August 16, 2008

Vs Meltdown

Never fear, the title is only that...I'm not going insane and lighting all my cards on fire or anything. It's just been amazingly hot here over the past few days...

Friday's tournament was pretty good. We started out with what looked to be a small four, but two late-comers bumped us up to a respectable six players. With the weather being so nice and it being a Friday night, I was actually really happy with that.

It was another interesting field as well. I believe we had X-Men, Negative Zone, Thunderbolts / Avengers, Crime Lords, Injustice Gang (I think), and my newly-built Green Lanterns deck. All of the decks were really strong and almost all of the games looked to be very close affairs.

We had some really good prizes too! After digging around in the back Pascal found us another Fin Fang Foom mat and a Silver Surfer t-shirt. I also still had some rares from our batch of MUL cards too, so the top three guys all walked away with something cool. Everyone also got some copies of the MUL Captain America and Iron Man cards, so I think all went home happy. We have another cool surprise for the next event winner too, so I hope we have a good turn out.

While I'm on here, I also thought I'd give a little intro to my Green Lantern build. Originally I had started out wanting to make a Hal Jordan legend deck that took advantage of Clash of Worlds to get drops of him out on multiple turns. After taking a look at the cards available I decided that wasn`t a really good strategy, due to the lack of cohesive synergy among the Hal cards. So I refined it a few times and ended up with something completely different!

Fear My (Will)Power:

Characters
1 drops
2x DGL-003 Arisia
1x DGL-007 G`Nort
2 drops
3x DGL-021 Olapet
3 drops
4x DGL-009 Hal Jordan, Green Lantern of Earth
2x DGL-017 Kreon
4 drops
4x DJL-013 John Stewart
3x DGL-006 Ch`p
5 drops
4x DCL-020 Kyle Rayner
1x DJL-016 Oliver Queen <> Green Arrow
6 drops
1x DGL-024 Sinestro
7 drops
1x DGL-002 Alan Scott
1x DGL-011 Hal Jordan, Reborn
1x DCL-015 Hal Jordan, Fearless
8 drops
1x DJL-198 Mogo

Equipment
2x DGL-186 Chopping Block
4x DJL-198 Nth Metal

Locations
1x DGL-035 Oa
2x DGL-187 Coast City

Plot Twists
4x DGL-181 Battle of Wills
4x DGL-215 The Ring Has Chosen
2x DGL-196 Lantern's Light
2x DGL-217 Uppercut
2x MOR-183 Cover Fire
1x DCL-047 Fearless
4x DCX-008 I'm Back Poozers!
3x MUN-309 House of M

The idea is to take odd initiatives. The turn one and two drops aren't that important, thus the low numbers. For turn three you ideally want Hal and Oa out for a solid attack, but if your opponent is relying a lot on his resource row, then Kreon is handy to have around. Save any character searches for your turn four character. You really want to get John out on turn four, drop Kyle on five, and then boost Ch'p in on turn six. You also want to drop as many Nth Metals on turn six as well, because between John's ally text and Ch'p's boost text it makes your board damn-near impossible to stun (on my attack back one game I had a 14 / 14 Ch'p, which is just awesome!). For a turn seven finish you want Hal Jordan, Fearless, out on the board to exhaust all of your opponent's support row characters. Then swing for the fences.

I still need a few more cards to really flesh this idea out. I'd like to load it with four copies of Oa, dropping the Uppercuts. Coast City and Sinestro are a back up plan, backed up by Kyle and the I'm Back Poozers... It's really unpleasant for your opponent when they stun Kyle in hopes of getting to Sinestro, only to have him recover for free. I'd also like to put in a full four copies of Cover Fire. If I can get those I may switch the turn six into four Sinestros rather than the boosted Ch'p. I'll need to do more testing.

August 06, 2008

Long weekend of gaming

The first weekend of August is a holiday around here, which means more time for gaming! Actually it meant more time for a lot of things, and I had a packed weekend schedule. First up was the Weird Al concert on Friday night. I think this one makes four times that I've seen him live. The seats were really good and while he was walking around during one of the songs he stopped about three seats away. The guy in the row in front of us got a great shot of it on his iPhone too!

Saturday was a barbecue, then off to play some Heroclix. I started playing last spring, and had been playing almost weekly up until about two months ago, but haven't really been enjoying the game as much as I used to. I think part of it is the quality of the current set. The dials are really strong overall, but the figure sculpts and paintjobs are really awful. I think the other part of it is the competitiveness of the other tournament players. I enjoy winning too, but don't really care about it as much as a lot of other seem to. I'd rather play something with a theme going, rather than a bunch of random guys who will kick your butt in two rounds. Of course, I also have a hell of a time rolling dice, which likely doesn't help my enjoyment on some occasions.

But on Sunday and Monday (and Tuesday!), we had a lot a VS action going around here! I wasn't able to make it to the Bring Your Own Team event, due the concert I mentioned above, so I was really itching to play some cards. Zack and I were tied for second place in the Heroclix event, and decided to play a game of VS for the prize. Since I didn't have any decks with me I opted to play one of Roy's: and insanity deck. I didn't do very well against a Golden Age Titans build. Playing someone else's deck against a well-honed machine like that just isn't a good idea. Luckily I didn't really want the prize, and was able to get a taste of how insanity works without having to go to all the trouble of building it myself.

Monday a few of the guys game by for a barbecue, some beer and of course...some VS! Jason, Roy and I played a few three player games that were very close, and I was able to pull out a win with my Infinity Watch / Fearsome Five on the seventh round. Will came by later and we played several more two player games amongst whoever was up for a game. Sage and Bad Press make for a very nasty lock-out combination!

And finally, today I was able to play a few games against Collin after getting home from the gym. He also had to miss out on Friday's tournament and had a few decks he wanted to try out a little more. I was able to run several of my demo decks up against him. I think I only won one of the four games we played, but all the decks I had built performed very admirably...especially considering they're built entirely of commons. I think the most exciting time of when we played was during a matchup of my Brotherhood deck against Collin's Outsiders. He had the initiative on turn 4 with Dick Grayson, Grace and Indigo on the board facing down my puny Destiny and Toad. I had a fistful of plot twists though and was able to stun all of his characters back with only my 1 and 2 drops! As you might guess however, I lost the game due to my poor recruiting, but it was great fun nonetheless.