Thinking Outside the Box

When Upper Deck announced that they would be reviving my beloved VS System  I was very excited. It was my first and only true love when it came to collectable card games, and I had run a local scene in my city for over five years, including keeping it alive for almost two years after the game had been cancelled. So when a friend brought the new VS 2PCG core set out for us to try the other day I was cautiously optimistic. As there were four of us we tried a 2v2 game. It didn't take long to get sorted out and look over the cards. Superficially they look almost identical to the old cards, but in terms of game play this is a very different game. I admit that it was only a single play, but I really disliked the change to resources. It felt so similar to Magic the Gathering to me in that the colours for resource felt like basic lands. That in itself is not a bad thing, but it soured me on the game almost immediately, as I truly dislike having to include cards that are basically ...

Ah VS System ...my second TCG dalliance; a dalliance that turned into my first and only true TCG love. I was able to start and maintain a solid player group for over five years here, three years of which were after Upper Deck 'cancelled' the game. I put together printing for three fan sets after that, all of which were great fun and kept us playing for quite a while. We played bi-weekly or even weekly for most of that time, depending on the season of the year and it was almost always great fun. However, last weekend I started boxing up all of my  VS System  cards. It has been a large part of my gaming life for almost a decade, but since we stopped playing last year I have hardly played. All of my sets were sleeved in 9-up clear card sheets, one binder per set. They looked really nice organized that way and specific cards were always easy to find when I was making a deck. After a year of dis-use though, I realized that it was finally time to move on. So far I've ta...

DC Final Crisis: Frequently Asked Questions by Captain Spud (from  http://www.captainspud.com/dfc/faq.php) GENERAL MECHANICS 1. Charge Some cards in this set have the keyword  Charge . A card with Charge has the text, "At the start of the combat phase, put a charge counter on this card." The word Charge will be followed by a number or variable in brackets. A card with "Charge X: (charge text)" always has "(charge text)", and the text's effect with scale with the current value of X.   For example, Two-Face, Protector of Gotham City has the text, " Charge X:  At the start of your attack step, you may flip X coins. Each time you win a flip, choose an opposing character. Characters chosen this way can't attack this turn." This text is always active, and the value of X will increase as Two-Face accumulates charge counters. A card with "Charge [number]: (charge text)" has "(charge text)" while it has [number] ...

I was able to pick up our latest set last week: DFC ! They look really good, and some of the cards have some great abilities on them. Unfortunately after prepping the images, then taking the day off from work to pick them up, and finally spending hours sorting them all out for the people who supported the set...I don't really want to look at them any more. At least not for a few more days anyway. The designers of the set have also added some cool text for Bizarro World . You can view all of the historical Bizarro World text here . I'll be posting up the FAQ for the set shortly as well. A few people have already picked their sets up, but there are still three folks left to do so. I imagine that will occur on Thursday's regular gaming night. As this is the third set we've done, I thought it might be worth letting people know that there are extras available from each of them. Here's a list with descriptions and costs, should you want to augment your collections: ...

Canada Day this year fell on a Sunday, which meant that I got Monday off in lieu.  In order to make the best of things I added the Friday to it and was able to enjoy a nice four-day weekend.  The weather here was particularly nice as well, which we sort of deserved after the rain-filled monstrosity that was June. Strange Aeons / VUK Starting things off on Thursday evening was a quick, as in almost light-speed, game of Uncle Mike's WIP Kulten rules. We played his 60 point ghoul cult against my 23 point Arcanists. Due to the massive point differential I gained some sorely needed resource points to help bolster my ranks.  I was able to add four new cultists to the sad and lonely three that had survived from the last game.  I also gained two favour points, and a dirty trick. I used the dirty trick to alert the authorities and one of my favour points to modify Mike's roll from a 1 to a 6.  This meant that he could only field three models total, so he chose a g...

For last week's "Special Guest Star" tournament I wanted to really mix things up. Having never played the team, I'd been thinking about building a JSA deck for quite some time, but had never gotten around to it. With my team chosen, I tried to come up with something that was really off-the-wall, but could possibly happen in a comic book...provided the editorial staff had been plied with enough liquor before reading the premise. After wracking my brain a little bit, I thought that throwing Lobo in there just might be crazy enough to work! JSA Guest-Starring Lobo (60 cards) Characters: 2x DCR-026 Terry Sloane <> Mr. Terrific (1) 2x DCR-002 Atom Smasher (1) 3x DCR-029 Wesley Dodds <> The Sandman (2) 3x DCR-023 Stargirl (2) 3x DLS-196 Jack Knight <> Starman (2) 4x DCR-017 Michael Holt <> Mr. Terrific (3) 2x DCR-020 Rex Tyler <> Hourman (3) 3x DLS-198 S.T.R.I.P.E. (4) 2x DCX-016 Alan Scott (4) 1x DCR-022 Sand (4) 3x DCR-006 ...