MUN Preview: Clandestine Operations

I’d like to start this preview article by saying what an honor it is to have been selected to preview an MVU card. Thanks to whoever it was that put this awesome piece of cardboard on my plate!

My preview is, of course, an Illuminati card. A plot twist, to be precise. I find it amusing that I got an Illuminati card to talk about, seeing as how what I feel was my first “big” article was based around an Illuminati version deck. Coincidence or a purposeful move by the Upper Deck folk? I’ll never know. But enough babbling on uselessly. To the card!

Wait, how about just another second of useless babbling to hype the card? You know how the Illuminati have a control theme? And an exhaustion theme? Meet Mr. Controlly Exhaustion.

Clandestine Operations
Ongoing Plot Twist
Threshold: 3

Play only during the recovery phase.

To play, exhaust two different members of the Illuminati you control. (The members of the Illuminati are Black Bolt, Dr. Strange, Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Professor X, and Sub-Mariner.)

Ongoing: Whenever a character enters play, exhaust it

MUN-239

Rare

If you’re confused about the name like I was at first, it means something along the lines of “secret government/military action”. Makes perfect sense for the Illuminati, don’t you think?

First thing you’ll notice is it fits with a lot of the Illuminati effects that have been previewed thus far. It’s rare, likely because it’d be difficult to get the required Illuminati members in Limited. It involves exhausting some of your dudes in order to get an ongoing effect and, in this case, the effect is quite the doozy.

This card screams control. Neither side gets to attack with the guy when they come into play and instead they’re forced to sit on their hands and wait to use whoever they just recruited. This is especially nasty against swarm decks since not only are those characters going to be exhausted so they can’t attack but they also can’t reinforce. It also hits curve decks pretty hard for the obvious reason of losing your big gun each turn.

Another fun thing is that this card triggers when the character comes into play meaning there are quite a few tricks you can pull in order to completely ruin an opponent’s plan.

Imagine an opponent having a deck based around Bodyslide only to have this flipped causing the removed characters to come back exhausted.

Imagine an opponent attacking your Superman, Last Son of Krypton only to be hit by Flying High followed by the character coming back exhausted. Clandestine Operations effectively turns Flying High into a Mystic Paralysis with no cost outside the original two exhausts.

Imagine playing against a deck based around Substitute, such as Birds of Prey, Darkseid, or the Marvel Defenders. No longer can your opponent recruit Barbara Gordon and then substitute her out three times to gain more card draws while keeping her ready for use with Bat Got Your Tongue?. Samantha Parrington is unable to pop in on your kill turn and grant a free attack. The Spectacular Spider-Man can’t pay 7 attack and then run away or use Gift Wrapped. Clandestine is a Substitute character’s worst nightmare.

Imagine an opponent recruiting their character for this turn and having it enter play exhausted followed by their drop from last turn being targeted by Frog of Thunder causing the new character to become exhausted as well, practically killing an opponent’s initiative completely.

To actually try and stay “on team” (although the Illuminati don’t technically have a team…), imagine flipping this before turn 5 while your opponent has odd initiatives. Their 5-drop enters play exhausted. You recruit Iron Man, Protector of the Reality Gem, who also comes in exhausted. You then exhaust your 2-drop and 3-drop to Iron Man’s effect and exhaust their 4-drop and leave the opponent only with a 3-drop to attack with. This can continue every turn for the rest of the game.

Clandestine Operations can also do a fair amount of damage to cards that rely on powerful effects that require a character to activate to deal their damage (see: Circe, Human Torch, Ahmed if an underdrop is somehow forced perhaps via Frog of Thunder while they have Threat Neutralized inplay, etc.).

One thing I find very, very interesting about this card is the fact that, at a glance, it appears to conflict with all the other Illuminati plot twists. It’s not easy to exhaust your guys to effects if they’re entering play exhausted. This leads me to wonder if the Illuminati aren’t going to have some sort of readying effect. Maybe one along the lines of Deadly Conspiracy that won’t let the character attack or use payment effects but would allow them access to their ongoing plot twist fun?

I dunno. I can’t say with any certainty that such a card exists. Instead, some other cards that will allow you to dodge your own bullet.

EDIT: As has been pointed out, you technically don’t even need a readying effect because you can just exhaust the incoming Illuminati character to one of the group’s power costs. That makes most of the below readying ideas unneeded. They’re still decent in a non-”mono” Illuminati deck and the “stay down” effects still work but a “mono” Illuminati deck really doesn’t need the workaround trickery. Thanks guys![/EDIT]