With the Vs. System World Championship on the horizon, things are hopping around like free electrons in a science experiment. And with Vs. System Mega-Weekend New York only a few short weeks away, the fan-based funhouse is materializing a wild and wonderful perspective that seems completely skewed. Casual becomes competitive and vice versa. Killer strategies can be found on kitchen tables. The unexpected happens, and the virtual vista of Vs. System creativity becomes Bizarro World.
I first found that fantastic magazine cover on the Bending Steel blog. Its creator captured the spirit of our trading card game community heading into the summer, as we try to figure out which end is up. In baseball, the Tampa Bay Rays have always been near the bottom of the standings, while the New York Yankees have been perennial favorites. This year, the balance of power has gone topsy-turvy. The same is happening in the Vs. System community. In previous lead-ups to major tournaments, Vs. System wisdom has been hoarded in a few major repositories. Now, it is busting out all over, and the casual player is leading the charge.
The Rays have been the butt of some major league jokes for many years. This year, thanks to a team of eager and talented youngsters, they are bringing some potent new blood to the top of the standings. The same is true for the fan-based bruisers of the Vs. System community. We are reading deep discussion and delicious dialogue in the most unlikely places, and it has spun our world completely around. Perhaps the best way to keep our bearings would be to focus on the basics.
When I was coming to grips with the strange changes, I stumbled upon the “13 Laws of Vs. System” on the It’s a Vs. Life fansite. You can click over for yourself to read the details, these are the guidelines:
Law #1: Have a good idea.
Law #2: Have a strategy valid for the format.
Law #3: Run plenty of searchers.
Law #4: Have a win condition
Law #5: Don’ try to do everything.
Law #6: Know your weaknesses.
Law #7: PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST!
Law #8: Learn from your losses.
Law #9: All habits are bad habits.
Law #10: Play the meta, not the man.
Law #11: Never overstock a "one-of” card.
Law #12: Test bad draws.
Law #13: Play enemy decks.
Those laws help keep me focused when things are flying around my head, and often I play music to soothe my inner savage beast. The Vs. is Legion blog talks a great deal about sonic reinforcement, and it is always memorable:
One of the things I love to death about music is the way that just listening to a song can be such a memorable experience that it transports you to where you were when it first really struck you. You can see everything playing out in your mind’s eye.
If you still need another great way to get the Vs. System strategy session back on track, you can always find the best deck and build a way to beat it. You can find a perfect example of that running around the Vs. Corps. You might even use it to find the path to a World Championship:
With the draw potential of this deck, it’s larger-than-life characters, and a comparable plot twist/location package to the hidden Injustice Gang deck, I really believe it is stronger than Injustice Gang—especially now that Injustice Gang loses Hunte Castle in Modern Age. The one (large) downside to this deck is that the meta currently contains a lot of hate cards for the hidden area. Those decks that are fine-tuned to take down the Injustice Gang will find themselves already well-suited to take on this deck. Try it for yourselves and let me know what you think. Does this deck have what it takes for Worlds?
My favorite recent healing method for Vs. System mental overload was chock full of Omnicresence. The essential core of our game was boiled down until it became a heavy metal pearl of the greatest magnitude. This is the central idea:
As we are all aware, Vs. System is ultimately a game of numbers. Strip away the flashy card art, epic flavor text, and colorful characters, and you’ll see that the combat actually ensues between conflicting values and variables influenced by the players. The most consistent gradient expression of this value system is the character curve, where character resource costs determine to a large extent the size of the character and his or her consequent effectiveness in combat.
One of the most recent outposts of Vs. System fan-based content can be found on Blog Division of S.H.I.E.L.D. The influx of fabulous fun has never looked better, and it reminds me of what the game is all about:
Last week at our Hobby League, we were running a Modern Age Bring Your Own Set event. It was a pretty good turn out, with ten players all bringing some tough competition to the table. I have enjoyed Vs. System for the past two years, mostly just playing with friends at the kitchen table. This past month I joined the Hobby League, and this week was my chance to shine.
Whether or not you’re able to attend one of June’s big events, your adrenaline will be kicked up a notch when you travel the blogosphere and indulge in some serious hype. If you stop off at Fizzle Me Sexy, your brain might explode with excitement:
Vs. System Mega-Weekend New York is a month away! Can you feel it? Can you?!?!
Being a native New Yorker, I cannot wait for this Mega Weekend event! There are so many options when I think about what to play. Also, with a larger gap, new decks are still being created. Many people have been testing for months, and others will just put something together last minute, like I did in Chicago.
I’m pretty excited. I’m sure everyone is still playtesting one deck that will, potentially. break the metagame. Will I actually play the Future Foes and pull off a combo putting a 16/14 character out on turn five that stuns at minimum two characters? It looks fun, but I don’t know . . .
Of course, many people settle themselves by getting down to brass tacks with serious competitive tech. Miguel Rodriguez and Paul Sung host the hottest spot on the interwebs for that:
Last week, I saw Ludina’s Random Punks World’s Finest “Superbrick” deck up close and personal. I really liked the way the deck looked, but the big thing for me was the realization that Superman/Batman Robot is an uncommon. Teen Supremes is a common. I smell a combo coming on.
“Que?”
Paul Sung
Characters
3 Jaime Reyes ◊ Blue Beetle, High-Tech Hero
4 White Lotus, Supermen of America
4 Maggie Sawyer, Gotham Central
2 Harvey Bullock, Gotham Central
4 Barbara Gordon ◊ Oracle, Hacker Elite
4 Huntress, Vicious Vigilante
4 Tania Belinskya ◊ Red Guardian, Cold Warrior
2 Krypto, Guard Dog of El
2 Superman/Batman Robot
Locations
4 Dr. Fate’s Tower
Plot Twists
4 The Hook-Up
4 Flying Kick
4 Crackshot
4 Teen Supremes
4 Bat-Signal
Equipment
4 Helm of Nabu
1 Amulet of Nabu
1 Cloak of Nabu
1 Ego Gem
Basically, you don’t need to exhaust a character to Teen Supremes. Consequently, you can just play it without exhaustion to ready the 0 cost Robots. The deck can potentially kill as early as turn three: A perfect draw of Maggie, Tania, and boosted Robots leaves you four cards in hand and three face down. You already have 10 points of attack on the board. Any combination from four copies of Teen Supremes to five pumps and a single copy of Teen Supremes will do it.
That is, of course, a pipe dream akin to eating three Chipotle Grill chicken burritos in one sitting. It can, however, kill on turn four rather easily, and you can definitely do it by at least five. This is with my rather lame build. I’m sure if we set our minds to it we could definitely tune it into something much more compact.
I don’t think this deck is on the same level that Last Laugh was in the previous Random Punks season. However, if you absolutely, shamelessly NEED to win those prizes, I think this deck is probably the best against an unsuspecting crowd.
That deck looks to the future with a rather insane combination of cards. There was another genius plotting his tack toward the past this week, and it brought back a flood of memories that calmed my shattered vision. It was from none other than the Kaleesh Warrior:
It’s time to party like it’s 2004 because today is the day I receive my three boxes of DC Origins. What pleasures shall I find inside the second oldest set in the game? Will it be as good as finding a five dollar bill lying on the floor of a taxi you just got into? Let’s break it down.
He broke it down, and you should check it out. Then, you can be up to speed on the background of one of the most exciting new cards that’s hovering on the horizon of Marvel Universe. It is a Vs. Explosion indeed:
Yup. Bucky’s gotten bigger and badder. After almost dying in the explosion that froze Cap, Bucky was found and captured by the Russians. During the Cold War, the brainwashed but highly trained Bucky was used as the Soviets’ premiere assassin. Then he was put back to “sleep” after each mission. Recently, however, he broke free and remembered himself. Before then, he was a killer for hire, working with Lords of Crime in order to destabilize Captain America and get revenge for slights during World War 2 and the Cold War.
THIS is the kind of power level the Crime Lords needed. Instead of making them almost curve if they’re reinforced, Marvel Universe is giving them a free-stun—now that’s potent. If this is an indication as to what the Crime Lords will be like, expect me to pick up a playset of each of them.
Returning to the comfortable arms of the stalwarts in the community always soothes the wandering mind, and there is none better than The Kamiza. This week saw a brilliant Random Punks tournament report by Felix Hughes:
I wasn’t expecting a deadly serious tournament by any means. Since it was Golden Age, I could come up with something a bit unusual and play a bunch of cards I liked quite happily. I ended up with 3 ideas overall.
As soon as you have your wits about you, you might want to go crazy all over again. There is nothing more Bizarro World on Earth than the fansite named Arkham:
Let’s start this tour of terror with the original, and my favorite: Scarecrow, Professor Jonathan Crane. This Scarecrow continues the concept seen in the Doom plot twist Reign of Terror—fear translated into Vs System mechanics.
Scarecrow’s fear toxins send all the small brains scurrying away. All that fear makes Dr. Crane even more powerful. I say he’s my favorite because I like to drop at least one copy of him into every Arkham Inmates deck . . . just in case. I remember years ago when I ran Arkham against Wild Vomit with Bastion. I boosted Scarecrow on turn 6. My opponent pumped all the Wild Sentinels back into Bastion on his swing, and then the other half of Dr. Crane’s power kicked in . . .
Bastion felt fear, and he ran away.
I guess it’s all about the balance: Vs. System lunacy, complemented by solid strategy, and wrapped up with a heroic string of modern myth. Our community houses the whole kit and caboodle, and it now includes The Unicorn. Mad props to The Brave and The Blog for giving me an excuse to further publicize his legend:
Former KGB agent Milos Masaryk has been doing battle with Iron Man for over 40 years as the villainous Unicorn. His name is fitting, though, since Masaryk wears a projector on his forehead capable of firing deadly blasts of energy!
Perhaps due to the basic nature of his powers, The Unicorn has become somewhat of a joke within superhero circles. However, despite this fact, he is one of the most prominent Iron Man foes—having battled the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and even the X-Men numerous times.
How does this happen? How do we get turned upside down and inside out by a trading card game? What mysterious and magical rituals are performed in the offices of Upper Deck Entertainment to create such a fantastic vehicle for this consensus cacophony of cardboard entertainment?
I will leave you today with a quote from the inner sanctum of Vs. System creation. Billy Zonos provides the details on the Read/Rant blog, and we deeply appreciate the backstage insights. This one is so good that it gets today’s final word:
No factual character history. No witty dialogue or banter. No Easter Eggs.
Just make it up from scratch.
Once I realized that it was actually okay to just “make it up,” it was extremely liberating. Is this cheating? Not really. It’s being creative! The way I figured, it was better to write something original and memorable that conveys the flavor of the given character through subtext–rather than paraphrasing some piece of research in an unoriginal and boring way. Can we agree on that? Good. I thought so.
Otherwise, I’d have to stop typing right this instant.
Rian Fike is also known as stubarnes and he is back refreshed and ready to rumble through the blogosphere with a vengeance. Stay tuned to this station for as much Rallying Cry as you can handle, or reach him in person at rianfike@hattch.com.