Welcome, oh enlightened soul, to the Astral Plane, where the physical fades and the mind expands. Your body may stay on the couch, but your thoughts are soaring through dimensions where dream logic is real and must be respected. This is the realm of projection, perception, and the place where all the objects you drop on the floor and simply disappear end up.
Nothing here is truly real, not even the cards. Especially the cards. That powerful Hulk you got in your hand is nothing more than a 0-Power mirage when reflected by the Astral Plane. Not very threatening, but maybe that’s part of the masterplan?
Now, let’s phase back into Snap for a moment and gaze upon this mystical location:
Oh–it’s like a xerox machine that doesn’t copy the power of the card.
Back to Snap
Ready to expand your mind? Hope so, because this very Wednesday the 25th, we’re about to forcibly go on a journey in search of spiritual growth into the Astral Plane as it will be our newest Hot Location for its debut.
I’ll be your spiritual guide, so let me give you all the pointers. First, we need to find some—
Cards That Wouldn’t Mind Being Powerless
When power doesn’t mean a thing, utility is king. Let’s try thinking of some cards that would bring value to the field even with 0 Power.
My favorite and probably the best and safest bet would be Ongoing cards. They often feature cards that most if not all of their value comes from their text. Look for them on your spiritual journey:
These are the broadest Ongoings cards we could find but you could absolutely run a deck centered around more specific cards like Cerebro, Victoria Hand or even Knull.
We also could look towards cards that have a powerful effect that is counterbalanced by their low power. From the weakest Nightmare to the biggest of the Draculas, they wouldn’t mind having a 0-Powered copy on the field. These are the cards I believe it would be great when copied by the Astral Realm:
One last category that could work greatly is Activate cards. The usual weakness of these cards is that they often require a turn of setup before being able to take advantage of their effect. By being copied onto the field, not only you will get a second use of their powerful effect whenever you want, you might skip the entire setup phase of these cards.
These are my favorites:
You could follow any of these playstyles to finally reach inner peace with the cosmos or you could ignore it completely and-
Flip Back the Scales
There is a card that does something extremely similar to Astral Plane’s effect. Can you guess which one?
Anti-Venom also removes the power of a card and allows you to play it for free. When we are running him, we often pair him up with either Luke Cage or Shadow King. Sometimes even both. They can revert back any card on your side that had its power cut off and since the Astral plane does exactly that, they will work perfectly with it to tip the scales in your favor on your typical game on the Astral Plane. Make sure to run some powerful cards with them.
Alright, follow the line of giant colorful heads to find powerful deck lists :
Astral Plane Decks
Negative without Mr Negative
Full Power!c
Flow Alucard
Fallout Boy
Copy of a copy
Blue Man Group
Afterthoughts
Boy I loved both locations this time around. Great job from the design team. The World Forge is still my Goat but these are pretty awesome in my book as they allow for some different playlines and offer more strategic depth to the game. And man I love the flavor! Camelot was all about equality of the round table so every card there would have the same power and the Astral Plane is not a physical realm so it makes sense that this place is where the spirit of the cards are, that’s why they have no power when being pulled.
Most important though, what did you think of it, oh enlightened one? Did you peer into the secrets of the universe? Did you become one with the cosmos? Centered and balanced? I hope so! Let me know in the comments if you liked this location, if you have any strats that I might have missed or if you enjoyed the article or the decks!
As always, it was a pleasure and I will catch you on the next one!