Thinking Outside the Box

I've had a few chances to play against some more decks built of cards from the new Marvel Evolutions (which seems to be selling at a very brisk pace locally). In addition to the Weapon X deck I wrote about the other day, I've faced off against an Exiles and an X-Factor deck, both of which were quite interesting to see. I'll concentrate on the Exiles build, which I've taken to calling Shi(f)t 'n Abuse . Since one of my main concerns is the power of MEV in relation to that of older sets, I've been playing predominantly Modern-Age decks against MEV-only builds. I want to see if non-Evolutions decks can compete, or even survive a match-up with the new-and-shiny mutant maniacs. The currently favored Exiles build starts off by recruiting no characters for two or possibly even three turns, rather concentrating on building up shift counters on characters in their removed-from-game zone. The ideal play on turn one involves shifting 3-drop Blink into play with a coun...

I just played my first couple games with MEV, against a Weapon X deck built with a focus on the new Shift and Hunter keywords. Now me, I'm not a crazy combo-creating type of player. None of my decks are overly tricky, but rather tend to rely simply on smashing my opponent into a bloody mess in new and interesting ways. Well, I have seen the future tonight, and his name is Deadpool. So here's the situation. It's the start of turn 5 and your opponent has a 2-drop Deadpool on the board. After drawing and playing a resource he plays a copy of Trouble with Clones (5-cost: To play, KO a Deadpool you control. Gain resource points equal to that character's cost. Spend these points only to recruit characters named Deadpool.) from his hand. Searching his deck he comes up with a Deadpool, Party Pooper. You think it's ugly now...just you wait. So now he's sitting there with a 7-drop staring you down on turn 5. Waking you from your shocked stupor he declares your...

There are a lot of comic book fans out there addicted to 'plasti-crack', also know as Heroclix. I got into clix about a year and a half ago. After asking around in the city and online I had found, much to my disappointment, that no one was playing VS here. My love of comic books being what it was, I decided to look into Heroclix to get my comic-gaming fix. Recent announcements by Topps have stated that they are ceasing production of the Heroclix product line and looking for someone to take it over. Of course, gamers being what they are, gloom and doom talk exploded throughout the interwebs...with conspiracy theories, economic debates and ideas for saving the game flying around all over the place. What does this have to do with VS? Well, I'm not really sure. It might positively grow our player base, if clix really does stop going. Some people might be willing to make the switch simply to fill that comic-related gaming addiction. Others might simply walk away from gam...

But at least it was for a good cause, and a good time. I recently started working with a new company and we had a team of team-building night out. Dinner, drinks, the new Bond flick, and more drinks. All on the company dime...oh yeah! Roy sent me a brief tournament report (thank you!), and I was surprised, but happy with the results. It sounds like our numbers continue to grow. We had another 13 player night. THIRTEEN! And that's not counting another regular plus myself who were unable to go. I know I've gone on about how much I love the people in our hobby league group, but that's still just awesome. Granted the lingering effects of the beer I drank may be increasing my euphoria a little bit, but that's still pretty damned impressive. So here's my report, based on what I heard about (any sensationalism is entirely my doing, blame the beer): The final match after three rounds of preliminaries was Roy's Hidden Injustice Gang deck (I've played this th...

For the most part, I keep this blog for two reasons...the first one is for myself. I like talking about my favorite game, posting ideas and reports about our local Hobby League / gaming group. The second is obviously for the people in that group. I thought that it would be helpful to have a site that everyone could easily check that had information about the upcoming tournament date and format, since not everyone can make it to every event. So for anyone who reads this thing, feel free to pipe up. Leave a comment, whether you play Vs here in Calgary or not. I'd love to hear from you. Give me some ideas on things you'd like to see, article topics, deck ideas, stuff you love or hate about my writing...whatever.

I've been meaning to post for a few days, but with the realms being down...so was I. Not enough to not play any cards, but it saddened me. I was able to fill my need for Vs talk via the boards on the Kamiza's site, and those over on TCGPlayer. For anyone interested in the game I heartily recommend both communities. I think there is a lot of overlap, but that's actually a good thing in my mind. It goes to show how tight-knit our players are on a global-level. It's an amazing thing to see something like that come out of a shared love for a simple game. As for playing, things are still going really strong for me here. A week ago, I was able to organize an impromptu sealed tournament with five players, including myself. It was only the second time I've been able to play sealed, and I absolutely loved it! We had two players (including myself) playing with packs from Marvel Team-Up, one player with Marvel Knights, one with Infinite Crisis, and another playing Wor...

Well maybe that's a rather extreme statement, but I sure felt like it on Friday night! We had our Bring-Your-Own-Two-Teams tournament, and I ran my first-ever build of a Team Superman / Gotham Knights team-up deck. It was a lot smaller tournament than most that we've had in the past two months, but we had some great decks brought in. With only 5 of us playing we had time for every player to play against everyone else, which I really liked. BYOTT World's Finest (65 cards) Characters: 2x DCX-023 Superman/Batman Robot (0) 2x DCR-212 Lois Lane (1) 4x DBM-006 Commissioner Gordon (1) 2x DJL-209 Kelex (1) 3x DWF-010 Krypto (2) 3x DWF-042 Batman (3) 4x DOR-007 Cassandra Cain Batgirl (4) 1x DWF-127 Catwoman (5) 1x DWF-025 Wonder Woman (5) 2x DCL-028 Superman (5)4x 4x DCL-070 Dick Grayson Nightwing (6) 4x DGL-159 Azrael Batman (7) 1x DWF-008 Kara Zor-El Supergirl (8) 1x DOR-020 Superman (8) 1x DWF-022 Superman (9) Total = 35 Plot Twists: 1x DCX-005 Flying High 2x DSM-032 Man...

As promised, here's the listing for my SHIELD Ultimates deck. I'll post up the cards first and then address how it's supposed to work. Lightning Strikes Twice Characters: 3x MUN-094 Hank Pym Yellowjacket (1) 4X MUN-051 Beetle Mach (2) 3x MUL-019 Clint Barton Hawkeye (2) 4x MUL-020 Nick Fury (3) 2x MUN-064 Radioactive Man (3) 4x MUN-062 Lady Deathstrike (4) 1x MUL-005 Natasha Romanoff Black Widow (4) 1x MUL-030 Jean Grey (4) 4x MUL-008 Iron-Man (5) 1x MUN-118 Wonder Man (5) 1x MUL-029 Cyclops (5) 2x MUL-004 Captain America (6) 1x MUN-084 Ares (6) 4x MUN-101 Mar-Vell Captain Marvel (6) 1x MUN-096 Iron Man (7) 2x MUN-088 Carol Danvers Ms. Marvel (7) 1x MUL-018 Thor (7) 1x MUL-007 Hulk (8) Total = 40 Locations: 2x MUL-006 Subterranea 2x MUN-127 Stark Armory 1x MUL-021 The Triskelion Total = 5 Equipment: 1x MUN-121 Hulkbuster Armor 1x MAV-035 Mjolnir 3x MUN-120 Extremis Upgrade Total = 5 Plot Twists: 2x MUN-137 You're Under Arrest 2x MUN-134 Scarlet Spiders 2x DCL-262...

Over the past week I've built three brand new decks, including one for the upcoming BYOTT event this Friday. Thanks to convenient scheduling, I've actually been able to play test all three of them against several of Scott's formidable decks. All in all I'm really happy with them, and am actually trying to figure out what to build next. Of course I could always refine something that I've already built, but shiny-and-new seems to be winning out over tried-and-true with me right now. Two of the three decks I'll share, but the other I'll keep under wraps until Friday arrives. The first deck that I built was a team I haven't played with since the release of DOR; League of Assassins. When DC Legends came out I was really excited to play with all the great cards in it, but looking back I really haven't built any decks centered on that set. I suppose one of the reasons would be that I wanted to build a JLA deck using my favorite characters (Batman, Sup...