Skullclamp is an exception, rather than the rule, in magic and you know it fry.

It was called as the best card in the set during the "card you want to open in pre-release" articles on starcity (by the guy who got banned from MTGO if I recall)

Anyway.

Doesnt spiderman have a tutor for more spidermen?

actually it is a rule =(. they also did it back in masquez block. if lin sivvy was unbanned you either play rebel or you bring some massive hate. and port was also banned because every deck would run 4. same thing with skullclamp case really =/.

Masque Block
Invasion Block
Oddessey Block
Onlslaught Block
Mirrodin Block

2 and a half years between bannings, and Lin Sivvi / Rishidan Port were only banned in block constructed.

Skullclamp was banned in block, type 2, extended, maybe 1.5, but not T1, seperate lists now, I dunno.

3 years between block bannings, 4 years between T2 bannings.

Cards like Lin Sivvi was broken in block because she had too much synergy(obviouslly) For all you non-magic players out there, it was the teen titans of magic, lots of weenies, search, and some utility. A poor defination I know Fry, but it will have to suffice.

Port was banned because it didnt allow anyone to do multicolor. Kind of like if the source wasnt teamstamped would hurt team up decks a wee bit. That rising waters thing plus artifact mana was pretty good too. Took 2nd place at the "OMG REBELS ARE CRAZY" tournament.

Skullclamp is the single most broken card since Urza's Saga. Yeah.

Magic doesnt come out with broken stuff as often as any other card game. Honestly Fry, the last game we played alot of isnt exactly a benchmark for fair play ;) Magics done alright. Besides, compare masques block's bannings to Urza's. That set had a card banned before it was legal. Jar of I win first turn.

Exception :-p

Outside of rotating a set out for whever reason, if there ever was a banned or limited card, it would be considered a failure on UDEs part. They have worked extremely hard to not make any cards that would require banning.

As I have mentioned before I define a broken card as: A card that in order to play competivly you have to run 4 of in your deck and if in any give game, you don't draw your given card and your opponant does, you lose.

Skullclamp fits that defination, no card in VS System even comes close.

I don't know anything about MTG but I am assuming that Skullclamp is the equivalent of Yata-Garasu and Chaos Emperor Dragon and most of the other banned cards in Yu-Gi-Oh and if it is I TOTALLY agree.

-Joe

For those not familiar with Skullclamp:

To put it loosely into VS. terms, think of it as an equipment that would cost 0 or 1 and had the ability:
"Transferrable,
Equipped character gets +1 attack/-1 defense. If the equipped character is stunned, draw 2 cards."

All that and it's not unique or teamstamped.

No not like that. It would be ongoing plot twist with threshold cost 1. That would have something like pay 1 resource point: choose a character you control, that character gets +1 attack /-1 defense. If that character becomes stunned or KOed, draw 2 cards. Use this ability only once per turn.

Urza block was the most fun time in type 2 magic. :) I didn't want to bother to get all the cards for the academy deck, so I instead made a deck aimed totally to just beat academy decks and I played it a few tournaments before they banned basically the whole academy deck. :p Didn't lose to an academy deck a single time. Can't remember what all the deck had anymore but it focused around arcane laboratory and forbid to lock out the opponent totally. Well arcane lab alone shut down academy decks totally. The deck did have problems beating anything except academy though.

One more important part about skullclamp is, in MTG a 1/1 that gets the +1/-1 effect of the skullclamp pretty much dies imediatly and triggers the clamp's drawing ability. So the skullclamp didn't even require you to have an outside source to do the "stunning". All it needed was a decent supply of cheap characters to draw a great deal of cards, couple that with the fact that MTG plays alot more of it's game from the hand rather than from the table as in VS, and the card breaks the game environment. If you look at the attention UDE places on the most dangerous mechanics (those of cards draw, and resource accelleration) they always er on the side of caution. Longshot is probably the card that is closest to a mistake, if you would think of his ability as unbalanced. In short UDE's r&d don't tread the dangerous card drawing and resource accelleration even close to as haphazardly as other games like MTG and yui gi oh.
Caution is good.
Nobody likes bannings more than bad cards.

Roy Harper really does come close to that line.

The only reason that you do not have to play four of him in every deck is because of the semi loyalty he has.

His synergy in a team that does not have to keep playing up the curve is amazing.

The way that Vs. gets around the have to have four of in every deck is that they create an illusion of team balance. If you do not believe that the Titans are the best "color" out there you are very wrong. Magic was locked into four colors from the beginning and have become trapped in that mold as it would be far to difficult to create "purple" now.

I remember when hardly anyone played blue in Magic. It was a more difficult strategy to play as you had to know the mechanics of the game a lot more than most, not to mention threats and card pool. This is the same for the Titans. Not every scrub can pick up a Titans deck and play it well.


This leaves us with playing Titans or playing against them. We have yet to find anything out there that gets a major favorable match up against them. Common Enemy/Doom is probably the worst for them, but we continue to play against them and it takes a player to make no mistakes with CE to keep that winning margin up. I will also mention that a lot of decks are catching up on CE and are getting more winning match ups against them.

So, now we have the worst match up for Titans losing ground to the rest of the field and then we are left with Titans with good players versus Titans with bad players.

I think we know where that will lead to.

[rambling end]

I hope this sheds a little more light on the metagmae than most people realize is out there. FF is not good. Curve beats CE. Spider-Man beats CE. X-stall beats anything on curve if it hits its draw. Titans loses only to Titans. Hmmmmmmm....

oh yeah Happy New Year everyone.

You people need to stop complaining about Roy. He's not that ridiculously "broken"...God I hate that word.

Run Flame Trap, Total Anarchy, Sunfire, etc.

There are ways around every card; thus, no card is "broken". Jeez, there shouldn't need to be a ban list, there are cards to counter other cards. Even the mighty Harper.

Total Anarchy wrecks Titans. Roy Harper is just something you have to deal with, like TNB. Rnd 9 at PC LA (rnd 10 currently unavailable) shows the top 12 seeds as

Common Enemy: 2
Spider Frineds: 2
TOGIT: 3
TTGo: 2
Brave and Bold: 1
Curve Sentinels: 1
Medium Brotherhood: 1

Now the good players at PC Indy and PC LA (top 8 on day 3) are superb drafters who chose solid decks that would get them into day 2 with decent seeding. $10k are a little more of a crapshoort because there is a very low barrier to entry, and you have to deal with a bunch of truly random decks. Therefore, the decks that do well there tend to be more of an example of a player on a streak. Looks at the top 8 finishers at PC Indy and PC LA--how many made it to day 3?

Playing Roy Harper or TTGo! isn't like opening a pack and finding a golden ticket to day 2 at the next PC. We should stop with the sackcloth and ashes approach to tough decks and start finding ways to deal with the cards. I hear League of Assassins is pretty good at messing with that whole team thing. The same people tell me that Ricochet and Nice Try! are pretty good as well.

i think the best way to deal with Roy is that matches should be 2 of 3 with sideboards.

That would completely change the game and with no guarentee it will have the desired effect.

Please, no sideboards...