And it doubtless would be, because you are reading it backward. I didn't say only one team should be able to do something. Multiple teams could be given cards that work well against certain archetypes. We could have multiple teams that can fight aggro, each in a different way. Multiple teams that can fight control, each with a different flavor or methodology for doing it. But when every single team is given a generic tool that does everything, it defeats the purpose of having teams to begin with.

Because, of course, every team needs hate to win. It's never enough to just be really good at doing what you do. It's not enough that squad is blazingly fast. It neds to have hate for all the stall decks too. It's not enough that glock can stall like no other. It needs specific, dedicated hate for the rush decks too.

What ever happened to pitting one strategy against another? Or is it that the only viable strategy in VS should be pitting one hate suite against another?

Yours is a vastly simplified model, of course, but the argument is silly. It's like saying that scissors is unplayable because it loses to rock every time. It's like saying paper can't be played because it'll lose to scissors.

Rock, Paper and Scissors are all playable. That's because they all excel at one thing and don't do much else.

If every deck is good at something and bad at other things, then no deck will be able to dominate. By extension, then, every deck will be viable. Every deck will have something to offer that the other decks don't have, and they won't have to worry that every single other archetype can just tech four cards in and ruin them.

Team-Ups would allow for decks that can do more, of course, but then they'd be less consistent bcause they're, well... team-ups! Now that's balance.

So, by limiting hate to certain teams, a hate metagame will be created?

No offense, but that's the most backward thing I've ever heard.

I was attempting to illustrate, through massive simplification, the effect that decentralizing the ability to "hate out" a certain type of deck would have. I do not believe that my specific example will ever come to pass, but it was meant to serve as an instructional tool to show you my side of the arguement.

Rock, Paper, Scissors metas are NOT healthy. This type of set-up implies that 3 Decks are playable. I would hope that this type of play environment is not our goal.

There are simply some things that every deck needs to have access to. At the top of the list are cards that say +ATK or +DEF. Next are the cards that save them from specific hate, such as Not So Fast style counters and means of Ko'ing Stunned Characters. Very last on the list, due mainly to the proactive style of deckbuilding that we have in the VS system, is the specific hate.

Why do we need generic hate against Weenie Rush, Aggro, Control and Team-up/Combo? Because if it didn't exist, those decks would dominate the Meta.

Without HAB and similar effects, combo/control ala New School and Rigged Elections tear apart more combat oriented decks. They would be impossible for other decks to stop before they "went off."

Without Finishing Move and and other KO tech, curve decks would forever dominate the realm of 1 on 1 combat between characters. They would be impossible for other decks to keep up with in sheer terms of DEF.

Without Flame Trap and other types of Weenie hate, the board presence of the aggro beatdown decks would overwhelm the opposition before it could ever get off the ground.

That is not to say that every deck must pack hate cards to deal with the Meta. It is enough that those types of Generic hate are AVAILABLE to whoever wants to put it in their deck. It is the constant threat of the fact that, no matter what affiliation you are up against, you may see that hate that matters.

It is the fact that those cards exist and are widely applicable that keeps the Meta from being overrun with one specific type of deck. Without them, the game stagnates. Stagnant games die. Ask Dicipher. Ask the guys behind Wild Storm. Once the game breaks itself, it's over.

Generic pump and Generic hate keep the game alive.

In fairness, Multiple Man's potential largely springs not from his ability but the fact that he's "universal" - an Army 1-drop for every team. He's better classified as a "generic" than an "unaffililiated."



This is situational. Right now, Finishing Move is "better" because there are more decks that focus primarily on cards in hand rather than cards in the KO pile, but there are already several teams that use the KOd pile as an asset and there will be more - and heck, right now, there's already one major decktype, Squadron nohand, that argues for playing Death Trap instead of Finishing Move.



A three-point swing isn't really classifiable as "small". It's average.

Other problem:

Let us assume every fourth team needs to be good against weenies.

That would increase the amount of weenie hate in the game about 150%. It is not hard to patch together multiple teams.

If you had four different Total Anarchies and Flame Traps... _one deck could play all of them_.

Some effects are just too dangerous to make redundant.

I would agree that weenie hate could be team-stamped. Also, curve hate could also be team stamped if we ever get back to a point of needing curve hate.

Combat pumps need to be available as non-team stamped. The nature of the game is to reduce an opponent's endurance in combat. That means that pumps fill a common element of game play.

If every team had 2 to 4 combat pumps (offensive and defensive) that would leave far fewer cool teamp stamped cards such as Fizzle, UN General Asssembly, etc.

There are improved combat pumps that work within a teams concepts such as Snikt, It's Clobberin Time, Magnificient Seven, etc. While the raw power of these may be less than Savage Beatdown, they provide other benefits that work for those teams or a wider range of application.

Yeah, X-Men's theme is discarding cards. And people wonder why they suck.

Would it hurt to not have so many pump cards in the game ? I mean I know that most people would then need to create a deck instead of just throwing mega blast flying kick and beatdown into a deck but seriously.... is this game any fun when i go down to a local store and have to play squad supreme all day long ? Could we maybe see a format where a team like the X-statix are playable... What about Crimelords? I find it pretty terrible when my 4 games in hobby leauge are Sentinels, Titans, Avengers Reservist and Squadron Supreme.... I'm not sure that squad supreme could ever win without flying kick or mega blast...

Since we're delving into the realm of analogies and examples anyway, I will simply ask you to look at that other extremely succssful TCG, magic.

* Black can't deal with artifacts and enchantments. It easily kills creatures and has access to discard, though.

* Red can't kill enchantments either. It can off artifacts, but its creature-kill is damage-dependent and not as reliable. On the other hand, the damage spells can be pointed at the opponent himself so they are never dead.

* Green kills artifacts and enchantments easily, but has trouble killing creatures.

* White has good artifact and enchantment removal, but its creature removal is mostly of the global, non-selective variety.

* Blue can counter anything, but once a permanent is in play it usually has trouble getting rid of it.

Last time I checked, MtG was still alive and kicking, even though goblin decks needed to dip into green for naturalize and White Weenie decks needed to add red for burn.

As a matter of fact, the times when MtG stagnates are those eras when a single color or archetype could efficiently handle everything else. Whether it's generic card-drawing from Skull Clamp (control hate) or generic creature kill from Jitte (aggro hate), the effect is never good.

Generic hate keeps the metagame stagnant because it interferes with the natural self-correcting tendencies of the metagame. In any meta, counter-strategies will rise to combat any dominant strategy. However, if the dominant strategy has the tools to hate out any other strategy, it will never be dethroned. Another way generic hate stagnates the metagame is that it keeps people from teaming up. Why bother to play ten teams if one team (plus generics) can get the job done?

Am I the only one who realizes how silly it is to claim that generic hate promotes diversity, when it was precisely the presence of generic hate that allowed CS to retain its stranglehold on the meta for months after overload was banned?

If you actually go to the trouble of teaming up four teams just to get sixteen weenie hate cards in your deck, then you damn well deserve to absolutely crush weenie decks.

On a related note, you also deserve to lose to pretty much everything else. Of course, this is sure to happen because the four teams you chose to team up with are all good at hating weenie rush (and therefore bad at doing other stuff). The only way this wouldn't happen is if you had access to powerful generic hate cards that act as silver bullets for your problem match-ups. You would be able to beat everything! You'd never have to change your deck!

And that, my friend, is how metagame stagnation happens.

I think you are the only one who called someone else's opinion "silly". These are opinions, not facts. There are many other variables involved: Luck, Player Preference, Competitive/Casual perspectives. I love when people go for the bird's-eye view and get philosophically analytical, and I know for damn sure UDE does too, but please remember that a personal opinion is just that.

You forgot the IMHO.

In my personal opinion you post way too much about stuff people could care less about.

Forgive me mods, but here goes:

WHY are you throwing us off topic? Can't you add something decent to the conversation and community? Stu contributes and yeah, sometimes we don't care too much, but people just roll their eyes and say "That's Stu," but at least he's made a name for himself by doing and acting and promoting. He's been a positive inflence. So please. STOP the TROLLING. If you don't care what someone's posting about, move on!

Back to the topic:
Basically here's where I stand on this one- Generics are just fine the way they are. Unaffiliateds *do* have potential, but the average character is underpowered. However, I think this is because they're meant to be played for flavor and little more.

Last time I checked there was more than five teams in Vs.

The simplification of 5 colors which have been used and added to for what ... over a decade?

You can't just say "this team does this, that team does that, etc ..."

Because you run out of things.

You can't compare Magic to Vs. and have the analogy hold water.

If Vs. didn't have TONS of teams ... they could seperate it into 'areas' of control.

And heck, they still do have SOME specific hate assigned to teams.

Doom and Plot Twists in general.

LOA and Locations in general.

Not to mention that only certain teams get an easy way to tutor for PTs and thus only certain teams are able to toolbox hate vs. splash and hope to draw into it.

However ... by limiting the hate for the top deck to a single team ... that deck can limit it's counter-strategies to that deck.

Titans was the only deck that was comparable to CS. So they only really had to tech against TT and various [similar] combo decks.

By team stamping hate cards ... you limit the number of teams that can be effective against the top deck. And thus the top deck is able to sellectively use counter strategies for JUST those decks.

CS was taken down because there were TOO MANY different decks for it to be able to counter tech all of them.

By allowing ANY deck to pack the hate card ... you allow for DIFFERENT ARCHETYPES to both get similar benefits. While you can tech against the specific hate card ... it's harder to tech against multiple different archetypes.

You still need a way to search for the toolbox of hate. Which means a team up with GK and/or Doom. And then you still need to worry about filling out your curve and having it not ... you know ... suck.

You are the only one who BELIEVES that perhaps.

CS was powerful because, so long as only a few decks posed a threat, it could strategize against those specific decks.

Not to mention, it was packing cards that were basically team stamped to other teams [Mojoverse, Magneto and Genosha, Juggernaut, etc] as ways to counter the strategies used against it anyway.

If more decks had solid answers to CS ... then CS would fall ... and that's what happened.

If betrayal was team stamped people would have had an even HARDER time against Curve Sentinels.

If only a few teams had access to Betrayal, then only those teams would have posed a legitimately threat to CS ... and therefore CS would have again been able to use it's 'extra space' to specifically metagame against those decks.

And you'd need to be packing a team that has tutors and is therefore not as powerful in combat.

Or you have to rely entirely on luck, in which case you won't always draw what you need.

You know ... like things go now.

I know ... I mean with the Squadron running wild I see everyone flame trapping left and right.

And using those 'return cards to opponent's hands' plot twists to mess with them as well.

The metagame is really stagnant ...

Oh wait.

It isn't.

Wait for Silver. I've been testing for a while now, and if we don't see a really, really good anti-weenie hate card - and I'm talking on par with Flame Trap at least - Silver Age is going to be AGL rush and decks that can beat AGL rush and NOTHING ELSE.

What are you talking about?? Lair is an AMAZING card that is BETTER than natural team attacking and reinforcement.

1) ALL of your characters can team attack, meaning you can splash any character into any deck, play lair, and you don't need a team-up for team-attack purposes. This is especially important if you want to splash affiliated characters into an unaffiliated deck, where team-ups wouldn't generally help you anyhow..

2) It allows you to reinforce one character per turn. NOrmal reinforement requires two characters of the same team, and you must exhaust one. Even if you COULD reinforce a fellow unaff character naturally, you still have to have a second character, and exhaust it. This card alows you to forgo the exhaustion and you can use it when you have only one character.

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Interesting. Top secret or can you give a list?

The last one I put up (on June 7th; Kergy's Korner #62) is out of dae now, so I'll have to put a new one up at some point in the future. Some time post-Atlanta.

If he is a Troll then your a StuBarn Goon.