The Immortal Iron Fist!

[teesaw]

@OP3 - thanks for the awesome feedback!

• Fiery Punches - I like the ID and I don't think enough characters got one.  That being said, they should pretty much always be off-color, as a 1F attack in a Fighting deck isn't very practical.

I went back and looked at what was released - I think the split was about 50/50 (I've included DG in my analysis, since there are only 2 ID in the original sets).  With that in mind, however, I think this card and the JW might be better off as Energy cards. 

• The Living Weapon - Not bad.  Very fitting.  Although again, I would make it off-color.

As noted above, maybe these both change to Energy cards - I'm not sure how I feel about 4 off-color specials, but definitely a good point worth considering.

• The Mark of Shou-Lao - Great name for a card, but I'm really not fond of the AE Specials as-written.

I personally like an AE - especially one you can pump to 11 with max contribution...it accomplishes what I think Doubleshots were intended to do, but has more flexibility.  Not to mention, from a 'comics realism' standpoint it's a punch (F) with magical fire (E) attached ontop of it, which is (in my opinion) the essence of iron fist.

• Hero for Hire - That is a fantastic idea.  I may just have to appropriate it for OP3.  One critique though: I would either make it OPD, or restrict it to just Iron Fist himself.

This was something I went back and forth on.  I compared this to a bunch of other cards with 6-attacks that aren't OPD, most notably the NT (If successful, Opponent must discard from Hand until both players have an equal number of cards in Hand. Opponent's choice.) - I also tried this as an OPD with a different card in place of the HR and I struggled to make it "feel" right. 

I also ran the scenario in my head of what this card looks like being abused (on a team with Nightcrawler, of course)...I think it's tough to land this card early in a battle, which is what you'd need to do to really abuse it.  If we made it OPD, I think the effect would need to be FROG, which would be too difficult to deal with, in my opinion.

Very powerful offensively speaking, but it seems weird to me he's so lacking in defense.  A martial artist as powerful and skilled as Rand should be dodging things left and right.

I don't disagree.  When I built this card, I wanted to build something that was very high offense - most of the cards in the set have an avoid, a negate, or both, so I've tried to keep those out.  If I had to give IF a 7th card (or re-arrange the cards he has) I did come up with a mechanic that was basically an amped up CC - acts as a X power card, may be used to attack or defend Iron Fist or Teammate.  The twist is that it's "+X when used for defense"..so it's also an MH, a numerical block of 9 or less.  The words were clunky when I tried to write it up.  I thought about maybe putting it is IF's IA (I did something similar with the hood, where I wanted him to be able to use the mechanic, but I didn't want it showing up in a battlesite deck), but it didn't feel right.  I don't disagree that IF is defenseless, but I'm not sure if maybe that's not his weakness?  Maybe one of his other specials needs to hit the floor - I'm not sure. 

Definitely worth considering...