Mobilize

There is not a day in my online Vs. System deckbuilding that I don’t thank UDE for not only making Mobilize but for putting it in both universes. The card is what makes my Resolution possible and is simply beautiful on all counts, like some angel of card design reached down and placed it on the earth.

Uhh… to make this post worthwhile, how about you guys? What is the one card that you are the absolute most thankful for having in Vs. System? This probably would have been better around, say, Thanksgiving but I’m asking now instead. Let me know your answers via the comments section.

The Great Vs. Resolution #5: Warbou— I mean, Marvel Defenders

Ah. Finally I return to the thing that brought me my claim to fame: the sheer idiocy of trying to build a mono-deck for each affiliation. I’ve taken WAY too much out of my time talking about how surprised I am at the site’s success and how I’m now finally getting my first physical Vs. cards (EA Armageddon is happy that he’s going to have some friends to hang out with) so it’s far past time to review my next affiliation.

If anyone is tuning in for the first time, here’s the rules:

All characters must share a printed affiliation, at least 50% of non-character cards must be team or character-stamped, remaining cards must be from the same universe as the affiliation for the deck, deck must be in as recent of a format as possible.

I built this deck right after I built my Illuminati deck. I wanted that deck to have its counterpart which is, of course, a deck based on the Hulk. Sadly, a World War Hulk-based deck won’t be playable until after Marvel Universe comes out. Poor Hulk started to cry when I told him that. He’s really quite the emotional lug. However, I was able to cheer the big guy up by reminding him that there’s already a way I can build a deck around him. Hulk has the Marvel Defenders to help him out and even though they aren’t a bunch of gladiatorial aliens, they still get the job done.

Holy… Vs. System, here I come!

Oh my god! I just won $25 for use at dacardworld via TCGplayer’s forum writer contest! I’m stunned. Now I’m conflicted as to whether or not I should go back there and post on my old blog as well as this one. This is absolutely crazy.

But all that is neither here nor there. I now have $25 that I can go ahead and blow on Vs. System cards. I have no idea what I’m going to buy so I’m going to ask you guys for advice. Note that I have a bit of extra money to fill in any gaps for shipping and junk.

My ideas are:

5x Spider-Man 20-pack booster box: 5.40 each, roughly $25 before shipping

3x Marvel Knights 20-pack booster box: 7.95 each, roughly $25 before shipping

3x Man of Steel 24-pack booster box: 10 each, roughly $30 before shipping

3x DC Origins 24-pack booster box: 12 each, roughly $36 before shipping

2x Avengers 24-pack booster box: 20 each, roughly $40 before shipping

That’s what I’m thinking so far. The link to the Vs. part of the store can be seen here. If anyone can spot any other particularly good deals other than these, point them out. I’m leaning towards DC Origins but I’m not entirely certain if that’s the best deal or not. I’m mostly wanting the best possible “single” set so any thoughts on that would be great.

All I know is that this is celebration time at the Kalee household!

EDIT:

Current plans are as follows:

4x Web of Spider-Man 20-pack box: $20

4x Marvel Knights 20-pack box: $32

Shipping: $13

Total: $65

From there, the gift card covers $25 bringing the total cost down to $40 which I’ll split with my little brother at $20 out of pocket each. So, for $20 each we’re getting 2200 cards. Sounds pretty good to me but now we have to convince our parents to let us get that many cards and use their credit card. Still, this is likely what we’re going to do.

Legion of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Or something like that.

Anyways, I was perusing the Realms when I found this thread. Now I have to build a Legionnaires deck for the guy to look at, just because gdaybloke went and called me out. Thanks a lot :P.

However, this isn’t my Resolution version of the deck, although I bet the end result will be similar. This deck is only stopped from being a Resolution deck by one thing and that is a single Marvel Legends card that is vital.

Anyways, I used to hate the Legion. Really, I did. I thought the affiliation was silly and that they weren’t any good. However, that was before I “figured it out”. That was back when I was a Curve fiend and didn’t build anything but curve. Curve Legionnaires is horrible and, therefore, I thought Legionnaires were horrible. But, you see, the Legionnaires are, by definition, a Legion. Being a legion means being a large group. Large group means weenies and weenies means team attack build. I know, I’m an idiot for not realizing that sooner.

Wow

I’m going to take a little bit of time out of my normal Vs. postings to just talk about how well this blog, online Vs., and everything else is doing.

Today, January 27th, 2008, on Planet Kalee’s one week anniversary, my blog hit its record peak for the most page hits in one day with 60+ and it still going up since the WordPress default “day” ends at about 7:00 p.m. EST. That’s roughly seven hours from the time of this posting. That’s amazing for me. Sure, a fair chunk of those hits are me before I login but, still, 60+ is great. According to my alternate statcounter, that’s about 10 unique visitors today, I think. I am incredibly happy that there are 10 people who have taken the time out to look at my blog. If you’re curious, my entire first week reads at over 250 hits.

My Vs. Experience

After looking over my blog for what to do next and whatnot, I realized that I hadn’t talked about how I got into Vs. I think it’s actually a relatively unique story. I went ahead and put it after the jump for two reasons. One, I want to keep Resolution #3 right on top so quick viewers can see it. Two, because it starts with a confession. If you’re a Vs. player and easily upset, don’t keep reading.

The Great Vs. Resolution #4: Emerald Enemies

That’s right! I finally got in another game with these guys and feel I have a decent enough handle on the deck to be able to talk about it.

If anyone is new in the Vs. world, or maybe just oblivious and confused, the card that the Enemies brought into the Vs. world, the card that brought this world to its knees before being banned was based around this guy:

Dr. Light, Master of Holograms became the key piece for tons of abuse. He was everywhere, bringing in championship after championship. It was his time in the sun. Then, just when the future looked bleak, the staff of UDE reached their hand down and wiped Dr. Light completely off the map with the all-powerful Ban-Hammer. Light’s reign of terror was ended and Vs. moved on.

This Emerald Enemies deck isn’t based around Dr. Light. For one thing, that’d be cheating. It’d be making an illegal deck. If I’m gonna do that then I might as well make a deck packing 30 copies of Flying Kick. No, Dr. Light gets to sit in his chair and mope some more. Instead, I’m using the forgotten members of the Emerald Enemies.

See, the EE have a theme. The theme is resource KO. You whack your own resources for extra attack and defense. The Emerald Enemies are bad. The theme is hard, it’s annoying, and you have to pick your timing on what cards you play and when you KO your resources. These guys just don’t get as much out of resource KOing. The cost compared to the gain is lopsided, lots of cost with little gain. Still, this was the Emerald Enemies primary theme and I would build it, just because I could.

Conspiracy theorists beware!

Have you heard of the Illuminati? It’s a conspiracy theory that claims that world events are orchestrated by some hyper-powerful group of people. They’re supposedly trying to take over the world by causing various things to happen, bringing about a New World Order (”Whatcha gonna do, brother?”). I personally don’t get it. If they can control 99% of the major events that happen in the world, doesn’t that mean they’ve basically already taken it all over?

Anyways, I’m not here to talk about those Illuminati. See, I was thinking about what to write about on the blog next. I noticed two things. My last two decks were team attack swarm decks and all of them so far have been mono decks. The fact that they’re all linked together and similar like that is annoying to me. I like breaking out and defying expectations. So, I built a curve deck with lots of affiliations. The exact opposite of my past three decks.

What do those guys in suits that control the weather have to do with it? Maybe it was Illuminati mind control, maybe they’ve hypnotically suggested me to do this via inaudible radio signals, maybe I was just bored (my votes on the last one). Any way you cut it, I noticed the Marvel comic books Illuminati and linked versions in Vs. System. There was my deck! I would build a deck solely on the backs of the major players of the Marvel comics world!

Cover art of New Avengers: Illuminati #1, by Jimmy Cheung

Just an observation

I’ve been playing on Magic Workstation for quite some time now. One thing I’ve had to deal with lately since the main Vs. server is down is WoW and Magic players on the public servers. I don’t mind this at all but I found something curious about it.

You see, with MWS you can title your games so you can say “Vs. System SA” or “WoW or Magic, No Vs.” or whatever. One thing I’ve noticed a whole bunch of in the public “Whatever games you want” servers are non-Vs. players who’s game titles are things like “Serious players only” or “No quitting” or “Good players only”. I’ve never seen a Vs. System game with a title along those lines.

Why is this? Why are WoW/Magic players online wanting only “serious, skilled players”? Are players of other games constantly quitting midmatch for some reason? Is there some sort of prevalence of players just leaving games when they’re about to lose to the point where players have to ask for non-quitters?

Now, I haven’t dug deep into this. I haven’t played MWS WoW or MWS Magic so I don’t KNOW if quitting is in prevalence but if it is, that’s incredibly silly since these online games don’t mean anything so why just quit if you’re losing? It’s silly. I also find it amusing that players are searching for “serious opponents” in an online program designed solely for fun. MWS allows players to play more along the lines of a friendly game around the kitchen table than a serious game at a money-prize championship. Since this is the case, why are players of other TCGs looking only for “good players”? Is there something wrong with logging onto a casual program and playing a casual game with a casual deck? Am I missing something here?

Maybe Vs. System is just that cool that it only attracts players who aren’t so “serious” that they can’t use a “for fun” program for, you know fun. Maybe there’s something wrong with the other MWS TCGers’ mindsets or maybe I’m misinterpreting things. All I know is that I’m glad that there aren’t MWS Vs. players that want “Serious playing only”. I like building a crappy Legionnaires Curve deck and trying to make it run. I like announcing gleefully that Wonder Woman can steal an opponent’s Dr. Sivana card draw only to have that player then chain the effect to her coming into play. I enjoy goofing off with the players that are online, poking fun at bad draws and revealing my hand on the second turn since I had just drawn a complete curve of Batman from 3-5 with Batcomputer and At Your Service in backup, despite the fact that it broadcasts my deck to my opponent.

Playing MWS for me is all about that feeling you get of camaraderie when its just you and a friend and a pair of decks you built just because you could. MWS is perhaps my favorite computer program of all time and I am glad that all the other Vs. System users on there are like me, casual and happy to play as unseriously as humanly possible.

The Great Vs. Resolution: Teen Titans

Yes, yes, I know. I promised a deck based on an affiliation that had a mega-broken, banned card in it and I promised it would be an article that went “back in time” and stuff but the hand of fate has forced a change of plans. I’ve been able to play that deck once and don’t feel I have enough of a grasp for the deck to write a decent article about it. So, in lieu of that, I’ll be writing about another fun Modern Age team known as the Teen Titans.

Remember the Titans? (movie pun intended). Back in the old days of Vs. System, the Titans ran rampant across the countrysides of this fair game. Alongside the Curve Sentinels, few could stop these two menaces from steamrolling the competition. Abusing such cards as Roy Harper, Terra, and the infamous Teen Titans Go!, the Titans swept their pay to multiple major tournament victories. Then, they went Golden Age and the days of Titans glory fell back into the pages of history.

The Teen Titans were then refeatured in the Legion of Super Heroes with a distinctly different flavor. These titans were all about using Cosmic and Substitute in combination. These Titans made next to no impact on the metagame, coming from a deck largely considered a failure and just overall not playing particularly well.

And then, DC Legends hit. With DC Legends came another chance for the Teen Titans. This time around the Titans returned to their roots. With one single card, the Titans are back.

When I saw that the old Titans were back, I sorta ignored them. I wasn’t around during the glory days of their youth, I’m not normally interested in weenie or team attack decks. I prefer strong curve decks. However, even I was called by that evil, evil card that is shown above. It was either that card and its deck or my “bland to play but original” Reservist themed Titans deck that I would use for this article. Evil won.