Magic: The Gathering

I’ve been thinking a lot about Magic: The Gathering lately. Blame some of it on the impromptu return of The Ring Has Chosen, a podcast dedicated to the dearly departed VS System. Cliff, one of the two hosts, has taken up Magic and been talking about it quite a bit. In addition, Duels of the Planeswalkers, an Xbox 360 arcade title, has been something I’ve played quite a lot recently, and I just picked up the expansion that adds a couple decks.

Here’s the thing about Duels of the Planeswalkers. It’s a very well designed video game rendition of the card game itself. There are a few things that took a while to get used to, and I had to go into the options menu to turn off simple targeting to allow the ability to target myself with negative spells (I understand why they did this, but any seasoned card player knows the importance of sometimes nuking your own creatures for beneficial effects). It has one glaring issue, which is the fact that all of the decks are preconstructed, and they cannot really be altered. This is a problem in many ways, but it’s not a game breaker. So when you have your solo black deck that’s focused on a mix of discard, creature destruction, regenerating blockers and flying creatures/vampires, it gets a little watered down. This is not to say it or any of the other decks are bad. In fact, they’re all quite good, really, for the sort of bare bones deck construction you have available. The biggest issue is twofold: firstly, you have no control over the lands in the deck. Each deck comes with a predetermined amount of lands, and while they’re pretty well balanced, the second issue also creates more problems from this perspective. You see, all of the decks have a sort of base deck you use at the start that is 60 cards. When you win matches in the single player campaign mode, you unlock a new card. Most of these are pretty powerful; this is where the rares usually come from, your Shivan Dragon or Sengir Vampire or Serra Angel, for example. But, you cannot alter or remove any of the cards from the base deck. So if you want to use all of the cards you unlocked (and you usually do with a few exceptions like some of the artifacts that heal based on spell color, like Demon’s Horn, which is mostly designed to let you survive until you get the good stuff), you’re walking around with a 70-80 card deck. Anyone who plays card games knows that you don’t EVER go above 61 at the most, or you’re diluting your options.

As a for instance, Royal Assassin is a fantastic tool for black decks to control decks based primarily on attacking (Green decks, for example). If you’ve got a few regenerators and a Royal Assassin on the field, no one is ever going to attack you unless they’re stupid. And the computer AI is pretty good at recognizing this. However, there is one Royal Assassin in the black deck as an unlockable card. You’re not going to see him very much. Can’t exactly consider it a mulligan condition. Would I rather take out those Unholy Strengths and Raise Deads to make sure I had playsets of Royal Assassin and Nekretaal in the deck? Sure. Does not having this completely kill its playability? No. And that’s why I’m going to continue to play the game. The decks are fun, if not perfect, and they’re actually surprisingly up to date, with some of the multicolor decks having quite a few cards from the Alara block that came out prior to M-10’s release (BLIGHTNING!!!!). It’s a lot of fun, and it’s making me want to play the actual physical card game again.

Some time this weekend, I’m going to take all my cards and sort the hell out of them. We’re talking alphabetical by color by set. I’ll be picking up some 5,000 count boxes at some point to really make this go. Once everything’s sorted, I’m going to really delve into this and see what I can do. Of course, I can’t exactly go to hobby leagues with my current cards; nobody plays Vintage, and I have about 50 cards from the Alara block, which isn’t exactly enough to make a standard format deck. Maybe I should sell some old stuff. Likely, it’s not worth a goddamned thing these days (Who needs Fallen Empires uncommons? No one? Fair enough!). I’m going to have to scrape some money together for some boxes of Alara, M-10, and Zendikar. Which is, admittedly, a lot of money. But I’ve got the itch. That much is undeniable. It’s coming.

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This post was written to the tune of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Heroes Week: The Brütal Legend of Tim Schafer

This week, I’m going to be looking at (hopefully) five heroes of mine from five different sections of the entertainment industry. I’ll be covering video games, music, movies, television, and fiction writing. I’m beginning the week with an article about the man that inspired heroes week in the first place: Tim Schafer.

When I was growing up, I played a lot of video games. I still do in some respect, but my life was more centered around gaming back then than it is now. I’ve had consoles for as long as I can remember dating back to the Atari 2600. I have a lot of good memories from the consoles of my youth, but what I actively look back at with the fondest memories was the era of the graphic adventure. Graphic adventures existed and were named as such at the time to differentiate themselves from text adventure games (Zork, for example), because this was the original wave of true adventure games that had, well, graphics. The lion’s chare of these games were so-called “point and click” games for the very reason that they were controlled by a cursor on the screen that you would point and click at things to move your character around and interact with objects in the world. There were two companies that mattered in the 90’s when it came to point and click graphic adventures. Sierra shipped out these games in startling volume, thanks mostly to the “Quest” series of games (King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, et al), all of which had at least four installments. The other side of the coin was LucasArts, who was stepping out from beyond the licensed property game to create new intellectual property like the Monkey Island series and Maniac Mansion. I played the hell out of games from both companies, but always tended to gravitate toward LucasArts. Their games had more of a feel of whimsy, and were also very famous because it was impossible to die or get truly stuck in basically all of their games. One of the true stalwarts of both the graphic adventure genre and LucasArts throughout the 90’s was Tim Schafer.

Schafer got his start working on the NES port of Maniac Mansion. The first entirely new game he helped design while at Lucas was The Secret of Monkey Island, the original adventure of one Guybrush Threepwood. He also worked on the sequels of both Monkey Island (LeChuck’s Revenge) and Maniac Mansion (Day of the Tentacle), as well as standalone games like Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. This, to me, was the golden age of video gaming. The stories were incredible, the art design was second to none, and Schafer was at the front of the pack, just constantly putting out solid gold entertainment. And he didn’t stop there. Schafer created his own development company, Double Fine Productions, and has since put out two games under that banner, Psychonauts and Brütal Legend. These are the first games Schafer has done outside the point and click graphic adventure genre, and he’s still got it. I don’t think there’s anyone out there working on games right now that can write on the level of Tim Schafer. And it’s not just simply writing jokes (although he is REALLY GOOD at writing jokes). The stories themselves are deep and enjoyable and complex in their own rights, which makes these games rise above simply being jokey with no substance. It’s exceptional design from all aspects.

I’m trying to keep these articles somewhat short, but I’m going to end every one with a top five list. Today’s is…

Top Five Tim Schafer Games

5. Full Throttle (PC, 1995)

I love Full Throttle, but I think it’s on the weaker side of the Schafer canon. I think part of that is because the story itself doesn’t speak to me the way all his other games do. It’s the beginning of his less actively funny period, in that it was not a game that was as abjectly jokey as his previous games. I really enjoy it, and even the weakest of Schafer’s games is a hell of a lot better than most of what gets released on a regular basis.

4. Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle (PC, 1993)

Day of the Tentacle is a fiendishly original story. It’s got one of the more iconic villains in video game history in Purple Tentacle, and such a great design gimmick of multiple timelines. It’s such a wonderful way to set up puzzles, trying to figure out how you can change things in the past to affect the future and get things you need to the people that need them. It’s a flawless setup (which is a hell of an impressive feat considering the heavy use of time travel), the humor is there, and it managed to eclipse Maniac Mansion in every possible way ever. The fact that it’s number 4 on this list just proves the prowess of Tim Schafer as a game developer.

3. Psychonauts (Xbox, 2005)

Schafer leaves his comfy home of graphic adventures to release a full on action platformer. The story of Psychonauts would probably be Schafer’s best if not for the first game on this list; you play the role of a psychic secret agent in training at a sleepaway camp where some bad mojo is going down. Just about every stage in the platformer takes place in a different character’s mind, and each mind is specifically designed to reflect that characters mental state, as well as whatever psychoses or instabilities that exist magnified to an extreme degree. The platforming itself does get maddening at one point, but it does not detract from the overall polish of the game. Wonderful.

2. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (PC, 1991)

The best story and the best puzzles of all the Monkey Island games. This wasn’t a Schafer original; he was still working with Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman as on the original Monkey Island title. There are so many memories about this game, from Stan’s used coffin store, to the Rapp Scallion story line, to the wide open portion of the game where you go to find the map pieces, to the final sequence leading to the undeniably bat-shit insane ending. It’s very much the game that set graphic adventures out into the stratosphere and allowed for such games as Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle to be possible.

1. Grim Fandango (PC, 1998)

The highest echelon of PC gaming. This is, in short, the best PC game I have ever played. The art design is absolutely gorgeous. That 1920’s art deco style mixed with the hard boiled narrative noir of the 40’s combined with the mythos and art of the Mexican Day of the Dead, and you’ve got a singular experience like no other. The only possible problem with the game is the fact that the interface, the first of its kind to be controlled by keyboard and not require pointing and clicking with the mouse, is not the best. It’s very apparent that this was LucasArts’ first attempt at this control scheme, and it’s not as elegant as the mouse control. Even still, the art design, voice acting, and story are so overpoweringly strong that it is easy to overlook the small foible of the clunky but still functional control scheme. I love this game. It’s one of the absolute best of all time in any genre. It’s the main reason I consider Tim Schafer a personal hero.

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This post was written to the tune of That Handsome Devil’s A City Dressed in Dynamite

A Week Remembering VS System – The Finale

Today’s article is more about the deck itself than the actual matches. As such, I don’t remember any specific about said matches. So I’ll mostly be discussing the design of my deck and how it beats in faces on a regular basis.

MKGKKO vs. A Litany of Decks (Impromptu Hobby League)

My greatest triumph in my gaming career was the initial design and eventual perfection of my Marvel Knights/Gotham Knights/Birds of Prey team-up deck I created a little while after the Marvel Legends release. The base idea of the deck has been around forever. MKKO was a deck that was created way back when the Marvel Knights set was released, based on using the litany of KO effects available to the Marvel Knights team to control their board while utilizing hidden characters to keep yours and attack for big numbers. The deck was revitalized by a much better roster of hidden characters in the Marvel Legends set. It always had one problem, though. The deck had no draw effects beyond Black Cat, Thrillseeker, who is definitely not a guaranteed draw as a one drop that requires an empty field to do her work. So what would be a good way to fix the deck? By adding card draw, of course! And what team has a startling amount of hidden area characters with big attack values? Why, the Birds of Prey, of course. And what team are nearly all of the Birds of Prey dual-affiliated with that has arguably the best team-up in the game that also doubles as a card drawing/cycling engine? The Gotham Knights! A quick combination of the Birds/GK characters from the DC World’s Finest set and the Marvel Knights from Marvel Legends and MKGKKO was born. By the time Marvel Universe was released, the deck received two more gems and became a force to be reckoned with. Here’s the deck.

Characters:

4x Lady Blackhawk, Zinda Blake

3x Black Cat, Thrillseeker

4x Daredevil, Fearless Survivor

2x Huntress, Vicious Vigilante

4x Barbara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Elite

1x Blade, Independent Contractor

4x Wolverine, Covert Predator

1x Vixen, Mari Jai McCabe

2x Cassandra Cain, Death’s Daughter

1x Punisher, Captain America

1x Captain America, Loyal Patriot

2x Dinah Laurel Lance <> Black Canary, Cry in the Dark

1x Hulk, Savage Hulk

Plot Twists:

4x The Hook-Up, Team-Up

3x Mobilize

3x Wild Ride

4x Flying Kick

4x Savage Beatdown

4x Quick Kill

3x Finishing Move

3x Blinding Rage

3x Pathetic Attempt

Let’s talk about the deck in detail. From a character perspective, you’ve got a full curve of both Birds of Prey and Marvel Knights characters. Much of how the deck plays depends on who you see on turn one. You’re going to be mulliganing for a turn one character unless you have low cost Marvel Knights and Birds of Prey and your team-up. The best of all worlds would be the following curve in order:

Black Cat

Daredevil

Barbara Gordon

Wolverine

Cassandra Cain

Black Canary/Hulk.

If you’re looking at a curve like that, your only real choices come into play on three, five and six. Barbara draws you cards, but Blade might become necessary either for the team-up if you lead with Blackhawk/Huntress or to begin slowing down an opposing hidden deck. Plus, you can just sub Barbara into the game a little later. Wolverine’s good for slowing hidden decks as well, and he’s always a better play than Vixen (who isn’t Gotham Knights). Punisher and Cap are designed for two reasons. The first is to have something in the visible area to soak damage, and the second is for both of their defensive tricks. Punisher’s a good choice on initiative if necessary, but if your hand is full of characters, you play Cassandra Cain. Cap gets played off initiative, and even then it’s only if he’s the only character or if you’re behind on the endurance race and facing down something big and scary. The choice for turn six is entirely due to feel. If you don’t feel confident you can get Savage Hulk to do his thing, Black Canary’s 14 attack should usually be enough to finish things. ONLY PLAY SAVAGE HULK IF YOU ARE POSITIVE HE WILL GET A CLEAR ATTACK. If you’ve managed to KO your opponent’s entire board and have a good board of characters for back-up leading to your initiative on turn six, you can probably get away with playing Savage Hulk. NEVER PLAY SAVAGE HULK OFF INITIATIVE. NEVER. It’s almost better to not play a character than to kill yourself by playing Savage Hulk, especially if you’re dealing with someone packing exhaust effects. Savage Hulk is a member of the deck more for finishing off an opponent in spectacular fashion than for tipping the tides in your favor during a close game. He will kill you and lose you a game if you’re not careful.

As far as the blues are concerned, they’re pretty self explanatory. Quick Kill is great because you can get the effect without having a Marvel Knights character on the board. I wouldn’t necessarily say Mobilize is a great search card for the deck, considering there are two characters that don’t have either of the core team affiliations (Lady Blackhawk is just Birds of Prey and Vixen is Birds/JLA, so if you lead with Blackhawk and want to Mobilize, you’re going to need two Hook-Ups to cross Birds with GK or MK), however, the Birds don’t have a search, and Bat Signal slows down the deck by exhausting characters to search instead of exhausting them to attack or KO. Some luck is involved, but usually if you can get the team-up established you should be in good shape. Worst case, you can always kamikaze Lady Blackhawk into someone and not recover her. Pumps are pumps, in this case being the Flying Kick/Savage Beatdown/Blinding Rage variety. Quick Kills should be exclusively used for the small drops if possible, as Finishing Moves need to be around for those fives and sixes. Much like Quick Kill, Wild Ride is great because it doesn’t require a Marvel Knights character on the field. It’s a great way to search out that Daredevil or Wolverine to establish a team-up. The Hook-Up should be used every turn if possible. Discarding characters to draw Savage Beatdowns are always great.

This deck just ruins people. It rushes fast with attack pumps to kill quickly. It KO’s your opponent’s characters to mitigate damage, establish tempo and control your opponent’s options. The KO effects start early and can do a lot to stop your opponent prior to the turn four Pathetic Attempts. Blade and Wolverine can stop hidden area decks in their tracks. It’s just mean.

THE ‘MATCH’

My buddy Los and I decided to do a two man hobby league one Sunday after we had played some casual games. MKGKKO had just reached another level and was quickly becoming established as a stone cold killer. I always bring tons of other decks with me and so does Los, so we thought it would be fun to set up a two man deck gauntlet. Each person chose four decks. Games would be played in succession; each time a player lost, he would switch his deck out for a new one. First player to four wins is the victor. I led off with MKGKKO. I didn’t need any of my other decks. I can’t remember exactly what Los played. I know he was testing out a few decks. I believe there was a Titans/Outsiders team attack deck based around Tim Drake, and I would assume (since this is Los, after all) that Insanity was in play as well. He might have had a Captain America deck built at that time too. Regardless, he got trounced in a real and significant way. Four straight wins for MKGKKO. This was basically the beginning of its real and significant reign of terror.

I’ve only lost two games with the deck. Ever. I can even make excuses about the second loss because it was after I sold my Mobilizes and the deck just isn’t as good packing Bat Signals. The other loss was a casual game against a heavily tuned monster of a Clash of Two Worlds Dr. Doom deck running all kinds of golden age shenanigans. We’re talking Reign of Terror, Press the Attack, Latveria, things like that. And I was playing a version of MKGKKO that was designed for modern age and only included cards from Marvel Legends, World’s Finest, and the Hellboy Starter Deck (thanks, Flying Kick!). And the funny thing is that my record against that deck is still somewhere in the range of 12-1. I was originally going to write my Friday article on that match-up, but that’s obviously not happening considering that it’s Friday right now. Safe to say, my success against that deck is entirely based on being able to KO his Dooms the turn they hit play. This turns off his ability to Reign of Terror and use Faces of Doom to search his curve. It works quite well, really. The game I lost basically was because I couldn’t find my KO effects, and Reign of Terror was wrecking my board to take away my tempo. It was still a close game, and I believe he won on seven, so even though I missed cards, I still almost beat him. That’s the raw power of this deck.

I will always love VS System. I was in the middle of a campaign to teach my friends the VS love, but that was derailed (in a good way) by our discovery of the Arkham Horror board game. I’ll get back to it at some point, and thoroughly look forward to the prospect of buying boxes on the cheap on the net and holding some draft nights. As a pure card gaming system, nothing will beat it. It allows for more than enough consistency to stave off frustration (I’m looking at you, Magic the Gathering), but is also one of the ultimate examples of a game that rewards the better player. If you are a better player than your opponent and your decks are of relative equality, you will win basically every time. The frustrates a lot of casual fans, and could be why the casual base never existed to eventually lead to the game’s death. Even still, for those who take the time, study the game, play a bunch and get a true understanding of the mechanics, it’s a gloriously rewarding chess match every time you shuffle up. There are people out there who are keeping the dream alive. For various reasons, I cannot join them in their quest to turn it into something that can last beyond the involvement of Upper Deck Entertainment. I’m content to live with my memories, which is exactly what this week has been about.

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This post has been written to the tune of Wired All Wrong’s Break Out the Battle Tapes.

A Week Remembering VS System, Part 3

Today’s installment (let’s see if I can actually get out five articles this week. Might have to cut it to four) is about pure, unadulterated agression. I give you the hidden rush deck.

DC Legends City Championships: Injustice Gang (Me) vs. Skrulls (Silver Age)

Ah, DC Legends. The second wave of VS System’s restructuring, and the first instance of DC cards with the new card layout. This was, of course, also the last DC set in VS System, and the announcement of the death of DC in VS was one of the early warning signs that things were slowly coming to an end. The Injustice Gang team in DC Legends had two separate themes. The first, a refeature of the original Injustice Gang theme from the Justice League set, force the opponent to draw lots of cards and then punished him for it, mostly by having the opponent take damage for drawing, stopping them from using plot twists, burning them for the total numbers of cards in hand, etc. The second theme was altogether new, and it was the theme I used to build my deck. This was an over the top, super strong hidden deck that featured characters with abilities that made them stronger off initiative. It’s one of those hidden rush decks that plays fast and loose with endurance. You can kill very fast under the right circumstances, but you can die very fast as well if the stars have not aligned in your favor. Let’s take a look at the basics of the deck.

Characters:

4x Penguin, Gentleman of Crime

3x Catwoman, Cat O Nine Tails

4x Johnny Quick, Earth 3

2x Superwoman, Earth 3

4x Black Manta, Deepwater Denizen

2x Owlman, Earth 3

4x Jemm, Son of Saturn

1x Ultraman, Earth 3

4x White Martian, Earth 3

2x Prometheus, New Year’s Evil

Plot Twists:

4x Secret Files

3x Mobilize

4x Flying Kick

4x Blinding Rage

4x Savage Beatdown

4x Big Leagues

2x Crime Syndicate of Amerika

Locations:

3x Hunte Castle

2x Hellfire Club

It should be noted that I only had two Crime Syndicates at the time I played this deck.

Hunte Castle/Hellfire Club: Two cards that have team-stamped effects that have nothing to do with Injustice Gang. Their non-stamped effects, of course, are what matter, and both give across the board attack pumps to hidden area characters. Shocking that I would want hidden area attack pumps, I know. Getting one or both of these out adds such a huge damage output over the course of a game, especially if you hit it early enough.

Many pumps! HANDLE IT! NOW!!!! You’ve got the standard seven search cards to ensure you get as much of your curve as possible, and the rest is just simple, raw attack pumps. Hell, more than half the characters are either oversized or offer attack bonuses in certain situations. It’s a simple situation. You kill your opponent before he can kill you. Because of all the attack pumps in this deck, it’s not difficult to see things like Black Manta attacking direct for close to 20 on turn three. This ends the game quickly.

THE MATCH

This was the finals of the City Championships. Both of us knew the game would end FAST, considering that Injustice Gang hidden and Skrulls are two of the fastest killers in the format. Plus, they both predicate themselves on the hidden area (The Skrulls deck uses Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter Earth to move all the cosmic Skrulls hidden and Captain America, Skrull Imposter to make them unstunnable). I thought I had the advantage, considering that the Skrulls work better when attacking characters, and Injustice Gang works better attacking directly. As long as I got my character curve and hit some pumps along the way, I was confident I could take him down.

I recall the match lasting maybe ten minutes at most. I killed on either four or five, I’m not sure exactly which turn it was, but it was significant because both of us were well into the negatives on the kill turn. Flying Kicks and Savage Beatdowns were flying fast and furious on both sides of the board. Black Manta was a star, attacking direct for probably 30+ damage in total just by himself. Johnny Quick made sure to one-way any Skrull that was left visible would be taken down without the stun back. I guess the match itself wasn’t all that amazing or spectacular, but it was just impressive seeing the immense damage that could be caused in such a short period of time. We’re talking about final endurance totals of -40 to -20 in five turns. 90 endurance loss in five turns for a non-combo deck is pretty good, especially considering that I did over 50 in one turn alone.

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This post was written to the tune of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins [Original Cast Recording]

A Week Remembering VS System, Part 2

I can blame this part not coming out last night on receiving season 8 of Smallville on DVD in the mail. Instead of posting, I watched a few episodes and exercised for about three hours. Good night.

Marvel Legends Build a Legend Event: Jean Grey Abuse (Me) vs. Jean Grey Abuse

Ah, the dreaded mirror match. Build a Legend was a format that was created in the wake of the release of the Marvel Legends set. This set featured “legends,” characters that not only had multiple drops in the set, but also had plot twists and locations that keyed off controlling them (“Use only if you control Wolverine” or “Target Wolverine gets X” and so on). These were some powerful themes, and the format dictated that decks would only be legal only if they contained at least twelve cards that referenced a specific character. These could take the role of character cards, plot twists, locations, or equipment. I had been working on a Jean Grey based deck since the release of Marvel Legends, partially because I loved her theme (she gets stronger for each Jean Grey character card in your KO’d pile to represent the numerous times she has died), and partially because it involves playing an absurdly large five drop, which is always fun. I was not at all surprised that Tom also brought a Jean Grey deck to the party, considering his love of all things redheads. Here’s an approximation of the decklist.

Characters:

4x Jean Grey, Teen Telepath

3x Jean Grey, Telekinetic Fighter

4x Wolverine, Logan

2x Jean Grey, Age of Apocalypse

3x Emma Frost, Ice Queen

1x Nightcrawler, Hit Factory

4x Jean Grey, Phoenix Rising

3x Colossus, Organic Steel

1x Jean Grey, Red

2x Juggernaut, The Unstoppable

1x Professor X, World’s Most Powerful Telepath

2x Jean Grey, Phoenix Force

Plot Twists:

4x Mobilize

4x Splintering Consciousness

4x Turnabout

4x Flying Kick

3x Telepathic Suppression

3x Savage Beatdown

3x New and Improved

3x Sneak Attack

Locations:

3x Cerebro

Let’s talk individual cards.

Jean Grey, Phoenix Rising/New and Improved: The heart of the deck, this Jean Grey gets +1/+1 counters for each Jean Grey in the KO’d pile when she’s recruited. What’s shocking is despite this awesome power, she still starts out at the standard 9/9 size for any five drop. She can get very big, and it can happen very fast. With close to 20 Jeans in the deck, it’s not difficult to have a Jean Grey character card ready-to-hand (Oh God, I just used Heideggerian language) to discard for a power-up, or the recruit cost of Emma Frost, Ice Queen, or the discard cost for Cerebro and Mobilize. The added benefit of New and Improved allows you to KO your 2 cost Jean (who should still be on the table considering the high defense of both Wolverine and Emma Frost) to get two extra +1/+1 counters and add another Jean to your KO’d pile. It’s not difficult to get the five drop to 15/15 or higher on turn five, which is just a massive problem for your opponent to handle.

Telepathic Suppression: This card is a super star simply because of its effect on some game based effects that would not necessarily be clear otherwise. Telepathic Suppression stops a character from being targeted by anything during an attack. This usually acts perfectly fine as a plot twist fizzle, whether you’re stopping attack or defense pumps on a character. What many people did not immediately realize is that both powering up and reinforcing are game based effects that target a character (i.e. the actual effect of a power-up is Discard a character card -> Target attacker or defender that shares a name with the discarded character card gets +1/+1 this attack, and the actual effect of a reinforcement is Exhaust an adjacent support row character that shares a team affiliation to target character -> Target character is reinforced this attack). Telepathic Suppression thus is one of the few (if only) cards that can stop both power-ups and reinforcement, and considering the Build a Legend format, stopping power-ups is always a good thing.

Everything else is relatively self explanatory for why it’s in the deck and how it works.

THE MATCH

Tom’s version of the deck was very different than mine. Tom was fully committed to Jean, and basically played her at every possible drop. Once he passed turn five, he would usually KO his five drop Jean to New and Improved in order to play out a new one that would get progressively larger as he filled his KO’d pile. This was a weakness to his deck, and I think it’s why the match turned out the way it did. I was much more focused on having a full curve of characters and only expecting to play Jean on three turns (2, 5, and 8). Characters like Wolverine, Emma Frost, Colossus and Juggernaut allowed for a more robust board, and despite some good work by Tom early (using his Jean Grey, Age of Apocalypse to fizzle a Splintering Consciousness and a Mobilize), I used my extra characters to get a hefty endurance lead heading into turn 8. Once we reached turn 8, it became a duel of 8 drop Jeans. Jean Grey, Phoenix Force has the ability to activate to bounce the whole board and go to the KO’d pile. Tom bounced everything on turn 8, I bounced everything on turn 9, him on turn 10, me on turn 11. Going into 12, I was concerned. Tom had a Slaughter Swamp face up, which meant he could constantly recur his 8 drops, of which he ran four. I only had two in the deck and no recursion, which meant my 8’s were no longer in the picture. He could bounce my stuff all day and I could do nothing to stop it. I don’t think it occurred to me at the time that I basically had Tom completely locked down, and he wouldn’t be able to push any damage through (though he probably didn’t realize that because he hadn’t seen my whole deck), and I could just win on time if necessary. I was leading somewhere in the vicinity of 23 to 9 at that point, and Tom’s turn twelve (on his initiative) consisted of playing Jean Grey, Teen Telepath and KO’ing her to New and Improved to bring out a simply massive Jean Grey, Phoenix Rising that was probably a 27/27 or something equally ridiculous. What’s important is that he had one attack kill power on the board, and I didn’t have an 8 drop Jean to bounce it.

It was at this point that I realized I had the game. I used a Mobilize in my resource row to search out Professor X, World’s Most Powerful Telepath, playing Jean Grey, Telekinetic Fighter (and putting another Jean in my hand due to her effect) to satisfy his Loyalty requirement. I dropped Professor X on the board and activated him on Tom’s Jean Grey, which would exhaust her to remove her attacking threat and have the added bonus of burning him for close to 30 endurance loss to end the game. He responded by KO’ing Jean to New and Improved. This was not something I considered, and I had to think about what I could do. Professor X was exhausted and all I had was my little 3/2 Jean Grey. Once again, I did have the game locked at this point, I just didn’t realize it, so I was determined to finish things right there. I attacked with Jean. A Flying Kick pushed her attack to 6, leaving me three away from the kill. At this point, I knew I had won, but I decided to be suspenseful. There was a bit of a crowd around the table considering that our game was by far the longest of the round, and seeing a mirror match involving twelve resources on a side is going to draw some eyes. I powered up my Jean with the two remaining Jean Greys I had in my hand, bumping her attack to 8. One more was all I needed. I paused for effect, took a deep breath and activated Cerebro. The first card off the top was a Savage Beatdown, which is ironic considering it would have given me plenty of attack to finish the job. It went to the bottom. The second, and final (and Tom’s best chance at survival) card from Cerebro was revealed to be the necessary Jean Grey. I pitched a Telepathic Suppression and powered up for the win. Tom doesn’t know I had another Mobilize in my row and I could have just searched for the Jean for the win.

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This post was written to the tune of Tom Waits’ Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards

A Week Remembering VS System, Part 1

This was supposed to be posted yesterday, but in part due to the fantastic Comic Geek Speak Episode 700 being a close to three hour behemoth and Monday being one of my busier television nights, I’m going to throw two of these up on the blog today. In part because I want to write on this thing more (this is becoming a disturbing theme) and in part because I had a few recent discussions about the topic at hand, I’m going to spend this week talking about VS SYSTEM, the single greatest collectible card game ever made, that died quietly at the end of last year. I’m going to reminisce about my five favorite matches. First up is the very first tournament I ever played, the inaugural Random Punks hobby league.

Random Punks: Heralds of Galactus/Inhumans (Me) vs. High Voltage (Squadron Supreme/Other Stuff)

Random Punks is a format in which rares are not allowed in the game and decks must be built using only common and uncommon cards. The choice of playing a Heralds of Galactus/Inhumans team-up deck that is designed to gain endurance and stall was a simple one for a few reasons. Some of the true adages of VS System deck building is to have character search cards and oversized characters for their cost. Most of the cards that give you these advantages are rare. The Heralds of Galactus team has an uncommon search card (Kindred Sprits, which has the added bonus of searching for two characters at the detriment of limiting your draw capabilities) and at that point in time had the only non-rare 8 cost character (Tyrant, The Original Herald). There was also the added bonus of the Heralds’ life gaining abilities, and some nice card drawing choices. The Inhumans added the extra flair of using Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth to move important cosmic characters to the hidden area, and Human Torch, The Invisible Man to allow for the team to be reinforced and mitigate damage. I do not have a decklist for the deck anymore, but I can give a list that will give an idea of what the deck was trying to do.

Characters:

4x Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend

4x Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter Earth

1x Silver Surfer, Skyrider of the Spaceways

4x Frankie Raye <> Nova, Soul Searcher

4x Human Torch, The Invisible Man

1x Morg, Corrupt Destroyer

3x Air-Walker, Harbinger of Despair

1x Silver Surfer, Righteous Protector

3x Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation

3x Galactus, The Maker

2x Tyrant, The Original Herald

Plot Twists:

3x Cosmic Necessity

3x Relentless Onslaught

4x Kindred Spirits

4x The Power Cosmic Unleashed

4x Extended Family, Team-Up

4x Cover Fire

2x A Proud Zinco Product

Locations:

3x Elemental Converters

2x World Eater Apparatus

2x Soul World

Once again, this list is most likely not accurate. A couple of specific thoughts about cards in the deck:

Cover Fire: This card is STUPID GOOD in this deck on this team. Every single character but Franklin Richards has range (Yes, even Lockjaw). If the deck is working, Franklin is sending every character into the hidden area every turn starting with three, so on turn five it would be the opponent’s initiative (the deck wants to go second because Destroyer is oversized and Tyrant wrecks people since no one else has an 8), when the 8/11 monster Air-Walker, Harbinger of Despair is the only visible character on your field and you have some Cover Fires as backup, they are going to get brick walled. This allows you to foster board presence (which is important for both Cover Fire and the exhaustion effects of World-Eater Apparatus and Cosmic Necessity) and save endurance to last until 8. Of course, the problem with choosing evens is the fact that Galactus, The Maker almost never gets a chance to activate, but that’s not a big deal.

Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation: A common six drop that gets large enough to stun sevens? Yes, please. The Power Cosmic Unleashed loves this guy, especially because you can’t use it until combat, so it usually surprises people and leads to a six on six one-way stun. That’s often the beginning of the end.

Cosmic Necessity: Making your opponents choose can often lead to good things. The choice offered by Cosmic Necessity (either gaining five endurance or drawing two cards) directly led to every one of my wins during that tournament. The only person that made me gain endurance lost because of it (more on that later), and the cards I drew were almost always exactly what I needed to finish my opponent off. It’s the perfect card for this format.

THE MATCH

Things went well for both of us in this game. I hit my drops in concert, with Lockjaw leading to Franklin, and Franklin shipping Frankie Raye to the hidden area to get my card draw mojo going early. I also hit my team-up early, which helped immensely. Bryan took the endurance lead early thanks to the giant Melissa Gold <> Songbird, Sonic Carapace. Her effect allowed me to reuse a Cosmic Necessity for a total of ten endurance gain. This was significant, especially considering High Voltage and its outside combat endurance burn capabilities. Worldeater Apparatus was humming along, and we reached the war of attrition stage, which huge characters on each side (my Destroyer, his Albert Gaines <> Nuke, Atomic Powerhouse). We reached eight, Tyrant did his thing, and both of us were pushed into the negatives. Golden Archer was burning for six. Black Panther was using his Advanced Hardware to burn for three. I ended up winning by about two endurance (we’re talking -13 to -11, or something in that range) thanks to Worldeater and that double Cosmic Necessity, as well as Human Torch’s reinforcement. It was enough to weather the storm and come out on top thanks to the combined 49 attack of my 6, 7, and 8 drops. I ended up winning my first ever tournament and coming away with a playmat and two EA Mobilizes.

Now, I’m aware of a couple things. One, the fact that I never update this thing means that no one is going to read it. Two, the few people that might due to some self serving Twitter/Facebook links won’t care one lick about the game or understand half the things I’m talking about here.  Such is the cross to bear for niche entertainment. Do stay tuned. I should hopefully finish that story soon (it hasn’t been updated due to lack of time, not lack of interest) and talk about some other things in the (hopefully) near future.

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This post was written to the tune of MUTEMATH’s Armistice