Time for a couple of hot takes: Book of Nine Swords is the best 3.5 DnD book. Yes, the best. It's the only book that would make me want to play an edition of DnD I find so fundamentally broken.
If you don't like that go cry somewhere else.
Thank you. Your tears make me stronger.
Y'know what part of the book I like the best? The frickin' Crusader class. You take damage and get stronger from it. The higher level you get the more you're able to absorb and turn into accuracy and brute force. I enjoyed throwing my crusader off of high cliffs, tanking the fall, and using that to destroy monsters' lives as part of the opening round.
Magna Defender is a faithful recreation of the crusader class.
Avenging Knight, Magna Defender's ability, has a really interesting implication. The first is that you have to discard a card for defense. I did not catch that. And that really threw me off the first few times I played him. So no, you do not want to take damage with Magna Defender all the time, as there are only so many benefits you can get to doing that. It's a level of gray I quite enjoy.
Most of Magna Defender's cards get stronger for having another type of card in the discard pile. You'd think this would mean you want to take as much damage as possible But a lot of the time you can't really control it. And you need to. Which is what Sacrifice is all about: take a card off the top of your deck and discard it. But there's more. Your friends then get to take any card they like from their discard and put it back atop their respective decks. This has been the card I've neglected the hardest and my playstyle with Magna Defender has suffered for it. Don't repeat my mistakes.
This bring us to Magna Defense. I keep finding this card getting in the way. I have to make sure that, when I use it, it's not causing me to not discard a card for defense. Obviously, once you use Avenging Knight you don't need to watching it as closely, so Magna Defense becomes a multi-use card: either use it so you don't hurt as badly to get Avenging Knight to go off or use it to tank shots that no one else can. Magna Defense doubles in efficacy if there's another one in the discard pile, which makes you one of the best tanks in the whole game.
All the rest of Magna Defender's cards are attacks and get much stronger for having their twin in the discard pile. This means that Magna Defender is a great late-game attacker, dealing craptons of damage or gaining lots of energy for much less than what other people are pulling at that point. So take your time, hold off on attacking until you have your ducks all lined up, and then destroy the heathen.
I mean. Oops. Sorry. Wrong universe.
Valiant Charge in particular I found useful when I had its twin in the discard pile, dealing tons of damage for very little. Long as you're willing to be patient I found that I could wreck shop later.
The Torozord only works if you discard the card for defense. While that sounds lame it means you can then use it to tank huge shots and probably deal half the offending card's health in a single hit! With the Torozord soft teams become capable of an amount of damage that makes them a lot more viable. It never does not feel good to use this zord.
Magna Defender was a bit more subtle than I was expecting, but I've found the time spent in learning how to play him well worth it. Get you discard pile set up and destroy! But as fun as he is, we know the real reason I love him so.
It's the frickin cape. In this case painting by Michael Jordal, what a piece of art!
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