Yeah, that's also true, but Upper Deck's new commitment to refeaturing at least one legacy team in every set kinda throws a monkey wrench into that. They're not always going to be able accomplish both goals.

Yes. Yes it would be.

So TS and RS will both be left to languish for some time, it seems, and the New Gods are basically hosed for new content barring an emphasis in DA cards or traditional legacy support.

I wonder if and when they get around to doing an Outsiders team, if they'll pull in the new and old teams, or if it'll just be one or the other. It seems unlikely they'll get their own team, though, since the JLI and Teen Titans seem to each have a substantial portion of the Outsiders of their relevant periods.

Gotham Knights

Arkham Inmates

Outsiders

Deathstroke??

I would love to see an Outsider's team, being a fan of the Winick era books, but I don't really see a cohesive enemy for them to be faced off against.

Basically they just took down random badies with Info from Deathstroke. Maybe a HUGE unaffiliated contengent? It would allow for some crossover with the thus far unloved Batman Villains.

In my humble opinion, this set would be the greatest thing to happen to VS since it's inception. Barring an Earth-X set, of course. ;)

If you have "Outsiders" as team number 4, you have SO many options:

1) You can revamp Fearsome Five. It can even be ANOTHER 5th team.
2) You can feature Deathstroke as his own team. This is just too sexy for words.
3) Brother Blood could get his own stuff. That'd be "neat".

Although, honestly, if the Outsiders team had a lot of stuff where you sacrifice something to make them better (kind of like Statix, I guess), since they are willing to risk their lives more than normal heroes (at least for the first 2 trades), then they'd be considered their own enemy, heh. I think that would make for some cool themes.

Also, I have NO idea who they USED to fight way back when, so you could always feature one of their older enemies (gasp).

I just heard that UDE might be scrapping the superman starter. If it were not scrapped then it would be delayed and repackaged as part of something called 'quickstrike' (heard of the term before but I don't know what that is). The guy who told me this runs a comics store so the info should be quite reliable.

Has anybody else heard something similar? I hope it isn't true.

quickstrike is a game system that shaman king used. and recently ude released avatar as part of the quickstrike system. havent heard anything about superman tho...

So quickstrike is a totally different game system? I guess it wouldn't make sense for the supes starter to be released under that. Perhaps that store owner was misinformed...

yea... its a a different game system... as vs has comics, i would guess quickstrike has cartoon tv shows? shaman king... avatar... could be alot of possibilites in this. naruto? another dragonball? who knows

I just got word from the guy who orders for the store where I play hobby league that UDE stated that the starter has been scrapped because of little interest.

From what he told me, this was from UDE Distrubitors.

So it sounds reliable.

No it doesn't.

-Mike

Upperdeck, please talk to us...

I heard the same thing he did. It's probably more likely that it's being pushed back, not cancelled, but it does kinda suck.

Well, I remember a post when a few distributers were said to have told store owners that Avengers would have a very limited, one run printing and that you probably wouldn't be able to get much if any at all.

So until UDE says something about it or it's months and months past any kind of release date... It really doesn't sound reliable at all. It not I don't believe you guys, it's that, yeah, at best it's probably misinformation and at worst it's blatent lies and rumormongering by _somebody_. What really sucks is that this makes UDE look bad more than anything. Hopefully, they WILL respond shortly and put this matter to rest.

-Mike

OK here's the official deal. I hoped to roll this into an upcoming metagame article that filled in all the blanks but it looks like people are getting misinformation so I want to put a stop to that now.

The Superman starters are indeed being pulled from this year's schedule but it has nothing to do with lack of interest or the movie schedule or the teams in the starter or another game engine or anything like that.

The product manager for Vs System at the GAMA tradeshow 2 weeks ago announced to the press and retailers that we will be releasing a new product for Vs System this year. We had hoped to have all the details finalized by the event to actually make the full announcement at GAMA and showcase this amazing new product but all the I's haven't been dotted nor the T's crossed yet to make it public.

I'd love to tell you more but we have plans on launching a teaser webpage and support articles so you just have to trust me when I tell you it's the coolest thing ever. You'll see more details in the upcoming weeks.

So the deal with the Superman starters was that when we planned out the release schedule for this year, we didn't know if we could have everything we needed with this new project finalized in time to hit this year's schedule.

We're super excited about this upcoming Vs. System project and we've been working hard to finalize the details. Things are going so well that it looks like now we can get the product on to this year's schedule. Currently it's being planned as an end of year release after Galactus but before Legion ships.

Knowing this we had to look at the other projects we currently had on the schedule and we reviewed if we wanted to add this project on top of all the other releases or if we wanted to potentially push something back.

Reviewing the other products, we had the most slack with our starter sets. Starter sets are very important as they are a gateway product to new players however typically we released two a year to provide each property with one release. While movie tie-in products are great for consumer awareness, what we really want the starters to do is introduce more players to the Vs System over either of the specific properties. So we decided to hold back on the Superman starters (X-Men releases first this year and had a supporting booster set which Superman did not) and we're going to replace it with the new product.

The Superman starter set is done, it's ready to print and next year we'll be looking at either releasing it as the starter set for that year or we may look at integrating the content into a future booster set (I'm not saying Superman will definitely be on the schedule as a refeature team for next year but it's pretty safe to bet we'll see Team Supes back within the next two years for sure).

I'm sad I can't say more about the new project yet - again stay tuned to our web pages and support sites for more info. I know that Scrye, Inquest and Gaming Report writers attended the announcement at GAMA and they may have more details in their upcoming issues.

So, basically, you haven't heard anything from Upper Deck on this yet because we wanted to wait until we were ready to go live with the full announcement and maximize the wow value of the new project.

Let the speculations begin!

Mike Hummel
Sr. Game Designer
UDE

Argh...The next TWO years? For the most iconic superhero in the world, Superman gets very little love VS-wise...

No wait, there was Look-Alike Squad. That's a pretty amazing card.

Oh well. Its better than having the starter being scrapped entirely, I guess.