So my card playing group (primarily Lord of the Rings) told me yesterday that they really don't like the Vs. system. It's just too random, they say, and once one player gets an upper hand they carry that out and win the game.

I'm somewhat inclined to agree. 40 cards is the bullet number to make this game work correctly, and until that happens I don't know if I'll be able to get anybody around me to play. Do you have an answer to this criticism? It's as new to me as it is to them.

How many cards do you play with in LOTR?

Lord of the Rings only had me interested for the one failed attempt we made to play it during lunch at a Red Lobster in Orlando once. :shakes head and regains senses:

The VS. system is exactly what I like in a game, simple turn based gaining-of-points to a victory number. The 60 cards, 4 copies thing is very sticky, I must admit, but it can be completely overcome... even within the first set. The metagame might suffer greatly from it, or it might just be a wide variation on one deck archetype. The designers built in a remedy to overcome the 60 card thing... and a couple real good ways to stop that remedy.


Whether your elf-loving comrades will ever come back to VS. long enough to get over the first frustration is another matter entirely. We absolutely adore the LOTR movies, but will never play that game a second time.

So essentially we're saying the only ppl who like this game are magic and yugi players...

The reality is it is so random that you may or may not get the cards you need. I dunno, it's a 60 card deck in rings too, but you get to draw up to your full hand size (meaning if you play 4 cards, you get to draw 4 cards) every turn. There are other reasons for that, and it probably wouldn't work as well for vs., but there has to be a way to make this work!

I can't stand having what I think is a good game ripped up, and nobody being willing to play. :(

I used to play lotr:tcg from Fellowship till Two Towers until I realised the meta was being changed by rulings, NOT the new cards. Glad I sold out before the bannings, though. Lord is a fun game to play but the game has fundamental problems that stop it from growing and changing and it becomes uninteresting. I hope you give VS a chance though, I think it really may have legs.

Your LOTR friends are playing one of the most BORING games ever made, and they want to complain about VS??? Trust me, true gamers (especially those that played before LOTR) appreciate the VS. system, and you will eventually find lots of people playing this game. LOTR is far too linear for me, and with all of the stupid "only draw 4 cards a turn" and Decipher's idea of banning good cards really took the wind out of the game a long time ago.

Well in this game you only draw 2 cards per turn. How is this any better? Not to mention that Magic has cards rotated out all the time.

But that isn't the point. The point is, how are you making a deck that can come back once your opponent has 4 characters down and you're taking a beating every turn. That's the major complaint, and I quote:

"Once one player gets a lead in the number of characters, they will win. There's no way to come back" Now this is excluding the big ticket characters (dark phoenix, onslaught) because most of our games are ending at turns 5-7.

start sniping game vs. game...

I think that VS. will have an appeal big enough to overcome the steep initial learning curve and the extra strategy levels that Magick and Yogi don't have. Those two games (don't forget Pokeyourmon too) have a huge mass of players that will take to this game like ducks. And, just like ducks, the novice will get picked off one-by-one shotgun style by the players that put the time into smoothing the 60-card-randomness problem. Then, the problem will be solved and the deck will be all over the net as the one that won in Philly and the ducks will buy their own guns. Is that good, or not?

try Flame Trap and Political Pressure.

are they comic book fans? I find that the deck with less characters can make a come back because they've been holding the higher cost characters in their hand unable to play them until the end and then they make a comeback (-very annoying)

You might tell them to buy few cards and play as practice until draft and sealed events which will play with fewer cards and limited selection of cards?

You might make a rule where everyone plays with 2 or more team affiliations in there deck- that could make the game more challenging- your Sue Richards and doom bot vs their Pyro and She-Hulk and no way for either of you to prevent critical damage?

Hang in there!
:cool:

how about giving us a gaming example? i am interested in the deck types (for example X-Men vs Sentinels), and a general description of each players moves per turn. to see where the 'overwhelming' effect happens. it appears this system may be a two edged sword - it is exciting because it is fast and furious, an it is frustrating because it is fast and furious. the major critique i have heard is 'it is all about the burn and beat down, which makes it one dimensional and takes away the potential strategic variety.'

so, if you can remember any games details i would be interested in hearing them. :)

I am not "sniping," to be honest I used to play LOTR hardcore (still ranked in the top 10 in GA). The points I were making have been substantiated by the dropoffs in tournament attendance after the Towers Block was put out. By excluding many of the most popular cards, and adding some rediculous (read: Grima) cards to the mix, Decipher drove people away. Many of those players were Decipher loyalists who had played SWCCG before they lost that license, and when LOTR became so linear, (which is something that SWCCG was not) they became disenfranchised and picked up games like MTG or, now, Marvel. Trust me, I know of a ton of former LOTR and SWCCG players that are picking up Marvel.

I see happening in the metagame is multiple New Brotherhoods/cheapevilmutantsbeingpumpedandfeedingdirectenduranceloss. (don't say "damage" or "burn", wrong game)

Is that what you are frustrated with, rgd?

No, that's NOT what we're saying. I loathe Magic, and never played YGO (because down here, it was a game only for screaming 10-year-olds). Personally, two of my favorite games were SWCCG and Raw Deal, and I still find Marvel interesting and challenging. I am a bit surprised at your criticsim though.

VS. is bad because "once one player gets an upper hand they carry that out and win the game", but LotR isn't? LotR is a horrendous example of a game that's almost impossible to recover from. Granted, I quit LotR before RotK, so maybe things have changed since then, but you can tell me that when I used to drop a Site 2 Witch-King with Sword/Steed and eat two companions that I wasn't "carrying that out and winning the game". More often than not I didn't even have to carry it out, they were dead and gone by site 4 or 5. And what about the instant-death that was the Site-7 Moria Swarm?

I'm not denying anyone their right to dislike VS., nor am I trying to change your mind as I am not responsible for promotion, but your specific complaints seem largely ridiculous when you are using LotR as your basis for comparison. I personally like the 60 card minimum, to drop down to 40 just means we all get to have all our cards all the time, and play-skill becomes far less important than buying every rare. If I were going to change anything, I would raise the Endurance from 50 to say, 70 or even 80, to extend the game a couple extra turns and allow some of the larger, more exciting characters to see play....

I have been playing new Star Wars TCG for the last 2 years.

The deck size is also a 60 card minimum and you could have up to 4 cards of the same type.

Creating different decks to make them the best is half of the fun in playing the games with your friends.

I am not sure that there is a metagame at this point in the game. Until all of the playing really gets going, we will not know how the best method that is needed to come back from being out numbered in the game.

I know that this game will change and get better as time goes on.