The following two cards have been spoiled from the upcoming Captain America and Ms. Marvel expansions:

Enhanced Awareness

2 cost Upgrade

Condition

Uses (3 mental counters)

Hero Resource: Exhaust Enhanced Awareness and remove 1 mental counter from it --> generate a [mental] resource.

[mental]

Enhanced Reflexes

2 cost Upgrade

Condition

Uses (3 energy counters)

Hero Resource: Exhaust Enhanced Reflexes and remove 1 energy counter from it --> generate a [energy] resource.

[energy]

We can only assume that a third card in the set will come out in the Thor expansion, dealing with physical resources (Enhanced Strength?).

So what is the point of these cards? You are using three resources (2 to play plus one on the card itself) to receive three resources, making it resource-neutral. On top of that, you are paying now for something later without receiving any interest, which is usually a bad investment. I have wracked my brain, and here are some reasons to play these cards:

· Resource smoothing: After planning out your turn, sometimes you are one resource short of what you really want to do. At other times, you have one extra card that is of no use to you, and you discard it. These "Enhanced X" cards help to smooth out your turns, so that these little inefficiencies happen less often.

· Mega-turn: Sometimes it is more valuable to save up for one big mega-turn. This can come with expensive cards (such as Gamma Slam, Nick Fury, Webbed Up) or synergy between multiple cards (such as wanting to use Lead from the Front, Avengers Assemble, Get Ready, etc. all in a single turn). It may be worth punting on a couple of earlier turns in order to set up a perfect mega-turn.

· All-in on one resource type: Some heroes benefit from committing to a single resource type. In the short term, Iron Man and Captain Marvel may benefit from replacing Tenacity and/or Emergency with Enhanced Reflexes. Eventually, however, there will be more options for energy resources, and that will make Enhanced Reflexes less and less appealing.

· All-in on one printed resource type, but may need a little of another: This is a very specific case, and it still might not be worth it. Imagine that you are trying to build an Iron Man deck with nothing but energy resources, in order to maximize Repulsor Blast. The problem is that Iron Man needs mental resources to power his Rocket Boots. Yes, you can do the trick where you spend your second Rocket Boots as a mental resource and then recover it with Stark Tower, but that has the weakness that you have to go to Alter Ego mode to do it. Here's another solution: all non-signature cards in your deck have printed energy icons, except for 1 or 2 Enhanced Awareness. On the one hand, you will not dilute your deck with mental resources too much. On the other hand, you can play one of these Enhanced Awareness cards to fuel your Rocket Boots for three turns (while removing a non-energy resource from your deck).

· Buffer against upgrade hate: If you are facing a Villain with lots of upgrade hate, you can use these cards to protect your more valuable upgrades. Install "Enhanced X," and use it twice. Then leave it out with one token, so that you can discard it the next time you hit a nasty card that discards an upgrade.

· Deck -thinning: Install one or more of these "Enhanced X" cards, use each one twice, and leave them on the table indefinitely. This will give you a thinner deck, in case that might be important to you.

That is all that I could come up with. So, the question remains: are these benefits worth the opportunity cost? After all, deck slots can get tight, and there are other cards that could be more valuable. In particular, this card does not compete very well with many of the available economy options. I would be hard-pressed to replace Avengers Mansion, Helicarrier, or the double resource cards with "Enhanced X" in most decks. And at some point, you can have too many economy cards and not enough cards that actually do stuff. I remain skeptical. Maybe it will enable some interesting jank...

So, what do you think?

She-Hulk and Thor will love cards like this to help offset their low hero hand size

You want to go aerial with Iron Man? Make sure you pack these in your deck to ensure it happens.

The ability to pay for something in a round you don’t have it yet (Ie. High cost allies, superpowers) is extremely valuable. That these provide minimal return in the worst case scenario isn’t a problem, the benefit is that you get to stack resources into future rounds.

I may have undervalued this card’s usefulness to She-Hulk. One extra resource on a Hero form turn is pretty huge for her. I can envision a She-Hulk Aggression deck with the Hulk that could use Enhanced Awareness. You would try to include mostly physical resources in the deck, in order to maximize the Hulk. However, you want some mental resources for Superhuman Law Division, but not so many that you undermine the Hulk. A couple of Enhanced Awareness could provide a steady stream of mental resources while also improving your 4 card turns. It could be a thing.

Edit: Nevermind, it does not work. See below.

10 hours ago, chemnitz said:

We can only assume that a third card in the set will come out in the Thor expansion, dealing with physical resources (Enhanced Strength?).

There was a basic card that was only discarded but never played on the livestream that had a Physical resource, 2 cost, a two word title and a 'strengthy' illustration. That could very well be the card we're looking for.

11 hours ago, chemnitz said:

However, you want some mental resources for Superhuman Law Division

Which Enhanced Awareness cannot provide, because it's a Hero Resource and Superhuman Law Division is an Alter-Ego Action. That's an additional downside of these cards.

They’re really useful for enabling those cards that ask for a resource to activate them. Like Rocket Boots, Energy Channel etc.

Those kinds of effects never feel worth a card to me, and now I don’t have to pay with a card.

Also I don’t think the sentiment of this costs 3 cards, so it’s resource neutral is the way to go. With the same logic Avenger’s Mansion costs you 5 cards and 5 more rounds just to get back to “zero”.

But I’m sure we can all agree that it’s more impactful than that.

Yeah because resources = cards in hand alot of logic that pertains to other games doesnt 100% work on champions. If this was say LOTR I would totally agree

3 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

Which Enhanced Awareness cannot provide, because it's a Hero Resource and Superhuman Law Division is an Alter-Ego Action. That's an additional downside of these cards.

Wow, that sure makes this card less useful! I don’t know why the designers thought that it would have to be a Hero resource—mechanically or thematically.

1 hour ago, chemnitz said:

Wow, that sure makes this card less useful! I don’t know why the designers thought that it would have to be a Hero resource—mechanically or thematically.

Could you generate the resource in hero form, flip, then use it for SHLD?

1 hour ago, chemnitz said:

Wow, that sure makes this card less useful! I don’t know why the designers thought that it would have to be a Hero resource—mechanically or thematically.

I mean it follows the Web-Shooter pattern. Mechanically, I think it’s just wise to include more of these slight limitations, as they force interesting decisions and make it harder to accidentally drop an OP card without realizing it (especially so early in this game’s life.)

9 minutes ago, Tarliyn said:

Could you generate the resource in hero form, flip, then use it for SHLD?

Nope, there’s no floating resources.

Just now, SpiderMana said:

I mean it follows the Web-Shooter pattern. Mechanically, I think it’s just wise to include more of these slight limitations, as they force interesting decisions and make it harder to accidentally drop an OP card without realizing it (especially so early in this game’s life.)

Nope, there’s no floating resources.

I knew you couldnt float card discards as resource, I wasnt sure how generated resources like that worked? Is there a ruling anywhere that talks about this?

We might see future cards that synergize with the Enhanced X cards. For example, here’s an idea for Dr. Strange. What if his magic were represented by spell upgrade cards with Uses X. Then his Hero card power could be “Sorcerer Supreme - Action: Add a counter to an upgrade card. (Limit once per turn)”. That way, he can recharge either a spell or an Enhanced X card. I phrased it as upgrade, so that it can’t charge Med/Tac/Surveillance Teams. That is just one example of how future designs could interact with tokens, making the Enhanced X cards more useful.

2 hours ago, Tarliyn said:

I knew you couldnt float card discards as resource, I wasnt sure how generated resources like that worked? Is there a ruling anywhere that talks about this?

I’d guess someone else will get around to looking it up before I can in a couple hours, but I’m fairly certain it was a blanket rule for all resources.

2 hours ago, Tarliyn said:

I knew you couldnt float card discards as resource, I wasnt sure how generated resources like that worked? Is there a ruling anywhere that talks about this?

Yes, RRG pg 14

RESOURCE ABILITY
A resource ability is a type of triggered ability, indicated by the bold “Resource” timing trigger.
• A resource ability can be triggered anytime the player who controls the ability is generating resources to pay a cost.

Resources don’t actually get generated outside of paying for a cost.

See: Play, Put into Play

I don’t think it’s ‘right’ to think of these cards as resource cards.

They’re enablers for things that either require a specific resource for a bonus effect, or (their main function) to provide the right resource for upgrades/supports, but without having to spend a card.

28 minutes ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

I don’t think it’s ‘right’ to think of these cards as resource cards.

They’re enablers for things that either require a specific resource for a bonus effect, or (their main function) to provide the right resource for upgrades/supports, but without having to spend a card.

Or enablers for big fat turns, lol

2 hours ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

I don’t think it’s ‘right’ to think of these cards as resource cards.

They’re enablers for things that either require a specific resource for a bonus effect, or (their main function) to provide the right resource for upgrades/supports, but without having to spend a card.

Actually, I think their primary purpose is to balance resources from alter ego to hero. I don’t know why that wasn’t my first thought in regards to why they’re hero-only resources.

Good for powering up Vision.

19 hours ago, SpiderMana said:

I mean it follows the Web-Shooter pattern. Mechanically, I think it’s just wise to include more of these slight limitations, as they force interesting decisions and make it harder to accidentally drop an OP card without realizing it (especially so early in this game’s life.)

Those are much weaker than Web-Shooter, because Web-Shooter costs only 1 (and so gives you a profit no matter how you look at it) and generates wild resources (which means it's much more flexible). While I'd guess that signature cards should be more powerful than aspect cards, which in turn should be more powerful than basic cards, that's a huge difference.

3 hours ago, Khudzlin said:

Those are much weaker than Web-Shooter, because Web-Shooter costs only 1 (and so gives you a profit no matter how you look at it) and generates wild resources (which means it's much more flexible). While I'd guess that signature cards should be more powerful than aspect cards, which in turn should be more powerful than basic cards, that's a huge difference.

Yes, Web Shooters should be stronger than these. I don’t think these will be auto included in all decks, but I can already think of several instances where these would be great:

- Iron Man’s Rocket boots - you want a Mental Resource on demand.

- Thor wants Energy Resources for his Lightning Strike.

- a bunch of Aggression cards want you to spend a Physical resource.

I think you’ll want a plan for the resource type you want to use, but these will be useful for planning some heroe’s bigger turns.

We will also get more resource sinks. We already have Nova, and he is great with Enhanced Reflexes.

Anything that controls the resource type leads to a more consistent deck. Knowing you have a mental resource stored away to go into aerial mode for iron man lets you concentrate on getting those cards you need to deal damage.

Or playing a card that gives a benefit if you paid using an energy resource, etc.

You are not at the mercy of the draw with these cards. If you have them in play, you have the resource.

I think these cards will be great, but as basic cards they are (and should be) under the curve. They won't be right for every build, hero or situation, but they really do help to enable new types of decks and playstyles. There's ton's of these kind of effects in the card, that I often find myself thinking aren't worth a card. They're not worth a card, and paying for the ability also reduces your ability to play other stuff that turn. All of the following get better with the 'Enhanced' cards in the card pool:

• Black Widow
• Captain Marvel
• Energy Channel
• For Justice
• Relentless Assault
• Rocket Boots
• Superhuman Law Division [edit: not this - it’s alter ego]
• Tenacity
• Vision

They're also great for getting rid of Villain attachments!