Thinking Outside the Box

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 som...

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...

Once again I've had the good fortune of being given a card to preview from the DC Universe fan-set created by some of the players over on VS Realms . So far the set is looking fantastic, and contains all kinds of Green Lantern and Sinestro Corps shenanigans. It's almost a shame that it's a fan set, because some of these cards are so damn good. It's been promised that the set will be available for both Magic Workstation and OCTGN (my preferred virtual tabletop). Being able to play with these cards, even if only just online is a very exciting prospect. So with that, let's have a look at the next preview! Now I have to admit that my JSA knowledge is far more limited than my Green Lantern lore, but I know the characters and have tried a deck or two out. However, you don't need to be a JSA expert to realize that Pancake Breakfast is a good card! The JSA's theme seems to be based on getting bonuses for having a lot of exhausted characters. So, if you're...

The group that's come together to play Vs. at our regular Hobby League events is definitely a good one though. We're also lucky to have a supportive store to play at, which makes all the difference in the world. Yesterday's event wasn't any kind of special event, nor did we have any special prizes, but we still had eight players show up with mostly new constructed decks. There was quite a field too including Avengers, New Brotherhood, Crime Lords (two different builds), Outsiders, Gotham Knights and a tweaked Thule Society deck. I've been really impressed with some of the deck building skills of the players lately too. Some of this stuff is amazingly inventive. I have played against both of the Crime Lords builds and find them to be very strong decks. Master Man is a serious threat if you can't get him off the board. With cards like Hired Hit he can be made huge even if you're trying to avoid attacking him. Add in all of the reinforcement mechanics w...

I love rare cards. The near-brokenness of their effects, awesome artwork and sheer cardboardy goodness all make me smile. And if you're lucky, sometimes you get that extra-shiny rare-card treat! Just the other day I received an envelope in the mail containing 70-plus rare cards that I had ordered online. With these cards added to my collection I can finally declare my first two complete sets: DC Origins and Green Lantern Corps. Now to clarify, "complete" to me may not mean the same as it does to you. I'm a collector as well as a player, and as such my aim is to obtain at least one copy of each card from each set. Many other players would consider a complete set to be 4 copies of each card from the set. The fact is that there are just too many cards out there and not enough time for me to play. And of course some rares I may never have a chance to use, and thus don't need four copies, or they are cards that you simply dont need four copies of (basically any...

Other obligations came up and I had to miss out on our last event. I had pretty cool deck put together and was disappointed that I wouldn't get a chance to try it out. It's a really interesting team-up that I wish I could have come up with myself. I found it on VsSystem in an article back in October of last year my Michael Barnes. You can read the article here . I had to make a few substitutions, as I didn't have four copies of a few cards. The most notable one I remember was tossing in the Marvel Knights 4-drop Wolverine. Otherwise it was almost exactly as the deck list there shows. Happily enough Darren, who was also unable to make it to Friday's event, was able to get together on Sunday. He ran an Avengers deck based on reservists and rallying for equipment like Hulkbuster Armor. After losing three games (the first being the closest), he conceded defeat. It just seemed like luck wasn't on his side, as he seemed to be missing draws and failed a lot of hi...

Today I have something very cool...our first card preview! Hot on the heels of the release of Marvel Universe is a new fan-set, DC Universe . This set is being put together by a hard-working group of members over at www.vsrealms.com . I liked the DC Legends set a lot, but found it really tough to get the rare cards of my favorite Green Lantern, Hal Jordan. With Beware My Power you can really lock down an opponent's board. I think I'd build a legend deck centered around Hal Jordan, Hard-Traveling Hero. Pump up his willpower with a Green Lantern Ring, Mogo or Power Surge and then exhaust a pile of your opponent's army characters, their big gun or both!