What’s that saying? You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. In my humble opinion, the best thing about the Vs. System community is the friends you can make. I’ve said before that the community is what got me into this game. Over the years, I’ve made some great friends that I’ve never actually met face to face, and a few that I have.
I love debating with Rian Fike over the hot topics of the day. I never get tired of listening to Cliff Parmeter and Squire Kershner spend two hours a week celebrating all things Vs. System in their fantastic podcast—The Ring Has Chosen. One of my fondest memories of the game will always be the time I appeared alongside them on the show. There are many people with whom I’ve struck up great relationships with over the years, but there’s one bloke in particular that gets today’s spotlight.
Chris “Gdaybloke” Miller was the first recipient of the Vs. System Hero of the Month award, and it was an award well earned. As an Australian living in Canada, Miller earns double Commonwealth points in my book, but it’s his work in the Vs. System community that sets him apart. His blog, http://losthemisphere.wordpress.com, is one of the most actively read Vs. System blogs on the net. He consistently pumps out superb content—ably assisted by VSRealms stalwart Captainspud—and today’s Rallying Cry article will be a testament to that.
Following his masterful success with the March Madness series, Chris decided to set off on a miniseries of reports based on the First Family of Marvel—The Fantastic Four.
Family Feud
Chris writes:
“When considering characters that work well together in a Legend environment, one of the first teams that always comes to mind is the Fantastic Four. As Miguel will no doubt tell you, Family of Four is a spiffy keen deck with a great beats game, and potential for a tweaking for flavour.
As I sit here all giddy about the potential of the new Mr Fantastic cards, a little piece of me cries for the rest of the family being left behind. So, what should we do for Ben, Sue and Johnny? How will they deal with the jealousy and resentment as Reed is catapulted forward in status along with his Illuminati compadres? Clearly, we need a throw-down!
Enough of the Family of Four Legend deck, let’s split ’em up and see just who rises to the top of the heap!
Here are the rules:
Four Legend decks, one for each member of the Family.
Each deck is Golden Age, allowing cards up to and including DCL.
All characters in each deck must bear the Fantastic Four affiliation.
No deck can include any versions of the other three family members.
No deck can include more than 4 support cards (pt’s, loc’s, equip) that are not stamped for either the Fan4 or its Legend.
All decks will be assembled by myself, to ensure a consistent level of deckbuilding incompetency.
Each deck will play off against the other three decks, for a total of six games to be played. Should no clear winner be determined at the end of those six games, the two lead decks will face off.”
http://losthemisphere.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/family-feud/
So the groundwork has been set and the lines have been drawn. Chris set the family members against each other in a family feud that could probably keep the neighbours up all night long. After setting the ground rules, Chris then went on to highlight the deckbuilding process for each character.
Human Torch
Chris writes:
“I guess the first thing I should point out here is that I build for fun. I’m sure not going to come up with the next Tier 1 deck all by my lonesome. As such, when building the Torch deck for Family Feud, one of the first considerations when choosing characters to work with our Legend was not effect compatibility, but rather thematic resonance.
With that in mind, considering the limitations of the allowed support cards, there’s the question of which direction to take the deck.
On the one hand, the older Torch character cards tended to either pay endurance for a stat swing (+ATK/-DEF), or burn, burn, burn. The newer Torch cards are all about DEF manipulation, out of combat stuns, and . . . well, more burning.
Since we want this to be all about Johnny, let’s slot in all three features as we figure out just which Torches to use and what support cards we’re going to run with.
I want to make these decks thematic wherever possible, so in keeping with Johnny’s back story the support characters of preference are his ex-girlfriends Alicia Masters, Namorita, Lyja and Crystal.”
Chris proceeds to take us on a journey through his reasoning and love of thematics before finally arriving at the deck:
“So, after all that, Johnny’s Family Feud deck: Burning Up for Your Love . . .
Characters
4 Alicia Masters, Blind Sculptress
4 Human Torch, Matchstick
4 Namorita
4 Lyja, The Lazerfist
3 Crystal, Inhuman Elemental
4 Human Torch, Nova Blast
3 Human Torch, Hotshot
4 Sub-Mariner, Uncertain Ally
3 Human Torch, Flame On!
Plot Twist
4 Heat Wave
4 Firewall
4 Torch and Thing
4 Cosmic Radiation
4 A Clash of Worlds
4 Signal Flare
3 Supernova
To read up on the rest of the article, visit
http://losthemisphere.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/family-feud-the-human-torch/
Next up in the Family of Four is Johnny’s sister, Susan Richards.
Invisible Woman
Chris writes:
“The trouble with building a deck around Susie is twofold.
See, Thing hits solidly as a beater on any of the drops 3–7, so for his deck it’s largely a matter of deciding what tech you want, and using him to fill in the gaps. Johnny, it’s the even drops—2, 4, 6—so he’s a given there. Reed’s deck can either be built around card draw or equipment, so you use the 4 or 5 as your main accordingly.
Susie, however, excels at keeping you in the game through reinforcing your troops and hiding your weak links. In other words, by herself she plays like the old-school Crime Lords. While she’s critical to the success of most good Fantastic Four decks, she relies on the rest of the team to do the actual damage to win the game.
Thus, Sue’s deck needs not so much to be built around her, but to be built around the second-stringers who can actually do the damage and get the win, while she plays her usual support role.”
“So Susan’s going to play her usual support role, providing probably the most effective stall tactics of the Family decks . . . but who’s going to do the damage and win the game for us? If we’re running Susie on 1, 4 and 7, who are we running in the gaps? Who are the alternatives? I think one name’s obvious. Where does Sue go when she’s on the outs with Reed?
That’s right, ole’ fishboy. I’d be eagerly looking to include Namor’s Legend stuff from MUN except we’re only using cards up to (and including) DCL, so as not to give Reed an unfair advantage. Namor can surge in on a tidal wave at the 5 slot for a little recursion.”
Chris goes on to cover the pros and cons of various cards and interactions before finalising his deck:
Characters
4 Invisible Woman, Walking on Air
4 She-Thing, Sharon Ventura
4 Luke Cage, Steel-Hard Skin
4 She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters
4 Medusa, Red
4 Invisible Woman, Sue Storm
3 Spider-Man, Power and Responsibility
2 Sub-Mariner, Uncertain Ally
2 Franklin Richards, Child of the Cosmos
2 She-Hulk, Single Green Lawyer
2 Invisible Woman, Shield of the Four
1 Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd
Plot Twists
4 Signal Flare
4 Force Field Projection
4 Invisibility
4 It’s Clobberin’ Time
4 Unstable Molecular Suit
4 Pathetic Attempt
To read the rest of the analysis, pop over to
http://losthemisphere.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/family-feud-the-invisible-woman/
Next up for cross-examination is the head of the family, Reed Richards.
Mr. Fantastic
Chris writes:
“When I first sat down to build Reed’s deck, I scratched my head a little. See, I knew I wanted to run an equipment deck, but the question remained how best to pull it off while maintaining some kind of theme. Based on the other decks I’ve been building, the characters (by and large) make thematic sense to be with the person they’re helping.
The main problem was that I like to curve out to 7 as a general rule, but since I wanted to run the 5-drop Stretch from MOR, king of equipment decks that he us, the only other 7-drop available (since Susie and Ben are in their own decks as per the rules of the Feud) is Hulk—who Reed sent into freakin’ space—it just doesn’t fit. BAH! Ah well, I’ll just have to pretend that this deck’s based on one of those times when Reed and Bruce would get together and actually chat civilly . . .
The base concept is that of my ever-favourite Pier Pressure deck. Spend four turns digging as much equipment out of the deck as possible, and then on turn 5 spam it all out for free thanks to Stretch, drawing cards via Antarctic Research Base (banned? bah!).
In the world before MVL, the curve was 2—Reed, 3—Thing, 4—Sue, 5—Reed, 6—Hulk, 7—Thing, 8—Surfer. Trouble here is, for Family Feud, we can’t run Thing or Sue. Sure, we have new options for Reed at pretty much every drop, but I decided to go with something comfortable and familiar.”
Chris then went on to explain his choice drops and as ever, furnished us with his finished list. I’m not going to spoil it, though, you’ll have to go digging for it:
http://losthemisphere.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/family-feud-mr-fantastic/
To wrap things up in the deckbuilding part of this series, we’ve got one more stop to make—and no, there are no prizes for guessing who’s next.
Thing
Chris writes:
“If any deck of the four screams pure and simple beats, this is it. Unfortunately, this also means that this deck will probably be the one that suffers most from the “no more than 4 non-team-stamped support cards” rule—no abundance of Big Leagues, Savage Beatdowns, Flying Kicks, or even Armageddons.
Thing may not have the plot twist support of the other three, receiving only a single dedicated support card in MVL to everyone else’s two, but he comes with a bonus in Marvel Origins’ Yancy Street, which not only protects from KO effects, but also doubles as a search card when your deck is full of Things.
Thing has a nice complete curve, starting with two different 3-drops, a 4, two 5s, two 6s now, and a 7. If any deck screamed out for [A Clash of Worlds], this would be it. One more 4-drop and you wouldn’t need any other characters in the deck from 3 onwards—but as much fun as it would be to have a board full of orange rocks, I’m thinking one at a time should be sufficient. We’ll run New and Improved instead, keeping it one at a time but making him even beefier than normal. Yay for big rocks!”
Geological enthusiasm aside, Gdaybloke once again delivers an interesting peek inside his noggin as he builds his decklist. Check out his blog for the details.
http://losthemisphere.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/family-feud-thing/
With the decks built, Chris then kicked off proceedings by playing out and reporting on all the matches. He writes:
“Welcome back to the Family Feud, the event where we see just which member of the Fantastic Four can rise above the others WITHOUT the support of their headlining teammates. Four Golden Age decks, all pre-MUN, with almost every card stamped for the team. Bring it on!
Time for a little brouhaha between the brother and sister duo, Johnny Storm and Susan Richards. That’s right, the Human Torch—master of burn and out-of-combat stunning—against the mistress of stalling and reinforcement.
Through the wonders of Uatu-vision, we get to see all the shenanigans . . .
ding!
http://losthemisphere.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/family-feud-rnd-1-sibling-rivalry/
“Time for another round of the Family Feud. This time, college pals Reed Richards and Ben Grimm go at it—the nerd vs. the jock, a battle for the ages. Bill Gates has been telling us for years that the nerds win, and for many, it’s been the only comfort in between bouts of atomic wedgies and swirlies. But is he right?
The Uatu-vision’s on the fritz this time, so we can’t see the players’ hands, but the plays are all out in the open and such.
Ben wins the toss, and takes odds.”
http://losthemisphere.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/family-feud-college-rules/
The results and reports of these and subsequent matches make for one heck of an entertaining read, and one that I wholeheartedly recommend. If you’re keen for some Vs. literature, this is a great place to go. If you’re a blogger looking for a little inspiration, you’d do well to take some notes from Chris’s pages. You’d think that after such stellar contributions to the Vs. System community, Gdaybloke could put his feet up with cold tinny for a bit, but no. A little bird tells me that there’s a Summer of Love about to dawn on http://losthemisphere.wordpress.com. If I were you, I’d check in every now and then to see what’s going down in LH town.
Until next week,
Steve