Illustrated by Starshock 12

My favorite video games have always been those involving green pixies (except maybe Wand of Gamelon).  Don’t ask me why.  I’m sure it’s some deep-seeded desire to wear tights or something.  More likely it has something to do with my unhealthy fixation on all things green.

What does this have to do with Vs?  Aside from the word ‘Link’, nothing!  I’d really just like to present a link to you; or more acturately, links.  I’m going to use this post to link every article I do (or contribute to) for Steve Garrett’s site The Kamiza.

Here’s what we have so far:

• I Don’t Make Movies, But if I Did They’d Have a Samurai (12/04/08)
• MEV Preview: Back From the Dead (11/21/08)
• MEV Preview: Weapon Plus Satellite (11/06/08)
• MEV Preview: Three-Card Monte (10/31/08)
• MEV Preview: Master Thief (10/30/08)
• Would the Real Scott Please Stand Up? (10/24/08)
• MEV Preview: Endangered Species and Rapid Fire (10/22/08)
• MEV Preview: Fearless Leader (10/09/08)
• Bee-Dazzled! (9/26/08)

*Click on the picture to see other crazy-cool virtual cards by Guglio!

Those of you that haven’t been at The-Kamiza lately may not have noticed that I have jumped ship.  That is to say that my content will be posted over there from now on.  I’ll still keep this address up because of my Infinity Gauntlet page and my Haves and Wants pages.

Thanks to those of you who have followed me through the months.  As of this posting I’ve dutifully put up just over thirty articles in just over thirty weeks (7 months).  In all I had over 6,000 hits, which comes out to over 200 views per article.  That’s still small time, but it was reason enough for me to keep writing.  I hope those of you checking in on me will continue to do so over at Steve’s site.

Speaking of which, I already put up my first article there entitled “Bee-Dazzled“.  Ridiculous, I know, but check it out anyway.

Peace out,
Vs. Corps!

A business lives or dies based on its location.  Growing up I had always wished that Manana, the closest town to where I live, had a McDonalds.  Given that the town is off the beaten path with only a population of around ten, my dreams never came to fruition.  I wasn’t bitter though because I understood economics, at least at a base level.

Well, a form of location economics applies to Vs. as well.  We’ve seen how powerful Ahmed and friends can be with the appropriate locations, but before them there was another team that focused on locations… League of Assassins.  They had the first real location search with The Demon’s Head, but there really weren’t that great of locations to search out at the time.  The team had Flying Fortress, but compare that to Brother Eye.  They also had The Demon’s Head, but compare that to Ahmed.  They even had Mountain Stronghold, but Checkmate got both Connie Webb and Brother I Satellite.  All in all, Checkmate was a huge upgrade on the old location theme.

The new League of Assassins come out of the DC Legends set and are a significant improvement over their predecessors.  They still have all their decent old cards, but now there are also a ton of generic locations that can help them out.  This is what’s available in Modern Age:

Team (or Ra’s) Stamped:

• Harsh Judgement
• The Demon’s Head
• Tower of Babel
• Demonfang
• Divide and Conquer
• Flying Fortress
• Mountain Stronghold

Tower of Babel is a bit redundant because the five drop Ra’s al Ghul does something very similar, but we’ll keep it on the back burner in case we have space for it.  Divide and Conquer is reliant on our opponents running good locations (similar to Espionage), so it’s more of a tech card, but so very often it will be a wasted slot.  I think we’ll omit it for now.  I’ve always been more of a fan of playing my own game than reacting to my opponent’s.  When you focus too much on tech cards, you switch gears from “trying to win” to “trying to survive”.  That’s just my play style though (and probably why I do so badly at constructed!).

Available Locations:

• Coast City
• Research Facility
• Unstable Ground
• Birthing Chamber
• Construction Site
• Lazarus Pit, Death’s Door
• Plague Zone
• Stryker’s Island
• The Demon’s Quarters
• Evil Lair
• Espionage
• Alias Investigations
• Asgard

Yes it’s true, the new Marvel Universe set has given League of Assassins some fantastic “MUN”ition.  Mainly Alias Investigations and Asgard.  Alias Investigations should be dynamo in a deck that’s mostly locations and characters because it can really help us hit our curve.  Asgard on the other hand, seems like a good card to get back characters that accidentally get put into the row with replacement effects like Merlyn’s.  For instance, If a character gets put into the row with something like Merlyn’s effect, then replaced with Research Facility, Asgard can rescue him/her.

Since many League of Assassins cards replace locations, I though using Unstable Ground in this deck would be a cool idea.  Many of your other locations you want to keep around all game, so it’s nice to have this card to blow to effects like Meryln’s, Talia’s, David Cain’s, Demonfang’s, etc.

Construction Site, while appearing as useful as Research Facility, isn’t very useful when half your characters already replace face-up locations.  There will be a couple of times that you row a plot twist and want to play it, but the only vital plot twist in this location-heavy deck will probably The Demon’s Head, which replaces itself.  Besides, the loss of the Nyssa six drop in this format means that we don’t need the ENTIRE row to be locations, just most of it.

Speaking of losses in this format, the League did lose a couple good cards to Silver Age.  Negative Zone from the Heralds set was awesome for hidden character tech, but it was replaced by Plague Zone (one Zone for another).  Seibo’s Garden was also a location that bit the dust, but it wasn’t game changing enough to shed tears over.

Nyssa was a painful loss for the league, but now we can play her seven drop version, who is awesome on the “D”.

Here’s a quick rundown of other cards we lost to Silver Age tagged with Modern Age cards that essentially fulfill the same slots:

• Soul World is replaced by Asgard
• The Kyln is similar in function to the new Lazarus Pit
• The Substructure is the same as Research Facility
• Battleworld/Rann/Thanagar are all similar to Tarnax but +1anything is pretty tame.

Alright, here’s a list I came up with after much thought:

4 Hassim, Loyal Retainer
3 Shadow Assassin, Army
4 Ubu, Ra’s al Ghul Bodyguard
2 The Mad Dog, Rabid Killer
4 Merlyn, Direct Hit Man
2 Talia, Heir Apparent
4 Ra’s al Ghul, Demon’s Head Rising
2 David Cain, World Class Assassin
1 Lady Shiva, Master Assassin
1 Nyssa Raatko, Maiden of Death
1 Ra’s al Ghul, The Demon’s Head

4 The Demon’s Head
4 Demonfang

4 Mountain Stronghold
4 Unstable Ground
3 Flying Fortress
3 Lazarus Pit, Death’s Door
2 Stryker’s Island
2 Alias Investigations
2 Research Facility
2 Asgard
1 The Demon’s Quarters
1 Plague Zone

While some location counts are a little low, the high amount of replacement effects mean that you should be cycling through your deck pretty darn fast.  Use your replacement effects first on Unstable Ground, then on anything you have duplicates of.  This burn combined with David Cain’s burn, means you should out-damage any other curve deck that tries to match you drop for drop.

This deck also has a lot of combat tricks with Stryker’s Island, Demonfang, and Flying Fortress.  Add this to the out of combat tricks of Merlyn and The Demon’s Quarters and you should be able to exert a decent element of control.  Speaking of Stryker’s Island, it should always be three or four attack with the range of costs in this deck, and that’s pretty darn good for an every-turn pump.

Lady Shiva is obviously amazing on the offense, while Nyssa can force your opponent to go through her multiple times on the defense.

It’s also worth noting that this deck is one card away from being a Ra’s al Ghul legend deck.  If there are any modern legend tournaments coming up, you wouldn’t have to change much to make this deck a viable and fun option.

Let me know what you guys think.  What changes would you make?  Should Coast City have made the cut to combo with Nyssa and Ra’s?  Did I have too much Sudafed to even remain coherent this week?  Look forward to hearing the constructive comments!

Afterthoughts:

How would a Golden Age deck with the old Merlyn and Thunderbolts Mountain work?  It could go off earlier than Sensei did in the previous Deep Green incarnation.  Deep Green 2.0 coming to a theatre near you!  Just Kidding, I’ll leave that one up to you guys!

…Well have a nap then fire z missiles!

If you don’t know what I’m talking about you have to go to www.iamletired.com  It’s an old site, but still a classic.  It sort of reflects my week… everything went to poop.  I got some huge sinus infection from mold in the vents at our school (from one of the science teacher’s lessons) and it all but incapacitated me.  I was still able to work, but when I went home I hit my bed like a sack of (insert generic heavy blunt object)’s.  Therefore, you got nothing out of me.  I am le sorry.

It also brings me to something I heard on The Ring Has Chosen (episode 59 I believe), where the Lost Hemisphere guys were lamenting the end of the Vs. blog.  They had some good points (there’s a reason they’re the best blog), but their biggest and best idea was consolidation.  There are many of us that only put up content weekly (less than that when mold strikes).  If were to combine a couple blogs here and there we would double the content and relieve deadline stress off each other.  Sounded like fabulous advice to me, so I’m throwing myself to the masses.  If anyone out there wants to combine blogs I would be a big proponent.  I’ve been begging for guest writers from day one, but this is a step farther in a very right direction.  If you’re interested, reply to this thread or drop me an e-mail at scottkthompson@maktoob.com!

Don’t worry though, I’ll still try to bring weekly content even if I have to remain a solo act.  I am already putting the finishing touches on this Wednesday’s article so you better get your tickets early

See you then!

PS: To the Lost Hemisphere guys… Summer of Love rocks.  You make me waste my valuable prep hours reading your articles because I simply can’t wait until I get home.  You definitely deserve another Blog of the Month title!

As I proceeded to clean newly spilled chocolate milk off of my rare folders, I praised God for the inventor of clear protective sleeves.  I also though, “Why do I have so many rares that I don’t use?”  Most decks use a few rares, and some decks do use more than others, but Vs. has yet to make it to the state of Yu-Gi-Oh where its players shell out a fortune for the most competitive decks.  There are currently a ton of cheap competitive decks in every format of Vs.  Checkmate builds had very few essential rares and dominated the meta forever (whatever happened to them anyway?).

Anyway, screw cheap competitive decks.  I want to use my rares.  I want to find the most competitive deck that ONLY uses rares.  Maybe this has already been done, but I’ve not seen it yet so I figured I’d give it a shot.  For the sake of my valuable time,  I decided to limit myself to Silver Age.

With the current abundance of legends cards (most of which are rare) you wouldn’t think it would be too hard to build an all rare deck, but it was kind of a challenge.  First of all, I couldn’t decide which team to focus on.  Here are some builds that are on the cutting room floor.

• JLA was my first choice because I love the JLA.  I was going to make a Flash legend deck that finished with Barry Allen on six.  The deck could also have run the Batman three drop, the Wonder Woman four drop, and the Superman five drop because they’re all freakin’ amazing!
• Fantastic Four builds are often reknowned for their high amounts of rares, unfortunately, they don’t have a rare Sue before turn seven.  This makes Force Field Projection (one of their sweetest cards) a no go.  One way around this is to use Carrying the torch to make someone else Sue early on in the game, so this build is still possible.
• Marvel Knights has almost two characters at every drop that are concealed and rare.  Throw in some Wild Rides, Savage Beatdowns, and Blinding Rages and you practically have MKKO.

I know there are many more viable options out there <cough> X-MEN <cough>, but I decided to stop searching when I remembered a conversation I had on the ride home from Gen Con with Eric Madden.  We were both talking about the best way to build a Captain America legend.  It didn’t take long to figure out that most of his good cards were rare, but also flat out amazing.  There was also the fact that I actually had them all since I’m only three cards short of having everything from MUN.  It was decided…

Captain America’s rare legend cards are all very defensive.  It makes sense for the cards of a shield-wielding hero to be defensive, but it sure doesn’t give you many options when building a deck.  I was essentially pigeon-holed into stall.

First of all, a digression.  I want to compare Captain America’s Shield to the Batarang…

As you can see, though both are incredibly symbolic weapons of their namesakes, Batarang sucks hard while Captain’s Shield rocks.  Why would you underdrop just to use the Batarang once?  The Shield’s only weakness when compared to the Batarang is in the choice of who exhausts.  This can often be played around by leaving only one non-stunned character on your opponent’s side, then using the Shield.  The fact that Captain can still use his shield if he’s already exhausted is also another big hit in the ‘pro’ column.  What were the designers of the Batarang thinking?

Anyway, onto the deck construction.  When searching rare Avengers characters there aren’t too many options.  After eliminating ones that are obviously not stall related, you’re left with an oddly large number of Spider-Men and Captains.  This is perfect when so many stall cards target those two characters specifically.  Here’s a list I came up with:

4 Spider-Man, New New Avenger
4 Dr. Strange, Secret Avenger
4 Hawkeye, Loud Mouth
3 Punisher, Secret Avenger
4 Captain America, Champion License
3 Spider-Man, Secret Avenger
1 Wolverine, Secret Avenger
2 Captain America, Living Legend
2 Spider-Man, Stark’s Protege
1 The Sentry, Mighty Avenger

4 Captain America’s Shield

4 Mobilize
3 Avengers Reassembled
3 Gift Wrapped
4 Big Leagues
4 Against All Odds
4 Charging Star
3 Steely Resolve
3 Level 12 Intelligence

As you can see there’s a ton of defensive pumps rocking this deck.  Between exhaustion effects, fat butts from defensive pumps, and the effects of the two Captains, you should be able to smash your opponents late game pretty easily.  I’m curious what you guys can come up with for an all rare deck.  Can anyone think of a deck that costs more than this that is equally competitive (or more so!).  Thanks for reading guys!

Alright, I’m back from everyone’s favorite vacation destination… Indy!  I once again traveled with the Madden brothers (Paul and Eric) that I’ve mentioned in the past, but this time my roommate Martie was along for the ride as well.  Another carload of comrades from the St. Cloud area also came so I always had someone to hang with during any given time.

Vs. had a decent showing, though it was well hid by Upperdeck in the far corner of the room under a lone banner.  It was a Mega-Weekend so they had a Silver and Modern Age tournament along with various side events.  Since we arrived late Wednesday night with little time to prepare for the Silver Age event, we decided to skip it.  This was a bummer to me because I had some Spider-Friends shenanigans I wanted to test out in the Silver Age environment.  Modern Age never excites me as much because of its limited card pool.

Anywho… on Friday they had a Super Crossover Sealed event which the four of us thought sounded incredibly fun.  Since we hadn’t done anything Vs.-related Thursday we decided to give it a go.  Below are the packs I cracked:

MOR
Blob, Fred Dukes
Robot Enforcer, Army
Wild Sentinel, Army
Doom Guards, Army
Psylocke, Betsy Braddock
Black Tom, Thomas Cassidy
Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner
Bishop, Lucas Bishop
Dragon Man, Experimental Monster
Medical Attention
Marvel Team-Up
Surprise Attack
The Power Cosmic
Base of Operations

DOR
Azrael, Jean Paul Valley
Mr. Freeze, Dr. Victor Fries
Spoiler, Stephanie Brown
Thuggee, Army
Ratcatcher, Otis Flannegan
Professor Hugo Strange, Psycho-Analyst
Terra, Tara Markov
Ra’s Al Ghul, Master Swordsman
Dick Grayson Nightwing, Titan Leader
Charaxes, Drury Walker
Dinah Laurel Lance Black Canary, Canary Cry
Teen Titans Go!
Mountain Stronghold
Lazarus Pit

MVL
Stryfe, X-Cutioner
Valeria Richards, Child of Light and Darkness
Multiple Man, Army
Ant-Man, King of the Hill
Black Tom, Callous Opportunist
Psylocke, Second Skin
Unus, Angelo Unuscione
Storm, Elemental Goddess
Crystal, Inhuman Elemental
Eureka!
Devastating Blow
Commanding Nature
Dealing with the Devil, Team-Up
Dark Alley

DCL
Big Barda, Furious Fatale
Catwoman, Cat O’ Nine Tails
Deathstroke the Terminator, Killing Machine
Argent, Toni Monetti
Mark Desmond Blockbuster, Mindless Brute
Firestorm, Ronnie Raymond
Gorilla Grodd, Grodd Awful
Owlman, Earth 3
Follow the Leader
Teen Titans Go!
Reform the League
Break You
Mightiest Heroes
Coast City

MUN
Cloak, Secret Avenger
Talisman, Elizabeth Twoyoungmen
Eric O’Grady Ant Man, Fugitive At Large
Hiroim, The Shamed
Drax the Destroyer, Titan Slayer
Speedball Penance, Painmonger
Red Skull, Johann Schmidt
Lady Deathstrike, Opportunistic Killer
Secret Government
Flattened
Losing the Argument
Liberating Number 42
Righteous Anger
Atlantis Attacks!.

I’m no expert, but here’s what I slapped together…

Draft Deck:
Speedball <> Penance, Painmonger
Argent, Toni Monette
Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner
Bishop, Lucas Bishop
Unus, Angelo Unuscione
Owlman, Earth 3
Crystal, Inhuman Elemental
Charaxes Drury Walker
Dinah Laurel Lance <> Black Canary, Canary Cry
Firestorm, Ronnie Raymond
Gorilla Grodd, Grodd Awful
Lady Deathstrike, Opportunistic Killer
Dick Grayson <> Nightwing, Titan Leader
Red Skull, Johann Shmidt
Dragon Man, Experimental Monster
Storm, Elemental Goddess
Ra’s Al Ghul, Master Swordsman
Mark Desmond <> Blockbuster, Mindless Brute
Teen Titans Go!
Teen Titans Go!
Dealing with the Devil, Team-Up
Break You
Commanding Nature
Atlantis Attacks!
Devastating Blow
Reform the League
Mightiest Heroes
Mountain Stronghold
Base of Operations
Coast City

Some card choices explained…

Many of the lower drops have activated abilities that could be used in conjunction with Teen Titans Go.  Dick Grayson and Mark Desmond also work great with Teen Titans Go, the latter getting two stuns in on turn seven without fear of stunning back.

Red Skull is one of the best defensive five drops in the game, and Dragon man is fantastic in this format because he’s always up against a Fantastic Four character!

Ra’s replacement effect is a great way to get more pumps late game and I also luck-sacked my way into a Mountain Stronghold so I practically had to run him.  More than once I left him wide open for a big attack, only to flip the location to give him reinforcement!

I hope you did a double take when you saw that I ran Dealing with the Devil in an event that requires no teaming up, but I had good reason.  Since you can pitch Dealing with the Devil to draw a card, it essentially let me run a 29 card deck.  A 29 card deck with two character search cards is incredibly consistent and I highly recommend it!

Atlantis attacks combos incredibly nicely with Mightiest Heroes or Base of Operations.  Speaking of Base of Operations, it’s an incredibly useful card in the sealed environment.  It’s the equivalent of drawing three cards and pitching one during the draw phase.  It was another reason my deck was very consistent.  As a side note, this card was an MVP in my crappy deck for the Marvel Trading Card Game on the DS!

The rest of the deck is attack pumps, one of which (Reform the League) filled my KO’d pile up for Mark Desmond.  Incidentally, Desmond only didn’t have ten cards in the KO’d pile once all tournament, so I’m pretty happy I ran him.  Though to be serious, my only other choice was Stryfe *shudder*.

Normally when I take game notes during a match it’s in the constructed environment.  That’s pretty easy to do because when you play agains a Family of Four deck you know that Mr. Fantastic is the four drop, Sue is the three drop, etc.  This makes it very easy to recall matches.  Super Sealed is quite a bit different.  My opponent could be running any random cards from five different sets.  Therefore, I took very brief outlines of the games so that I wouldn’t go insane from all the note taking!  Here’s kind of how the day went…

Round 1 Vs. Mathew Harris

I took the fewest notes for my first couple of rounds because I didn’t even think about writing about them until round three!  I know that I curved to seven, but Matt missed his seven drop.  Other than that it was a pretty uneventful game that pretty much came down to who drew more generic pumps.  I had the edge because I had won the die roll and got odds.  The final score was 3 to -10. (1-0)

Round 2 Vs. Eric Madden

Those of you who have read past tourney reports of mine have heard about the “Madden curse”.  It’s not the John Madden one that dooms featured football players for the rest of their careers.  Rather, it’s just that I get stuck playing one of the Maddens at every tournament I’ve ever played in that they’ve been present at (which is quite a few).  To make it worse, I usually lose to them, and this time was no exception.  Eric had a pretty rockin’ sealed deck, but I thought I had him beat.  I got odds again, and on seven I brought him down to -5 while I was still at 10.  Somehow, though, I he had enough pumps to get me down to -5 as well and the game went to turn eight.  He had another high drop to recruit but only had Argent, so I scooped.  Eric later went on to win the tournament without a single loss, so I don’t really feel too bad about losing to his stellar deck. (1-1)

Round 3 Vs. Alex Lloyd

Alex Lloyd is better known as Orange Soda Man (OSM) on Vs. Realms.  He’s a pretty cool cat who joined our team for random board games between matches.  I got odds this match and things were going back and forth for both of us until turn six when Alex had to underdrop Shiva, Sandra Woosan.  She’s a good underdrop when you have odds, but she was a textless 9/9 at this point in the match.  He did get in some good damage on turn six because he used No Man’s Land to exhaust my six drop and just focused on my lower drops.  When turn seven came I had Mark Desmond, Teen Titans Go, and ten cards in the KO’d pile.  This meant that I could throw my five and seven drop into his seven drop and ready my seven drop.  I then threw that same seven drop into his Shiva (whose text was now online, but to little effect).  The rest of my board attacked to the face for the win. (2-1)

Round 4 Vs. Reid Cox

This game we both missed drops but I think Reid’s was a little more crucial than mine.  I got odds and we both curved to five and I missed on six.  I had Dragon Man to fill in the void, which is pretty decent, especially when your five drop was the incredibly defensive Red Skull (the endurance loss that Red Skull shelled out was more than Dragon Man’s low defense hurt me).  Reid missed on seven and I recruited Blockbuster again.  I only had nine cards in my KO’d when Reid asked for a count, but when Mark Desmond attacked I was able to flip up a Reform the League for that last card.  With Dragon man able to take down his six drop with no pumps and Blockbuster able to attack his now-alone five drop, the game was essentially over and Reid scooped. (3-1)

Round 5 Vs. John Hall

I actually didn’t get odds this time…   John and I both had Base of Operations going from turn two on, but even with its help John never played a plot twist all game!  He never did miss a drop at least so I guess that’s something.  I, on the other hand, missed my three drop, but had Argent on turn two.  She was a 4/4 on turn three so I never felt like I missed a three drop.  Our drops traded blows back and forth, but in the end, John’s lack of plots killed him because I had drawn into quite a few! (4-1)

Round 6 Vs. Jared Steglich

Jared had three one drops on the field after turn two so I thought I was going up against a rush deck, but he later explained he’d drawn all three of the one drops in his deck!  From turn three on we both curved out, but he had Psylocke, Second Skin on five against my Dragon Man; and John Henry Irons, Working Man against my Ra’s Al Ghul.  This may not seem that bad for Jared, but Argent could put a counter on Dragon Man, my hidden Owlman made Dragon Man an extra +1/+1, and Reform the League was face up.  This meant that Dragon Man could be a 12/12 at a moment’s notice.  Similarly, Ra’s could quickly be a 15/15.  It’s also worth noting that Argent was protected by Ra’s with a Coast City in my row, so no attack was safe for John Henry, and Psylocke couldn’t even attack unless she teamed with John!  This stonewall allowed me to go into turn seven with a very healthy board. (5-1)

There you have it!  I got second place behind the undefeated Eric.  We walked away with a complete foil set, a complete non-foil set, and a box of Marvel Universe.  Like I warned, it was hard to remember a lot of details, but I tried to jot down key moments of each match for your scrutiny!  Hope you enjoyed the read.  Please submit any changes you would have made to the draft deck.

I must apologize for a lack of a post this week, or at least an article.  I got a new math teaching job and I’ve been spending the week setting up my room.  Not only do I need to be ready for my first couple weeks of teaching, but my room has to look spic and span for Open House this next Wednesday!  Like usual, even though I don’t have an article ready, I did still work on my site some.  I updated my Haves/Wants pages from changes made at Gen Con.

Speaking of Gen Con, I picked up cases of the Batman and X-Men starters for five bucks each.  That’s 40 little twenty six card decks that I can use to teach my classes that wonderfully “math-related” game we all love so much!  I also picked up a simple math game that’s pretty similar to Uno for my lower math class called ”Straw”.  We played Straw between all our tournament matches because there were always games going twenty minutes past time.  We even got Orange Soda Man from Vs. Realms in on the fun!

Join me next time when I unveil my Super Crossover Sealed report.  It’ll be on your screens Wednesday 8/27 when I should be caught up with everything else going on in my life.  Look forward to talking to you next week!

Alright, whilst working my summer job and prepping (albeit very little) for Gen Con, I got a few of the cards done in my Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) Essential Collection.  I figured I leak some now, do my Gen Con report next Wednesday, then hopefully get back to finishing this thing unless some genius discussion topic strikes me. But that has never happened before, so I wouldn’t hold your breath…  Except you Eric and Jose, you two can hold your breath.  Anywho, here’s some cards…

Xander’s new command position in the series is reflected in his ability to deploy slayers like nobody’s business.  The slayers themselves make each other stronger as they go down fighting.  These two cards are somewhat similar to running Aquaman, Arthur Curry with Sea Creatures.  Then again, Xander is also very similar to Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. in that they can both net you three two drops on turn four.  Xander’s lower stats are made up for with the Slayer’s built in stat booster.

Speaking of slayers, these are the real deal.  Faith has a suedo-Arkham theme in that she wants no one around her.  Buffy on the other hand, lends support to those around her, making her a great defensive play on seven.  Faith is a reservist because up to this point in the comic she’s only been tapped once by Giles for a mission.  She’s definitely seen as a rogue in the ranks of the good guys, so I tried to reflect that.  There will definitely be more cards reflecting the Buffy/Faith relationship; including a Finishing Move-like card.

If you’ve been following the run so far, you’d know that a rift has started to form between Giles and Buffy.  She’s starting to see just how far Giles will go for the good of humanity, no matter what the cost (think of the season 5 finale where he kills innocent little Ben to stop Glory).  As a result, Giles and Buffy have kind of been working together while simultaneously not talking about their plans with each other.  I’ll be interested to see how that turns out!

Finally, what is an Essential Collection without an alternate win condition?  Willow provides a Captain Marvel type win.  With Captain Marvel, Champion of Magic, you just have to survive to turn eight with 25 endurance.  With Willow, you have to survive with seven Magic plot twists face-up in your resource row.

I’d show you more, but my scanner stopped working.  I’ve finished cards for Andrew, Dracula, and Dawn, but I have to get images on them before I post them.  Let me know if any of these cards should have any changes made to them.  Once I release the second wave of these cards I’ll start up a tab for them so that you won’t have to look back through buried articles to see them.

See you all at Gen Con!

The Ring may have chosen Hal Jordan of Vs. Corps banner fame; but he certainly isn’t the only chosen one out there.  That’s right, I’m talking about Buffy Summers of Sunnydale California, er… formerly of Sunnydale California.  It kind of imploded in the last season of the TV show.  Luckily for me though, the story lived on in one of my favorite mediums: Graphic Novels!  In my book, that’s all you need to get the Vs. TCG treatment.  After all, how cool was the Hellboy expansion.  A small set like that would be perfect for Buffy and Co.  In fact, I once made a thread about it on Vs. Realms.  I think it was the only thing I’ve ever been “repped” for.  Here’s the link:

http://vsrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54387

I know Star Wars, a Dark Horse license, seems like an obvious choice for another Essential collection, as mentioned in another thread; but it doesn’t really fit the pseudo-fantasy realm of standard comic fare. Buffy the Vampire Slayer -recently starting it’s eight season in comic book form- on the other hand, does. It’s very similar to Hellboy in that our heroes and heroines are fighting demons from hell (or more accurately, the Hellmouth).

The license itself would be much easier to obtain than Star Wars (obviously), and I know a great deal of people who would buy into Versus just to take their Willow-Themed deck against every comic-book hero in printed form! Buffy obviously has a great cult fan-base, and this type of collection could be exactly the shot in the arm Versus needs.

Am I the only one that thinks this would be a sweet license to add to Versus? It’s possible, I do lead a pretty sheltered life. Let me know!

Buffy has already existed as a card game.  Formerly it was made by Score.  The biggest thing this long-dead game had going for it was the flavor.  It had so many cool tie-ins to the show and actually played out as close to an episode as you could expect from a card game.  It also had about the same amount of campy humor as the show.  The game only lasted a few expansions, but I was entertained enough by it to buy up a crapload of it dirt cheap at Gen Con a few years back.  I still get in a game every now and then, though my friend Rob has to re-teach me every time.  The game lives on through online virtual cards that people still make (similar to the Star Wars CCG), though a lot of them are over-powered.  The game had also sort of devolved into the card game “War” because people would play an “action” card for its numbers instead of for its text.

Anyway, it’s high time for me to make my own fantasy cards for Vs.  I’ve always wanted to, but never had the time.  Now, with the new leaked footage of the Buffy Animated Series found at the link below, my excitement has begun anew!

http://www.buffytheanimatedseries.com/

I’m going to enlist your help for this project.  I’m going to be making the cards throughout the week with your feedback.  Please submit any flavorful ideas for cards from the Buffy Season 8 comic in the comments section and I will try my best to make a card out of it.  Here are some ideas I’ve already thought of…

Buffy Summers could be a seven drop with a leader ability.  Heck, she runs an entire army now so she needs a leader ability!  Faith, our anti-hero slayer that’s near-equal to Buffy could be a six drop reservist that penalizes people around her (like those Arkham cards from the World’s Finest set).

Generic slayers and generic vampires could serve as army characters for the opposite decks, but we could still include slayers and vampires that serve bigger roles like Renee and Dracula.  Giles and Andrew are the researchers so they could serve as draw/filter/search cards like Barbara Gordon.

Xander Harris has already made reference to himself as Nicky Fury in the comic book, and he serves as a commander for Buffy, so he could throw out army slayers like Nick Fury from the Marvel Universe expansion.  Or he could give everyone +1 willpower, which would fit the theme of the show.  In the show he was constantly trying to find his place in the gang, and it was often explained that he was the heart, or humanizing character of the bunch.  So him “encouraging” characters on your board would be thematic.  This would also allow him to have the flavor text, “Give Will more power?!  Are you crazy?!”  It’s of course referring to Willow’s constant battle with her abilities and it just seems like something Xander would say!

Speaking of Willow, she could use magic plot twists like the Shadowpact team did.  Heck, there are a ton of magic users in Season 8, so a revisit to the magic theme would be perfect!  She would definately be the team’s eight drop.

Alright, the challenge is on.  I know at least four of the five people that actually read this blog like Buffy, so get thinking.  I don’t have the time to do this all by myself!  Thanks in advance!

Rarity always seemed to matter to me in Vs.  Most rare attack modifiers like Savage Beatdown, Big Leagues, Steely Resolve, Armageddon, Blinding Rage, etc. outshine their more common counterparts like Combat Reflexes and Acrobatic Dodge.  There is, however, an occasional common or uncommon that is so good you wonder how in the heck it got past the rare-detector.  Teen Titans Go! is the first card that comes to mind.  Though, when you really think about it, only one out of all twelve banned cards is actually a rare, so maybe I need to rethink my hypothesis about the value of rarity.

Back when the Justice League set came out I thought I had found another common card on par with the power of Teen Titans Go!  The first time I read this card I was taken aback.  I thought, “Like ‘Bill’ in the Pokemon TCG that nets you free cards with no drawback, you’d be an idiot not to run as many of these as allowed in your deck!”

That card was Death Times Five.  Coincidentally Death times five is a subtitle to a book in “The Gunsmith” series.  It’s about five young misfits causing mayhem in a rural western town.  Very similar to the five supervillains portrayed in the art on the similarly titled card.  Though I doubt anyone would make the mistake of calling these supervillains “kids”.  If the development team actually was pulling the title of this card from that ‘99 Western, I know exactly what my friend Robin would say…

All digressions aside, here’s the text of this easily misinterpreted card:

(1) Death Times Five

If target attacker would cause breakthrough while attacking a character this turn, instead, that character’s controller loses 5 endurance.

It’s easy to see how this card can be read two different ways.  In fact, many early rulings actually got this one wrong.  It stems from the fact that the object of the sentence starts out as the attacker, which leads you to assume that the “character” referred to later is still the attacker.  The object of the sentence is never explicitly changed to the defender, though that was the intent of the card.  Truly, the biggest crimes in literature are open-ended modifiers and unclear subject indicators.  As such, my first interpretation of this card was that not only did this card stop an attacker from causing breakthrough, but it also burned the attacker’s controller for five endurance.  Why wouldn’t you run 4x of a card that did that?  It’s like Surprise Attack and Burn Rubber rolled into one, wait… it’s better than those two cards rolled into one!

My thoughts immediately went towards ways to abuse this card.  I was going to run an Anti-Matter deck that used Johnny Quick and Slipstream for double attacks, while my opponent’s attacks to my open board would be met with Death Times Five!  I actually built this deck, but during its christening against my roommate’s Squadron Supreme variation, he told me he didn’t believe the card worked like I thought.  In my anger I turned to the forums for guidance, but alas… it appeared my roomie was correct.  I was not the only one who had been confused, but others more in the know than me were saying that it was the defender that lost five endurance, not the attacker.  This mess would have all been avoided had they worded Death Times Five similar to one of its precursors: Mystique, Raven Darkholme.  Mystique reads, “If Mystique would cause breakthrough to an opponent, instead, that opponent loses 5 endurance.”  You can’t get confused as to who is losing the endurance with Mystique’s wording, and she was printed in the very first set!

Well anyway, my Anti-Matter deck was still cool, because it was Anti-Matter, but it was crippled a little.  Then, just a few days ago I saw someone ask a question on the wording of Death Times Five and it triggered all these old memories anew.  I decided that I would still try to see if there was a use for this seemingly worthless card.  After all, why would they bother printing it if the defender would be the one losing endurance?

Well, it turns out that situationally this card is usable.  First of all, If your one drop is on the receiving end of an eight drop’s attack, you could turn twenty breakthrough to a mere five.  From the opposite side of things, your four drop attacking their five drop with a Flying Kick could have his one point of breakthrough turned into five.  This card is a life saver (an endurance saver at least).

Sure, you save a few points of endurance, or drop a couple points of endurance from your opponent’s total, but is there really a good use for this card?  After all, Teen Titans Go! would have been a pretty lame (or at least balanced) card if it weren’t for Roy Harper’s shenanigans.  The trick to seeing if this card is usable has nothing to do with giving more or receiving less endurance damage.  No, the trick lies in looking for situations in which you’d want a replacement modifier for breakthrough.  After all, Death Times Five makes whatever damage given or taken something other than breakthrough.  It’s an “instead of breakthrough” situation similar to how Lost City replaces power-ups with +3/+3 pumps.  When do we not want to give or receive breakthrough?

First lets talk about not wanting to take breakthrough.  In some instances it’s better to take the five burn from Death Times Five than five breakthrough.  The Joker, Killing Smile equipped with Laughing Gas is one of those instances.  There’s also Nocturne, Dark Kryptonian, Brass Grill, the new Wonder Man, and most Juggernaut-related cards.  These are just a few devastating cards that are stopped by a timely Death Times Five.

Now lets talk about not giving any breakthrough damage to your opponent.  It flies in the face of the very foundation of the game, but there is a team that fits the “Bill” (get it?!).  In fact, it turns out that the answer was smacking me in the face all along.  I was playing against my roommate’s Squadron Supreme No-Hand deck when I found that Death Times Five didn’t work like I’d hoped; and Squadron Supreme is also the team that has a theme that’s synergistic with how Death Times Five actually works!  It’s a small world ain’t it?  Though Squadron was famous for it’s “Look Ma, no hands” style beats, it also had a second theme that required you to not do breakthrough, lest you be stuck with the consequences.  It’s this theme that we’ll look at today.

Squadron Supreme has some cool support cards for their “no breakthrough” theme.  Eldritch Power and Squadron City are both +3 attack pumps for the turn that punish you for causing breakthrough.  With Death Times Five, those drawbacks are erased.

Similarly, Project Utopia allows for us to inflict a lot of burn damage on our opponent, but only if we refrain from causing breakthrough.  If we do cause breakthrough, our attacker will be KO’d  It’s also worth noting that Project Utopia only targets a single character on our board.  To get the most out of it, it would be nice to find a way to get that character to double attack.  This would also go well with Eldritch Power, Squadron City, and Airskimmer, all of which are Squadron Supreme exclusive for-the-turn pumps!

My mind immediately went to Samantha Parrington, but that ground has been tread too often already.  So instead I went to my second most worn path… Villains United!  That’s right folks, Hunter Zolomon readies a character with his vengeance ability.  He also stops them from doing any breakthrough on their second attack.  He practically screams for this team up!

At the one drop position we’d sure like to run Ape X to snatch up Airskimmers, but our character list is going to be pretty crammed, so we’re going to stick with The Calculator to snatch up Team-Ups.  At two however, we’ve got some more choices.  For the Villains United (VU) side of things I went with Dr. Psycho because his ability rocks.  There are a ton of other good choices from the team though, I’m just playing favorites!  For Squadron Supreme we’ll want Haywire.  He’s going to help us lock down our opponent’s board so that we can kind of stall to a late game (I know, unheard of nowadays!).

On turn three we’ll probably want to hit Lamprey because his effect makes him bigger and bigger each turn.  Dr. Polaris is also a good choice at this drop because he will also help us stall to a late game (just wait ’till you see who our big finisher is!).

Turn four is where things get interesting.  Amphibian is the choice from the Squadron side of things because he can “Garth” things like Eldridtch Power and Death Times Five back to our hands when we need them.  But on the VU side of things we’re going to run Alexander Luthor, Insidious Impostor.  His discard ability, which was formerly awful, will help us rid our hand of cards on the off-chance that we want to recruit Alfred Gaines on turn five.  He will allow us to suddenly change gears into a no-hand style of play.  After all, we want a big five drop to double attack with after it’s targeted with Zolomon’s ability.  If we can’t pull off the no-hand scenario, then Mr. Freeze hits the table as our resident Gunsmith.  He’s also stall orientated and will help us lock down our opponent until later turns.

At six we’ll Have Zolomon and Doctor Spectrum (does this deck have a ridiculous amount of doctors in it or what?)  Spectrum is pretty much just a target for Enemy of my Enemy.  I’d imagine we’ll mostly want to abuse Hunter Zolomon every time.  Similarly, we’ll splash a copy of Deathstroke in at seven, even though we’ll want to hit Arcanna most of the time so that Deathstroke’s drawback isn’t preventing us from playing our plot twists.  Both of these seven drops are pretty outstanding at clearing the board, but if they’re somehow not enough, you’ll just have to recruit…

Doomsday, Armageddon Creature!!!  That’s right, the sweet eight drop from the Superman set is finally in a deck!  His drawback of not being allowed to cause breakthrough is negated in this deck, because we dont’ want to cause any!  Also, The Calculator/Coercion combo is perfect for getting around Doomsday’s bothersome loyalty.  Doomsday will clear the entire board, then the rest of your characters can finish whatever’s left of your opponent’s endurance total!

Here’s my rough list of…

The Gunsmith, Death Times Five!

4x The Calculator, Noah Kuttler
4x Haywire
3x Dr. Psycho
4x Lamprey
2x Dr. Polaris
4x Alexander Luthor, Insidious Impostor
2x Amphibian
2x Albert Gaines <> Nuke
1x Mr. Freeze
1x Hunter Zolomon
1x Doctor Spectrum
1x Arcana
1x Deathstroke
1x Doomsday!

4x Airskimmer

3x Squadron City

4x Eldritch Power
4x Project Utopia
4x Coercion
4x Death Times Five
4x Enemy of my Enemy
2x Hibernaculum

Alright, a quick recap.  This deck wants to load up a five drop with for-the-turn pumps and target them with Project Utopia.  Then, we’ll target that same five drop with Hunter Zolomon’s ability so that our pumped-up five drop can get in eight points of burn damage in addition to the damage from both of his attacks.  The rest of the deck is somewhat stall orientated so that we can achieve every fanboy’s dream of recruiting Doomsday!

Hope you guys enjoyed my trip down memory lane.  If you can think of any other uses for Death Times Five, drop me a line.  Heck, drop me a line even if you’ve got nothing creative to add!