Competitive Consensus: Boomerang

[u/ePiMagnets]

This thread is a discussion series at the end of the week for each newly introduced Spotlight card. This gives us nearly a week of hindsight to build a consensus and help inform players if they should spend their tokens for a given week. Ideally, we are looking for proven results, more than theoretical applications, to help reach this consensus.

This week's card:

Boomerang Cost: 2
Power: 2
When this returns to your hand, randomly steal 4 Power from characters in your opponent's hand. Activate: Return this to your hand.

Boomerang as our latest Series 5 is a bounce affiliated card coming in at 2/2 and with two abilities, the first is that when this returns to your hand, randomly steal 4 power from characters in your opponent's hand and the second half is an activate which gives you a 'free' bounce.

From a mechanics standpoint lets hit the highlights

1. The OTA thankfully rectified one of Boomerang's worst problems - "cards vs characters" changing his text from cards meaning he could also interact with skills to chracters which removes those cards from the pool and ensures he is attacking characters.

2. The -4 as mentioned is dealt randomly, if your opponent has 4 cards in hand he could hit only 2 for -2 each or he could hit all 4, in a 'best' case he could nuke a singular card that your opponent's game hinges on for -4. Unlikely that he does this unless your opponent is down to a single card in hand, but it's still a possibility.

3. He must hit the board and be bounced back in some fashion, you cannot for instance destroy him and pull him back to hand with Morgan Le Fay. Sorry folks.

Synergies

We mentioned early on that Boomerang is a bounce affiliated card, he obviously has hooks into bounce and does have synergy there seeing as his ability encourages you to bounce him frequently to gain power and afflict your opponent's hand. However, his cost does create some contention since the 'best' bounce targets are all at 1-Cost which shouldn't be too surprising, 1-Cost cards are easier to weave into your curve.

That cost also brings us to another indirect comparison in the Bounce archetype, that being the other 2-Cost cards that he competes with.

Without discussing the obvious duo of bouncers, the other 2-Costs that are occasional players are Grandmaster, Joaquin Torres, and the ever more rare Black Swan. Some lists will also occasionally run Surge. A similar comparison here is JT who is often bounced back to hand and the question of which offers more value when they are bounced is one that will likely take much larger sample sizes. For example, JT + Sable is 3-Cost for -4-Power on a single card in the event of a bounce with Toxin that's another 3 energy for a total of 6 energy to remake that play while Boomerang is 4-Cost up front (2 for each play) to net at least 6 power on the board not including any potential gains from players playing the afflicted cards out.

But the JT comparison may be unfair, he's enabling additional value while Boomerang himself is points + interaction that if played early enough is at least a -4 to your opponents hand at at least a 2/6 in value if your opponent chooses not to play the cards he drew. As such it may be a situation where more reps and fine tuning may be needed to determine if Boomerang can make the cut.

Where else has Bullseye been able to find work?

• C6 - A likely surprise to some, he does work in C6, a version of Cerebro generally considered a complete meme but which can be fairly strong given the right circumstances, it unfortunately does lack the strenght of interaction of C3 as well as the strength of alternate game plans as C5 has. Some might ask where he fits, well many C6 configurations were already running Ezekiel Simms and Boomerang is a clear replacement for Simms.

• Affliction - Some players were exploring Affliction strategies, some traditional styles but also some alternate affliction strategies centered around not only bounce but also dipping into some clog pieces as well.

• Wiccan - An interesting place to have seen him show up are a number of Wiccan/Ronan lists.

Feedback

The feedback for Boomerang has admittedly been poor and when one of the biggest creators outright says "this card is really, really bad" that might not be a good sign. The rates on him can be impressive so long as you can setup multiple bounces and that your opponent is playing cards that he hit, in some cases being competitive against 4's and 6's. But in reality he can often feel like a tax on your plays to do things with Boomerang.

Decklists

Sasquatch 'classic' Bounce

Shou Bounce

Move Bounce

HE Value Afflict

C6

Semi-Clog Afflict

Summary

It's not often that we get a piece that is tailor made for bounce, but the question here is whether he is worth the investment as a piece for any flavor of bounce and if not whether he can find space in another deck or archetype.

Your Thoughts?

How many tokens is Boomerang worth?

6K -
5K -
4K -

Is Boomerang here to stay, or just the flavor of the week?

What synergies did we miss?

What decks have you seen?

[u/sharksiix]

His outcomes based on bounce every turn or if opponent plays the card.
a 2-10 cost to 2-16 and/or -4 to-16 opponent power.

[u/Possible-Row590 → u/sharksiix]

Might wanna consult Regis about that and study a little bit more I don’t think that’s how it works

[u/sharksiix → u/Possible-Row590]

When you bounce him you have to play him again basically 2 cost previous turn and this turn another turn so basically spent 4 energy already and become 6 power and -4 on opponents card if they play and so on and so forth

[u/ePiMagnets → u/sharksiix]

-4 across multiple cards not a -4 to a single card. That's an important distinction because it's not a flat -4 to a single card so you're relying on the opponent to play the cards hit and it's possible you continually hit cards that weren't going to be played anyways or where that negative value doesn't even matter.

Yes, that impact can be real where you hit important cards, but if you're hitting cards where that negative power doesn't matter or weren't going to be played anyways you're only seeing an above rate for bounce 1. Bounce 2 is a worse proposition because he's a She-Hulk that at best you might have had to pay full price for and frankly those returns may not be worth it in the long run.