hahaha......

Um, Overload is dead far more times than Not So Fast was. They put 1 card in JUST to tech against weenie decks, so why is it unheard of for the weenie decks to have to add 1 card to save themselves? But I digress....

I've personally always been strictly against it, for a number of reasons

1stly, we are talking about a combo that requires 2 cards to stun a small guy, three or more for a midsize guy. While overload can put a decent dent in curve combat, it ALSO encourages curve combat by inherently slowing down the game (through stopping attacks AND by wasting a persons attack pumps). Overload is an end and i think there are quite a few other cards that prolly should be higher on the watch list than those (Devil's Due and Cosmic Radiation most notably).

2. Overload is an end, and at that a typically not degenerate end. In recent times, upper deck has banned MEANS to degenerate combos. This is an important distinction to note and is the reason truly broken cards like Light, Frankie Raye, and Chimp are banned.

To further summarize this point, look at this list

Overload
Dr. Light
Frankie Raye
Fiddler
Detective Chimp
Antarctic Research Base
Valeria Von Doom

One of these things is not like the others, no?

I want Dr. light back, maybe overload. But i would really like to see Dr. light back because it worked in many decks. Swarm, stall, curve. Was in all the Top tier decks but it was good for the game like enemy of my enemy.

Actually, all of those were banned because of their non-combat interactions. You never saw Press The Attack or Teen Titans Go! banned because there was combat involved...and they weren't broken but, I digress. Overload is like psuedo-combat, it's not really real, we just all think it is.

Dr. Light is broken, 'nuff said. If he came back in World Finest or something a little later with a Willpower stamping or even just Emerald Enemies, that's not broken. I think G'Lock should be able to be played, just, not Dr. Light.


Coolexplosion

Overload creates a problem for a combination of reasons.

First, it can be used proactively, with attack pumps of your own that you play on your opponent's characters to stun them. This means you aren't packing Overload as a tech card ... it is a useful card that you can play proactively.

This means that the card will be packed and thus is available to be used as a tech card against the decks that it does especially well against.

Overload is a very powerful anti-low drop card. However, unlike say ... Flame Trap, you can play it in a deck, go up against nothing but Curve Decks, and still have a use for the card, more so than you would with Flame Trap. [Also you can pack it in nearly any deck without having to suffer the same drawback as you would with Flame Trap, except for having to commit a number of other cards to making it work ... but the same can be said of Fate Artifacts].

It's not just the ability to use it proactively ... it's the fact that being able to do so means the card is played much more often. Thus, the card it 'techs' against are hurt.

A 'bullet' that is ONLY playable as a bullet is one thing. A bullet that is playable and 'good' even if it NEVER faces the targets against which it is 'great'.

Perfectly said.

So versatility and the ability to play a card in a creative fashion are the reasons that cards go on the banned list? I find it comical because overload was banned because of its use in a relatively "fair" deck (lets be honest, overload was banned solely because Curve Sentinels had by far become the best deck in the format and off curve decks hadn't quite been established as a viable archetype to the degree they are today), whereas all of the other cards on the list pretty much contribute to some extended/near infinite cycle ( a good number involving devil's due) many of which could have in part been slowed down by **overload** (obv. barring cloak of course). To use an analogy from another game, Overload is in many ways the Berserk (because when they restricted it, Giant Growth + Berserk apparently = Broken) of this list. Is it strong? Yes. Broken? Possibly. Game-altering to the point where it deserves a spot on the banned list because the game is ending/locked up on turn 3? Not in the least.

It was game altering in a way they did not intend.

The card was SUPPOSED to be a way to punish the opponent for making their characters ridiculously high in attack, often to try to stun too far up curve.

However, it was being used outside of it's intended use, and having a HUGE effect on the metagame in the process.

It was banned because it was taking the game in a direction they did NOT want it to go. It was replaced with a less powerful version in the form of System Failure. It's gone, it's not coming back, period.

Not every banned card is banned because of being able to end the game early. Just because there could be a balanced metagame with Overload, doesn't mean there SHOULD be.

It is banned ... for it to be unbanned would be the same as deciding to make the card all over again. It's much different to decide NOT to ban a card, than to decide to UNban a card. One is maintaining the status quo, the other is overturning the status quo.

Whether or not off curve decks would have been fine without banning Overload ... it doesn't change the fact that before it was banned, Curve Sentinels dominated the format, and that outside of Sentinels and Titans, most decks simply avoided combat all together as any curve OR off curve deck that attempted to actually attack would get eaten alive by CS and/or Titans in part because of the power of Overload.

Jolt, were you actually playing the game during the Overload era? If you were and you think that was a balanced and fair meta, you're an idiot.

I'm sorry for being rude, but sugar coating things isn't my style.

To unban Overload would be to set up an enviroment where you have one team that best utilizes Overload dominating the field percentages, a smattering of teams that used Overload second best and a bunch of decks trying to win outside of combat. That is stagnent and boring and degenerate.

Even the prevalence of Ahmed doesn't come close to the amount of decks that tried to abuse Overload. Not to mention that not every deck has to avoid an ENTIRE phase of the game to defeat Ahmed, like you did with Overload. When you remove the combat phase from the equation you have a bannable offense. Just like Ivy League negated the build phase. Overload didn't break decks though. Ivy League was a broken deck. You know what Overload broke? The GAME. That's BAD.

-Mike

We've noticed, I'm 3% more sad because you don't sugar coat things :cry: .

On the Overload topic, the card is just amazing, WAY too amazing. It easily combos with other cards to take out the Combat Phase. UDE is now trying to make the combat phase a much more important part of the game. Especially by banning Frankie Raye<>Nova and some of the other non-combat cards. Now TDC Stall is dead, and along with it, the Combat Phase has more attention...as soon as UDE freakin' bans the Golden Age stuff that is!!!


Coolexplosion

lol But wouldn't you rather be 3% more sad and upwards of 10% more intelligent?

-Mike

...I cannot even come up with a good comeback. RanmaSolo, you sir, win this round.


Coolexplosion

I did indeed play in the era of overload. I'm also not gonna lie. I was pissed off when it was banned because it was a check on a number of things ('specially roy). However, in this instance i think the power of Overload in the current era is being very vastly overstated. While I agree that the combat phase is of importance to the game, constantly dragging up the specter of Curve Sentinels, especially in an environment where there are multiple outs to overload (Cloak, Mob Mentality, etc. etc.) is really a moot point. Saying a card erases combat because it forces a player to handle combat differently (when in actuality its most egregrious use AUGMENTS the combat phase [the NO in SNO] by making an offensive turn bigger than it is). Additionally, i think that another important unintended conequence of overload (namely the fact that it is a solid check against a number of otherwise degenerate situations that aren't as simple as Attack-Pump-Pump-Pump-Pump some more) is part of the reason that overload was nearly universally played while system failure has traditionally seen lukewarm response at best.

Secondly, ranma, let me clarify... since clearly there is some miscommunication. By NO MEANS am i saying that the spring 05 meta was a diverse sparkling metagame in any sense of the term (albeit not as bad as the DCMA meta later that year), however, it wasnt a deck that neccesarily broke or warped the fundamental rules of the game in any way (unlike say any deck using Doc Light skirts the resource rule, or any cosmic radiation based deck skirts the you can only activate once rule), hence the terminology "fair" deck (Notice the quotation marks, as i ripped the terminology from an old article on metagame.) Additionally, the real reason the meta stagnated in the period has less to do with overload, and more to do with the fact that sentinels got serious augments (Mark V in MSM, Hounds in MMK.) in a string of sets where everything else was disappointing to say the least (hence curve sentinels losing most of its steam once DGL and MAV came out).

Thirdly, Walter, you mention that there is much breaking up the status quo by unbanning cards, HOWEVER, typically, once a fair amount of solutions are released in the format (in this instance cards that give untargetability, and for that matter even PAY ATK cards), most games will pull cards off of the banned list (most companies don't like making people not play with cards). Magic's done it moving Mind Twist/Channel from outright banned to restricted and has pulled cards from the restricted list a few times. Yu-Gi-Oh does it every six months. Hell, even raw deal did it once (with FLaU, before they started having to release three or four silver bullets every set).

Simply put, as i said before Overload is the Berserk on the banned list. It may take a while before people stop being haunted by curve sentinels enough to know that solutions are out there, and more are bound to be released over time. I think now is a good time to pull it, as the emphasis slowly shifts to Silver/Modern/Punks whatever format they come up with next.

Actually, it was a specific card in the next set [Fortitude Surge] that bulleted FLAU. However, Raw Deal prides itself on not banning cards, and the reversal/backlash deck concepts allow for Raw Deal to be have bullets in a way that Vs. can't.

All right, I'll definitely say my comment didn't apply to you Jolt. :) I don't agree with your assesment of Overload, but you do have a very good grasp of what the CS/SNO era was like. And I will admit that it wasn't just Overload that made Curve Sentinels so widely played.

Curve Sentinels obviously would have been played a lot either way at that time. It was proven by the fact that they were still the most common deck after Overload got banned. But once it was it opened the field quite a bit and when Avengers came out Avengers Reservist crushed Curve. It was the "New Standard" for a while there and if Aaron Weir knew how to draft it probably would have won a PC. Or at least made the finals. Of course then maybe Hans Hoh wouldn't be banned and who wants that? :p

Needless to say if Overload had still been in the enviroment there's no way Faces or Avengers would have made the kind of impacts they did. Squadron is arguable, but even with Joystick, Lady Lark and Melissa Gold's huge ATKs they would have seemed incredibly risky to play. It probably would have to have been a full curve deck running to 7 to keep the gas on without blowing up.

I don't think it would have severely affected JLA or MXM except puting Morlocks to bed with their Physical decks not panning out instead of the Evasion theme trying to catch on. And at this point, it's still Curve Sentinels at the top of the meta.

How sad would that have been? It would've killed the game a hundred times... A MILLION times worse than the OP announcement supposedly was going to. PC Australia? It would have been PC Carlsbad Office Parking Lot. Free IHOP breakfasts if you make Top 8!

-Mike