If Minimal cost is exhausting two characters in a fast curve deck to get a power up back, then I want to see these "expensive" costs. Please stop making Phantom Stranger such a big deal. Card Size doesn't matter in this game. Phantom Stranger rarely "enables" a broken combo, and otherwise helps an archetype that works one way, one type of mechanic, the way it's supposed to do.

*looks up decklist archive*

There are 29 occurrences of "Katar Hol" in those decklists, although many decks played both versions of him, so I'd say there were about 20 powerup decks. I will grant you that there were no copies of Phantom Stranger in these decks. However, I will challenge that these decks are better than Great Guys. Having tested the powerup vs. powerup matchup, Great Guys wins if it hits Firestorm with enough Nth Metals on the table. Also keep in mind that PC San Francisco was the second event to take place after the release of DCR. When the next Silver Age $10K or PC comes around, we'll see who's right.

And just for interest, there are significantly more occurrences of "Phantom Stranger" than Katar Hol at that tournament. Looking through PCLA results, where Prosak won with Frankie.dec, there are:

73 occurrences of "Optimistic Youth"
52 occurrences of "Wandering Hero"
0 occurrences in the Top 8 of a deck that used Frankie Raye without Phantom Stranger
6 occurrences in the Top 8 of a deck that used both Frankie Raye and Phantom Stranger

So, assuming every deck that played Phantom Stranger also played Frankie Raye (to skew the results against my side), roughly 1/3 of the decks that had Frankie Raye didn't have Phantom Stranger. That means that of the 6 decks in the Top 8 that had Frankie Raye, 2 of them should not have had Phantom Stranger. Otherwise, those decks were not as good as the rest of the field, implying that Frankie Raye is not inherently broken.

EDIT: Never mind. I'm so not going to exacerbate this.

Which of the decks that played Frankie without Stranger WON PCLA?

Easy answer....

Most Intelligent Post Ever. You get rep tommorrow when I reload.

I keep waiting for someone to rip his onus off, but so far it seems to be more humorous than anything. Well done Realms, keep your cool.

Frankie + PS > Frankie, so PS > Frankie?

The existence of decks which ran a card and were not broken does not mean that the card is not broken. Fantastic Fun, GLock, just about any new Doom deck...

The fact that broken Frankie decks are better with PS than without does not mean that PS is the problem. Decks that run Frankie and (say) Soul World are ALSO better than decks that just run Frankie... that doesn't mean you should ban Soul World.

Please let it go. You're spamming up my hotmail.

If you said Phantom Stranger should be banned because of the card advantage it grants combo decks, I'd consider continuing this conversation. Since you're only saying it should be banned because the powerups it grants are too powerful, I'll stop now. :)

The misuse of statistics/logic/common sense here makes me want to cry.

Your assumption being:

If Frankie Raye is inherently broken, decks without Phantom Stranger should do at least as well as the other ones.

However, just because Frankie Raye IS the card that should be banned [i.e. she would still be 'broken' without the Stranger] doesn't mean that Frankie isn't BETTER with Phantom Stranger than without.

You are making faulty assumptions.

First of all, the top 8 decks are in the top 8 IN PART because of sealed play.

The top 8 decks at the end of Day 1 are not the same decks that top 8'ed Day 2. So you've already started off with incorrect information on which you are basing your assumptions.

Similarly, more decks packed Savage Beatdown and Nasty Suprise than Overload ... and no deck would pack Overload without the 'enablers'. So, does that mean they should have banned all the attack pumps instead of Overload?

Compare the instances of Frankie Raye and Devil's Due, or Poison Ivy. I'm pretty sure you'd see that most of the 'best' Frankie Raye decks also use Poison Ivy. Why? Because the BEST use of Frankie Raye includes Phantom Stranger and Poison Ivy ... The only reason NOT to include those cards would be bannings.

If a BUSTED card is better with a certain card ... you INCLUDE that card.

Thus, a deck running Frankie, and Stranger, and Ivy will also be running recursive locations, STTG, Enemy, Dr. Light [until he gets banned], other free characters, like Haywire, etc, etc, etc ...

You have taken a position stating:

If Frankie Raye is inherently broken, she'd be just as succesful without Phantom Stranger as she is with him.

No is arguing that Frankie Raye is not BETTER with Phantom Stranger.

They are saying that even if you ban Stranger, she'd STILL BE BROKEN.

Your argument is that there are decks that would pack Phantom Stranger without Frankie Raye. However ... you have definately NOT shown that deck to be broken or abusive. Phantom Stranger is still good outside of Frankie abuse. Which means he'll still have non-broken applications and useful applications that are non-degenerate.

Frankie, on the other hand, has basically one power. And it is that power, ITSELF, that is the problem.

Frankie does what she does.

Stranger allows Frankie to do it a little better and a little cheaper.

Without Frankie, Stranger is (a) Used as intended [a power-up] or (b) a different kind of Mxy with a cost of exhaustion.

The 'cheapest' free characters, the ones that he can FEED easily, are no longer around. Thus there are also less characters that can exhaust and bounce him many times per turn.

You have put forth a false premise. Frankie is better with Stranger, so if both are legal, the best decks packing Frankie will be packing Stranger.

However, the same arguments could be made about Ivy and Frankie ...

So then you are banning both Ivy AND Stranger to prevent Frankie Abuse. Not to mention you now have to restrict any OTHER effects that let her reuse her effects. [Again, even without Ivy, you still have Villains United, for example].

Frankie's ability is broken ... because she's a 1-drop that can be played for free and thus, can be recruited as many times as possible. Her card cycling refills the cards she uses to play her self for free. Her abuse is NOT just in finding the right cards, there are also a number of cards [Hala, Nega-Bomb, Surrounded, Devil's Due, etc] which means that each recruitment gives a bonus.

EDIT:

The abscense of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

And, to echo a previous post, the correct answer to this:

Phantom Stranger + Frankie > Frankie

is

Phantom Stranger > 0

In other words, PS is "better than nothing". Which isn't to mean it's not better than anything ... but that it is better to have Stranger than nothing at all.

However, it does NOT prove that Stranger is better than Frankie.

Heck, comparing decks that ran ONLY Frankie and ran ONLY Stranger would be the correct solution ...

However, most Frankie decks would likely be trying to do what the deck with both was doing.

The Stranger only decks would have their Strangers doing something different. Why? Because the MAIN reason for PS in the PS + Frankie deck is the interaction with Frankie. The main reason for Frankie in a deck running both is to use Frankie's ability ... Stranger just happens to help that happen.

OK, I think we need a quick recap:

You said: Phantom Stranger, not Frankie Raye, should be banned. It's the real problem.

I/We said: Fine, show us a deck without Frankie that proves Phantom Stranger is utterly broken.

You said: Look, here's my Great Guys deck. He's just too good!

I/We said: He's not really that good, sorry.

You said: Why does everyone harp on the fact I used Great Guys as my example?

I/We say: Because that's the only example you gave?

***

P.S. I will concede that Phantom Stranger is better than The Uni-Power would be in that deck, since he can be used for both offense and defense. Touche. But your saying that he is comparable to Magnificent Seven is pretty much the same as admitting that he's far from broken. Unless you want to make a case for Magnificent Seven being broken. (Please don't.)

Finally, someone posts an argument instead of a flame. It's about bloody time. I'm tired of posting to this thread already. If you'd like to continue this discussion (because, really, it's a discussion I'd like to have with someone intelligent enough to have it with, and you seem intelligent), I would very much like to do it via PM, but if I continue to post here I will continue to be flamed and I don't want that to happen, because it makes me angry and makes me not play Twilight Princess.

Ok, I won't (cause it's not). It's not broken when you're playing 4 copies of it, and when they're done they're done. When you play 8 copies of it, 4 of which are reuseable, it becomes a little excessive. When you add in the fact that said card also enables a broken combo, it becomes very excessive. When you add in the fact that said card gives almost-free card advantage, it becomes even more excessive, and when you add in the fact that said card allows you to play characters for free, it becomes too excessive.

As for the "Frankie + Stranger > Frankie -> Stranger > Frankie" argument, I was saying that if Frankie is broken, Frankie should be broken with or without Stranger. One can see what happens when a broken card is played with or without its combo by looking at Dr. Light. Dr. Light was playable in pretty much any deck that ran a 2-drop. Unfortunately, most of the top-tier decks that ran Dr. Light also ran Comes-Into-Play-effect characters, so it's difficult to make an argument about decks with Dr. Light being good for the sheer reason that they played Dr. Light. We haven't seen the metagame without Light yet, so I can't comment for sure, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of decks died when Light got banned JUST BECAUSE Light got banned. He made decks good just by his presence in them. This is a broken card. If Frankie was broken, she would be broken regardless of where she was played, and any reasonably well-built deck that played her would have a chance at being top-quality material. I believe I have proven that this is not the case. conversely, I suppose, I would have to concede that Phantom Stranger doesn't make decks inherently good by his presence either, but looking at the last SA PC where there were 5 copies of Phantom in the Top 8 and Frankie hadn't even been released yet, I think that says something; if not that Phantom Stranger is broken, then that he is a little better than average anyway. And while I will agree that the PC standings are largely based on sealed, there (I believe) is a cutoff portion for Day 2, so these decks had to have some kind of merit on their own to get that far.

I suppose we'll have to see at the next major sans-Frankie tournament how Phantom Stranger fares before we can truly make a decision.

And you really read this thread before you said it? How is that possible?

There is no point in waiting for anyone else here because a lot of us know Frankie Raye was the problem. In about 6 or so weeks you'll know too, when there's hardly any sign of a Phantom Stranger in the top 8 of PC Sydney.

Keyword here is "hardly". I'm sure some players will still make use of him as a way of cheating discards.

I'm not going to get involved in this argument anymore than that. It seems pretty pointless. :(