The first Starting Card.

While not relevant yet, it should be noted that you can only have one starting card in your deck. We'll soon get more starting cards in other aspects, which will make this rule relevant to Spider-Woman and Adam Warlock who can naturally use multiple aspects.

Now, this card is an Armored Vest that starts in your hand. If we're comparing this card to anything, it's to that.

Most of the time, if a deck was going to have Armored Vest, you'll want this instead of or in addition to the Vest. But it's also not strictly better.

The added consistency is a curse as much as a blessing. Yes, you get to draw it on the first turn. But then you practically have to play it on the first turn, as it provides no resources to pay for other cards. If this is in your deck, 2-ER from the first turn is probably going to go to playing this. Did you draw other cards you'd rather play instead? Tough.

Okay, that's actually not completely true. If you draw better cards you'd rather play instead on the first draw, you can discard this with your mulligan without losing resources. But that decision has to be made before your mulligan. No resources immediately lost. If you mulligan and THEN draw the cards you'd rather play instead, you're locked into this.

The question with this card ends up being... is it better than any other cards I might draw on turn 1? Is the guaranteed consistency worth the added pressure to play it immediately?

In decks built around having the defense stat high, I would easily say it is. But if the defense stat isn't the biggest priority in the deck, it might be an inferior option to Armored Vest.

Another thing that's less relevant is that you can't equip other heroes in multiplayer with it like you can the Vest, but that's a very niche case.

This comparison is a bit of a moot point though because I think most decks that want Armored Vest will want this too. And probably Defensive Conditioning on top of that. Together, that's +3 DEF, making you practically impervious to damage. If you're using the new allyless archetype with Ronin, it's +4.

And that's actually the real value of this card. Not getting to start with Armored Vest in your hand, but getting a SECOND Armored Vest to attach to yourself in decks that were already using Armored Vest.

Protection just became playable in expert true solo, instead of being mostly random.

Hard to Ignore, Unflappable, Not Today, Desperate Defense, Never Back Down and Riposte will be a lot more effective, especially against a stage 3 villain.

This will not only be a huge boost to heroes with a basic defense of 3 (like Groot) it will also open possibilities with protection for many heroes with a basic defense of 2. Wolverine is an obvious choice, but there are others.

New possibilities for Angel too, who won’t have to rely on his Archangel persona to have a basic 3 defense.

Other multi-form heroes, like Ant-Wan, WASP and Phoenix will benefit from this. Protection is already an attractive option (contrary to most heroes, they don’t have to be in alter-ego to benefit from ‘Perseverance’ as they can always switch in an alternate hero form), but the stronger starting defense will make them a lot more effective in the villain phase.

I think this card was meant to either be unique or have a limit of 1 max per player.

If we're able to start the game with +3 def it would be broken.

Did FFG forgot to put either the unicity or the limit ?

I guess we just found the automatic include for any Protection deck.

Seriously though? A 2ER bump of +1 to DEF that you can guarantee is in your starting hand? Wtf is happening at Fantasy Flight?

I am a HUGE fan of Spider-Man (Peter Parker) and especially Ghost-Spider protection decks. Ghost-Spider taught me how a hero can literally live in the defense during the Villain phase. With Armored Vest, you will get a +2 bonus to already impressive 3DEF characters, which nearly negates Villain damage in the early to mid game.

And I cannot stress enough how powerful the 'Starting' keyword can potentially be. We spend thousands of words in our deck write-ups describing how to handle a mulligan to get the right hand. Now we can guarantee certain cards? And one of them is a +1 to defense for 2ER? I'm frankly astounded they didn't overcost this card for that feature.

I probably shouldn't have put that out in the universe, now 'Starting' cards will be 3ER minimum.

That said, this isn't a silver bullet. Spending your exhaust to block damage can obviously be a detriment, so for the "Actually..." crowd, let me make clear that I am simply advocating that if you're going to build a deck around your DEF stat, Innate Reflexes is clearly a 'must-have'. I honestly think it's now an auto-include in any Protection deck.

And I love it.