Thinking Outside the Box

Last Friday we played another Golden Age open tournament in our VS System Hobby League. It was great to see some old favorites hit the tables again. In my first round I faced off against Jordan with my long-suffering, never-victorious Legionnaires deck. We were tightly matched up until the 7th turn, where I was able to fend off just enough damage to make it a 3 / -2 endurance game in my favor. Through creative Cosmic counter manipulation I was able to maintain three characters with them and pull off Terror Incognita , causing Jordan to lose an additional 5 endurance, just to cement the victory. My second round game was up against William. Initially I thought he was playing his ever-so-nasty Kang deck, as he runs the 1-cost MEV Mystique in that as well. It turned out to be an Underworld deck that makes use of her to boost up Meatmarket and Satana on turns 4 and 5 to kick my butt. With some copies of Armies of Quard to move his characters visible and give them spiffy attack bonuse...

So our Call of Cthulhu LCG league has been running for a few weeks now and seems to be fun for the players, but our numbers are a little light. So far we're averaging 3 or 4 players per event, and I'd like that to grow. So if you've picked up your starter set and are wondering what the do with it, the answer is...whatever you want! Most of the teams can work with any other, the key is finding some synergy or common thread that you can make use of to give them an advantage over your opponent. It seems a general consensus of the players so far that the Hastur cards from the starter aren't well suited to being your primary faction. However, they seem to go well with almost any other faction! They're like the vodka of CoC...mix it with something else and you'll probably be able to get something tasty out of it. One of the more original pairings I've seen so far utilizing the Hastur faction cards was a team-up with Mistaktonic U, put together by Jason. He ...

Well our last event was a really interesting. A big thanks to Roy for putting together a draft cube for us to play from. The players all had a really great time drafting from it and playing our games. We ended up using four "packs" to build our decks, which I actually found to be very difficult. There were just too many good cards to choose from and it was tough to eliminate enough of them to get my deck down to a playable size of 30 cards. My first game was against Collin, who missed drops on turn two and five. I hit a perfect curve all the way up with my JLA / X-Force free team up. I also had Black Bolt on the table and was able to team him up every turn after the first one, making him a minimum 5/5. With a full board advantage against him Collin just couldn't manage a win. Sadly for me things went downhill quickly from there. I lost my second game, which netted me a bye for round three. My final match put me up against Roy. My deck treated me much as Collin...

Well we've had an awesome resurgence in tournament numbers as summer draws to a close. The previous two tournaments have had 7 or more players in attendance, which is really great to see again. I've been a little behind on the tournament updates, so this will be short. Our most recent tournament was a switch-deck event decided on by Jordan. He won the first event in August with his villainous Thunderbolts deck. Well done. In the switch-deck event we had time for three rounds of play in which we chose two first places: one for the player with the best record, and one for the deck with the best record. As a final round the top player and creator of the top deck played it out for the final bragging rights. The top performing deck of the night was Roy's Weapon X. The top player of the night was none other than your truly, posting a 3-0 record. That put my League of Assassins deck up against Deadpool and his cronies. It was a close game right up through turn 5, but Roy t...

Yesterday I had a chance to get together for an evening of VS with Scott and Collin. While trying to quiet my nephew down enough to go to sleep I watched them play two games one-on-one. Scott was playing a deck made mostly of cards from Universe and Collin had DC Legends. All of us made various remarks about the power levels of the cards from the new sets being frustrating to deal with, or in some cases plain over-powered. Later on we were able to play a few three player games, and it struck me that the simple addition of another player really seemed to level out the playing field. Due to the number of things to consider when attacking and defending against two opponents instead of just one, many of the high-powered effects don't seem to be nearly as bad. While this doesn't really address or change the fact that the cards are in general more powerful, I think it's an interesting observation. It also might be a good suggestion for players who do use older sets, or were...

Well color me more than a little disappointed. This summer has seen a pronounced fall in attendance at our VS System events. While I did expect a bit of decline due to the game's discontinuation I didn't expect the rapid drop that has happened recently. I know that I can attribute some of the losses to summer vacations happening etc, but I don't know if that's the entirety of it. Even a lot of our rabid regulars don't seem to be coming out anymore. With all that being said, I'll continue to run events and provide prizes (it won't just be cards, I have some other good stuff too!) as long as people show up to play. And of course if you have any suggestions for formats, events or improvements in our game please let me know.

Our VS System tourney on Friday had a new first-time winner: Congratulations to Vern and his formidable Inhumans! Those moon-dwellers are full of tricks... Ben came in second, piloting an Injustice Gang deck centering on Criminal Mastermind. Impressively he was able to set up four copies of it in his row on not one but two of his four matches. As per the winner's decree our next tournament format will be Golden Age Open: Ban 5. Each player chooses 5 cards that they can ban for this event. If a card has been reprinted, banning one effectively bans all versions (such as Mobilize or Flying Kick). Post your ban-lists in the comments to this article. Selections must be entered by midnight on Sunday, August 2nd. Your ban list is void if you do not join us to play in the tournament.