You're right. I guess that's probably Konami's ad.

People don't pay conscious attention to ads, no. Or, at least, rarely. You saw the blue border and naturally assumed Vs. To somone unfamiliar with the game, a full page spread with such bright colors and their favorite characters would likely get noticed.

However, advertising often ends up being a little more subconscious than that. I doubt many people would go buy Vs just because they see the ad. But, the thing is, a majority of people who read comics have never heard of Vs. At least, a majority in my area. I'd never heard about it until a few people I know started playing, and I have no idea how they'd first heard of it.

I would definitely tend to agree with the people who say that Marvel and DC could and should be doing quite a lot more work with this game. All three companies could benefit greatly from a more in depth alliance, I would think.

Then again, I don't know anything about the costs of working with Marvel and DC.

I do believe this opens the door to the "WHAT IF..." set.

A set thats not legal for a major event, but perfect for the kitchen table.

1. Sell the game in regular retail stores (Wal-Mart, Target, etc.) while still concentrating on driving people to events at hobby shops (if the area has them.) Put an ad directing kids to hobby stores or vssystem.com on the blister, in the pack, whatever. Of the top 7 collectible games right now (Magic, Yugi, WoW, Pokemon, Naruto, Pirates, and VS) only VS has no retail presence outside of hobby stores.

2. Advertise the game in comics and on more gaming websites/magazines. Konami is advertising their game in comics, but there's no reason there can't be VS ads in all Marvel/DC comics. Just work it in into the next renup of the licensing contract for them to always be in there. It makes perfect sense for Marvel and DC to put house ads for VS in their comics, it makes them more money. Also advertise the game on regular gaming websites outsides of realms, pojo, etc. Magic does this (G4, Penny Arcade, Game Informer, etc.) and it can only help VS.

Good call. Perhaps we may see elements in this in Giant Size Vs?

1) Not true I got 3 boxes of DSM for $20 each. They have a person stocking it and is independent from Wal-Mart. They normally don't carry it because it doesn't sell that well so they don't put it out that often.
2) I do belive they put adds out in some magaziens lke Inquest or something like that. I know I have seen it but can't remember when or what magazine. They should do it more often.

There are too many teams. Magic - 4 colors. Yugioh - different types of monsters, but they're interchangeable for the most part. But as one person brought up a while back, if you buy one back of Vs from one set and then another pack from another set, good luck trying to put that together into a deck. 99% chance that it's not going to work.

I just counted on VSed, and theres 55 teams in the game. 55! And each one is completely different with multiple themes. If you add all those (curve + rush + stall, etc) for each team, there's hundreds of potential "teams." Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but when there's so little cross-compatibility, unlike Yugioh, it is extremely, extremely daunting for your average casual player to keep up with. It's why I left the game.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but most casual players have a favorite team. They may even have a 2nd or 3rd favorite. For me, its Sinister Syndicate (then Spidermanetc, then X-Men). Right off the bat there's a problem - for the longest time, these teams all sucked, yet they're the most popular in all of comics. Next, there's so many sets coming out with so many teams, I have to wait twice a year to get any support for these teams. I remember anxiously checking card lists to find out if these teams would be getting any upgrades - cards like Carrion, Man-bull, etc., only to be let down almost every single time.

UDE needed to pick one or the other - many teams with easy cross-compatibility (Yugioh), or few teams with difficult compatibility (Magic). Instead they went with both, and its a huge, huge headache in my opinion. I think they're on the right track with MTU, which is why I'm posting now, because the SS support is fun and exciting for a fan like me. If I could go back and be UDE dictator for day, I would have told them to stick to 10 teams, max. Don't care what you call them - gold and silver teams, or just stuck with actual, major teams like JLA/Avengers (which would've far more accurate and exciting than "Team Superman" or "Spider-friends"), whatever. I would have been much happier with a set number of teams that I can count on to be upgraded every release. Just like in the comics (Who's going to have the edge this time? Will the new Iron Man best the JLA's highly touted new Superman? What will the JLA counter with next??! Stay tuned next time to find out!)

But, it looks like UDE has caught on to this and has started to make some teams obselete and beef up the money makers. If they really wanted to, they could just go back and make smaller teams sub-versions of bigger teams, kind of like a Wrecking Crew kind of thing. X-Statix would fit just fine under the X-Men in my opinion. If UDE really wants make it more accessible, stop supporting 40 of the teams out there, right now, and stick to ten to beef up. If they need to, re-release the other teams as sub-versions of the 10 big boys down the road. But, hey that's me. Maybe you guys are so hardcore you like forgetting about all the old teams every 3 months and doing all that playtesting. But as a (wannabe) casual player, I would love the simplicity. It's just impossible any other way.

What do you think?

To elaborate on that idea a bit, it could work something like this:

Each label gets 4 teams, 2 hero and 2 villain. Just throwing stuff out:

Marvel: 1. Avengers 2. X-Men 3. Brotherhood 4. Sinister Syndicate

You could even go generic for them.

DC: 1. Silver Heroes 2. Gold Heroes 3. Dark Villains 4. Green Villains

Whichever you went with, you could have subversions to expand on other concepts. So: Silver hereos can get the JLA, JLI, and Gold Heroes can get, I dunno, whatever's left. They can be thematic. For Marvel: the Spider friends characters and S.H.I.E.L.D. can be under the Avengers, X-Statix and others can be under the X-Men. If you went this route, you might need to stretch the team licenses a bit, but I don't think it would be qualitatively worse than making Super-man or Spider-man have, and be dependent upon, their own team as it is now. You could always tweak it and call them the "Super Avengers," "Brotherhood of Evil," etc. and call it a day. Just as realistic as anyone else happening in Vs right now.

So Marvel/DC each has a stable set of 4, and when new licenses are brought in they can add 1-4 teams to the table. If it's small, like Hellboy, 2 new teams would probably be plenty. Then you have more of a true "Marvel vs. DC" thing, since it's even and stable. Heck, anyone here if they wanted too could take the existing VS cards and condense the teams into 4 each for Marvel and DC.

If this had been the case earlier, it would also have had the other benefit of forcing UDE to focus on the star players. Would they really need to devote dozens of cards to characters like Orb, the Skrulls, etc., when each team revolves around a star like Superman, Spiderman, or the Joker? But they would also have the flexibility of going obscure, and introducing an entirely new THEME with new characters without having to introduce an entirely new TEAM, just like the other successful card games.

I still have a hard time believing there's 55 teams...and that it's only getting worse. It's too bad, because I really liked Vs. It's a good system, a good concept, and a great license. Well, I can always dream - here's to Vs. 2.0!

So... we already have the teams... which ones would make Day 2 and which ones would be relegated to 10k status?

It's called Anti-Life Equation.

And every almost 9-drop ever printed before Heralds hit. :p

About advertising: I hadn't set foot in a gaming store or comic store in over two years before I went into Daydreams to pick up Joss Whedon's first issue of Astonishing X-Men. One ad for Marvel Origins in it, and three years later, here I am. Anecdotal, but I doubt I'm an isolated case.

I would say the lack of advertising hurts Vs. more than the number of teams. Being a casual player, I have not gone to many tournaments, and there aren't a ridiculous number of Vs players in my area (8 to 10 max for our hobby league, generally 5 or 6), but I've yet to hear anyone get irritated with the number of teams, and, in fact, that's generally one of the things people I know get most excited about in a new set.

I have, however, repeatedly been playing Vs in a comic shop, and had people come up and ask "What is that?" and when I explain it's a superhero card game, they wonder how they had never heard of that.

The only ads I've seen in comics for Vs. (aside from the Konami game) were ads for DCR (which I didn't see much of) and the Superman Starter that never came out.

Then again, I am biased. I play Vs. because of all the varied teams and the cool things they do. Be little reason for me to play if I just had to slog through set after set of Spider-Man and Superman, so I would understandably rather see the current manner of production continue.

You can't limit to 4 teams for both sides, there is more than 4 "big beef" teams out there, then you would also be limiting the characters. Not to mention all the people who like more obscure teams, I personally am a fan of The Thunderbolts (Venom and Bullseye w/ TB FTW). Limiting teams wouldn't help, in fact it would severly damage it. Diversity is a big selling point.

Diversity is a big selling point, I agree, but so are compatibility and and the big names - Spiderman, Superman, X-Men, etc. There has to or had to be a way to incorporate both the diversity of the comics while also giving these heroes their proper due, without having the mess of all the teams that we have.

I don't doubt you guys love having so many teams. But try to understand the difference between you--the hardcore players (casual or pro) who anticipate each set and understand what they're about--versus the player who picks up some cards from one set and another set, maybe skipping some in between. I started playing TCG's with Yugioh with my little brothers, and it was fun. We could buy packs from any sets we wanted and slog a functioning deck together. You can also do that in Magic. But you can't do that in Vs. Teaming up compounds the problem; it doesn't make it easier.

I guess I would've rather had more Underworld type themes - where characters in the same genre are put under a collective team - and just expanded on those. 4 teams per set 4 times a year is nuts to a player that doesn't want to buy either a) ton of cards from all sets, or b) a ton of cards from one or two sets but no others. Some people thought that Spider-man was unsuccessful because it had only 2 teams. It was unsuccessful because those teams sucked. And as far as sealed/draft goes, imagine how awesome it would've been if the the X-men/Brotherhood redux rounded out the other two? We wouldn't have had to wait so long for them to get an upgrade.

You don't have to agree with me. I introduced a lot of people to Vs to try to get it going back in the Origins days, but they all ended up going back to Magic or Yugioh. I eventually stopped altogether. And I think that's why. Basically, something that a minority of TCG players may get hooked on, a majority of TCGers (particularly casual players) may find not worth the price of admission. That's what I think happened.

I think the way it's done now is fine, and I'll tell you why. If you jump into Magic and decide you want to build a red deck, you'll be told you need to buy packs from Set A, packs from Set B, packs from Set C, etc. If you jump into WoW and decide you want to play a Hunter, you'll be told you need to buy packs from Set A, packs from Set B, $30 raid decks, etc.

If you jump into VS, and want to play an Avengers deck, you'll be told "buy Avengers packs".

That seems better for casual play to me.

I would agree that this is also a problem in Vs. System. It has been discussed many, MANY times before, but it's really hard for a casual comics fan to get excited about some of the top decks out there.

What are the most powerful characters in Vs. System? Ahmed Samsarra? Golden Archer? Rose Wilson?!? When the most playable JLA/JLI deck has a character curve comprising of Shayera Thal, Katar Hol, and Fire, there's something amiss.

Of course, UDE R&D has said that they recognize this problem, and are planning on making future sets more about focusing on archetypal characters. Already we've seen some of this come to play; as Marvel Team-Up has some of the most amazing versions of Spider-Man that we have yet seen. I have a feeling that World's Finest will not disappoint, either. I wholly expect Batman, Superman, Lex Luthor, and The Joker to have some absolutely amazing versions that will make all of their respective teams quite playable.

Finally, I think Vs. System does ebb and flow to a great degree with the popularity of the comics. We had very high points with the Avengers and Infinite Crisis sets - 1) Because the sets were quite good; and, 2) Because the teams/comics involved were big in comics circles. We had a low point with Legion of Super Heroes (but that has more to do with DC cancelling the revival of the comic more than anything). I think that we should see some growth with the upcoming Marvel and DC Legends sets. In 2008, Civil War is bound to create some buzz among the comics and TCG communities. Hopefully that will translate into growth in the player base.