It would seem that in your estimation, the qualification to be the latter is simply being more articulate than the former. :)

No, the qualifications are as follows:

Troll: Hate on StuBarn's spam and so called "articles", and term is used as loose as a goose.

StuBarn Goon: Swing on StuBarn's pubic hair.

I am a certified Troll to the highest rank, I command my own division on the West Coast.

I just get really ANNOYED by posts that deter a thread into negative and... to use the word of the day... "stagnant" territory. It wasn't necessary for someone to post something saying nobody cares about ANYONE's opinion. If it'd been you, Bubblemailer, I'd have been just as likely to jump up in arms as I did.

Besides, I'm clearly not a StuBarn Goon. I'm an LJ Freak. 'Cause LJ's the coolest. Or I'm a Biz Hater. Either one. I'm not exactly on the same page as Stu, but I believe he is one of the good guys. So are a lot of people on here. And I'm fans of them all.


Topic: I'd bet the IC set does something for Unaffiliated, because there's a ton of unaffiliated characters floating around in Infinite Crisis.

CRIPPLE FIGHT!!!

It's on like Donkey Kong!

Well, if anyone thought I was belittling anyone else, I apologize. That was not my intent. I wouldn't even be posting if I didn't think people here had opinions that may very well be more valid than my own.

I do think it's silly to say that generic hate promotes diversity. IMHO, that is.

That said, I would like to clarify a mistaken notion that permeates this thread: I do not advocate giving all the hate for an archetype to a single, solitary team. I want it to be given to several teams, each doing the hating in their own way (think about how black and red can both kill creatures, but in different ways).

We could for example have six teams that are good against stall. Five teams that are good against rush. Four teams that are average against everything. Seven teams that are good against combo. Something like that. And it needn't even be that simple. We could have teams that are good against stall and rush, but can never ever beat combo. Stuff like that. The better a team is at beating what it is designed to beat, the worse it should be at beating other stuff. You know how those "create-a-character" features in fighting games give out points for you to distribute? The more you devote to strength the less you have for speed? That's what I'm talking about. You know how Zangief had to sacrifice speed and range for strength and damage? That's what I'm talking about. MVC2, a 50+ character game, has been dominated by the same ten or so characters for years. Why? Because those characters can beat everything.

In my view, even if hate cards were team-stamped, any deck could still tech against any other deck. The only difference is that instead of replacing four cards in the list with four hate cards, the user would have to figure out how to use the team-stamped effects that he needs. You want to kill weenie decks with your team that was designed to combat aggro decks? I say you should have to work for it. Hard. You want to use your midgame curve deck to beat stall decks? It should be much harder than putting 2 Apocalypse in.

Teams are defined by what they cannot do as much as by what they can. By what they lose to as much as by what they beat. The more generics there are, the more blurry the lines between the teams become.

If Sentinels didn't have the ability to tech against any match-up, then it would have been dethroned a lot sooner. There would have been a team that was good against it, that it could simply not tech against easily. That team would also have a natural enemy, so on and so forth.

The problem with saying so many teams will be good at this, so many will be good at that is that inevitably one team will become the best at each thing. This becomes a real issue as I will explain below.

Deck A (Combo) - Beats curve, loses to rush
Beck B (Rush) - Beats Combo, loses to curve
Deck C (Curve) - Beats rush, loses to combo
Effectively you will now only have to actually play 1 in every 3 games. Say you are playing Curve - you have so much hate its practically an auto win against rush, but can do nothing against combo. Any game against either of those decks is either an auto win or loss (bar horrible draws), the only game involving any skill is now the mirror match. The mirror unfortunately is generally decided on who gets the better draws, as if both you and your opponent both hit your drops but you have only 2 combat pumps and they have 3 they will almost always win. With this situation tournaments are now decided entirely on matchups (whoever play the most games that are auto-win, will come out first).

With generic hate cards that we have at the moment it allows a deck to patch up the holes in its gameplan - if a deck is terrible against rush it can atleast put in Total Anarchys to even the odds (abit), however it will never be as good as a deck designed to beat rush. The idea of a rock, paper, scissors metagame is nice as long as it isn't taken to the extreme. A player should be able to add tech to their (favourite) deck to match the metagame, rather than just having 3 different netdecks and hope that they have picked the right one (one that auto-wins against the majority deck) for any given tournament.

Mind you my whole argument is problably wasted as if you're even half as stubborn as me you will ignore it.

Hamish

You neglect, of course, the facts that -

1) VS comes out in expansions, with 4-5 teams per.

2) VS has Modern Age formats that use only the latest two sets.

If there's not generic hate for the strongest strategy, then the 'obviously strongest' strategy will be the winner - and that's a CS metagame, no thanks!

LJ, I appreciate that.

Bubblemailer, I do not understand your obsession with me. The only thing I can figure out is maybe you are trying to latch-on to my efforts in an attempt to get yourself some attention. And I really wish you would stop. This thread was everything that you say I should be. It was on-topic, all about the game, no unicorns. It was spam-free. Then someone took a shot at me, as usual. And you had to jump in, as usual. Your posts are not only spam, but they should be considered harassment. I knew you would jump in, everyone else knew it too. Any time someone says anything positive about me around here, they get jumped. I really wish you would stop.

With Bubblemailer around, we just have to grin and bear it. I think the "report" buttons are broken again.

(See:DC Modern)

All I can see is Marvel Modern at the moment. How does that fit into the Generic/Unaffiated debate? With a full handful of seriously viable decks to pull our hair out over, have the designers raised the level of their skills? What Generics do we have to work with? Null Time Zone, War of Attrition, System Failure, Disassembled...

I think we already have that. Anne-Marie is a custom hate-hottie for reservists. Caliban against concealed for evasion. Natasha is some kind of good weenie hate herself, let alone Hawkeye.

That is very well said, and I think we are getting closer to your ideal every day.

But what about Enemy of My Enemy?

But.. the "answer" to GLOCK and New School *isn't* add two Apocalypse to Avengers and call it a day. Is it? That seems like a bad idea. And, what other "stall hate" is there?

What about Enemy of My Enemy? I'm glad I've already got mine and I'm buying all I can at 30 bucks cash each - they'll never be worth less, i think - I bet EoME ends up 45 plus bucks like Beatdown

I was refrancing the old DC modern metagame. It was gleeti matter or random. But Usually glee or anti matter.

With silver, I am almost sure AGL will fill most of the T8 spots, unless there is a deck which can directly counter act it. Suddenly, badoress isnt really needed meaning 4 more tech cards.

You see, I was kind of intrested in a SA metagame until AGL came around because now I dont see too much beating it at the moment (I have been wrong before).

Luckly, there are still sealed at PCQs and I LOVE the x-men sealed...

First of all, my post or any of these posts weren't directed at you, except the first one. Second, stop being a wuss. Also, you have enough spam to cover a third world country. It's like the devil saying "Hey, I'm not killing anyone at the moment".

Actually, I didn't derail this thread someone else did, I threw gas in the fire. Your seriously just need to quit Vs Realms.

Actually, both AGL and Squadron are entirely beatable in Silver Age. Several good curve and stall decks can either keep up with their stats or stabilize reliably enough to finish them in the long game. My group's testing has found nearly a dozen decks that are all within the probable Tier 1 and 1.5 levels for the Silver Age metagame, with several others in the works. It's odd how many otherwise overlooked ideas become suddenly vastly more viable in a format missing the Origins cards.

I very much agree with Mr. Rock on that issue. AGL is hardly going to be the only game in town when Silver Age comes rolling around.