Shhhh!!! If someone makes a Hecatomb analogy, I win fifty bucks.

It seems to me we could solve two problems by introducing BoyOfSteel's jerk-boy to the guy willing to beat up little kids for EoME. But, seriously, I love the idea of making it a regular rare in every set. That way we would get different art and flavor based on the theme of the set.

wait, you know someone who acctually played Hecatomb?

I know someone who bought some of the cards...whether they played or not, I cannot say.

The art on that stuff really hauls ass. I can't wait until it dies completely so I can scoop it up for cheap. (Unlike Vs. with its Enemy. This game will never die.)

When Jacob is one of those people, I pay more attention than usual. And given that even our deck, which started off with 'only' three Enemies, probably goes up to 4 if Ivy League gets popular, four copies are looking like a prerequisite for competing in at least Silver Age.

Looking at 10K Brisbane, Golden doesn't look much better, with 26 copies of Enemy of My Enemy present in the top 8. One mono-Shadowpact deck running 0 (only 26 characters, and almost entirely mono-Shadowpact) and two decks running three copies (1 copy of High Voltage, 1 Rigged Elections build that already had 4 Wild Ride and 4 Bat Signal.)

If a card is so powerful that owning four copies of it is effectively a prerequisite for top-level play, that card has issues.

And I also don't think that Enemy encourages the kind of diversity people are hoping for - with Enemy as a universal and constant tutor, decks will tend to approach the same strategies as a format develops and matures. A plot twist with threshold 3 with the text 'Discard a plot twist card. Search your deck for a plot twist card, reveal it, put it into your hand and shuffle your deck' would encourage diversity at first as well, but that diversity would then rapidly decrease as people figured out the most degenerate strategies given unrestricted access to plot twists.

Although I'm not a big fan of releasing sets very shortly before PC-level events using those sets, it seems like the only option if Enemy is in those formats - with an extra couple of months to test, PC SF may have been a much more depressing event for the casual spectator.

they can be bad for the game. if it eliminates mono teams, and multiple teams that actually use team ups, then yes, it can be bad.

Those hybrid cars won't be made illegal. but there are real stories about the absence of scientists that were coming up with alternate fuel sources back in the 70's.

If?

People keep building up this straw man, as if there's some artificial choice to be made between an environment with Enemy and an environment dominated by one decktype, be it Titans or Sentinels or what have you. That choice doesn't actually exist. Immediately prior to Enemy becoming legal, you had 10Ks with Titans, AGL rush, Good Guys, Gamma Doom and X-Stall all showing up in the top 8. How is that not a diverse environment?

And "flexible" is one thing, but "so flexible that you can automatically grab your silver bullet every game for the deck you're facing" isn't. For example, consider the JLArkham deck. You want to know how to beat JLArkham, if you have four copies of Enemy of My Enemy?

1.) Take odds.
2.) Mulligan for Enemy of My Enemy or your single copy of Sage.

Wow. That was hard. Yes, JLArkham runs Deadshot to take out Sage, but if you deny them the chance to play their own Enemy on turn three it becomes nearly impossible for them to fill their discard pile quick enough to use Deadshot's ability to matter; we find that four games out of five, the JLArkham player loses for this reason while their opponent bashes the hell out of them.

Is this a good thing, that with one copy of a card in a deck running Enemy, you can totally shut down a major deck? Shouldn't meta choices be more difficult to make than that? I think they should.

Actually, the Prius (and most of the other Toyota and Honda hybrids) are quite competitively priced.

Enemy essentially adds to the system the one thing that I personally did not want to see in VS (but let me explain before you come down on this opinion). It has added a built in character "Side Deck". We tend to fool ourselves about this idea, but while in the past you would have liked this character or that character because it provided a solution to facing a certain deck type or combo, you had only limited slots in your deck. Standard team searchers which were tradtionally the best at cost effective and good search effects, had speed issues before you could get another team included into the search by means of a team-up. But now you can get that other character that you need and be ready to team up too. This allows you to cut down the need for so many copies of a given character that is there only as an option to address special needs. Before you had to have more of the primary characters to ensure consistancy. Now with Enemy you do not. This opens up plenty of new slots in your deck and also speeds the way your deck works. It supports turn 4 or 5 wins and retards the idea of needing high cost characters in your deck. Since you can now set up for an earlier win condition more consistantly. There are of course exceptions, but you get the point. Now on the surface by itself I am opposed to this development.


Enemy effectively defeats the original idea in VS that any deck will have weaknesses and strengths, because now you have access to your "character side deck" that just happens to be built into the deck. Now building a deck that can go against the current Meta a any given tournament is easier to deal with. In the past you had to build something that would cross the survey of different decks as best as you could. Wel that is changing with enemy. It allows a toolbox that can respond to almost any deck if developed properly.

Now to explain why I really don't want to get rid of Enemy. I don't really think this is necessary. I really think the solution is adding card or two that supports mono based decks and provides a response to fast, character diverse decks enabled by enemy. Bring tools for the other deck structures so that they can compete and thereby offere resistance to the apparent dominance of the Enemy based decks.

When we see a Meta that has equal chances from Mono vs. Teamed-up decks and Off-curve vs. Curve, etc, then we will see a healthy Meta that is full of fun, skill, and opportunity.

The guys a UDE are smart, but I hope that they are also watching the trend that enemy has fostered that forces the Meta into a certain limited set of choices.

Enemy has solved many issues in VS, but if it is not followed by other solutions needed for other problems, it will limit what we can do with VS to a very narrow set of decks types.

Just one man's opinion.

Have anice day.

i see it this way: yeah, a lot of new decks have been made viable by throwing in four copies of EomE, but i dont think people should fool themselves into considering that diversity. as with all trends in deck building for any game, people are going to realize "hey, this deck wins" and run it. lots of people. so instead of these new, viable decks showing up splashed in with a bunch of other builds (particularly in the top 8), you see the dominant presence they have based on the fact that they are better than all the other builds.

long story short: new doesnt equal diverse.

that said, i do not believe the card itself is broken, or unbalanced. i just think it very unfortunate that it is a rare. i've only been playing for a little over a year, and i dont have the resources to throw massive amounts of cash into this game, ie buying multiple boxes or cases. i also dont really have the means to try to pick up four copies of EomE on eBay or internet websites. furthermore, ive noticed this is not an easy game to trade in; at any given time maybe a dozen to twenty of the thousands of cards printed are going to be sought after, and if you dont have those cards, no one wants whats in your binder. thats probably an extreme statement, but i find it especially true when you have to scrape together most of the cards youd like to hold onto just to pick up one or two copies of a card you NEED. besides, most people wouldnt even consider letting them go. i cant even pick up the five or so AGLs i need to finish that deck.

lastly: ive always wanted to get into this game on a competitive level. the more and more i look at decklists and realize i can't compete without getting ahold of four copies of a particular card, i realize that that is by no means likely to happen. that right there is my biggest gripe with the card. and yeah, shadowpact doesnt have any copies of it and still placed well...but i dont want to play the deck. and i dont think its very fun to show up to a tournament without playing a deck you will enjoy busting out.

rant over. i need a drink.

Affiliation used to be a limiting factor in the game. Many cards were created/tested as if affiliation would continue to be a limiting factor. Getting rid of it as a limiting factor can indeed be bad for the game.

despite the fact that I think these cards should be banned in all formats:

Enemy
Dr. Light master of holograms
The Fate artifacts
Justice League of Arkham

I think UDE has done an incredible job at tiptoeing the line on so many different things.

Look at what we ask of UDE:

Brotherhood is broken, fix it...
Titans is broken, fix it...
Curve Sentinels are broken, fix them...
Lightshow is banned, fix it...
Curve decks are broken, fix them...
Rush decks are broken, fix them...
Mono team decks are lacking, fix them...

I think we ask a lot of our game to be perfectly balanced. I feel this is impossible to do. They've done a terrific job so far, and I personally hope they miss something big in the future (like Ivy League) and I get to design a deck that has more than 4 of the t8 PC slots (if not for the leak, I do think we would have had at least 6 out of the t8, possibly all 8).

But those cards I want banned, should I explain?

How about this, you all can say I'm wrong and we'll bring this thread up again in 8 months. : )

How about a plot twist that does something similar to:
Each player stuns a character he/she controls for each affilliation among characters he/she controls.

I know wording would have to be made official like, but assuming the wording were made so it only stunned one of your characters if they are all teamed up, it wouldn't be too unfair if we are looking to nerf non-teamed up, multi team decks.

I still personally believe there is nothing wrong with the card and like what it is doing to the game, but maybe an answer card would satisfy the majority.