I think daemyann must have a black belt in aikido or something. He's always letting aggressors be crippled by their own momentum.

Seriously, dragon11, take a step back and ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish. Even if you do think Donais was being intentionally deceptive (FYI: he wasn't), you're not helping anyone with comments like those.

(EDIT: Great post, Stu.)

I agree with that whole-heartedly.

Just knowing that should foster some reluctance to jump head-long in on either side.

A totally unfair characterization Stu. I rarely speak in heated tones, and in general, tend to look at both sides of an arguement, and, as I did above in response to Walter, acknowledge when others with a different take have a valid point. Hell, over half of my rep points are from you for that very reason.

This situation has just pissed me off big time, mainly the PCQ thing.

Honestly, Im not trying to accomplish anything, and Im not under the illusion that my words have any real effect on the situation one way or the other. It was venting pure and simple.

I apologize to forum members who have been hurt by those posts.

But, my feelings toward UDE remain as stated.

I think alot of you are being very unfair to Jeff. Im sure he is not sitting around planning on how to screw over the VS players

I remember when I played magic I was big into legends and all that then all of a sudden the print cronicles and make most of my "Legends" pretty worthless and with no real warning.
Then I get back into the game a few years later then they revise everything and put the stack in I got sick of it only played some draft with my friends then I found VS and never looked back.
How bout with D20 and wizards of the coast they changed a whole bunch of stuff with 3.5 and make alot of stuff I purcahsed obsolete with very little warning. Now rumors are 4 edition is in the making, so its not Jeff
d!cking you
How would you of liked them to have had Pro Circit Indy then said sorry were all done with our OP have fun if the game survives
No he came up front and said hey we are losing money and we need to save our game here are some of the ways we can do it and please help up out
None of this hey man

Then it's our take that your being pissed is weakening your position and tarnishing your reputation for evenhandedness. It's one thing to be upset and voice your concern, and it's another thing entirely to do what Stu's talking about, which I think pretty fairly characterizes what's been going down.

EDIT:
The thing is, your words do have an effect, and Stu and others are trying to show you that. Words that are pointing towards accomplishing something are worth much more than ranting.

But thank you for the apology.

I'll say this much about casual players building 'competitive' decks:

A pro team doesn't just try to build a deck ... it runs guantlets, tests out numerous possibilities ... it doesn't just make a deck as good as possible, it first finds out what is (one of) the best decks in the format and then fine tunes that deck to perfection.

A casual player on the other hand will start with "I want to play X". For example, they want to play a Spider-friends deck. Or they want to play a Future Foes deck. Or they want to play an Emperor Joker deck. They will then find how to make THAT deck as good as possible.

In an environment of decks where you choose a team or theme and make IT excel ... you'll have a lower level of raw power than an environment where you look to find the best of all possible decks and then take it to it's pinnacle.

There are a number of conflicting priorities.

For most casual players ONE priority is playing the deck they want to play. Winning comes second.

I'm not going to get into winning vs. fun ... because winning IS fun.

Fun should be the ultimate goal, and we can treat it as that.

However in some equations, fun means winning and getting the money weighing more heavily than playing a deck that has Emperor Joker in it.

Many players that play top tier decks do so because they can just take the information off the internet and bring it to their Hobby League. They KNOW the deck is good, no effort required.

The people that come up with their own decks will continue to do so. Without as many large events, it will be harder to 'netdeck' the top tier of those events.

Also, if 'jank' wins City Championships and thus shows up in the R&D tournament ... then jank decks will be getting net decked ...

I don't want to get into a 'net deckers = lazy' thing ... but well, obviously net decking is a short cut. Without the net deck, they'd have to do the effort themselves. They could reach the same conclusions, but they're guantlet would be tainted by the jank around them. And that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Metagames would be influenced by local level play instead of having the global metagame thrust upon it. Giving players at least the ILLUSION of control over their environment is a good thing, IMHO.

Bendrix. I haven't insulted or called out anyone on this thread other than UDE in the form of Jeff Donias. I think its great that alot of people can put a positive spin on this. More power to them. I really mean that, its not sarcasm.

However, as a consumer, I feel totally betrayed, and yes, lied to by this company. I was just expressing that bluntly. I dont usually beat around the bush. I guess I could've sent them an email, but I seriously doubt they really read them.

No, it really didn't. Cards like Big Leagues and most of the dual-loyalty characters pale in regard to the real power cards of the set: the Underworld fieldflood strategies which only really work well in three-team-plus decks, the busted-### Defenders cards which aren't teamstamped (Samantha Parrington), and the Wild Pack removal cards which require multiple teams and many of which work best with Crisis On Infinite Earths, of all things. The only card which actually really encourages generic monoteam play in the set to a reasonable degree is Against All Odds, and I'm still not sure how powerful it is outside of Secret Society or a Mental deck that runs teamups.

Design can make all the cards they like to encourage monoteam play, but so long as Enemy is in the background, it's almost guaranteed to be meaningless.

Very good points, many of which I've been trying to say. You said it much better than I did.

"Liar! Liar! UDE is on fire!"

Man... I hate my addiction to VSRealms and to this thread in particular right now.

Why are people so focused on the crap when doing that does nothing?

1. Dave breaks his long hiatus to point out what some of you took 14 of his posts to understand because you were too busy calling him an "elitist".

2. Jeff explained many of the reasons why things had to be changed and then he has to come on here again because some of us have "trust issues"?

I can understand the anger because I'm mad too... but name-calling and fist-stomping is really not going to do much. It might be therapeutic but in the end, we need to accept, adapt and move on.

Jeez... now you guys made me sound like stu.

Forget it...

"SCREW UDE... MY ANGER WILL MAKE PEOPLE WANT TO BUY VS AND MONEY WILL APPEAR SO THAT I CAN HAVE AN OP PROGRAM THAT I DON'T REALLY GO TO!"

C'mon... your girlfriend of 3 years broke up with you... deal with it.

In other words, until they ban enemy, nothing they can do will ever make mono teams playable. At least your consistent.

Then I have a suggestion, stop trying to battle it. I can't count how many times I've seen this scenario play out:

somedude: ZOMG VS is dead! UDE sucks and my dog died last night!
stubarnes: please spare use the theatrics, VS is alive and well.
somedude: No seriously, no one around here plays! Enemy of my Enemy is borken and costs way too much. F### this stupid game and f### UDE!
stubarnes: fine, then get the f### out of our forums. We love UDE and everything is peachy. Oh by the way, unicorns!

Now I really don't care what you do with your time, you can continue to yell over and over again how everything is great, and everyone who doesn't think so should shut up. Fine by me. But I really don't think it's helping all that much. You're not changing their mind, and I doubt you're having much of an effect on people who pop in to see what this game is all about by arguing like that (In the end, I think that's what you are trying to do).

I think you would better served to just ignore the nay-sayers and go back to arguing about unicorns, the circumference of Dave Spear's bald head, and if Spiderman could score a date with Lois Lane. Both conversations can be entertaining, but I think the later does more for the game. If you ignore them, I have a feeling most of them will eventually just go away.

NO SHE DIDN'T! SHE DIED!

Okay, so she did, but I'm over it, man. I'm angry because...uh...recent VS news. They're a bunch of liars and charlotans, that UDE, especially the one who is talking to us. He's the biggest among a wide range of liars and charlotans.

Nah. You dont sound at all like stu. The difference: Even though your post was aimed somewhat at my rants, I liked it and it made me laugh. And yes, Im done with the vitriol part of this.