Mutate #666 Beast is pretty much the gold standard of "draw"-style cards, quite likely for the category as a whole, and plausibly for good low-cost cards as well.  He's very straightforward:  when you block with him, you draw a die from your bag and put it in your prep area; if his burst is showing (it's on his level 1 face), you get to pick two from your bag, keep one, and send the other to your used pile.  This is pretty great; every time your opponent tries to churn that Gobby, you get to draw dice to help tip the scales out of his favor; Tsarina particularly hates him because she'll  let him spin down to use his burst, which will let you cherrypick exactly what you need.  Put that on a cheap purchase and fielding cost, plus a statline that can let him fail to KO some popular churners, and it's little wonder why everyone regards him so highly.

This isn't to say he's perfect; Avenging Angel Angel is not something he wants to have to deal with, he fears Mr. Fantastic and Phoenix's force-attack globals, and if your opponent is not attacking (say, a battery of Human Torches on the backline), he's not going to do tons for you.  Still, given how easy it is to activate his ability, and how well he handles some of the more popular attacking characters, he's a very easy choice to make.

All three Gambit cards, to one degree or another, are "draw"-style.  Dave's recently discussed them, so I won't linger on their descriptions, but in short: the common, Ace in the Hole, lets you draw one die (of two, if burst on level 1/2) and immediately add it to your reserve area; his uncommon, Le Diable Blanc, lets you draw and roll two (of three, on burst) and field them for free if they come up as a character, with them going to used if not; his rare, Cardsharp, lets you draw and roll one die and immediately do damage with it if it rolls a character, adding it to reserve if not.

I largely agree with Dave's feelings that the uncommon and rare are a little too expensive, between the five cost and the die's overly expensive fielding costs, to be really effective.  That said, all three of these have one thing up on Mutate #666 - they occur on-field, meaning you know exactly when you're going to get your extra die (or dice).  While I'm sort of reluctant to recommend either the uncommon or the rare because of their cost, and because of how they limit what you can do with what you get, I don't think they're terrible, and Ace in the Hole is probably my pick for a supplemental draw aid if you feel you need another; he's easy to pick up, and if you approach him with the idea that you'll just try to roll away from his 2-cost face and not worry too hard about using him for energy or drawing, he'll fit in one way or another.

Nova Quasar brings die draw potential alongside some beefy stats.  He lets you draw a die each time he takes damage, which makes him extra lovely if your opponent has to double-block him, or* if you have a Johnny Storm Human Torch with nothing better to ping character-wise.  The only problem is that he costs five to buy, and he's relatively expensive, at 1/2/2, to field, making him less effective at being an early game draw engine.  Still, he's got a lot of punch for the price, and there's a lot of ways to activate his ability.  If he cost one less to buy, he'd be giving Mutate #666 a run for his money; as it is, I think he's another good secondary choice for improving your throughput.

The Drawn-Out

Silver Surfer is most at note from a draw perspective for his global, which is on all three versions of his card: On your turn, once per turn, you may pay one shield and two life to draw a die and put it in your prep area.  That's pretty interesting, but the uncommon, Sentinel, has a relevant ability, too - while Silver Surfer is active, if you have less life than your opponent, you draw an extra die during the draw phase.  This is an interesting case of self-comboing; you can use his global to draw more dice and keep your life lower than your opponent's so you can draw even more dice!

Still, it's a little risky to throw away life - the feeling you get when you drop an energy and two life to get a sidekick who rolls energy you can't do anything with isn't a good one. Moreover, Silver Surfer is one of those 6-cost, 1/2/3 to field beefpiles that the game seems to love, making him a really expensive buy for something you'll probably want going earlier rather than later.  Worse, when you do get him out...you probably don't want to risk losing him, and that extra die, so he gets to be a big shiny lump on your backline.  I like his idea, and I like what he does, but outside of the global, Nova pretty much does as good a job or better at drawing dice, with similar stats, at a cheaper cost.  Consider him for his global - he'll probably make good filler in the Sealed format - but I wouldn't jump to take him otherwise.

The last of the "draw"-style characters is Spirit of Vengeance Ghost Rider, who lets you draw a die when he gets knocked out while engaged.  This sort of winds up being like a backloaded 'on fielded' character; instead of getting the effect when you put them on the table, you get it when you take them off, which you hopefully do constantly because you're constantly churning them.  This should throw up two red flags; firstly, Ghost Rider has a seriously heavy fielding cost, so churning him a lot may not be practical, and secondly, his stats are frequently good enough that your opponent will have an easier time chump blocking him and denying you your die reward.  Between these two things, I really can't see why you'd take him over Mutate #666, or even Gambit.


And then there's Gearing Up.  Four to buy, gets you two dice from your bag when used, for a net gain of one die, once per die bag.  I suppose if you're really desperate for draw aids, and you can't spare a character slot, this is vaguely okay, but almost every other option is easily repeatable on a per-turn basis and gives you a character at the same time.  I really can't recommend Gearing Up, and agree that it's probably one of the weakest of the basic actions.

Fetch the Sidekick, Boy!  Good Die!

With the "draw" cards exhausted, we move on to the "fetch" characters - no terrible action card here (yet;  like Katie said in her recent news post, if Cerebro doesn't involve looking for a die in some way, it will mark the death of my immersion).  I've already waxed poetic about Norman Osborne Green Goblin, so I'll just do a quick recap here - he lets you grab and reroll two sidekick dice in your used pile when he gets fielded, as long as they weren't used to pay for him.  This is pretty nice; I'd noted that fielding him is generally at least energy-neutral if you can get one die, and probably a net gain if you can get two, which is a great way to get some characters on the board (especially given how strong his die is) while still working towards your nefarious master plan.  One thing I've noticed in more recent games, though - if you put him in a squad with a lot of "draw"-style characters, you wind up going through your die bag so fast that you have real trouble actually having sidekicks in your used pile to roll when he comes out.  This is a little bit 'boo hoo, poor you getting too many dice to get extra dice efficiently', but it's something to note if you feel you need a second or third character to speed up your game.

American Hero Captain America is very similar to NOGG - when you field him, you get to roll one sidekick from your used pile and add it to your reserve.  This shows the problem with him: he's pretty much inferior to NOGG in every way.  He lets you pick up one less die; he doesn't have a potentially useful global; he costs one more than GG on every face for a net +1/+1 on level one and +2/+1 on level 2, which will only hurt your ability to churn him.  The only time I could see someone conceivably taking him is if they're looking to add some extra dice to their pool with an Avengers-themed deck using Mr. Anger Nick Fury, neatly sidestepping his gross fielding costs; otherwise, he's an almost-guaranteed energy loss for a die that isn't much better than Green Goblin's.

Katie gave us the lowdown on Brimstone Biker Ghost Rider a few weeks back.  He lets you grab any die you want from your used pile and add it to your prep area; as Katie said, this is best used to get that clutch die - maybe one you just bought - and get it in play faster than you would than by waiting for your bag to refresh and for you to draw it.  He's really the only "fetch" character we have with that degree of freedom, and it can be pretty nice...if you can work around his big, ugly fielding costs.  Katie notes that he's not a good choice for your solo churn option, and I'd have to agree; he's really there to help you hedge your bets and make sure you get that thing you need out when you need it out, at a possibly steep cost, not to have you swimming in dice.

The rest of the "fetch" cards - Annihilator Hulk, Matchstick Human Torch, and Vigilante Punisher - all fall into the category of what Dave calls "clones," which is a pretty good description of what they do - get copies of themselves back for you to use.  Hulk grabs all his copies from the used pile when he takes damage; Torch lets you roll Torches in your used pile when characters are fielded, and put them in reserve if they roll a character; Punisher lets you search your bag for a Punisher and put it in prep when he attacks unless your opponent pays three life.

The issue with all three of these is that they're predicated on the idea that you want more, and will have more, of their dice kicking around.  At 6 cost, the idea that you'll have purchased two or more Hulks frequently is sort of absurd; given how expensive he is, you probably wouldn't want to try to field two of them at once anyway.  Torch is much more reasonable to have several of in your dice bag, but his stats aren't so amazing for his cost that you'd necessarily want to take advantage of that; you also get no opportunity to get extra energy this way, so you better have a big enough pool to buy all those Torches this turn.  Punisher is better, with reasonable fielding costs on a strong offensive die making him more attractive to spam, but the five purchase cost is a fairly large barrier to entry.  Moreover, as Dave said, all of these cards suffer from the issue that there's just better options for that die.  Given how limited all these cards are, and, frankly, how poorly balanced they wind up being, they're not really good solutions to your die-drawing issues, and not particularly something you should be looking to put in a serious squad.

Drawing To A Close: The Verdict

It really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone - least of all people who frequent The Reserve Pool - that your best drawing option is Mutate #666 Beast.  He's pretty easy to trigger and fits into a lot of niches, and as long as you've got a starter set, you're going to have him.  Ace in the Hole Gambit is probably my choice for runner-up; I'll admit I was pretty cold to him for a long time given his fielding cost, but after playing with him some, I see that he makes a great supplemental accelerator for many squads, especially later on, when you're less likely to be saving up for those big purchases and may be in a better position to blow a bunch of energy on Gambit and the friend he produces.

After that it gets a little harder to pick.  Quasar Nova, NOGG, and Brimstone Biker Ghost Rider all do useful things, each with their own quirks and drawbacks; which one is going to be most useful to you will largely depend on what exactly the rest of your squad looks like.  Need a heavy hitter with your draws?  Go Quasar, or maybe NOGG if you're more focused on keeping yourself in energy.  Worried about getting out your big gun before your opponent can neuter it, or just wanting to have the fastest Gem Keeper on the block?  Consider the Brimstone Biker.  Silver Surfer is an odd duck; you're not likely to get him out for a while, which dampens his usefulness, but you can take advantage of that global right away and without having to worry about drawing anything but spare sidekicks (or shield characters).  I can certainly see teams that would work well in.  The rest of our options...outside of very specific situations, or casual play, they just don't do the job of getting your more, or at least more useful dice, well enough to bother with.

That will just about wrap it up for my look at draw accelerators.  Join me next time, when I delve a little deeper into some of the ways I'm hoping the next set - or future sets, I'm not picky - will liven up the game.

*:  Thanks to Matt Mansell and others in the comments section for reminding me that damage clumps together during the attack phase, so it winds up only being one source, so you only get one die.  Shucks!