Dave Humpherys answers more of your questions!
Last week, we held a live chat with Dave Humpherys, Lead Developer for UDE. Dave contacted me this week about using some of the questions that didn't get answered during the chat for his Metagame article this week. I wholeheartedly agreed.

So, we have some our own "original content" over at Metagame.com, in the form of questions that you guys asked. Head on over there and check it out!

Wow...my personal excitement about the new Batman/LoA starter just grew ten fold. Gonna have to buy a few of those now...oh my poor aching wallet.

Here's to a healthy future metagame!

The toast continues...

Here's to the confirmation of sets designed in "pairs", and to a comittment to future Modern Age formats that will always keep us swimmin' with fresh new one-cost women!

Namaste.

OUCH!

PSP!

OUCH!

BATMAN STARTER!

OUCH!

FF STARTER!

OUCH!

::gator's wallet continues to scream

Just be patient on the PSP gator. Maybe the price will drop by Christmas.

Dave,

About the Spider Friends comment. In due time, in due time.:devious:
I am also glad that the starters have been cleared up. And bidding for the initiative is new to me. Anybody else heard that before this thread?

Congrats. This is a strong deck. Spiderfriends by themselves are very strong and it was the only deck I lost to and only because he played pleasnt distraction on surfer in response to stealing the initiative...argh. You obviously did allot of playtesting for a change. My hat is off to you.
I have a similar build, which I feel is stronger. Mainly replace the moon knights and the fight to the finish. 4x wild rides and 4x spider senses. I would play with 6x of each if I could. They are that strong.

This is going to be the deck to beat.

Just fyi, Pleasant Distraction can only be played at the beginning of that player's attack step, whereas Silver Surfer "steals" the initiative at the beginning of the combat phase, before either player gets their attack step. So Pleasant Distraction wouldn't be able to be played "in response" to SS stealing the initiative.

I assume that both the Batman and FF starters will be legal for competitive play, at least in Golden Age?

It's a pet idea, in the pet store brain of TimsWheelbarrow. We parried it around a bit a few months ago. I say it's a few feathers short of a full Easter Chick, it'll never fly. It is much fun to contemplate, however... and rotating initiative each round is dizzying.

Stupid wallet, just had to spend it all and the league, oh well, i'll just go without the Batman starter set. Or the ff set and just see the movies and get another game my DS. Maybe an RPG....

I was one of the first people to publicly offer bidding endurance when the one-game matches were announced by UDE and everyone was moaning and groaning about the announcement. You may remember players’ were/are very critical of the one-game matches because of the advantage you have over your opponent if you win the initiative that favors your deck. I felt that a reasonable compromise for players who build decks around a given initiative was for players to bid endurance prior to the start of the game, a player that bid the most endurance wins the choice of odd or even initiative. This meant the initiative based decks had to give up something to have the right to play a desired initative. Prior to Vs, I played LotR and this is how initiatives are determined. I liked biding process because it added another layer of competitive complexity to the game. I hate to see my chances in winning or losing a one-game match increase or decrease based on the roll of a die.

I do agree with Dave that this process would be difficult to implement since the game was designed around both payers starting with 50 endurance but it would be fun o try.

What if the amount you bid is added to your opponents total instead of subtracted from your own? Wouldn't that solve the "50 Endurance Design" problem?

I was wondering that about that with Silver surefer and pleasant distraction. But the judge was sitting right there so I figured it was legal. I got cheated.

I personally don't like bidding. As dave said, it changes the game too much. I'd much prefer a solution worked into the TO software and the swiss system such that one player was chosen to choose who startes, and the software annouced that in the pair up.

Eg round 3 scrappy vs Stu Barnes. scrappy chooses.

I wouldn't have thought this was possible but I lost *every* coin toss in the London 10K. All 10 rounds and my opponent choose every time. With the TO software trying to balance things out, Ok, I might not have gotten 5/5 but the statistical distribution of how many games you choose with could be made much sharper around the middle.