Card of the Week: Roller Rink

Roller Rink
Feng Shui Site
Body: 6
Generates: 1
Turn to return to your hand a Character in your smoked pile whose cost is less than the amount of damage on this card.

I often see this card tossed into decks that could benefit from returning small characters from the smoked pile, and it appears like the person who built the deck assumes that the damage will just magically appear on the site so that he can use it. Even though Roller Rink only requires minimal deck support to work, it is not suitable for every deck. Much of the following applies likewise to Mountain Fortress, but the Fortress benefits from being useful early in the game, whereas the Rink typically starts being useful in midgame.

As stated above, it is necessary to be able to damage the Rink in a controlled fashion to make it work, otherwise it is a card you’ll discard at best and a useless, fragile 6 body site that can cost you the game at worst. There are two major ways to insure that the Rink ends up with the right amount of damage: controlling which attackers hit your front row Rink, or damaging the Rink with non-combat effects.

The first method is integrated in many decks. You control the damage done to your site by intercepting attackers, redirecting them, or smoking them outright. This method requires the Roller Rink to be in your front row, which is not a happy place for a site that has less than 6 body (which is what the Roller Rink is once it’s doing its job). Likewise, controlling the incoming damage is more difficult in some games than in others. An ideal attack on the Roller Rink has both small and large characters. The large characters are removed, either with larger interceptors, Iron & Silk, Flying Sleeves, Fox Pass, City Square, or the spot removal event of your choice. The smaller characters are allowed through to do exactly as much damage to the Rink as you need. In many games, however, you will see one extreme: hordes of small characters that you cannot all stop, or just big characters who can all take the site by themselves. If you’re letting the opponent damage the site for you, states that pump body help immensely. Security does the trick but is a bit boring. Sure, you may be able to return a very big character from your smoked pile, but the Roller Rink will typically fall prey to the next attack, unless you heal it. Portal Nexus is much better: it boosts the body of Roller Rink by almost the same amount, but in addition, you can move the Rink out of harm’s way once it’s damaged. If you intend to have your sites damaged in this way, consider adding Entropy Tap for power generation. Entropy Sphere rounds out the Purist arsenal. It can take care of the attackers that are too big while still loading the desired damage onto your site.

The second method is much simpler. Pick the site damaging event or effect of your choice, and hit the Rink with it. Killing Rain, Kunlun Clan Assault, Artillery Strike, SAM Simian, Disco Inferno, Desolate Ridge in response to your own event. This has the advantage that you can leave the site in your back row, where it is much safer, but you have to go a bit out of your way during deck construction. City Square should be mentioned here again, because it allows you to pick any amount of damage flying around and dump it on your Roller Rink. Obsidian Mountain can load damage onto a back-row Roller Rink as well, but make sure you have a way of dealing with the Mountain before it becomes a liability. Balanced Harmonies lets you shift damage around and precisely control the amount of damage you have on each site.

Finally, let’s look at cards and factions that work well with Roller Rink. The best use for the Rink is to return low-cost characters. Two factions that like to play lots of small characters are Lotus and the Jammers. The Lotus already have Inauspicious Return, however, so the Rink is only of limited use to them. You really want to play 2-cost characters with the Rink in a Lotus deck, such as Purist Sorcerer or White Disciple, maybe even Walking Corpses. The Rink can be damaged fairly easily with Killing Rain.

The Jammers are the prime faction for Roller Rink. They have two outstanding 1-cost characters that combo well with the Rink: Fire Woman and the Simian Liberation Army. Both cost only a single Power and thus can be played with two points of damage, which can easily be put onto the Rink with a SAM Simian or a Disco Inferno. When you have 3 or more damage on the Rink, you can return said SAM Simian to play, as well as Violence Junkies or The Monkey Who Would Be King (who incidentally is another source of damage for the Rink and can be used to move the Rink out of harm’s way). You can also use the Rink to clear out your smoked pile a little before playing “There’s Always One More…”. Finally, the Jammers have what it takes to get rid of a Roller Rink that becomes a liability: Disco Inferno, Revenge of the Patent Office, Potlatch, and Blow Things Up!

As mentioned earlier, the Purists also work well with Roller Rink, and they sure can use those 1-cost Magic characters to keep the Quantum Sorceries going, or return the Purist Aspirants to duty. Note that if you can get an opponent to seize Roller Rink rather than burn it, you can copy the rules text onto one of your bigger sites with Chi Syphon.

In summary, Roller Rink is a decent card that really shines in a select few decks. It is a terribly bad card if it’s tossed into a deck without planning around it. Be certain that you have a specific card in mind to return when you add Roller Rink to your deck, and ask yourself if you’re not better off just by drawing more cards and playing more characters instead of recycling used ones.