Vs cards to match them up a la Hawk/Dove or Booster/Blue Beetle

See my images for the art I'd like to see on a related PT. Mike Grell draws the best Green Arrow and his stint on the title is still the best ever.

If you haven't read it, check out the Longbow Hunters.

Graham Beadle
The Grinning Demon
www.grinningdemon.co.uk

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