Golden-Age Goodness!

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 extremely frustrating to play against. Some of their effects to burn cards from the top of my deck just seem a little too cheap, but that doesn't mean it's not a good deck. However, while I suffered a rather poor draw and missed a few drops, Roy's draws were worse. I was able to survive long enough for a win, but if he'd got a little better early set up I don't think I would have had a chance.

The second game was against Jordan's X-Men / Avengers deck. His focus was on Cyclops and Captain America, getting team attack and stun effects with Cyclops, and rallying goodness from the Avengers. I destroyed his team-up card twice, but just couldn't survive when he played a second copy of Concussive Force, requiring me to exhaust my 6-drop Batman and 8-drop Superman.

Round three paired me off with Colin, who I haven't played a game against in several months. Being a DC-only player, I wasn't terribly surprised when I saw his "Power-up Everyone" JLA deck hit the table. With seemingly dozens of copies of Nth Metal at his disposal, my Gotham Lanterns were beaten to a bloody green pulp in no time.

After some debating what we all though was a weird pairing for the final round, we decided that the computer did know what it was doing after all. We'd never seen it give a player two byes in the same event, but it all worked out and I faced off against Scott's Radioactive Man / Iron Man / Thunderbolts deck. Now I think I might have mentioned this deck before but the combination of +1/+1 counter generation, Radioactive Man's you-can't-play-stuff lockdown, and Iron Man is a very tough one to beat. I was able to last out until turn 7 and pull a couple of lucky Cover Fires to make it interesting, but again...the Lanterns fizzled out late game. It was a close one though, which is always good in my books.

Scott walked away the winner once again. Congratulations!

In-House Becomes Official

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.

First In-House Ban

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.

Ivy Sweep-kicks the Elder Shoggoth...

...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. Surprisingly, my Super-Darkseid-Man deck won both games and I ended up the winner for the tournament.

I didn't see all of Scott and Jordan's game, but Scott was victorious in short-order. My game against him was very close, with me winning by a narrow margin of less than 6 endurance. I was able to get set up well against Jordan who was working on building a small swarm for turn five. I was able to draw into a Superman, Metropolis Marvel that turn. The following turn put victory firmly in my grasp. Thanks for everyone coming out to play on such a beautiful evening which ALSO happened to be the Stanley Cup final game (I hate both teams, but I'm glad the Penguins won instead of the Red Wings).

Saturday I shunned the gaming tables for rowing on the reservoir and working on my tan (read: sunburn). Note to self: use strong sunscreen next time...as in, actually USE sunscreen next time. A fantastic barbecue (thanks Seb!) in the evening had me in bed full of yummy food by just after midnight.

On Sunday the plan was to play games anyway, but the sunburn cemented the decision as even the sun on my arms and knee in the car on the way there hurt a bit. Sebastien has started up a new-player league for UFS that runs on Sunday afternoons. I've played 6 games with my starter deck now and am only just getting the hang of how the game works. I scored my only victory due to running out of time while having higher vitality, rather than actually defeating my opponent.

I was able to get a few games of VS in too (it'll always be my first love!), as well as running two demos for Call of Cthulhu. Those were well received and I think both players really started to get a feel for the game.

It's been a great year for gaming with friends, and it's even more fun now that we're all playing several different games. I think it will help keep things fresh for all of us.

Now who wants to learn to play the GIJoe and Teen Titans CCGs? :P

Cthulhu Rises

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.

Mmm Stale Blog...crunchy!

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 hit well for me in any of my three games. The one victory I had was more due to Will's extremely poor luck drawing into useful characters than my awesome deck building skills.

Here's the deck list:

Characters
3x Professor X, Mutant Messiah (1)
4x Raza Longknife (2)
3x Nightcrawler, Brimstone Cowboy (2)
4x Corsair (3)
3x Ch'od (4)
4x Hepzibah (5)
3x Rachel Summers (5)
4x Korvus (6)
2x Polaris, Back in the Fold (6)
3x Havok, Proud Son (7)

Plot Twists
3x Mobilize
2x Savage Beatdown
4x Messiah Complex
2x Cannibal Tech
4x Freedom Fighters
2x He Who Watches

Equipment
4x The Starjammer
2x Rapier
2x Ego Gem
1x Reality Gem

The basic idea is to get the Starjammer shifted out or recruit Professor X out on the first turn. From there you want to get Corsair on turn 3 with a He Who Watches to play before he stuns a character. Then Ch'od to do the same thing the next turn. I have to tweak it a fair bit, because it can't really last out well right now. I can get my opponent's hand size down pretty low before turn 5, but I don't have a way to cement the win. I'm open to suggestions!