Thinking Outside the Box

Greetings everyone, I was asked by bkwrds from vssystem.org to pass along the following tournament details. When: January 16th and 17th (Both days start at noon) Where: 69 Agnes St in Kitchener, Ontario Formats: Jan 16th - BYOS followed by MUN draft Jan 17th - "Silver Age Constructed (DCR-MUN, + MEQ) How Much: $20 entry fee (covers both days) For anyone who is interested in attending, please contact bkwrds via private message on the vssystem.org forums.

In their year-end address to the community the VSSystem.org council has suggested an errata. The full text explanation can be read below: Our final topic of the day is Nick Fury, Col. Nicholas Fury (MVL-123). This card has been nominated for an errata because of a broken interaction that allows for consistent turn 3 wins (sometimes turn 2) in Silver and Golden Age. The combo uses the following cards: Nick Fury, Col. Nicholas Fury Haywire, Suicidal Lover Mind Gem, Unique * Infinity Gem Soul Gem, Unique * Infinity Gem Ratcatcher, Otis Flannegan or Apokoliptian Zealots, Army Any team-up In ten test games, KardKrazy won on turn 3 eight times, turn 2 once, and turn 4 once. The trick is to put a Soul Gem on Nick Fury and a Mind Gem on Haywire, Then have Haywire stun himself repeatedly with Nick Fury’s effect, and bounce to hand repeatedly with Soul Gem’s effect. Ratcatcher burns your opponent to death throughout this process. In Silver Age, you simply need to replace Ratcatcher with A...

Oddly enough my parents never pushed me to do anything overtly musical as a kid. I didn't have the prerequisite piano lessons that a lot of kids did, or even get pushed into joining the school band. It's actually something I chose to do on my own. Now I can't recall exactly the process that went into it, but it's been a part of my life for so long (skill level notwithstanding) that I can't imagine not having an interest of some kind. In junior high and high school I played in the concert band until grade 11, which overlapped into joining the metal band of some friends. It was interesting getting that gig, as it came about from being taught to play bass guitar for a school assignment. As soon as we had played it a few times and recorded it, I was asked if I wanted to join their band "because you're better than our actual bass player." We played some live gigs but mostly tried to blow out the power system of an old gutted trailer my dad had set up ...

Ok I don't usually do this kind of thing, but I'm seriously annoyed at the situation thus far and have no other outlet for my rage so it's going up here on the blog. UPS LICKS FUCKING DONKEY BALLS So I receive a delivery notice last Thursday, stating that I have a package waiting and owe a minimal fee of $16.05. That's all fine and good. So I call their 1-800 number in an attempt to talk to a REAL LIVE PERSON, hoping to re-route the package to my workplace. Yeah right, before each of the enter-x bullshit menu options I get from the uppity computerized bitch on the phone, there's a plug for the fabulous technological marvel that is ups.com...where I can fulfill all my package-related desires with speed and ease. But I'm already on the phone. After what seems like dozens of menu options I obtain a confirmation that my package will be available at the service center Monday morning. Of course, I can't understand the address the spits out at me, nor does ask...

Greetings fellow nerds, I mean...no, I guess nerds is pretty accurate. But don't feel bad, we're all on the same page here. I felt it important to throw some outlines down for the rest of the holiday month here in regards to our gaming fun down at Trilogy. This coming Thursday (Dec 3rd) we have another Call of Cthulhu Adventure League night planned. Come out and play some games before we finish up for Christmas! I have some gifts for anyone who can make it down and play three games. This event will also mark the end of the 2009 Adventure League, so I'll be giving out the FFG-provided prizes as well. Win or lose, you'll have fun playing games AND get an early Christmas present! What's not to like about that? For the event on the Thursday, Dec 17th we will have an open tournament. Any card is legal for play, including legacy cards! Build your trickiest, nastiest deck with any cards you want. Faction head abilities will still be available for use to add for ...

This week I started cleaning up my place in preparation for the holidays. It has nothing to do with the fact that I've been lazy and not properly cleaned it since before Halloween, honest! One of the first things I have to do when cleaning up is collect all the various gaming junk lying around on the tables, counters and even the floor, and put it all into one spot. Well this time around I realized that one spot simply isn't going to cut it anymore, unless I get a bigger spot. So today I thought it might be an interesting bit to talk about some of these games and why I like (or don't) them so much. For today, I think I'll restrict it to card games, because otherwise this list is just going to be too damn long. Grab a cup of coffee and let's go! VS System - If you have ever met me, or come to this blog at all it's very likely that you know of my love for the VS System card game. This was not the first collectible card game I got into, but it has certainly ...

Hey kids! I just wanted to check in with all of the players and remind them to bring their team-play hats for this Friday's Giant-Size VS night. We'll be running both Galactus AND Starro multiplayer events. The Starro deck is a really interesting creation from the online community that I've play-tested a few times and feel is good enough for regular use. It's a different take on the Giant-Size idea that came to us with the Galactus set and is a lot of fun. I also wanted everyone to think about what night would be good for them if we were to make the tournaments weekly rather than bi-weekly. Of course the prizing system would be vastly improved. Regular players would not only get to play more VS, but would be rewarded for playing on a regular basis with new cards and great new deck ideas. Please drop a comment on the site here to let me know which day is best for the majority of folks. Of course Trilogy's open-hours will affect what we're able to do, but p...

Well I'm back again, and have some happy news on the Call of Cthulhu Living Card game! Most of you probably have heard about the upcoming full-size expansion for the game, entitled Secrets of Arkham . The new expansion will include 100 cards total (2 copies of 50 new cards) and be released this winter. In light of this news, I think it will be a great jumping-on point for players interested in joining our current Adventure League play. Currently all players have purchased a starter set and added cards from purchased Asylum packs to it. We'll continue with that format until I have news of a release date for the new expansion. At that point we'll have a round-robin tournament event for everyone to finish off the current league. After the release of Secrets of Arkham we'll begin a new cycle with new rules, to be decided at that time. There will be a new Adventure League kit to co-incide with this and should spark another cycle of deckbuilding, insanity and fun...

Well we had another night of demons vs investigators last night at Trilogy. Our Call of Cthulhu league is starting to gain a decent player base which I'm really happy to see. Four players came on Thursday to battle it out over story card and drive their opponents insane. Sebastien is probably the bravest (or most insane) of us all, as he has not yet added any Asylum Packs to his original Syndicate / Cthulhu deck. The scary thing is that he's still winning a good portion of his games! Jason has built two decks, and is probably the farthest along into integrating Asylum Pack cards into both of them. They fought each other to a standstill over two games, each declaring a single victory and adding to their currency pools accordingly. I was also able to play two games, one versus Sebastien and another against our newest player Cameron. Prior to last night's gaming I had set out to improve my deck further, after having been sorely disappointed by its performance thus far. ...

We had a smaller turn out than I expected, but travel plans, wives and colds kept some of our regular players away. The six of us who were able to make it out each grabbed our three packs and the draft was on! I set up two pods of three players to draft, but in retrospect I think that we should have all drafted together. Since draft is a format we don't play all that often I hadn't really thought about the team availability being a little easier in groups of three, but it didn't seem to affect things adversely...just something to note for next time. Harry, Vern and Scott made up pod 1, Dustin, William and I made up pod 2. In my first pack I noticed a large number of Marvel Knights cards and started filling out my curve early on. A lot of the more team-specific cards were coming back to me, so I started grabbing them. After all three packs were done I had ended up with an almost complete MK build, only using two Doom characters and an X-Men 6-drop to round things out. ...

While I was away on my trip I didn't have a chance to play any card games. That's over two weeks without shuffling up a deck of my favorite comic book heroes and villains. As much as I loved being on vacation, two-plus weeks seems like an eternity in terms of non-gaming time. As an aside, I did get to play some board games with a friend in Osaka at their VERY cool gaming club. Imagine an entire apartment full of board games, card games, comics and DVDs at your fingertips. But back to my story. Our hobby league hasn't held a VS System tournament in the time I've been back, but thanks to some of the regular players I have been able to play some games. Sunday afternoon William and I played out three matches. First up was his Wolverine legend against my Beast Boy / Doom Patrol legend deck. I was able to survive until turn 6, but only barely...as his Muramasa Blade-equipped Wolverine's made it impossible for me to keep my characters on the table. Second match saw...

Sounds like the name for a historical fighting game of some kind doesn't it? Well, in a sense I suppose it is. This coming Friday the VS System Hobby League will be running our first ever Marvel Legends Draft event. I've been looking forward to it for a while, and I'm hoping that we'll have a good turn out, even though it's Halloween weekend! As for me, I don't have a lot of experience with draft but I really enjoy playing VS this way. You often end up using cards and team-ups that you would never consider otherwise, or find a neat little combo that you may have overlooked while deck building from the full pool of cards. And then, there are those cards that are really only playable in draft or sealed play. The other cool thing that I like about running draft events is the rare-draft that we do after the main tournament. In my opinion, holding a rare draft from the packs opened removes the risk of players drafting a rare card that they won't use, simply...

Over the past two months I've been keeping a watchful eye on the preview announcements for Fantasy Flight Games ' newest Living Card Game: Warhammer Invasion . Not being a player of the miniature game, I initially had very little interest in this card game. My love of fantasy in general, enjoyment of the Call of Cthulhu game, and appreciation for the Living Card Game model got me looking at things more closely. As time progressed and I saw more cards, my interest grew. A few weeks back FFG posted up a 'how to play' tutorial on their website. The new tutorial goes through the game from setup to an in-depth play example, and is probably the second-best play tutorial for any game out there on the internet. (My first choice would still be for the CoC tutorial, which is a little cooler.) Having watched through the video and looking closely at all of the preview cards, my interest was truly piqued. Then comes the news that the core set will be releasing a full three wee...

Hey everyone, I'm back from my cross-Pacific adventure and it's good to be home. I trust everyone was able to get some good gaming in over the weeks I was away. Thanks go to Will and Roy for running Cthulhu and VS events in my stead. I really appreciate it, and I'm sure the players do too, thanks guys! The next event coming up is round 6 of our Call of Cthulhu Adventure League. This event sees a turning point I think, as players will be able to add a third and final pack to their deck for play in the league. Trades have been slim across the board, so the pack choices have been critical to making the decks stronger throughout play. After the sixth round concludes we'll take stock of the standings and organize a final tournament to crown the winner for the first phase of play. First place will take home a deck of Cthulhu playing cards as well as a faction pin. Second place will also obtain a faction pin. Following the final tournament we'll begin the second p...

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.

Hey again loyal readers. Er...I guess one begins to wonder if there are any such folks, but honestly it doesn't really matter much. This site is more for me than anything else, although I do heartily appreciate the comments by those of you who do stop by from time to time. Ok so back to my ramblings. If you checked in earlier this week you may have seen my post about the Dark Heresy game we ran last weekend. During the course of this week I've been doing a lot more reading and thinking about role-playing games, genres, available books and all kinds of other related nerd-activities. *gasp* Yes, I used the n-word! Thinking back on things, I think the first time I actually played an RPG would have been in grade 10 or 11. A friend of mine who had recently moved to town rounded up a few of us to play a game he went to special pains of describing as "not Dungeons and Drgaons". That game turned out to be "Dark Conspiracy". I don't remember much about th...

With our upcoming tourney on Friday night being Golden Age, it got me to thinking. I have lots of decks that I could play, but somehow I just think I need something new. Last event we cracked a box of Marvel Knights to use for sealed play, and I found that to be a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the Crime Lords / Underworld interplay and was shocked at just how awful the X-Statix really are on their own. After batting around some posts on the forums over at vssystem.org I decided that a mono-teamed X-Statix build just wouldn't be the thing for me to build. So what does that leave me with? I have been playing the game almost from the beginning be there is a surprising amount of stuff that I've left untapped thus far. Looking back over the past few months it seems I've focused mainly on the mini-teams or those that seemed harder to make work on their own like Doom Patrol, Starjammers and Secret Six. Assessing those efforts as honestly as I'm able, I would say that my...

Yesterday I had the chance to run a game of Dark Heresy for some friends. This was only my second time as game master (GM), and our group consisted of one experienced role-player, one long-out-of-practice player, and two brand new ones. It was their first exposure to Dark Heresy however... I've been buying the Dark Heresy books since they were first released early in 2008. Initially I had been shown the core rulebook by a friend of mine while on a trip to Pittsburgh and was captivated by the artwork. I knew little of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and next to nothing about the miniature game. Before heading home on that trip I happened upon a copy of the rulebook for half price, and haven't looked back since. I devoured the contents of the core book and have purchased all of the other products released to date. I've also purchased dozens if not hundreds of 40k miniatures, and now have pieces to build approximately seven different armies. Sadly only three of those are...

Which I'm going to blame on it being summer rather than the decision to ban Blink, but I suppose it could be a little of both. With the stupefying amount of rain we've had here lately though I think that there is probably a lot of kitchen table gaming going on. I was able to do exactly that on Monday evening, playing several games of VS w/ Scott. My new Arkham Inmates insanity deck held its own against a massive Jean Grey legend, but just couldn't pull out a win on turn 9 (yes NINE) when faced up against a 19/19 Jean Grey, plus an 8-drop Professor X and an Onslaught. Even against all that the game was still pretty close. We also played a game with this deck facing off against the Fantastic Four. I believe that was my only win of the evening. Insanity is tough to build, but so far I think it's a blast to play. My Legionnaires also got a chance to come out and play. Another deck I love to use because I think the characters are great. However, every time I play thi...

Well, here it's a national holiday and people were out in large numbers to enjoy the sunshine and wave their maple leaf-emblazoned flags proudly. I'm proud to have been born in such a great country like Canada, and now we need to protect it more than ever...from the ancient ones! Over the past few months I've been doing demos for the Call of Cthulhu LCG, and have been please with the reception it's getting from most players. One of the major selling points is that after you buy your base set, it's a minimal investment. The Asylum packs are released on a (near) monthly basis and run around $12. That's around the price of three random packs of your average collectable game, so it's pretty easy to get into for little cost. So in preparation for league play I thought I would give you a few pointers on getting started with the contents of your base set. There are seven factions in the Call of Cthulhu LCG: - The Agency: A human faction of law enforcement age...

Another couple of busy weeks, but not too busy for some gaming goodness! I'll start off with some coverage of Friday's Golden Age VS System event. We had five players for this one, which is a nice step up from the three we had a few weeks back. I do hope that our numbers will level out again as summer winds down. We had an Avengers / X-Men team up, JLA, Thunderbolts, Runaways and a Green Lantern / my Gotham Knights team up played by me. I wish I could take credit for my deck, but I only had the idea. I found a deck list shortly after over on TCGPlayer created by ShadowTrooper that I used and it's probably better than what I would have come up with anyway! I had to make a few modifications to it, as I only had 3 copies of a few of the rares needed to make it run. After being released in two sets I was rather surprised that I only have three copies of Alfred... My first match up was against Roy's Runaways deck. Let me just say now, that I think Runaways is extreme...

Well folks, whether you agreed with my decision or not...it seems that the VS Council did. They also have decided to ban Blink, in addition to proposing an errata to Armed Escort. The official wording for said errata has not yet been released. I will post it here when it becomes available. I do realize that this decision is disappointing to some of our players, but I feel the decision is the right one for the health of our game.

After a lot of deliberation, discussion and debate, I've decided to add our first card to the banned list; MEV-134 Blink, Earth-295 - Clarice Ferguson . This card will no longer be legal for play in scheduled tournament events run by me at Trilogy. The reason behind this decision is simple: I think that this card is far more powerful than the designers intended, and would remain so even with errata'd text.

...as Superman flies by carrying Darkseid, who burns everything to a crisp with his Omega-beams! What? It could happen! At least if the last comic book title I saw on the shelves is any indication. "Jesus Hates Zombies" is apparently the name of an actual comic, so if they're willing to print that, then my story idea should be more than acceptable. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, trying to alleviate the confusion of you readers. Well, let's start with Friday night's Arch Enemy event. We had four players, but one didn't have a deck that qualified for the format so we started off with a three-player vs. Galactus game. To save you the boring and painful details, the Scott-run Galactus deck kicked our butts. Following that we played a quick three-player tournament. Scott was running Wolverine legend that included Mystique, Jordan was playing a Cyclops legend with Mr. Sinister, and I played Darkseid and included two different versions of Superman. Surprising...

Just a note for anyone interested. I'll be running some Call of Cthulhu demos this Sunday (June 14th) after 4:30pm. We're looking at running a hobby league on Sundays after the new beginner UFS league that Seb and WIll are organizing. Currently I think it will be every other week, likely on the same weekends as our VS System games. If you attend a demo and are interested in playing with us, I'll give you a two-player demo deck to use as a starting point for your deck building. For more information about the Call of Cthulhu LCG please see the website here .

I was chastened by one of our players today for not updating my blog in a while. Looking back I suppose my writing has been pretty sparse lately. Oops! Well just because I haven't written much doesn't mean I'm not playing much. Just last weekend we had another Golden Age tourney with 5 players joining in on the fun. Scott was playing Avengers, Will his Wolverine Legend deck, Roy had some Negative Zone shenanigans, and Jordan...for the life of me I can not remember what he was playing. Whatever it was must have worked well though, since he went 4-0 to take top spot in the tournament! What's even worse on my part is that I played a game against him on Sunday and still can't remember what his deck was. I must be getting old, since it looks like I'm going to have to start taking notes. Regardless, congratulations (and apologies) Jordan! As for me, I was playing my first build of a straight Starjammers deck. It's a fun little idea, but really didn't ...

Well let's give this another try, and see if I can make it stick this time. Friday was a good night, with ten players joining in the Alter Ego tournament. We even had a new player join us I threw the players a little curve before beginning: there was only 1 copy of each Alter Ego card to choose from! Each player got to choose from the pile (like a draft), so if someone had already chosen the one you designed for might have already been taken. I chose Superman as my Alter Ego, with 75 endurance. I was playing my new Outsiders deck, which had performed really well the first few times I played. Sadly between my match-ups and my draws, I was only able to win one of my four games. Seeing the different match-ups play out with the different Alter-Egos added in made things really interesting, and from all reports everyone would be interested in playing with them again. After four rounds of play we ended up with Harry as the top dog this time around, with Jordan taking second place. ...

Ok kids, looks like we'll try to have our Alter Ego tournament on Friday, May 8th. We'll return to our regular schedule and have another tournament the following Friday. Due to them being back to back let's make the next one simple: Golden Age open. Mediocre Deck-Man out!

I got a call from Pascal earlier today telling me that the store would be closing at 5pm on Friday, May 1st. I'm trying to see if I can reschedule for the 8th, but am not sure at this point. Sorry for such short notice everyone!

I've put together a very short list of cards that I need to finish sets or to build decks with. Maybe you can help me out, either in trade or selling me stuff. I have a full list (it is WAY longer than this) if you really want to go all out and try to unload some of your older rares, and even a few commons and uncommons. Have a look and let me know what you've got! Commons 2x MAV-071 Answer the Call 8x MAV-179 Macrobots 20x MVL-224 Shi'ar Soldier 1x MAA-007 Jean Grey Uncommons 4x MAV-179 Kang's Guards 1x MVL-182 Uatu the Watcher 3x MAA-014 Havok 1x MAA-021 Breeding Pens 2x MEQ-008 Doctor Doom 2x MEQ-011 War Machine Armor 2x MEQ-014 Web-Shooters 2x MEQ-017 Man and Machine Rares 2 MAV-069 Aida 1 MAV-079 Rocket Central 3 DCR-032 Advance Warning 1 DCR-037 JSA Headquarters 2 DCR-164 Dodge the Bullet 3 DCR-168 Secret Six Victorious 1 MHG-212 Haywire 2 DCL-259 Have a Blast! 1 MVL-048 Telepathic Suppression 1 MVL-144 Encircle 1 MVL-184 Fantasticar 2.0 4 MVL-198 Signal Flare (...

Here's my first-ever joint article! Thanks to Scott Mooney for providing counter-point to my ramblings. Following the release of Marvel Universe and Marvel Evolution there has been a lot of discussion among our player group (and online) about the powers of certain cards, both in terms of sheer power and in terms of wording. I'm sure most of you are familiar with the debate brought on by the 3-cost, Exiles-affiliated Blink. We'll not be discussing that particular card today, but rather some other combinations you may or may not have thought of. Scott has built a very deadly Starjammers/X-Factor/X-Men deck that takes advantage of discard effects and Energize to lead to an amazing turn 7 combo using Cyclops, Astonishing X-Man and Havok, Proud Son. This combo can stun an opponent's board if they are unable to pay the discard required by Havok's ability. It is especially dangerous in a multi-player format and brought up some thoughts on designer intent versus the ...

*sigh* Well kids...the internet gremlins did it to me again. I had written a nicely detailed report detailing our first draft tournament, only to have it stolen in the ether upon posting. The thought of retyping it doesn't really make me all warm and tingly inside, so I'll simply congratulate Harry on winning the tournament and walking away with a copy of Mobilize to cement his status as supreme overlord. At least...until next time. >:D

Back when Marvel Team-Up was released, UDE also provided what they called "Alter Ego" cards. These cards had a starting endurance total that sometimes varied from the standard 50, and granted some kind of bonus to you, or a restriction on your opponent. While there was talk of a similar set to be provided for World's Finest , they never appeared. Shortly after UDE announced that they would no longer be supporting the VS System, the text for the proposed DC Alter Ego cards was released by the R&D team via the forums, and later created as actual card images by members of the online community. These alter ego cards offer another awesome twist to playing VS. I have posted them under the Game Resources section for reference. They will be available in printed format from me to use in Alter Ego format events. Note: Alter Ego cards may only be used in a match or tournament if both players agree to use one (they may both pick the same Alter Ego). Players must use the ...

Hey everyone, The last little while I've been posting up the FAQ documents here for people to have easy reference to. They're mainly for myself though, both as reference, refresher info, and for a sort of archive source as well. Upper Deck's documentation site is hard to navigate and I wouldn't put any money down on the VS System files having a long life over there. I'm trying to find the most up-to-date copy of the Comprehensive Rules Document (CRD) to post up as well, but that may not come for a while yet. While reading through these documents I couldn't help but think how varied, deep and exciting this game really is. There are just so many strategies and combinations to explore that it seems almost infinite. I still love playing this game, and hope that other around me will want to continue playing for a long long time to come. The gameplay coupled with the staggering array of characters and effect available really set it apart from any other game I...

Marvel Origins Frequently Asked Questions A Child Named Valeria Plot Twist, Threshold 3 If you control Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman, characters with a cost of 3 or less you control cannot be stunned this turn. If you control Dr. Doom, stun target exhausted character with a cost of 2 or less. This plot twist checks to see if you control Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman, and/or Dr. Doom when it resolves. If you control Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman when this plot twist resolves, characters with a cost of 3 or less you control cannot be stunned for the duration of the turn, even if later on in the turn you no longer control Mr. Fantastic or Invisible Woman. If you control Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Dr. Doom, and the only exhausted character with a cost of 2 or less, you must target your own character with the “Dr. Doom” part of A Child Named Valeria. When A Child Named Valeria resolves, its effect will try to stun your target character, however that character can’t be stun...