Dave, I promise I won't be mean. In fact, I will see if I can stay out of it completely on this site. I will try to make this my only post in the thread, and I would be just as happy if no one else even responds.

What is the consensus? Does it even matter? Are the Yankees good or bad for baseball? Is The Donkey Club good or bad for Vs. System?

(The announcer in Atlanta screamed "Yankees lose! Yankees lose!"... but they look like they plan to continue gobbling up all the top talent and keep attempting to win one like that. They are pushing 10% of the entire field, what happens when they make-up 20%? Would they still be considered a "team"?)

Stu, out.

Its a great idea and if they all want to do it then we cant stop them
Their team is just a group of playtesters who do a really good job and win a lot of UDEs money in the tournaments

How many people are in the club now?

What is the prerequisite for membership?

Is it just me or does the number of Donkeys grow during the course of a Premiere Event? Seems like all you need to do is Top 8 a 10k and you're in... hehe.

And what have they been feeding Doug Tice?

It seems like when you top 8 an event you get an invite and should you accept said invite you are retroactively added to the team and are then entitled to 1 night of sleeping naked w/ Dave Spears. There's still some debate going on about whether this last part is an incentive or a hazing ritual.

My guess is that the team just playtests together and share's travelling expenses. What this means is they'll have the edge that extensive playtesting rewards as well as making more money if they win.

What does this mean for the rest of us? If one person in the club breaks the format, the entire team benefits, and the premier events get a lot harder for everyone else. Picture what TOGIT did with X-stall, then change TOGIT with Donkey Club. Ouch.

What does this mean for the team? They're all better off. Not only is it cheaper to attend events, but they're rewards for playtesting are exponentially better. You can bet the team will stay together for a while. The only thing that could hurt the team is if one player comes up with an amazing idea, shares it with the team, then loses at the PC only to teammates with the same deck as his. He might feel ripped out of the easy day 2 he would've had if he was the only person playing that deck.

I don't see what the problem is. The Yankees haven't won the world series in a few years. Real Madrid aren't exactly tearing up the champion's league (hell, or even the spanish league).

Just putting a bunch of great players under a single banner doesn't net you a great team, I think sport shows us that. It is how your team functions in terms of dynamism that matters.

Hell, look at our squad. The roster looks good now, sure, but that's the result of the team functioning together for the past year. When FTN formed up (proper) before PC Amsterdam, it was actually me who had the most $$$ winnings and only me and Steve w/ a trophy to show for our first year efforts in VS.

One year on, I am now only 5th/6th of 11 in terms of earnings (depending on how you calculate it), only three people still have no trophy (and one of those is Milton, who is uber consistent otherwise) and the team has almost a quarter million dollars in earnings to its name.

I think FTN is the best example of what a team can do for people who want to improve their game. Donkey club has a great bunch of players, doubtless they will win a PC at some point if they stay together (though not without a fight ;)) but until one team starts winning everything I think it's premature to call it bad for the game.

Business as usual for us. I mean we're already working as hard as we can while maintaining our normal lives. Basically we each work as hard as we want and luckily for us we have a lot of hard-working dedicated individuals so that policy works. The existence of a huge team w/ a lot of talent has more impact on the people not working w/ a great team I think. It means it's a lot harder for them to compete w/out putting in a lot of work.

I agree w/ the above poster who said that the biggest problem the Donkey Club faces is people getting pissed off when they lose w/ the deck they worked very hard on to a teammate who basically did no work and just took the team's list and got a better draw. That's a reason why we try to keep FTN at a manageable # of people and don't just add every good player who expresses interest.

I don't think any invites were given at to anyone at 10k LA. Kind of surprising considering Dave Spears was in attendance. We did hear about this great story involving poo and a pinata though.

You know, if I was in a team, or made a team (Which I'm not, and am not trying to do), I would have a few different type of players on the team:

- Collectors
- Good Overall Players
- Good Sealed Players
- Good Constructed Players

I'd also include a few low-resource players, because as a team, I believe even the low-resource players have talent. They just need some help with the high-end cards.

You didn't get your invite?

I think Dave was recruiting like 4 or 5 guys... but that may have been for his own purposes and not the Donkey Club... Nintendo anyone?

So is the Bowser Club going to be formed as nemesis of the Donkey Club?

8 Bit teams ROCK!!!

A team like Donkey Club just won't last. With that much ego on one team eventually feelings will be hurt and players will go thier seperate ways.

I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU SAID THAT! YOU HURT MY FEELINGS!

MAN, I'M LEAVING!