I want you to go back in time and tell my past self that right before DOR comes out. Maybe then I wouldn't have traded all my Terra's and Garth's for Batman's and BBBS. I guess I got some Fizzles and Alfreds back before anyone knew they were good, too. Tell me to stop trading Garths and start trading away all my Arkham stuff. That would save me alot of future/past headaches. ;)

The thing you're neglecting to mention, oh green winky one, is that the true hero teams in Vs never win. At least not without teaming up with Dr. Light, or readying more times than should be legal. The only decent hero team is Titans, and they are second rate (IMHO) in the comics.

FOE
Sentinels
GLEE (Note the EE)
New Brotherhood
Big Brotherhood
AGL
Doom/IG

The only thing the good guys have right now is Avengers Reservist, which seems to be going the way of the Dodo, GLock (which is getting more and more obnoxious every set) and the epinimious "Good Guys" (which I think is a stupid name, since the team-up itself was named World's Greatest Heroes, but I digress).

There's a thread about Power Decks scaring off potential players that a few of us have been going round and round about this in. I've been staunchly supportive of UDE in their decision to make the heroes less powerful in order to let the Newbs play their favorite teams right off the bat without dropping too much coin. Now, I'm not so sure I'm on the right side of the fence.

It seems that the bad guys in this game get the big bodies, nasty burn and breakthrough enabling tricks that allow decks to compete in this, Uber Aggressive Meta. The Heroes get breakthrough prevention, recovery and some bizzare underlying sort of defensive synergy (I'm not even going to count the Avenger's disasterous Curve Team Attack Strategy).

There is a dichotomy that seems on the surface to be relatively equal on both sides: Evil Attacks, Good Defends.

Unfortunately in the world of TCG's, as in the world of any other sort of combat/mock combat, Defense =/= Offense. A proactive strategy (read: evil teams) is holds any number of advantages for a given force than a passive or defensive strategy (good teams). Proactive, attack based strategies give the player more leeway and a greater control over the game state, without clogging his deck with defensive tricks and counters that may never see play.

It's an unfortunate fact that if the good teams remain true to their previous incarnations in this game, all we will ever see is decks full of the bad guys smashing face into other teams of bad guys. I understand that UDE has a responsablity to keep massive defensive pumps in check to allow for actual combat in this game, but it just seems like R&D looks to Aggro as the preferred game state.

This isn't Yu-Gi-Oh. This game is played by people with a maturity level above that of 4 year olds. We can handle the idea of multiple deck types being playable. Some of us like 7 drops, and would be more than willing to put them in our deck. I would love to play a deck with 12 cards in it that say "negate" and actually have it work. Right now, though, it doesn't look like that day will ever come.

/rantoff

Sorry for all that, I'm just kind of fed up with being dead by turn 5.

I like How UDE handles most of the Things:

SqS Should Be really Strong as a Faux JLA deck, with Guys with lots of power that dont need Tricks ( Cards in Hand) to win fights they do it with Them Selves.

Avengers are A huge Team with alot Of beef, seems good to me.

AGL: they Were Clones Of HAl Jordan I beleive but only lived for 24 hours, So tech they should be 5/4 with 3 WP.... I see no Prob with them.

GK is a Team of people with No powers that Focus on taking away your Opponents advantage, this is how batman Fights, he makes up for the fact that you are stronger than him by making your Weaknesses far below his. Now this isnt a way to go about fighting alot of things. GK is a reactionary Team (as they should) but in the state of the Game right now Negation isnt that Strong.

X-Men I have no Idea why they are still sorta Week as they have a Very Large Roster, (although Few of thier Members are very powerful) They used to get screwed Character wise, as for the Character search I go No Idea.

Not to mention that Time Breach is rare and Join the Club/Bloodhound/Sovereign Superior are uncommon. I suppose this is because the X-Men do have a unifiying mechanic throughout the team.What would have been nice is an X-men stamped card that let you search for a Mutant. That would have been both good and flavorful.

And for thje record, I find Good Guys to be a fairly catchyname. I refer to my JLAlly deck as my "Superfriends" deck, but I suppose that could easily apply to GG too :).

Maybe because X-Men aren't really about tutoring. Besides, Time Breach DOES support one of their main themes: weenies.

What, would you prefer a plot twist that read "exhaust an X-Man character you control: recover target stunned character and search your deck for an X-Man character card."

I think they did a GREAT job of supporting the X-Man theme of looking at the top of your deck/draw more cards. I would argue that X-Men are the heaviest of the Mental teams, which gives us all of these deck-topping cards JUST IN MARVEL MODERN:

Archangel (who is basically Worthington Industries)
Longshot
Professor X (4)
Worthington Industries
X-Corp: Paris
Memory Probe
Jean Grey (2)
Cerebra

And that's not even counting Emma Frost, Jean Grey (6), or Beast, who can all help you see more cards if you need them to (by turning down Memory Probe, drawing 6 new resources, or searching for an equipment, respectively).

I feel your pain, but FatBat, Bumper Cars (FF), Fantastic Fun, and X-stall have all had their day in the sun and are all still a threat. Any one of those could have gotten a lucky weekend and changed the metagame forever.

Common Enemy and Mutant Nation don't count, right?

I definitely enjoy the challenge of trying to make the Marquee teams competetive. But it can be frustrating when the traditional teams are not really set up for it. Personally, I would love to see a return to Curve success (if it ever existed) If you look at the average stats per drop, this game looks like it is designed to go to turn 7.

1/1, 2/2, 4/4, 7/7, 9/9, 12/12, 15/15 adds exactly up to 50.

And it just seems more "fun" when the games go into the 7th round.

Just some thoughts.

No, I think of those as "grey area teams." Something like Heroes United, on the other hand would be 100% Heroey Goodness. ;)

Ok, I'll give you Fantastic Fun. It actually shows up on tournament reports once in a blue moon, but the rest of them are way too unreliable in today's meta. I've heard rumors of the second coming of X-Stall, but that'll have to wait a few more months.

FatBat is a great gimick deck. It's built around the idea of avoiding any type of real combat until turn 7, while drawing most of your deck in one fell swoop. I'm not sure that's the type of thing that the hardcore Batworshippers out there want to see from their BatGod. Batman puts foot to face to maintain order in Gotham. Cosmic Radiation has nothing to do with it, unless it just made another meta-human bad guy. It's out of flavor, even if it is genius in deck building.

Bumper Cars is a deck that may actually live up to your hype, except for the fact that it's early game gets trashed by more aggressive decks. It doesn't take flight until turn 5. By then the Squadron's already eaten your lunch. That's not the way I picture my Fantastic Four interacting with the enemy; getting beaten down hour after hour, just to mount a half-###ed attempt at a comeback that is doomed to failure because they've lost their will to fight. Real uplifting, yeah?

X-Stall is an X-Men deck only because it has to be. If it could be mono-Doom, or mono-IG then nobody would bother with the X-men. The Characters are played for their raw power, not really for any team-wide synergy. It's hard to put this one in the W column for the good guys.

The fact is that the teams featuring the folks on the side of Truth, Justice and Love (the American way just isn't big enough anymore) just don't have the legs to stand on, the fists to break things or the heads to butt with that make the villianous teams work. It just seems like somebody decided to err on the side of flavor with the good guys, and failed.

They failed because, in the end, the good guys pull it out. In the end, the X-men destroy the Sentinels. In the end, the JLA puts Grodd in his place time and time again. In the end, Captain America stands, shield held high, over the unconcious bodies of the Masters of Evil.

In Vs, the games just never make it to the end. The Villians win before the book's actually over. Before we get closure. Before the heroes have the chance to pull that phantom zone projector out of Steel's ### and make with the projecting.

I guess to me, VS started out as a great expiriment in living the comics. A chance to interact with the Heroes on a level that hadn't been done before. Recently, it has failed on that same front. It's no longer about the comics, it's no longer about the heroes. It's about money and power decks that win by turn 3 on their nuts draw.

I think I may be reavaluating my time commitment to this game soon. Probably right after Crisis drops. Hopefully something will change my mind. Right now, I'm not that hopeful.

Batshido

A killer combo deck is EXACTLY what Batfans should want to see.

Nothing is cooler than an amazing combo deck. Except slivers. And they aren't in VS...yet.

I heard slivers is that big surprise that Jeff was talking about....

that would be some sweet stuff, I mean, like the two most popular heroes in DC have super sucky cards(batman and superman) with the exception of alfred and sometimes fizzle.On the marvel side, they have made x-men horrible and most likely never be tier 1, all the shady teams that no1 really pays attention to are the broken teams, like squad and masters/t-bolts and also sentinels and lets not forget those crack addicted teens the teen titans.

Fatbat is essentially a lesser or proto-version of New School. Bumper Cars was barely a blip on the metagame before it settled into Common Enemy with the superior Doom effects. X-Stall is only "X-Stall" because of three characters in the deck.

That leaves Fantastic Fun as the only major deck worth mentioning in Golden that's had any serious impact on the "good guys" side, which isn't very surprising. You might add MKKO as well, but it never really hit as hard as people were expecting. Even so, MKKO is notable because it plays like a "villain" deck - heaps and heaps of aggro.

I've said this again and again - the defense in VS is seriously lacking and has been ever since the Origins sets. "Good guy" teams should ALL have at least one and preferably two ways to cancel or negate attacks. If you're going to print defensive pump cards, print real defensive pump cards, not ass like Bulletproof (which is a substandard defensive pump when its optimal condition is met, for crissake) or Narrow Escape or what have you.

Seriously, let's just pause for a second and take a standard "hero" team: the JLA. You'd think the JLA would have good cards, right? Because they're the frigging JLA? But they don't have a good 6-drop, or a strong tutor, or a good defensive effect (Wall of Will doesn't even come close to qualifying).

If the "bad guy" teams get aggro that is better than Savage Beatdown (and they frequently do), then "good guy" teams should get card draw better than what's available - IE, something better than Birthing Chamber - or defensive pumps better than Acrobatic Dodge (Spider Senses is a good example of what I'm talking about here), or tutoring effects better than Enemy of My Enemy or at least Vicarious Living.

Seriously, bad guy teams get the majority of search effects, the majority of aggro pump effects, and the majority of KO effects. What are "good guy" teams supposed to do again?

Batshido wins the thread. :cool:

There is one thing That makes me Mad.

TEAm Superman, they have average Ablitys and Average Stats. Its fine for some of them (Rose/Lois) But I think Superman should Be a little more formatable.