I love what this card is intended to do, but I would love if there was an easier way to recover it once it's discarded; Sam's only ability that allows him to recover discarded cards is "Birds of A Feather" in his Alter Ego card, but it only allows him to recover "Bird" cards.
it doesn't help the fact that there is only one copy of Talon Line.
Review for Self-Volton Builds
CITT is a card that belongs to a group that I call “basic tribal self-readies.”
These cards are not really meant for inclusion in every deck, but are staples for certain strategies that revolve around buffing your stats and getting readies for it. And those strategies have gotten a lot more support since some of these cards were released, which I think makes them worth revisiting.
Originally, the main cards that could reliably do this were those that came with the core set. Combat Training and Heroic Intuition. Civil War came along and gave us Aggressive Conditioning and Heroic Conditioning. Each of these did what the originals did for a slightly higher cost and with an Endurance tacked on. And then the X-Men sets introduced the specializations from Specialized Training.
Suddenly, good old CITT is looking much better.
And in fact, I don't think this was ever a bad card per se. It was just maybe slightly behind the curve. You pay 3 effective resources one time to be able to pay 2 effective resources from then on, getting the same effect as Limitless Stamina every turn for the same value. It's not a terrible deal. But it's not incredible either.
So how does this compare to the other basic tribal self-readies:
Earth's Mightiest Heroes: Earth's Mightiest Heroes can be seen as costing about 2-ER. It's 1-ER plus exhausting an ally which costs you tempo. It's difficult to compare directly because one of these is an event. You need to build around Earth's Mightiest Heroes much more, making sure you can usually have at least one Avengers ally in play whereas CITT doesn't need anymore set up once you play it. You play a card then are guaranteed a ready every single turn for the rest of the game.
Spider-Man: Spider-Man costs 4-ER in exchange for 3 readies. And then you lose him. Until the next reshuffle. He's good value but is a bit more fiddly. You want to have a First Aid to heal him, or something like Chance Encounter to recur him if you're trying to use him for a self-voltron web-warrior build. It's very difficult to compare him directly to CITT. The best comparison I could make would be if you are using First Aid to heal him. Because then it does play similarly but with double the value. First Aid is a 2-ER card that heals 2, meaning you get twice as many readies for the same effective resources as CITT. But with the downside of only working when you draw First Aid. And there is a deck building cost to including three copies of first aid just to keep Spider-Man alive. But none of that is factoring in the value of Peter being able to attack and thwart with each interaction.
Utopia: This is the most comparable to CITT it's another support that costs 3 effective resources to play. But it doesn't have the same requirements to get ready. Instead, the ready is free so long as you play an X-Men ally. This might be the most efficient one. After you pay the initial price, any subsequent readies are going to be free. But doing this every turn does require you to lean hard into the X-Men tribe. You're going to want a good handful of X-Men allies who you can drop every turn. If you end up with a turn without X-Men allies in your hand, you don't get the ready from this. Another thing about Utopia is that the price of the allies is higher than the ready for CITT. You're paying at least 3-ER to ready. You're getting enough benefits from your X-Men allies to make that extra cost worth it, but I do want to mention it anyway.
All of the other basic tribal self-ready cards have deck building costs that need to be taken into account. Earth's Mightiest Heroes is an event you need three copies of and need to have a bunch of Avengers allies for. Spider-Man only has three uses and you need other cards to either heal him or recur him if you want regular access to the readies. And Utopia requires a bunch of other X-Men allies.
Only CITT can reliably provide your hero with an extra ready every single turn.
Now, while this is the only one that can guarantee a ready every single turn without a bunch of extra deck building, that's not to say that you shouldn't build around it a little. You can pay for the cost of readying with The Power in All of Us. So if you are going to be using this every turn with your self-Voltron build, having two copies of that is going to be helpful.
Other Uses:
While I was originally just going to talk about the use in this type of self-Voltron, this can be used for Guardian allies too in more traditional Voltron builds. Good targets include Gamora who gets you to draw an event every time she activates, Bug who heals every time you make a basic attack, and Yondu who doesn't take consequential damage for attacking. CITT with Cosmo can even find a niche with Magik. If you're Voltroning any of these, you should consider a copy of CITT for extra readies.
One other thing it also combos well with in Leadership is Blaze of Glory, letting you get more value out of your stat boosts.
If only the text on this were worded similarly to Black Panther, like so:
"Play only if your identity has the AVENGER trait. Max 1 per deck. You may play the ally tucked here as if it were in your hand. Action: If there is no ally tucked here, exhaust Avengers Compound → tuck 1 ally from your hand here."
I suppose the reasoning for the final wording is to avoid maxing out on reducing the cost of the ally and to avoid playing an ally and tucking an ally in the same turn, which I don't see the harm in that but maybe there's a weird power combo out there. But for my (purely thematic) preference, I would have liked to have been able to pair this with a couple Quinjets. Put an Avenger in the compound and then they fly out when the quinjet is fueled up and ready to go. Tuck a high-cost Avenger ally, and it would become a ticking ally reinforcement clock waiting to take off.
Thematically, would have been super fun and cool. Mechanically, probably clunky as heck.
I guess I could house rule this card and play it that way, see if there's a reason it's an action to exhaust to play the tucked ally, but I honestly can't think of one off the top of my head other than to limit how the tucked ally can be discounted or maybe to keep the cost of the compound at 0...?
Sometimes I wish there was a way to see the design and playtesting notes on some of these cards, just to see the thought process and evolution of the card.
Overall, we had good times using it everytime It appears in our hand. Probably way less appealing when going to team-up with your identity-specific ally (both are made to not staying around for many turns so the window of opportunity is scarce).
Not the Daredevil Hero you want, but the Daredevil ally you need. 3 ER for 2 thwart and a chump block is very strong and an almost auto include in every Protection deck. Very strong against the second stage of Ultron as you can block and not take damage to kill the drone minions he makes. Pretty good art even if I’ve never met the character before.
Rating: S