Thinking Outside the Box

One of the things about customizable card games that is both a blessing and a curse is the infinite variety offered. Having dozens, hundreds or even thousands of cards to chose from can be liberating and daunting all in the space of a few heartbeats. Additionally, as most of us have some kind of addictive mentality when it comes to these sorts of games, invariably we will devote our time to more than one. We have now taken that variability and likely performed a square operation on it, rather than a simple doubling effect. Whoa, pretty heavy vocabulary for a Monday morning I admit. I'm only two paragraphs in and I'm talking about math. Often when I'm writing something I have only the roughest sense of what my topic is before I start. Even more often I'll simply write a title on the spot and carry on from there. I may change the title after I'm done, but that doesn't change its initial impact on my creative process. In many ways this is very similar to ho...

Well I'm a little behind, but last Friday we capped off our DC Universe season with a final tournament. There were six players who came out for the event (which is probably all of the people who are reading this article!). The rounds shape up as follows; the winners are in italics: Round 1: Jason vs Jordan, Will vs Seb, Roy vs Scott Round 2: Jason vs Roy , Scott vs Will , Jordan vs Seb Round 3: Jason vs Seb, Scott vs Jordan, Roy vs Will I ended up playing in Jason's place due to him having to leave after the first round. He found a really interesting little combo equipping Killer Shark with a Batmobile. Using his pay willpower ability to increase his attack and defense, while becoming unstunnable thanks to the Batmobile is probably not a combination that the designers foresaw, but it was pretty fun nonetheless! One of the great things about this set was the big endurance swings in the late game. I saw a lot of games being played with endurance totals like 10/12 at the en...

VS System I thought that it would be good to update everyone about things with our gaming group as our DCU tournaments are coming to a close. As it stands, I'm very happy with the continuing attendance for the weekly Friday night VS System tournaments. We'll wrap up with DCU on the last Friday of September (Sept 24th) with another big tournament which I trust will be good fun for all. Please make sure to mark it on your calendar! Through October and November we will play some fun tournaments with no prize support while I prepare things for December and into the New Year. The details of those plans will be forthcoming as they are solidified; but have no fear, we WILL continue playing VS into 2011 with more awesome new events and prizes! Scheduling-wise, we've been talking about moving the tournaments from Friday evenings to Thursdays. I haven't settled on this yet, but am leaning toward making the change starting in December. There are a lot of reasons why this wil...

For reference purposes, I wanted to post up a list of formats available for play. I'll link it to the side panel and maintain as necessary. Age Formats Modern Age: - DC Legends (includes DCX) - Marvel Universe (includes MUL and MEQ) - DC Universe - Marvel Factions Silver Age: - Legion of Super-Heroes - Marvel Team-up (includes Hellboy) - World’s Finest - Marvel Legends (includes MAA, MCG and MEX) - DC Legends (includes DCX) - Marvel Universe (includes MUL and MEQ) - DC Universe - Marvel Factions Golden Age: - All sets are legal in Golden Age. Banned cards may not be played. Block Formats Origins Block: - Marvel Origins - DC Origins - Web of Spider-Man - Superman, Man of Steel - Marvel Knights - Green Lantern Corps (includes Batman TCG starter set) Crisis Block: - The Avengers (includes Fantastic Four TCG starter set) - Justice League of America - The X-Men (includes The X-Men TCG starter set) - Infinite Crisis - Heralds of Galactus - Legion of...

Hm...that title is better than the first one I almost went with, but on second thought, not by much! What I meant by that is that it seems most of the trading card games I like playing, or have been recommended, seem to die. With VS System in our area, the resurrection came through my refusal to let a good gaming group die. We still have weekly tournies with a decent turn out, prizes and good times for all. I hope this will continue for a good long time. Call of Cthulhu died as a TCG and was brought back as a living card game by Fantasy Flight. I ran a weekly league for about six months, but attendance was a problem. I still love the game and we do get to play occassionally. Seems everyone I introduced the game to enjoyed it as well, and we'd all like to play it more often. The GIJoe TCG , well, it just died, but I still bring it back to life a few times a year at home or the local game shop. Good mindless fun with beloved characters from the 80s. Warhammer: Invasion , is s...

Last Friday was a great event. We had eight players some out for our DCU tournament. We were missing a regular player as well, which was too bad but it was still great to see so many people come out for the games. We all built sealed decks using mock-packs from DCU. I had a ton of locations, but was pretty light on plot twists. Given that...I decided to play a mixed deck of Green Lantern, Anti-Matter and a few JSA characters thrown in for good measure. My mock-packs only had one team-up card (Janus Contract?), which was good for a three-way team up...but if you didn't choose Suicide Squad it got replaced at the end of the turn. My first game ended in a coin-toss as Jason arrived too late to play (technically we should have given me a bye and he a loss for being late), but since we're pretty informal I just decided to flip a coin. The second game against Nathan was a tight race, with the health gains from my early Central Power Battery nearly being the difference. In the ...

Legends Block is pretty simple and follows the same structure as the previous two block events that we've played recently. Build a deck from the following sets. Legends Block - DC Universe - Marvel Universe - DC Legends - Marvel Legends - World’s Finest - Marvel Team-Up - Hellboy