If chdb says "UDE should ban EomE," and gets a job at UDE where he has the power to ban EomE, and does not, that is hypocrisy.

If chdb says "people shouldn't play EomE," and plays it, that is hypocrisy.

If chdb says "UDE should ban EomE", and doesn't believe it, that is hypocrisy.

These all involve saying one thing and thinking/doing something directly contradictory.

But saying that EomE should be banned, and playing it, is saying one thing and doing something that isn't at all contradictory. Saying a card should be banned is a reference to what UDE should do, not the players. He may still believe that the card should be banned, but want to, oh I don't know, actually have a chance to win.

exactly............

You know, the fact that you actually went and got a dictionary definition of "hypocrite" and are still managing to get it wrong impresses me no end.

Let's recap with the relevant portion of the definition:

2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

My stated belief is that UDE should ban EomE, because it degenerates the play environment. I am personally incapable of banning it, as I have no connection to UDE.

I've never said people shouldn't play EomE. People should, if they want to do so, build the most competitive deck they can possibly build and play it. By necessity, EomE is going to be included in any competitive Silver deck, QED.

How arguing that EomE should be banned (at least from non-Golden formats - honestly, it's not like I give a toss about stupid broken-### Golden play) for being too powerful supposedly contradicts playing it because I try to be a competitive player is beyond me, but maybe you could explain, using your advanced understanding of hypocrisy.

Have I ever said "you know what, folks, I know it's legal and all, but you shouldn't play Enemy, just to send a signal"? Of course not. Because that would be asinine.

He's not acting in contradiction to his beliefs. chdb thinks that EoME is too good, therefore he plays it in his deck. Why would you not play a card you think is good? I see nothing hypocritical about.

(a) CHDB wishes for the rules of the game to be changed

(b) CHDB wishes to play the game

(c) CHDB does not have the ability to change the rules of the game

Therefore:

(d) CHDB plays the game by the rules as they are, not as he believes they should be

Very simple logic.

Someone believes that taxes are too high. They still pay their taxes. Are they hypocrites? Or just not stupid and not wanting to go to jail and understanding that the electoral process is likely a better way to change things than to refuse to pay their taxes ...

So you are simply prepetuating the "degeneration" of the enviroment. Kudos to you. Your association with UDE is of no consequence to the arguement as the statements you made were those of a gamer, not as of a representative of the company. Seems to me that if you felt as strongly about your position as you claim, you would have found an alternative to the deck you played or at least played without EoME in the deck.

Now, back to why we should ban EoME and/or Dr. Light (our regularly scheduled program).

If I wanted EoME banned (which I don't btw), I would use it in a deck that absolutely NEEDS EoME to do good (which is exactly what chdb did). That way, at least UDE notices how good it is. If everyone wanted EoME to be banned and nobody played it, why would UDE even consider banning it? It would just look like nobody is playing it because it's not a good card.

I don't think they should ban them. I didn't play Dr. Light in a deck that topped out at 3 (except for 1 maddy) and I did fine. Two out of the three games I lost on the weekend came at the hands of 3 drops that were not Dr. Light. Shayara Thal and .... Captain Cold. It turns out that if you Slaughter Swamp a Dr. Light target, then they are typically screwed. You guys should try it. This is especially true of a face-down swamp. When any deck devotes 3 points into Dr. Light, only to have the target swamped, they become hard pressed to want to recover the character that does nothing (this is mostly true on the 4th turn). And any faces deck can be slowed down almost a turn by swamping the dr. light targets. Slaughter Swamp, in my opinion, is the 2nd best card in Silver Age, not Dr. Light.

Enemy is definitely number 1. It is a nuisance in it's versatility, and a boon in the same regard! Sauce for the goose. I think the talk of banning it is kind of silly. If you are going to play competitive VS, buy 4 EOME on ebay. The price isn't going down anytime soon. If you desperately need money, sell them on Ebay for probably higher than you paid for them in a month or two. The cost of staple cards like that are similar to getting a hotel room and buying 2 dollar Cokes, except with this you can actually sell your used Coke back to that stupid vending machine after you've turned it into pee-pee for $2.25.

If you can't afford EOME, sell VS Singles that you do own until you can. Go mow some lawns or give backrubs to your grandma. I feel for people who are very very strapped for money, but these are often the same people who can't afford to fly to tournaments, where finances will be a problem no matter what the state of the game and it's money-rares happens to be at any given time. Thems the beats. If wishes were horses, etc etc.

Previously I thought EOME should be banned. But think about what did well this weekend in Columbus. I played against these different deck archtypes:

2x Good Guys
2x Inhumans/Heralds
2x Society Control
2x Faces of Evil (of some sort)
2x JLI/Masters
1x Squadron/Fate
1x Stall, Wesley Dodds, Cloak, Godfrey, Spiderman, Exhausto thing

Now compare that day against formats that existed before Enemy and Straight. Do you remember playing against Sentinels or Titans 70% of your matches? I do. Do you remember playing against a Brotherhood deck 4 out of 5 games? I do.

This environment is just dandy.

damm thats an excelent post ./

That's one way.

However here's the thing:

Building a competitive deck WITHOUT Enemy of my Enemy -> Prove that Enemy is NOT degenerative, and that there are competitive options without it.

Building a competitive deck WITH Enemy of my Enemy that might be abusive -> Prove that Enemy IS degenerative, and possibly be the straw that breaks the camel's back and thus help to bring about the change he wanted.

Sometimes the BEST way to bring about a positive change is to push the bad to a point where change is the ONLY solution. Make the situation WORSE so that a change is necessary.

He could 'martyr' himself for the cause by playing a deck without Enemy and having very little chance of winning, but ultimately, would that PROVE anything? Tons of people lose for TONS of reasons ... 'not having Enemy in my deck' isn't necessarily the ONLY reason that it lost. Not to mention, not matter HOW good the deck was, he could be taking dives just to prove a point.

HOWEVER ... winning is much harder to pull off. Therefore, the BEST way to show that Enemy is abusive and should be banned is to abuse the HECK out of it and do well as a result.

Kovacs is absolutely right.

By the way, for those of you who do not know me, I am Jason Kattides, the original creator of Lost in Space.

Lost in Space is an incredible painful deck to play against. It is abusive, and can seem incredibly unfair to play against. It should not exist.

I played a match against Kim Caton at Columbus, and even a player of her level simply decided on turn 6 that their was no way for her to win with her endurance still well above 30. Should i mention that she was playing ecstatic villians, who are meant to start winning around turn 6?

As I have discussed with chdb, Enemy of my Enemy is a card where either one of two things happen:
1. New players use it as a crutch to build fun decks featuring their multiple favourite teams.
2. Experienced players find ways to brutally abuse it making the game very unentertaining for everyone.

At Columbus, most of the reactions to my deck were the same. The first 5 minutes of the games, "cool!". The last 25, "Snoooooreeee". And it was not like we were stalling. There was one judge who seemed like he was following me around the entire day watching my matches. While my opponents would look to the judge for help as I would take my excessively long turns, he would simply shrug, and state that I was making legitimate actions as quickly as possible. So if I am not cheating, how is it that my matches were so boring for my opponent?

Now Jaxxin makes an excellent point. Before EomE, there was not much diversity in the decks. (Apparently im told, as i have only been playing since DCR) So im still torn as to whether EomE is good or bad for the game.

There have been many decks in the past where a player knew they had lost the game when they were at more than 30 endurance, that really isn't that uncommon. Such is the way of control. Once the tide gets stood-up, there's nothing left but the crying.

While I thought the deck was neat, it was by no means an example of why enemy should get banned. It's not the best deck in the format, despite being quite good.

It lends itself to attrocious plays. While I don't have complete incite on every time Tim Capes played Frankie against me, I can say this with confidence, he got greedy. He had access to an appropriate drop but instead chose to continually draw 2 cards instead of just play the correct drop and leave enough swamp activations to mikado all my 1's. (I mean no slight by this Tim, I have played with Frankie/Stranger many times and it can be hard to know when to put the bottle down.)

And as proof by how Tim responded to my turn 2 off initaitive San putting Slaughter Swamp on the top of my deck, dr. light is a big deal for the deck, and being able to negate him, even if only once, is an enormous deal.

While I applaud you for your deck. The engine it utilizes, much like ones found elsewhere in the tournament, is where the power lies. You just chose to put an awesome engine on the back of a common-enemy'esque aggro-control system. This is compared to Mike Sewell's pure run-me-over-see-what-I-care control. Neither are perfect, and the metagame has shown that in my opinion.

If you're opponent is bored by playing you, tough. That's the name of the game. I have been cussed out twice in VS System Pro-Level events for taking a lot of time during my build step. TWICE! Both times I won the game naturally after they stopped whining about my equal-time deliberate decisions and both times I graciously waited for them to sign the slip. I accept that the pace at which I play is painful to some people because the decks I play often take 5+ minutes to build during critical turns. But if they don't like it, call a judge or go play checkers.

In the first place, the pre-Silver environment was dictated by the Origins cards that were more powerful than ninety percent of everything released up until DGL. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Sentinels and Titans cards are way more powerful than anything released in MSM through MMK (and most of DGL for that matter). Once UDE stopped releasing bad, nerfed-quality sets, and started releasing cards of comparable quality to Origins (in Avengers and Justice League), Curve Sentinels and Teen Titans became merely major decks as opposed to environment-defining monsters.

In the second place, playing five off-curve swarm decks and five toolbox curve decks, each subtype playing large numbers of the same cards and essentially using variations on the same strategy to win, doesn't seem any less stale to me than when CS and Titans dominated.

I disagree.

I have a question about the time limit thing. Is it really legal to spend that much time in a build phase? I realize that what is involved is a lot of actions, but does that make it okay? From what I recall at Pro Circuits, i remember Paul Ross saying that each palyer is responsible for playing at a pace that leads to the game ending in 30 minutes. If your build phases are taking 5 minutes then you are not playing at such a pace, correct?

I'm not saying it's stalling, I'm asking if it is "stalling". Clearly it's not by a normal definition of the word, but it's also not playing at a pace that allows for the game to come to a natural conclusion either.

Basically I guess what it comes down to is a question of does each player get 15 minutes of action time, or is each player supposed to act at a reasonable speed at all times? This 1st occurred to me while watching Vidi play Jacob in San Fran. Vidi was playing a very simple aggro deck while Jacob was playing a very complicated one. They had 150 minutes to play 3 games if I recall. What if Vidi decided to use up 75 of these minutes on his decisions? They definitely would have timed out in that case (they timed out anyway). Would Vidi have been stalling by using his half of the time allotted?

I tried to look at policy documents and it wasn't very clearly spelled out.