How am I supposed to go to the manchaster master challenge without PCQ's? There is, never was and never will be a city Championship where I live. There have been 3 PCQ's the last 2 years. I already stopped playing, but started again with the hope to go to play in manchaster...I feel like a moron spending money on the last 3 sets. I should have burned everything

Wow...it was over and you wanted to get a dig in? What a jerk...nothing naive about my opinions, and I'll thank you to never do anything like this again.

Look for a PM.

Not to sound like a Yugi Fan, but...:grin:

I believe in the heart of the cards

So you start them off with a starter deck instead of throwing a RANDOM pack at them that they might not care about.

So you don't start selling the game with "Well, here are all the problems on the most competitive level that you probably won't be playing at right out of the gate anyway".

Don't bore them with the details.

Get them to PLAY THE GAME so they can learn it ... This is cart before the horse stuff.

What?

This barrier is you being a jerk and telling the player "You can't play what you want to play, you can only play established decks that have done well!"

It's about developing new PLAYERS not necessarily new hyper competitive players that will be at the pro circuit within a month.

If the people you are trying to attract are NOT gamers originally ... don't assume their goal is to BE gamers. Get them to like the game BECAUSE of the characters ... then once they like the GAME, you can teach them how to excel at the game.

Again, cart before the horse.

First of all ... Avengers Assemble is BOTH a Hobby League EA and a Gallery Pack rare EA.

Not to mention, it's likely not the most expensive rare in the world considering Avengers LEADER is far from tier one.

You can explain to a player the concept of deck building and things like that. Perfectly fine. Although, you should be starting off with teaching them how to play with decks they DON'T have to buy and build 'themselves' ... get them to love PLAYING the game, and then get them loving the 'meta-game' involved in battle preperations [i.e. deck construction/tweaking/gold-fishing/etc]

Cart ... horse ...

Or start with a deck that works for teaching them.

If you have two decks with a solid, consistent curve, some pumps, some tricks, etc ... they should be a good match up for each other.

Throw someone that just learned how to swim into the ocean ... they may drown.

Teach a player how to play ... eventually they'll want to learn how to build ... and then they'll want to buy cards so they can build what they want.

First you have the horse and behind IT is the cart.

This depends on the area ... there are some that like the game so much they buy boxes of every set and rarely get around to doing it. However this is a 'down the line' issue. At this point the player is saying "I want to invest money in this game" ... Now they could get turned off by the cost of doing so as a 'barrier' ... but Modern Age is good for a reason ... they can focus on a single set and likely get a decent [not necessarily great] modern deck out of it, and have to chase down [trading/buying] singles from the other modern sets to fill it out.

See, the horse pulls the cart, it doesn't push it.

You have a person buy cards and build a deck BEFORE TEACHING THEM HOW TO PLAY THE GAME?

How is the deck building lesson any help at all?

Once people have played the game, they'll understand the idea of maximizing resources, of board pressence, of why attack pumps are good, defense pumps are good, etc ...

Until then ... all that stuff would be going over the players head.

You START with two decks that should be 'fair' against each other [maybe give the player a deck that is a little bit better] and you go through the game that way. You can explain SOME of the 'complicated' concepts like the chain, or formation and reinforcement.

But having them buy cards and build a deck before they even play the game?

Now I'm beating the dead horse with the cart ...

This isn't a barrier ... this is a 'risk'.

And if those people go to HOBBY LEAGUE, they are still supporting the store to some extent. And, EVENTUALLY, there will be a re-feature.

Some players might only enjoy the game as far as their particular favorite characters are concerned ... well, at least it's someone to play against, to attend Hobby Leagues, etc. It's one more person playing and if they don't normally buy EVERY SET that comes out ... they'll likely save up and buy quite a bit when their favorite characters to. Some players stick to a single team just to keep their costs down. They could spend NOTHING on the game, but buying for a specific team and paying entry fee for tournaments is better than nothing.

People that want to play but don't want to spend ANY money on the game? Hey, some places are just looking for people to play. I have a friend who can't really afford to play limited events, but it's always better to have more people. So I pay for him, and get his cards. He gets to play, I get to purchase twice as many cards [and get doubled chances at prizes].

Speaking of which ... SEALED is a great way to teach a player about deck building [note: NOT draft ... draft is later].

Open 5 packs of a set they like, put together a curve and some pumps.

Limited can be an expensive format, but it also helps to build up a resevoir of cards for them to be able to build constructed decks with.

Someone read it ;)

Don't underestimate people ...

If anyone is looking for a vs hobby league in the nj area, tonight theres one at realitys edge

i couldn't resist the cheesy plug, seeing how were talking about HL

I was not for core sets (like Magic) but if you did core teams like this then that would be cool you would still have some team diversity and yet still have the Big Guns always getting more and most people would perfer to play the big guns its just most of the big guns sucked
Im all for this guys idea

Repped

While we're doing the cheesy plugs, Marvel Team Up draft this Sunday at Little Shop of Comics in Scotch Plains, NJ. (VS Zombie: We really need to have a LS/RE team event sometime too)

Game Nightz in Phoenix has HL every Monday @ 6pm.

Hobby League shout-outs! We should do this once a week.

Villains (used to be Superheroes) in North Miami Beach. Every Monday at 6pm, I will be there each Monday in March for sure.

Check your PM box

P.S. Wheres John Williams' voice in this matter?

Man everyone totally misunderstood me...

Especially when it came to building the deck. Wtf you supposed to tell someone who wants to build a deck and you just don't have any cards but the most recent set in your shop? I know Avengers Assemble is easy to get. I know a lot of cards are easy to get. Its still completly intimidating to the player to tell them they need to go shop online.

I never said they had to play tier 1. I would go through the characters they like and help build a deck that is consistent with tricks (and cheap). The Iron Man thing was a joke. Its frustrating to a player that wants to play their FAVORITE TEAM to tell them they can't because you have to purchase X packs from an old set that isn't available anymore locally. The CCG allure of buying packs and trading doesn't work on most people at all around me. (Especially on a comic fan who just want their favorite team) So you are left with buying singles online if they want to play their favorite team.

In reference to its ok if the player only buys cards he likes, that is never ok. There wouldn't be VS if there weren't players such as myself that bought boxes every set (Well... not DLS. Nice try on X-men round 2 UDE).

Does anyone run a HL or have a local gaming night around the Pittsburgh area? Just checking now when everyone is in a good mood.

P.S. Civil War 7 was so cool. We need more Infinite Civil War Crises published through the year. World War Hulk coming up I guess.

how is it not available? try using MAgazene Exchange. they have loads of old stuff. that's one way Game Nightz has a box+ from EVERY VS set (gallery pacs not included)

One thing that I think no one has mentioned is the release date for World's Finest. According to the OP docs, WF was supposed to be legal on June 1. Now, it appears to be pushed back even more. I have to wonder why this was done and the ramifications of this decision.

So now, we're going to have a lull of almost 3 months between this latest announcement and the release of the next set. You already have people who are quitting the game. You already have zero organized play during these next 3 months except for Sydney. And, oh yeah, MTU (and I suppose Hellboy) needs to carry Vs. for the next 3 months without having a big tournament to showcase it.

I don't know about you, but the next 3 months are going to be very telling as far as the future of Vs. is concerned. The success of World's Finest is also going to be crucial.

I was told by alot of people that the problem with VS was the UDE made it a money game from the start and did not even bothering making a huge casual fan base and now there trying that...i hope it is not to late