Incapped Freedom Six Wraith

When Price of Freedom Wraith is incapped, one of her abilities reads as follows:

Put 1 Ongoing card on top of its associated deck.

We played a game last night where this ability was CRUCIAL. We interpreted this as "take an ongoing card from ANYWHERE on top of its associated deck (trash, hand or field; not deck). Is this a correct interpretation? We helped keep heroes alive by allowing Naturalist recycle his Indomitable Force while in Rhinoceros form, tanking just about everything in sight. We fought the Ennead on challenge mode, so allowing Set to play the top ongoing was a very potent combo after Wraith sent it to the top.

I would probably have interpreted it as meaning only an Ongoing card from play, but I can see an argument for what you did. Nice combo!

Pretty sure the intent is to be just from in play. Could be wrong though.

I would not be surprised if this was a typo.  Not only being a promo card, but being on the back of the card, maybe it just wasn't closely scrutinized.

Being able to:

  1. Take a Player ongoing from their trash and put it on top of their deck.
  2. Take a Player ongoing from play and put it on top of their deck.
  3. Take a Player ongoing from their hand and put it on top of their deck.
  4. Take a Villain ongoing from their trash and put it on top of their deck.
  5. Take a Villain ongoing from play and put it on top of their deck.

All in one seems overpowered, even for an incapacited ability.  No power, no one-shot, nothing else has that much versatility to control ongoings, even among cards that can only be used once and go to the trash afterward.  Yet, you can do this every turn.

Any villain that has ongoing cards and can't play 2 cards in 1 turn very easily could be put into a perminent loop.  You just take their ongoing from play and put it on top of their deck every turn.  If you can also do it from the trash, then it is even easier to perform.  If it is only from the trash, you just need another hero with a power that blows up ongoings and you can still get a villain stuck.

There are many ways to bring cards like Take Down back frequently, but having the option to do that in addition to all of that other capacity to manipulate the villain take just seems beyond belief.  Most of the incapacitated abilities either affect villain or hero ongoing cards, not both, only affect either in play or in trash, and not both.  I know of no other hero card that takes ongoing cards from your hand and puts them on top of your deck, but there aren't a lot of cases where you'd want that.

That said, I really don't know which of the scenarioes I listed were intended by the card.  I believe my group played it unrestricted when we has an opportunity to use it, but we were already doomed by that point.  I will probably continue to use it rules-as-written as long as no one deliberately kills the Wraith just to use it.

Well, keep in mind that you're spending the turn of an incapacitated hero and essentially nulling the draw of another hero if you plan on recycling this over and over. So if F6 Wraith goes first, she can take Legacy's Take Down from play (which will be used up and destroyed on his next turn) and send it to the top of his deck instead. Legacy will have to receive draw power from someone else to even use it next turn (otherwise it's every other turn, which isn't bad either). So that's essentially 2-3 heroes for the combo, not exactly an ideal situation because Legacy also won't get any new cards, since he'll constantly be using the same one. Granted, I had the Ennead in my setup, so Set's incapped power helped. But in a typical game you won't get to do this quite as easily unless you have Team Leader Tachyon. It CAN be overpowered, but in many cases it really isn't.

This combo can also be emulated by Bunker or Tachyon (One Player may take a card from their trash into their hand) or Tempest (One Player may take an Ongoing card from their trash into their hand). The question remains, is it intended to work similarly to these? At the moment, it's open to interpretation.