Welcome to new edition of Rallying Cry, now with 100% more Brit (no colourings or preservatives). I’ve taken the helm for a bit and I’m looking to steer the good ship Vs. System through the deep seas of content that the fans pour on to the web.
Rallying Cry has always highlighted some of the best contributions that you guys put out there for all to see, and I want to continue in that vein. The last few weeks have been frenetic for anyone associated with Vs System—either as a fan, or from the other side of the fence. We’ve seen Marvel Universe hit the shelves with a massive preview campaign. Mega-Weekend New York has come and gone, and as I write this, people are just about ready to smash their way into the inaugural Vs. System World Championship at Origins. Now is certainly a busy time for our beloved game, and this is absolutely echoed in the online community.
The first stops for Rallying Cry this week will be somewhere fairly close to home for me. There are a couple of new blogs that have popped up this side the Atlantic, and the effects will surely soon be felt stateside. That’s right guys, the British are coming!
Chris McPhee is a player from my local game club who dropped off from the game a couple of years ago. The strength of the recent Legend expansions and Marvel Universe has hooked him. He recently started a blog to document his thoughts as he tries to get back on the horse and improve as a player. This past weekend, our local club hosted a Golden Age Build a Legend event, and Chris put an article up that goes over his preparation for the tournament.
http://mcpheeandvs.blogspot.com
Chris writes:
Maaaaaaaan! With the release of the power set that is Marvel Universe, I am getting more and more upset! If that set could just get released a little earlier, then the Build a Legend tourney I will be playing in will be so much more interesting!
I wanna make a Captain America Legend!
Alas, there is nothing I can do about that, and I am sad. So what has the mcphantastic been up to? Well, for one, revising for exams (A levels!) and then making decks! So I was looking at the cards I have from back in the day and I got to work.
The first deck I made was a JLA / JLI deck.
The second was loner X-Statix.
The third was a Curve Sentinel deck!
If you want to find out which deck Chris decided to build the for Legend event, you’ll need to check out his blog.
McPheeandvs is not the only new blog on the net, though.
The British Initiative is a new collaborative project headed up by Graham Beadle—the driving force behind the recent U.K. National Championship. Graham has managed to get several regular U.K. players to contribute content, and although the project is in its early days, we’re already seeing some good work published. Several of the players attended the Golden Age Legend Event (at my local club, Fantasy Wargames, in Luton) that Chris McPhee was preparing for, and there are multiple reports up there for you all to read.
http://ukvssystem.wordpress.com/
Garry Hewitt writes:
I am intrigued by some of the Legends in Marvel Universe, and one deck idea in particular has appealed from the moment I saw the preview card. The Illuminati and The Infinity Gauntlet give one of the most powerful payoffs in Vs. ever for keeping six different characters in play. Now, having had some success with a Fantastic Four deck based around the Plaza that needed the big four in play, the higher challenge seemed to be a logical place to go.
However, four boxes of Marvel Universe down, and no copies of Infinity Gauntlet or The Elektra Situation and only one Clandestine Operation means that this will have to wait. So the deck had to be put on ice . . . until I had the following brainwave.
Reed Richards has been featured since Marvel Origins, and one of his primary shticks has been the manipulation and recruitment of equipment. Combine that with the original version of the Infinity Gauntlet being portrayed as pieces of equipment, and suddenly, a cunning yet slightly mad plan began to form. The comics had a storyline based around the ensuing chaos when the Illuminati assembled the gauntlet; it was now time to see if the card-based game could do the same.
Garry went on to build his Infinity Gem / Illuminati deck and take it into action at the Luton event. You’ll have to click here to see exactly how he did.
Graham Beadle was also inspired by the new expansion and decided to build a Red Skull deck for the event.
Graham’s decklist was as follows:
Red Menace, Part 1
Characters
3 A.I.M. Agents, Army-AIM
3 Roscoe Sweeney, Fixer
4 Stilt Man, Wilbur Day
1 Viper, Madame Hydra-Hydra
1 Jessica Drew ◊ Spider-Woman, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.-Hydra
4 Red Skull, Aleksander Lukin-RAID
2 Silver Samurai, Kenuichio Harada-RAID
3 Kingpin, War Profiteer-Hydra
1 Crossbones, Brock Rumlow-RAID
2 Red Skull, Johann Schmidt-Hydra
1 Headcase, Sean Madigan-AIM
1 Baron Strucker, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker-Hydra
1 Taskmaster, Mnemonic Assassin
1 Red Skull, Master of Creation
Plot Twists
1 Armed Escort
4 Nasty Surprise
2 What Are Friends For?
3 Cold Storage
2 No Man Escapes the Manhunters
3 Acts of Vengeance
3 Code White
3 Radically Advanced
2 Assault on Hellicarrier 13
3 Mobilize
2 Hand Dojo
1 Underground Laboratory
3 Death Warrant
1 Cosmic Cube
To get an insight into his building process and his performance on the day, check out the article.
James Warrener is a player from the Grinning Demon games club in Maidstone who also contributes to the British Initiative. James was another guy who made the journey for the Luton event, and he covered the experience in his latest article.
James writes:
With the new Universe set coming out, I wanted to build a new deck using the new cards, and once I opened a pack up with a certain man clad in red, I knew exactly what I wanted to build. Yes, that man is Iron Man!
Unfortunately for me, I only managed to pull one of the 4-drop Iron Man cards, and not enough other drops and equipment to make it an Iron Man Legends deck. With that out of the question, I still put together a deck that had him at the center, ready for when I get some more!
The deck revolves around rallying for characters and giving characters counters (and recovering them with Iron Man!).
Unfortunately, the Avengers don’t have a whole curve of characters that do things with counters, but luckily, the Thunderbolts do! So, the team-up was pretty much given, and it was at this point that I put together this decklist.
You can read about James’s Thundering Avengers here.
I thought that the Golden Age Build a Legend event that we all attended was an incredibly enjoyable tournament. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and there was a real eclectic mix of decks, including an Insanity Joker Legend! It’s great to read multiple perspectives on a single event, as sometimes one can suffer from rose-tinted glasses. I’m going to take a moment of pure indulgence now and point you in the direction of my own report on the event, where I decided to reunite some old enemies.
Steve writes:
Another list I was working on was a tri-team World’s Finest deck. I was combining the forces of Team Superman, JSA, and Gotham Knights into what can only be described as a DC version of Common Enemy. Wonder Woman is obscenely good, and when you factor in the negation abilities of Gotham Knights, you have the cornerstone of a solid control deck. The JSA and Team Superman also provide excellent combat tricks, both on and off initiative. Much like the Common Enemy deck of old.
The list was coming together nicely, but needed a little work. That’s when real life struck. I was suddenly engulfed in two weeks of hell at work where I was coming in early and working late and weekends, and as such, I had no time for anything else except eating and sleeping (and not much of the latter, either). In short, I had no time to tweak the deck and fix the issues I had been experiencing with it. I’d also had no time to examine the new Marvel Universe cards, so I couldn’t make something from my four-and-a-half boxes. In the end, I had to go with something familiar. I still didn’t want to play Punisher, though, so I thought—if I was trying to make a Common Enemy–style deck with the DC guys, why not just play Common Enemy itself.
As I said the last time I was at the helm of the good ship Rallying Cry, this online community is a powerful thing and can be used as a great promotional tool for our game. If have a forthcoming event, get online and shout about it. Talk about your preparation. Talk about your results. These sorts of articles intrigue people and encourage them to take part. More players = more fun.
We’re going to step away from local tournaments for a moment and take a look at something a bit bigger. A couple of Brit bloggers have been documenting their thoughts about Modern Age and the World Championship.
The first up is Joe Clarke, or lordoflimbo to his online friends, and he’s taking a look at the Modern Age from an Army perspective.
Joe writes:
So, we have our new Modern Age.
In this, the current modern age, we will have 25 different Army characters. So, with the influx of Army in this set, does Army stand a chance in Modern?
Let’s take a look at our options, shall we?
DWF
Gotham Central S.W.A.T, Army
The Newsboy Legion, Army
MVL + MAA
Multiple Man, Army ◊ MadroX
Doom-Bot, Army
Doom-Bot II, Army
Pacifier Robot, Army
Swarm Bots, Army
Ultron, Army
Shi’ar Soldier, Army
Random Punks, Army
The Infinites, Army
DCL
Novice Assassins, Army
Sea Creatures, Army
Shadow Assassin, Army
MUN
Cape-Killers Unit, Army ◊ Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
S.H.I.E.L.D Agents, Army ◊ Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Sentinel Squad O*N*E, Army
A.I.M Agents, Army ◊ A.I.M.
The Hand, Army ◊ HYDRA
HYDRA Recruit, Army ◊ Hydra
MODOC Squad, Army ◊ A.I.M.
The Centurians, Army
Currs, Army
Seekers, Army
Atlantean Warriors, Army
Hmm. What’s wrong with this picture? Other than that only a few of those are actually seeing play at the moment. Or, is this picture the best you’ve seen in years?
Eleven Army characters from MUN alone. This means that almost half of the Army characters in the current Modern Age are coming from MUN. Given that the sets are coming out six months at a time, we will hopefully have around two years of Army glee. This will make for exciting times for Army lovers such as Rian Fike, Soshi Kenpachi, and myself.
So, let’s look at the possible Army decks that could come out of Modern Age within the next few months.
Joe, an avid Army character fan, goes on to highlight a lot of options for the military-minded Vs. enthusiast. Check out his musings here.
Our final stop of the day is at our blue-skinned friend the Fuzzy Elf’s blog. His most recent article covers some predictions for the World Championship, as well as a rather interesting Warbound decklist.
The Fuzzy Elf writes:
I’m not going to stick my neck out and say that player X or player Y is going to win the big show because I don’t know enough about the North American players to do that—and let’s face it, it’s going to be almost exclusively North American players competing.
Instead, I’m going to make a few predictions based on the environment and the perceived best decks.
Although Hulk / Warbound won’t be the most played deck at the event, it will be the most played deck at the top tables.
And the only reason it won’t be the most played deck at the event is the short amount of time that MUN has been available and the high proportion of rares that this deck needs to work properly. Yes, the deck is susceptible to KO effects due to its reliance on having a single Hulk in play but even the most defensive build of this deck still packs some amazing ATK pumps.
This is not the definitive build—I haven’t had anywhere near enough time to perfect and test it properly—but this is a good starting point for a more control-oriented Warbound deck.
If you want to check out the rest of his predictions or examine his Warbound decklist, you know what you have to do. Bamf your way over to his blog right now!
Well, that concludes this week’s edition of Rallying Cry. Fear not, my non-British friends—this column will not turn into a soap box from which I continuously shout and scream about how things were so much better when the British ruled the world. Normal service will be resumed next week with far less “fish ’n’ chips” and absolutely no “knees up Mother Brown.”
If you have anything in particular that you want to highlight for Rallying Cry, please feel free to email me (kamiza(at)the-kamiza.com).
Until next time.
Steve