It was a joke.

This was at a store where I have no control what goes on. Silly me, I go to other stores. (What? I like to play, and I need a break from spending all my time in school or in that store)

I could add dual lands to any deck to run a single card right now... just because you've seen it doesn't mean everybody does it. I'm sure there are still successful versions of decks out there that don't rely on EomE.

I was just going off of the cards my roommate pulled. 2 boxes of Dissension = 1 dual land. 2 Boxes of X-Men, 3 EomE. I understand this is luck, but the EomE can go in any of his team-up decks, while the dual lands are color specific. You speak of trading these in whenever you need a new set as if it is as easy as calling up a friend and just doing it. It's not from what I've seen.

Counter decks aren't good vs everything, and speedy decks don't beat anything. If that were true, why would anybody play anything else? The removal of color hate was a decision by WotC, but not something I agree with. Many old players of MtG feel that WotC had neutered (sp) the game a bit too much. I don't play anymore so I don't know the current meta, but I do know that an Urza's era type 2 deck would decimate a current type 2 deck. The cards used to be that good, and I had a blast with them back then. Color hosers were just a part of the game, and it forced you to plan for/against them.

More options are good, that's all I'm saying. EomE provides flexibility and options for decks and I think it is fun that way.

If people's main problem with the card is just the price, then that should be said rather than attacking the card's function and affect on the meta.

PS. It's ok Stu, I laughed.

and it was funny, in fact since I never played magic I think it was the only thing I understood in the last 3 pages of this thread.

Well then you have to ignore the jerks!

You can't complain about "netdecking" as if that's something you can change or would eliminate the problem.

I hate seeing kids get picked last at sports. It demoralizes them, they don't improve, and as such are never picked earlier. But I know that you can't change the world's ways, and I do what I can.

If you don't like the way that kid acts at that store, ask the owner to play a different tournament structure. Play the kid who only has the starter yourself. Trash the kid with the netdeck and show him how to win graciously.

But don't delude yourself into thinking that mono-team decks or eliminating money rares (which is just impossible) will solve this kind of problem.


So that people can follow this post, here's the statements I was responding to:

I have no issue with money rares. That's how I make my money. (Yes, yes, I take money from little old ladies wanting to buy their grandkids high priced cards) Besides making money, I like the idea my cards, that I own for myself will be worth something. One day I'll break out the box of Magic cards I played with 12 years ago, and sell them off.

And I don't hate duel team decks. Brotherhood and X-Men was the first deck I seen a lot of people make. (Starter deck to blaim) Brotherhood and X-Men fit together. Teen Titains and Gotham Knights, even Marvel Knights and Gotham Knights (Street level crime fighting) all click. It's the new team for each drop, and the 5 teams tossed together with no team up, then filled in with highest proced cards for the soul reason that someone else played it and won at this place.

This game was built on teams.

People bad mouth Yu Gi Oh. I enjoyed playing it. I did a lot better at that game than some others (Still think VTes is the best CCG out there, and Inquest agreed with me) You see the themes on TV, but everyone knew it was a joke to try it. Poeple did and had a lttle fun, but it was toss Dark, Light, Beast, ect into a deck, because they have better effects, and you want that. Now pound on people, and get a win on your first turn. (Sounds wrong, but I can think of three ways to do it, and one of them just needs three cards)

Now this game is getting to the point of just tossing in this card, and that card, and some card over here, and while your at it, this one card from this team. Then they claim it's a <insert team name here> deck. Now that your doing this, you lose the people that crack open a starter, and think "wow, I can play Superman and Batman in a deck" then wonder out into the mean world, just to see people playing decks that look like a chaos demon throw it up. Now that player gets to go home, toss his cards on the dresser, because they look pretty..and forget the game. No thrill of seeing what happens when the Joker, and Two Face fight Batman and his people..because for some reason Ape X, Nuke, and some more people from Marvel picked up Bizzaro and dragged them into a Arkham deck. Dr. Fate Vs Dr. Strange! not so fast, Fate brought Daredevil with him and Capt America, and Wondergirl....okay now it sounds like a game of Hero Clix. And here we have the new guy..with a rule book in hand..wondering why he learned all of this stuff about team attacks, and reinforcement...because it seems pointless.

Yep..Yu Gi Oh with Superheros is what we have now. I for one, want my Superheros back.

And Enemy of my Enemy is a casual jank players wet dream. DarkHam's Elite Inmates is finally playable!

But entirely out of their reach.

i think this game has reached to a point that where buying a box of x-men is cheaper than buying an enemy of my enemy

I think there is a good chance that there just might be too much search in VS.

Those of you that can remember should think back to the old days of the decipher star wars game, and think about how much it changed the game when search cards changed from the 'so and so's back' type cards in to the objectives and their ilk.

The game became much faster, and your deck construction required less of the people, which allowed you to run higher destiny cards which once more, offered up another change to the game.

I didn't understand back then how bad it was, but as I watched things progress, it became more apparent that some cards shouldn't be able to be gotten too easily, and luck of the draw and deck construction should do most of that work, not some uber powered generic search card.

this trend will inevitably lead to more negation effects, which will lead to effects that can't be negated, which will lead to broken loops and the need to ban cards to control said broken combos/ loops.

It is a fairly clear path, if you know your tcg.ccg history.

I think it isn't bad to have another option, but it is bad that people don't need to build decks that allow them to draw their characters any more.

The risk/ reward of getting to your characters comes at the cost of playing more of them, and risking drawing them later and not being able to use them very well.

At least, that is what my friends and I got from our earliest analyis of the game. The game offered a built in reward that allowed you to use those extra characters as power-ups later in the game if you drew them.

Now, ...now i don't know what to think.
I just thought I'd share some of my insight with those that care to ponder it.

(get old and you start ramblin about the good old days...)

I disagree. In my area we have casual players and we have serious players, like in every area - but most of the casual players are going to the 10K this weekend, because a big tournament is, in theory, *fun*. I mean, twenty-five bucks, you get a fancy EA and a shot at something a little better, it's a good deal.

But just because you don't spend a couple hours a day playtesting doesn't mean you don't want to do as well as possible, and it's obvious - it's stupidly obvious - that Enemy of My Enemy gives you a huge advantage. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about stratifying the play environment.



You can always ban a card if it's too unbalancing for the game. Cf. the Moxes. Possibly you could restrict it to 2 copies per deck, to serve as a secondary teamup. But I don't see any other option.



Yes, but the difference here is one of deckslots. Enemy of My Enemy takes four deckslots. The ST2G engine takes, at a bare minimum, eight (four Straight, four Swamp/Avalon), and probably more because you also want to ensure that you draw your Swamps. That's eight to twelve cardslots to get the same level of consistency that Enemy achieves in four, and that's a somewhat reasonable level of sacrifice to get the same toolbox effect Enemy provides.

But the thing is Enemy of my Enemy doesn't polarize the environment the way say Overload did. Instead, Enemy just makes the whole format faster and all the decks better. Obviously some decks gain more for this and some decks gain less, but whether or not it has in fact made the environment completely worse - I'm not just talking about the end result, I'm also talking about if this card is the only factor - is debatable.

With regard to casual players... for most of them the point is using a favorite team or having fun or executing some sort of concept. If there whole purpose was to win then I would consider them no longer casual, as being able to achieve this certain level implies some degree of study/practice. Certainly an individual could try to make his own deck at a tournament level but then he would still not be a casual player. This individual would be looking for a playset of EomEs. In my mind, for the most part, casual players have little need for EomE because trying to get EomE is inherently not fun - would you like a left nut to go with that arm and leg? Sure they would play with it if they had it, but casual players are not the ones driving up the demand for EomE - it's tournament players. I know this explanation seems very black/white, and if it doesn't make sense let me know.

I agree that I am warming up to the idea of banning a card. In Magic, they banned Consult, Survival and Necro for speeding up the game too much.

My main issue with Enemy of my Enemy being banned is that it sets a bad precedent. It's not just the fact that it would totally spit in the face of the secondary market - how would you feel if your 200 dollar cards suddenly turned to 1 dollar cards over night? This was one of the biggest irks of the combo winter, and I can tell you a lot of the people I knew did not feel too happy getting a pack for their previously 20-30 dollar Tolarian Academies - it's that Enemy of my Enemy is not actually the offending card.People will be running hate for JLoA but not Enemy of my Enemy. It is true that Enemy of my Enemy is part of the engine that enables the madness of JLoA. EomE is merely the catalyst, but it's not the only Catalyst. Clearly the Mxy/Slaughter Swamp engine is very powerful, so is the Beetle/Yellowjacket/HSC engine. That's not even going into the Midnight Sons engine. All these engines are capable of pushing forward EomE like consistency. Might it be more work - that's debatable - but as deck building becomes refined and more cards come out banning a tutor as opposed to the win condition seems like a much worse choice.

I would think that a Silver Age banned list banning Dr. Light would be the best plan. My guess is that Dr. Light is the real offender here and just banning Dr. Light would keep the decks fair. It would be a huge kick in the nuts to a lot of decks - like Faces : ( - but it would have less of the upheaval that banning EomE would have.

We can agree there, but the fact of the matter is the whole TDC Stall/JLoA arkahm engine is so powerful and is so ridiculously redundant that you won't actually have to run too many more slots. Hypothetically, I can easily search for Ivy on 2 with Beetle and play Dr. Light on 3, somehow pitch Ivy - maybe to swamp or whatever and be able to get an engine cracking. Really, if you toggle a few numbers I am very certain you can optimize Straight to the Grave equally well.

Banning or putting a limite on a card does not mean the price goes down. (I love my Chaos Orb, it's so pretty)

We have a Gold/Silver/Modren. Maybe Silver should be changed a little. We cut out so many sets as new ones come in, how about we do not let Modren into the Silver age games. Cut it off from both ends.

Or Golden lets everything in..so maybe it should be the one to cut everything out that's not X amount of time old.

Quote

But the thing is Enemy of my Enemy doesn't polarize the environment the way say Overload did. Instead, Enemy just makes the whole format faster and all the decks better.

...*if you have copies of it.* Which is my point. There is literally no deck that is not improved by adding Enemy of My Enemy and toolboxing a few key characters, so if you don't have it, you're running a subpar deck.

Quote

My main issue with Enemy of my Enemy being banned is that it sets a bad precedent. It's not just the fact that it would totally spit in the face of the secondary market - how would you feel if your 200 dollar cards suddenly turned to 1 dollar cards over night? This was one of the biggest irks of the combo winter, and I can tell you a lot of the people I knew did not feel too happy getting a pack for their previously 20-30 dollar Tolarian Academies -

I know banning Enemy isn't going to be a popular move, but something has to be done about the card itself, not just the other cards it interacts with. As I said, maybe restricting it to 1 or 2 copies per deck is an option, reducing the consistency of the card somewhat. Or, alternately, errata it to cost two discards rather than one, giving it a cost that accurately reflects its power.



It's most certainly the offending card. JLArkham is just the most annoying example of its overpowered nature. Mexican Hardware Store, for example, wouldn't be half the deck it is without Enemy - ditto the energy burn blitz deck - and call me crazy but I could do without decks that frequently win the game on turn 4 in what's supposed to be a limited format. See also: the Checkmate tools deck. See also: the Squadron Fate tools deck. And so on and so forth.



But, again, at the cost of cardslots. The Midnight Sons engine is sixteen cards - Dagger, Midnight Sons, Wild Ride and Micro-Chip/Mikado and Mosha. The Straight to the Grave engine is 10-12 cards. The Beetle/Yellowjacket engine is 12-16 cards (since you need an actual teamup on top of it) and only works for low-drops. None of these even compare to Enemy of My Enemy - four cardslots for the same level of consistency. Deck space is one of the most precious commodities in any CCG.



See, to me Dr. Light is a good example of a powerful card that's relatively balanced. Yes, you get resource acceleration - but you have to exhaust a 3-drop, who's underpowered to boot.

I disagree.

Take a peek at the latest issue of inquest or go online and look up which rares sell for more than the baseline rare price.

Outside of NuTZ and Avengers mansion, and a few Kang rares, what cards go for over $6.00 regulary? Thor, Hulk, 6 Drop Cap, Avengers Assemble. IS this becuase the pro player demand for them is so great? Did you see any Gamma Rages or Avengers Assembled thrown around in the last few 10K's? It's because casual players love their Avengers.

Enemy of my Enemy, as I said earlier, is Joe casual jank Player's wet dream. It makes their Crimelords/Syndicate mafia deck work (well better than it did otherwise.)

Bottom line. EoME is a 4 of for a larger percentage of the decks out there. And it's not available to Joe casual who buys 2 to 3 boxes a set. And the game becomes a game of have and have nots.

I don't think it should be banned. But somethings got to be done to get it into the hands of Joe Casual and Zeke Pro alike. Heck even Carl Wannabe-Pro needs him some.

Print it as an EA with some deck tins.
Give it out at Hobby Leagues.
Reprint it in the next 2 sets.


BTW - I got mine, but I'd like to have a playgroup left to play with.

What qualifies as good or bad for the game? It isn't exactly something you can measure. If it comes down to counting how many people quit over it, I can see it being far less threatening than, say, Teen Titans.

Something that would really ruin the game would also do more than impact only constructed; given that limited is completely untouched by the "evils" ascribed to the card, it can only be half-bad for the game at best.