I agree with you, "popular" teams shouldn't be the best automatically just because of their fanbase...

All I'm saying is that I think it's more exciting to see 8 people piloting the "popular" teams rather than a top 8 of 2 mexican hardware stores and 4 ivy league decks... I guess it's because the flavor entices me...

Imagine a tournament with a top 8 that goes like this:

Team Superman vs X-Men
Doom vs Gotham Knights
Spider-Friends vs JLA
Green Lantern vs Fantastic Four

Then Team Superman vs Doom and JLA vs Fantastic Four in the semis... Then Doom vs JLA in the finals...

Something like that...

I think his point is that Squadron has more top 8's in the last six months than SF, X-Men, Supes and GK have at every 10k and PC ever.

Won't happen for a couple reasons:

1) Teams put work into predicting the metagame and building the best deck for the tournament. Getting 8 totally different decks into the top 8 of a single tournament is hard enough.

2) Almost always, 2 slots in a top 8 will be ones that seek to win through some way other than straight team affiliations (this is true even without Enemy of my Enemy, to avoid debate). You'll see decks like Rigged Elections, Ivy League, New School, Xavier's Dream, etc.

3) To see a top 8 like this (in Golden, I assume) means that "unpopular" teams can't compete. If the best 8 decks (which somehow each get one rep in the top 8) are all popular characters, you'll never see Squad, Hellfire Club, X-Statix, Anti-Matter, Fearsome Five, etc in the top 8, which means they are not strong enough to compete.

4) You're still discounting villains, not in your lists, but in terms of popularity. Heroes will ALWAYS have more fans than villains, and teams of villains often aren't fan favorites (Luthor is, but who would say "Oh, I love all the Revenge Squad?" Well, Biz98 might...).


Now, would I like the "popular" teams to be more powerful? Yes. I think they should be, and as Icymatt said, Spider-Friends and Supes were hit hard by bad sets. But players will always find card interactions to improve a deck and choose the best deck over the-best-deck-with-a-clear-comic-book-theme.

For example, X-men might be playable with the Fate Artifacts added, but does that count as an X-men deck for you? Even if they'd lose without the Artifacts?

You mack good points for the approach pros must take to be effective in competition.

As for the point in item 4...I actually enjoy the Vilians. I think most people secretly or openly enjoy Dr. Doom and a deck built around his flavor. Lex Luther is a perfectly wonderful villian and perhaps has not seen a deck that captures all his wicked brilliant glory (though some of the various teams that include him are nice. But Villians have always been more fun to play in theater and movies...just ask the acters and actresses.

I for one am not asking for all the popular teams to be at the top and leave the rest to gather dust at the botom. I contend that there should be a solid set of builds possible for all the teams and for that matter team-ups, jank, rainbow decks and such, so that what ever is you passion, you can use that to win or play or whatever level you like. As I have pointed out, it probably cannot happen because of the difficulty in pulling off such a balanced interaction between the teams.

As to the point you make about purity of team builds, well you are porbably correct. But a deck that uses the majority of its slots for a single team with added support from splashes is exceptable to me. It's a close as I think this game can get it when you consider the almost impossible task of designing a perfectly balanced card pool that serves all approaches.

Good points.

Have a nice day.

Oh, exactly my point!

I love villains. I usually play the villain team (or one of them) in each set.

But a top 8 of "The Most Popular" won't include villains. First, because Batman and Spider-Man will always be "the most popular."*

Second, because if you ask people what villains they like, they'll say "Dr Doom" (ok, he has a whole team around him) and "Lex Luthor" and "Green Goblin." But they almost certainly won't say "Oh, I love the Revenge Squad!" or "The Sinister Syndicate...you know, all of Spider-Man's bad guys teamed up at once."

Heroes have teams. Bad guys have loose associations. And because of that, in VS, will never be the most popular.

*And again, how do we determine "most popular?" Most books sold per month (favors heroes)...in a random poll (doesn't matter if you're a fan of ANYTHING)...in a poll of comic fans (do we count people who haven't read a book since the 60s?)...characters who have movies (DC is vastly outnumbered there)...

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I contend that there should be a solid set of builds possible for all the teams and for that matter team-ups, jank, rainbow decks and such, so that what ever is you passion, you can use that to win or play or whatever level you like.

"Whatever level you like" is probably too far off to hope for, but most teams are solid enough to do well in everyday play.

Remember, when a pro says "Arkham can't win! Why play it?" they don't (usually) mean, "Never touch Arkham! Sacrilege!" It means "Playing Arkham 10 times in a row against more consistent decks for money is not a wise choice."

Yeh, unfortunantly you are in practice and function correct, but my inner hope says there should be a way. Since you are correct about the pro vs. the non pro player's motives, the question of what is popular is realized by totally different goals.

I guess the dream is way to impossible to bring together, since there so many ideas people believe is the right way to make this game work. So overall, I suppose that UDE really has acheived a pretty good collection of teams and non team splashes for a card pool.

You are correct that most villian teams are not associated with a popular villian but a vague group of villians with some odd group name.

I still think that this game is always moving forward. That may be its best saving grace in that it changes from curve heavy meta's to rush to splash, to something new and will often come full circle. In that, we have the variety. But I can dream.

Have a nice day.