Hmm, lately I've been noticing that this has been happening anyway....havn't you?

There seem to be veeery few trolls about, at least of the calibur we've had in the past, and the game itself...well, you covered that part already.

I'd say the "social part" of VS is looking almost as good as the game itself....;)

That could be because of the newest campaign we've started. Now that I've reached 3 levels of Chameleon I can mimic class features and have taken trolls as a favored enemy, and even got a +5 whip of troll bane, so I've been ridding the lands of their existence.

Oh, and in the supervillain campaign I'm a brain in a jar [in a mech] :)

i like playing vs system.

The end.

Word. It has been nice around here lately. Thanks, everyone.

I've just finished reading the second trade of Morisson's Doom Patrol.

The bad news, Chicken Little was right, the sky IS falling, they couldn't stop the antigod, the unmaker, the Decreator.

The good news, it's been slowed so much, that it is barely noticeable and will take a very long time to actually end the universe.

Its always a pleasure to help when I can ;)

Let me present you readers with something, I'm running a $25 sealed VS event today. You get 3 packs of Legion and 3 packs of Man of Steel. First Prize is $50, plus prizes for 2nd-4th place. Build a deck with a minimum of 30 cards, etc. I know MOS is not beloved by all, but still I think a fun and affordable blend. Seems to have produced minimal interest.

In two weeks I'm running a Fallout Five event (Thank you Fallout Shelter)
$6 to enter (True, better entry fee)
Rules
1. 120 Cards, 100 endurance
2. minimum of 5 teams, 5 character cards each team.
3. 5 unafilliated character cards.
4. 10 non team-up locations
5. 10 non team-up ongoing plot twist
6. No cards with a cost of 10 or greater.
7. No more than 1 copy of Lacuna.
8. 9 cost Galactus may be in your deck, but not recruited.
9. Reveal the top card of the deck to decide who goes first (Highest wins),
and remove it from the game.
10. Proxy cards may be used for Enemy of my Enemy, and Mobilize.

This seems to have generated a wild responce from my players. Now I really hope todays turnout is better than expected, but is it possible that fun won out of cash value? If so, I'm rather pleased ;) and its encouraging so I can do stuff like single affiliation night, or something.

To stay on topic I am really pleased that there is a small, and trying to thrive Vs community over here, and also my other local store got itself a Marvel Team-Up Sneak Peak.

lol

Entropy ftw!!!

I still play that game every once and a while Loved it.great game till Fleer got it':cool: s hands on it.

I still play that game every once and a while Loved it.great game till Fleer got it's hands on it.:cool:

I have followed Dancy quite a bit in the past as a table top roleplayer. Don't dismiss the guy, he is brilliant when it comes to gaming and the business model around it. He was instrumental in basically saving (yes SAVING) the Dungeons and Dragons line. Which is now flourishing like never before.

The guy seriously knows what he is talking about.

But this shouldn't be any real shock to anyone. Online games and consoles ARE killing much of the table top community. Want proof? What prizes did the Spoils offer? What prizes are UDE themselves offerring for the WOW tournaments? Online game subscriptions and electronics.

Part of it is pure economics. Local shops want money, and prices aren't good right now for us. So do I spend $15 on 3 packs of cards, and hope for a useful rare? That same $15 can get me unlimited access to one of dozens online game worlds. Games where i am socializing with many MANY more people than show up at any given tournament.

If they give us an online equivalent of VS, would it work? Probably not to the level they would like. But the casual gamers woudl stop buying cards. If you want to play the game, you don't care if you actually have cardboard in your hand or not.

Read what he is saying though. He in now way is putting down the games, or the game industry per se. He is merely stating some very obvious facts and making logical assumptions based on them. The industry has done this before, and will do it again.

Few things to note.....

He mentions that assumed the retail market was 5000 stores strong. turns out, they were off by over 2000 or so. Why? People 'list' themselves as brick and mortar stores to get hobby kits, get game support, get discounts, etc... and then are nothing more than an eBay store. All the intent of the industry to support local stores with good programs goes down the tubes when about half your 'retailers' are abusing those programs for their own gains.

And the industry often doesn't see when they have a good thing.

One thing that got Ryan noticed was how well Five Rings did, and the follow up 7th Sea. At a time where ONLY D&D or Vampire coudl sell more than 5000 books, they blew that number away. Thats why WotC bought much of AEG, and why he was moved where he was. But in the interim, the Marvel RPG sold incredibly high numbers for a role playing game... and was cancelled by Marvel. They were looking for volumes akin to their graphic niovels, and didn't realize that they were selling HUGE for a new gaming system.

We need Marvel to partner with a tabletop game company, we need licenses. Thats the only real major way to get the market expanded again, but all the bigger players have their eye firmly on the internet now. Marvel is doing an MMORPG, DC was in talks for one. Even UDE is wise enough to see this, and are trying the reverse. They are latching onto the success of an establsihed MMORPG with the WOW card game.

But make no mistake... the online games ARE taking a huge chunk of the market. And people will go there because they are LESS expensive to play. There are tournaments with some online games with prizes, whcih draws in the competitive types. Everything points to the PC.

Bullseye, you know I love you like a brother, but I will still dismiss the guy when it comes to his doom-laced pipe dreams about specific numbers of personnel cuts at Upper Deck. That was poppycock on a stick, this company operates differently than the ones he is used to.

I would bet $1000 on that particular part.

I would bet money (in significant amounts) that UDE will be making big slashy personnel cuts sometime this year. I know three people who work there and they've all said that they're having personnel issues (to put it mildly) and JDonais regularly "cleans house" and starts fresh, cutting departments at a time. Now is a good time to work in WOW R&D, not so much VS or OP. OP especially needs to *hire* more people, and that's not happening.

If you can get the proof, you have a bet.

There is a difference between being brilliant about
gaming and being brilliant about business, even the business
of gaming. Dancey strikes me as someone for whom the
fun and gratification of playing games will always be
overshadowed by the nebulous costs of doing business.

First, if you think that playing WoW or City of Heroes
is equivalent to socializing, that's your sideshow. I would
point to any of the D&D print ads circulated in comics
lately for a counter-argument.
Second, card games and online games are different
archetypes. The first lends itself to play with friends,
colllaboration and cooperation in deckbuilding and
brainstorming. The latter is suitable for solo gaming,
gaming with strangers, gaming with friends - whatever
is convenient to the player. But don't confuse that
convenience with some kind of superior format in game
design.

His description of "hobby stores" is also a little narrow,
as specified elsewhere in this thread. That's probably a
better explanation for the (surprisingly) low number, rather
than the fiendish eBay seller.

It's narrow-minded to suggest that there is a monolithic
"gaming market" which suffers at the hands of "new"
technology. It's also somewhat foolish to predict disaster
from a force that's been present in the market for years
without utterly destroying all non-online-gaming as we know
it. But this is Dancey talking, so we should listen, right?

Yeah, rumors don't count. Meet me back here in January 2008 and we will see what really happened.