Just to clarify, i never said i think this game is 'all about the beats', but rather that is the main critique i have heard (for example, reference Holothuria's journal for a differing point of view on the VS system).

whether or not the VS system degrades down into simple 'beafed-up character rushes' is something i will have to determine once i have many hours of playtesting under my belt (of which i have very little currently).

i am merely saying it is a valid thing to consider since i love the potential this game has and would like to see a number of different strategies and tactics be valid and viable in gameplay. i have no problem with an aggressive, high powered brotherhood deck. i just want to see that decks of other strategies have a fighting chance.

as an aside, i would also like to see other game mechanics like xavier's dream which allow a win even if you don't reduce your opponent to 0 or less endurance.

I doubt that the high cost rares will be useless for "the meaningful lifetime of the game". As more cards come out, we'll see more stalling cards, that being a fairly popular archetype in games. As it is, I think that 8 costers are plausible if you surround them with the right cards (characters with high defense, exhausting and discarding mechanics, etc.).

I'd be very surprised if we don't get other stallworthy cards to push the game back more, within the next couple of sets.

So you think that acceleration significantly better than the FF characters is coming? I'd be really interested to see how that plays out.

I'd tend to agree with JoFo-- stalling cards are a more likely path to getting to play the really big, splashy cards than resource acceleration... that way seems to lie madness, and Power 9-type cards (Moxes, Lotus, blecch). Still, i'd be surprised if stalling became a dominant, or even viable, archetype in competitive play-- it would take a lot of cards devoted to stalling, and would negatively impact consistenc of the deck. But... who knows what the future holds? That's what makes CCG's so intriguing.

As the environment is now, unless you're able to effectively attack on your turn to slow down your opponent, you will have difficulty holding out. Almost every ability seems to be geared to taking advantage of when you have the initiative. Blob is the really notable exception to this trend.

I dunno. After paying 3 power for the Gamma Bomb effect in Shadowfist, splashy symmetrical abilities just don't do it for me anymore.