Reinforcing didn't matter much, but team attack did. The lack of an ability to team attack on turns 4+ is what ultimately killed FTN's deck considering that one more stun and they would've won at least two of those games. They had enough attack on the field to stun a character too, just no way to team attack to get up over the def.

I am still worried however, as if a bullet is made that can then overcome the total useless need for teams then it will be a done deal.

With ten teams, at least they have no intention to really attack to win. The mexican hardware store, along with Ivy league, and other hodge-podge decks that have every team with no intention of teaming up, just decide to blast you to the face, and give as good as it gets on the stun back.

I'm not saying the game is broken, but it is definitely getting imbalanced. If it comes down to the point where you must have EOME to be competitive, I will no longer wish to hear some of the arguments on the marvel vs. yugioh thread.

Matter of fact, I have a thread to necro........

I've always like splashed characters in decks without teaming up (with Magneto, MOM being the king of splashability). Decks now are becoming nothing but splashes. I'm surprised that Ivy League decks don't use Mosaic World.

I think the only solution to this is to reprint EOME in some upcoming starters or something like that. I hate to compare the two games again cause I don't want to start another "you know what" thread, but what made YGO fun to play again for a while were its "staples" being reprinted as commons and rares. In VS's cases they'd be commons and uncommons.

And for those who may b*tch "I spent $$$ on mine, f*ck that!", sorry. Who knew the impact would be this huge. Savage isn't as abundant in Golden as it used to be, but EOME sure as hell will.

For the record, MHS CAN team attack -- we weren't running image inducers in an earlier build and ran into some problems against high def decks (glock, good, guys, etc), so they got swapped in (x4). In looking at deckbuilding efficiency, teamups are minimum 4 slots that usually don't do much EXCEPT team up. The inducers facilitate the team attacking and reinforcing while also providing extra aggro. And you DO lose something with tons-of-teams decks: the ability to play team-stamped effects. Everyone (at least initially) referred to the FTN build as squadron toolbox, but the ONLY team-stamped card in the deck is Wild Ride (since it gets an MK character, not keys off of one). Would have loved to have been able to run Other Earth or Panacea Potion, but that was the tradeoff we made when we decided to build it the way we did. So there IS a downside, you just have to decide if it's worth it when you build a deck. IF UDE was going to do anything to clamp down on tons-of-teams, what makes the most sense is powerful team-stamped effects to make it worth it to run mono or teamups.

* Takes deep breath *

I don't think the issue is as much Enemy of my Enemy as a card, but rather as a trend. UDE has been increasingly liberal with their search effects, perhaps even too liberal and has been too nice to team-up decks.

I understand that search effects are important. In a game that is as heavy on tempo as VS missing a drop is extremely detrimental. On the flip side... the problem with having so much tutoring is that it becomes way too easy to get what you want, when you need it, at minimal constraints. There is a certain tension that is neccessary in a game with randomized cards that ruins it if it becomes to easy to get whatever it is you need. In a perfect world this would still be fine. However, in a game like VS - with a professional circuit and money riding on it - you really don't have the option of hoping players will miss certain interactions because it is far too lucrative to find them. As the card pool becomes bigger and cards become more powerful tutors become better because they can fetch better and better cards. Unfortunately, cards that are good tend to reduce interactivity - the best way to win in a game is to either win before your opponent can interact defensively, or to make sure your opponent can never interact aggressively against you - and making sure that it is easier to find more and more ways to stop interaction is a definite way of killing a game or sends you down this power creep cycle.

I think UDE has been trying to hard to make sure that players can splash teams and whatever. The whole point of a team-up deck is that they get an increased power AT the expense of consistency. The current trend seems to be that the former is true while the rather not. Team-up decks are becoming far too easy to run and the whole tension between team-up decks and mono team decks is missing. I mean look at silver. The top 8 had 32 Enemy of my Enemies in it - under some definitions this is grounds for banning, but i'll talk about that later. Looking through the whole decklist there is like what, 3 decks that don't run EomE? The most obvious being AGL and perhaps some build of reservists. However, the fact of the matter is those decks can certainly be tuned to benefit from EomE too. I have no doubt that AGL with Shadow Thief, Felix Faust and some number of Tatoo'd man can be configured somehow to use EomE effectively too. Now, I love team-up decks - my favorite deck is New School - nor am I advocating UDE go team-up Nazi, but the fact of the matter now is that teaming up is the best way right now, as opposed to an option.

The biggest example of this is, in my opinion - Ahmed Samsarra. I mean, clearly, this guy is ridiculous. He is low costed, humongous for his size and provides tutoring. He has a hefty drawback to him yes, but the fact that he is concelead already signifigantly reduces the threat inherent within this drawback. Now, this guy can do all of this... at the price of loyalty-reveal? Loyalty-reveal in my mind doesn't even really count as a penalty as much as a hindrance. Loyalty forces you to dedicate your strategy to play this charecter. You are rewarded for your strategic foresight with sweetness. Look at cards like Cassandra Cain? How nutty would she be if she didn't have loyalty? Ridiculous... balanced by the fact that if you want to use her, you have to strategize and plan around using her. But why even stop there? What about Terra? What about Garth? What if they all had loyalty reveal instead? All loyalty-reveal forces you to do is to make sure you have a power-up in hand, or just a random one of that shares the affiliation, which is really not that hard to do with the huge amount of tutoring power in the game. At the end of the day... there is essentially no drawback to Ahmed Samsarra, a card which lets you tutor freely for locations, which in turn lets you tutor freely for charecters.

As early as turn 3.

Which for some decks is the first turn they can consistently hit their drops.

I know that ther are tons of other cards that should probably have loyalty tacked on them somewhere but don't. Regardless, Ahmed is in my mind the biggest offender.

Looking at history, that 'other card game' had two huge instances where people left the game. Obviously one, was post-Darksteel Magic where every competetive deck was essentially Skullclamp/x. Much like Enemy of my Enemy, aggro decks, control decks, and combo decks were all running the Clamp just because you really had to in order to keep track with everything. Even aggro decks are starting to splash simply because strangely enough Enemy of my Enemy makes your inconsistent double team deck much more consistent and powerful then it's original incarnation because you gain access to a free tutor.

The irony with banning Enemy of my Enemy is that you really can't. On the surface it is a very fair card. It does not promote stagnation or stop creativity. The problem is that the polar opposite of stopping creativity is not very good either. There has to be penalties for splashing teams and the current trend of design and EomE do not help this situation at all. When there are no stops in creativity, it becomes too easy to splash all the powerful effects and the result is Ivy League/The Killing Joke. The biggest problem with this is that none of the cards are actually inherently broken, and thus it is very hard to stop it from the perspective of organized play. It's the combination of all of them that is.

At PC: SF I talked a little with Tim Willoughby and various other players about the TDC combo deck. Most importantly, what was going to happen to the deck after the PC. The fact of the matter is that there are 0 ways to fairen this this deck without applying some errata. As UDE has expressed their desire to only issue errata when it clears up the functionality of the card, it is obvious that the only choice left is to ban it. How absurd is the notion of banning Justice League of Arkham? I mean, honestly while the card is extremely good sometimes, it is horrendous in the abstract. The only other way is to ban the engine which is the real cause of this insanity. This is actually better for the game in general because it allows UDE more leeway to design envelop pushing effects - such as more discard. This however, results in a total nerfing of at least half the decks in VS. The only other feasible way I could see is to have a Silver Age only banned list. But of course, the fact that there is a ban list already indicates that something is wrong and has the potnetialy to go worse.

I suppose the only decent choice then is to ban the JLoA, but the fact remains that you are walking on the razor now as there exists a ridiculously powerful engine that is capable of pushing forward something - though this still remains undefined - a dubious amount of times, extremely early... and consistently. Much like how the world stands on guard for that possibly inevitable world ending nuclear war, our games stands on the brink of self implosion due to as Mr. Willoughby so eloquently put it "A critical mass of search effects."

Going back to 'that other card game' the other big exodus occured during the Urza's Block. This situation is perhaps more applicable now then Skullclamp. Not only did we have efficient kill and disruption, but we also had huge amounts of search - some of them costing no resource usage and replaced themself... does this sound familiar to you? At first Wizards thought they could control stuff by banning just a few cards, but as more expansions and more interactions became available, it became painfully obvious that the only way to even the game out would be to ban a bunch of cards. I don't know if I think we are at this point there, but it certainly looks like we are heading there.

In short, I think that Enemy of my Enemy is good for the game... it's just that given everything else that's happening - free recruits, more turoting effects - it serves as something of a catalyst for brokenness. The only way to solve this is more loyalty but that has problems too. Or maybe I am just being really cynical because I went 3-4 and missed my last round because I tried to buy some food.

By the way, is this whole post off topic?

I seriously don't see the deck as a problem.

The Australians beat the deck very soundly.

Ian beat Gabe 2-0.

Any card draw automatically counters the deck (Via Birthing Chamber, Brother Eye, etc.)

There are 3 silver bullets that severely hinder the deck: Latverian Embasy to stop spamming, Sage to prevent it for 2 turns, and Fatality to prevent everything else. Not to mention whole deck types don't mind emptying their hand.

I've already got plently of decks that aren't effected by the deck. It's not like the Light Show ver. 1 where you needed 10-20 cards to silver bulllet it.

When they let us start using horses in VS?

Four. Lex Luthor-3 and even initiatives stop it dead just about every time.

The Killing Joke/Ivy League isn't really a problem deck. Those that aren't prepared for it are lost, but it doesn't take much to make it fail. It appears that even in the hands of experienced/good players, it can lose to itself by going to time because it is so difficult to play.

Kim: Yes, you could team attack and reinforce with Image Inducers. Those aren't as flexible as a teamup card, though, since you have to have inducers in play on enough/the right characters for it to work. I agree with you that a lot of teamups do nothing but team up. The recent breed of teamups do help make them worth playing, though.

Oh, totally... image inducers don't replace teamups, but do address some of their benefits. Teamups don't smash your opponent's face, so we couldn't find room for them :) Ah, priorities...

IMO the best deck won. Checkmate has some pretty powerful awnsers and combos and so long as you keep your kings safe, you win.

In a Nutshell..........

It's so cool to see a chic talk like that. :o :o

Nothing will destroy this game faster than banning cards based on their performance at one tournament. It's ironic that your point about JLoA was made in the EOME thread, since EOME enables players to put in cards like Sage or Black Cat that help against Ivy League. By this logic, Teen Titans Go and Bastion should be banned too.

Firstly, a little pedantic I know, there were only 31 EOME in the top 8. Ian only played 3.

Secondly, I think what's important about this whole issue is that it's currently very, almost too, easy to do whatever you want within the game due to the power of generic search effects for Team-Ups, characters & Locations. UDE are indeed being a little reckless with these effects at the moment but I don't see it as a bad thing for just now. This is a necessary and fun phase that the game needs to go through.

What I see is that it will be a bad thing in another 1 or 2 events as the card pool expands even wider.

The gain of generic search effects at the moment easily outweighs the printed constraints and deckbuilding restrictions.

What I'd really like to see rather than a spate of Errata or bannings is a set of answer cards: An ongoing Anti-Team up giving no affiliation to all characters in that players hand, KO, Deck, in play; Betrayal; etc etc. Essentially a set of cards that says "You can play all the different affiliation cards you want but I will mess with your strategy."

UDE has managed to balance the Curve v Rush question very well. I think that they'll have something here to rein in the power levels of certain cards. At least I hope so. In the meantime you have to just marvel at the excellent deckbuilding that went on in preparation for the PC.