Another year, another birthday

First fully non-Vs. related post ever. I was able to hold off for half a year. That ain’t bad.

This morning at roughly 4:30 a.m. marked my seventeenth year of life.  Sadly, there isn’t that much attached to turning seventeen. Sixteen has the driver’s license, eighteen is adulthood, and twenty-one is gambling, smoking, alcohol, guns, and all the other fun stuff. Seventeen has… purchasing M-Rated video games, something I’m not particularly interested in (I own a Wii and my computer can barely run games from 2000, I don’t even have access to Mature games).

My current celebration plans are eating a Hot Fudge cake from a local bakery, going to Barnes and Noble to look for some books, Gamestop to browse their used game collection, and Toys R’ Us for some various collectibles and perhaps some card game stuffs. For dinner my parents are taking me to the following restaurant:

That’s right. Chuck E. Freakin’ Cheese’s for my seventeenth birthday. Greatest. Idea. Ever. Honestly, who doesn’t want to go to CEC’s for their birthday? Maybe I’m strange for wanting greasy pizza and arcade games for my birthday instead of fancy Red Lobster food like my older brother normally requests but, what can I say, I’m a free spirit. I might get some pictures while I’m there just to prove my Chuck E. Cheese birthday-dom. If I do, I’ll probably post them on here.

Finally, to finish off my birthday celebrations, tomorrow I get to go see my favorite band of all time live in concert with my brothers and a friend. This band seems to love me. Last year they released their new album on my B-Day, and this year they’re giving me a concert. Combine that with the fact that they have a shirt with a bear fighting a shark and these guys seem to be specifically catering to my tastes. Gotta love it.

Oh, fine, I’ll add some Vs. System related stuff. I’m also working on taking some of my birthday cash and making a deal for a bunch of MXM/MVL commons and uncommons with another blogger. I was planning on buying some boxes of MOR but, really, this was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Thanks gdaybloke!

That is all. *blows a party noisemaker* Let the birthday festivities continue!

“You might have power, but I am power!”

Thanks to the power of cheap Ebay auctions, I am now owner of the Silver Surfer Heralds of Galactus pre-release t-shirt for the low, low price of $12.50 counting shipping. Look at that awesomeness. Look at it!

I would say this officially makes me a Vs. nerd (as if the fact that I play it online and will rattle off a character’s stats and powers at the drop of a hat wasn’t proof enough). I also attempted to get a Superman t-shirt and the Infinity Crisis: Dr. Fate shirt but that went just out of range of what was in my Paypal account. Still, one shirt is better than none and the Silver Surfer is awesome in so many ways. How many ways? I can produce 5 off the top of my head.

Vines wrap their way about your FEET…

hort post today since I just got back from a weekend long trip (during which a pre-scheduled Hellfire Club post was made).

Feraks. These plant-based gals have become quite the thought experiment for myself ever since I got 14 copies in my DC Origins packs and built a very shoddy deck around them.

Since then, I’ve been wanting to take a load off my feet, sit down on MWS, and build a deck around them that actually works. The card is Golden Age for Pete’s sake! There has to be some way to break them with all the available options. Off the top of my head, I’m seeing Feraks -> Mr. Fantastic/Invisible Woman -> We Had A Team-Up -> Cosmic Radiation/A Child Named Valeria. You’d never run out of Feraks in the hand with a deck like this. My only thought is how one would actually win with such a deck… Xavier’s Dream since you should never have stunned guys inplay and Feraks have low enough attack to not stunback? Ponder on this, I must.

On another note, I owe Number6 a mentioning due to him taking up my challenge at the end of this post. He came up with quite the decent combo to go with Natasha Romanoff:

Fallout: Post-DC Origins Box Opening

So, I had a really, really bad day today while doing stuff to apply at college so this is going to be quick and then I got to split faster than a banana at an ice cream parlor.

I opened my first box. Hot dawg was I excited. I got three Bat-Signals and two Mountain Strongholds right out of the gate which got me excited. My “rare” haul by the end of the first box was a single copy each of Alfred, Have A Blast, Total Anarchy, Concrete Jungle, 8-drop Ra’s, Garth <> Tempest, Trigon, The Demon, Terra, Lady Shiva, Optitron and a couple other cards that I didn’t mind seeing. Things were going great.

Box 2 + 3. I open up four or five Barbara Gordons, three GothCorps, three Deathstroke, another Trigon, three USS Argus, Lucius Fox, Wayne Enterprises, two Batcave, FOUR Shrike, FOUR Wheel of Plagues, two Mad Hatter, two Ventriloquist, three Neutron, two Psimon, and three Blackfire.

That’s right: Utter. Junk. Rares. No Fizzle, no Rigged Elections, and only one Alfred/Terra/Garth/Have A Blast. Ugh! It’s like someone handed me a banana (which, to make the allegory work, I must say I dislike) instead of the apple I was hoping for. Sure, I wasn’t expecting perfect draws and I was expecting a good portion of junk. There aren’t a particularly large amount of amazing rares in DOR, most of the power is in the common/uncommons. However, my second and third box were just sad. The only “good” cards in them was a single copy of the 7-drop Batman and 8-drop Superman.

All grumbling ceased, playing with the set has gone well. My younger brother is learning the randomness of Arkham Inmates with the lack of search. The deck can go from running horribly to KOing/Kidnapping everything in sight.

Older brother has a decent League of Assassins build. It could use some fine tuning but it’s still quite runnable. He was able to lock younger bro’s Arkham deck’s locations out of the game via the 4-drop Ra’s and then went to town until turn 8 when he played the 8-drop Ra’s and younger bro scooped. One really fun play I did while running this LoA deck for fun was waiting until after younger bro flipped up his key locations (No Man’s Land and Arkham Asylum) before stripping them away via Remake The World. Fun, fun play.

My decks are currently a Fizzle-less Gotham Knights build that makes me grumble due to the lack of negate and a semi-Roy Harper abuse Teen Titans deck. Nothing better than pumping Roy into an 18 attack 3-drop on turn 4 and swinging into The Penguin for massive damage.

So, in all, things went all right. Sorta like a hot dog with mustard. It could’ve been better but, hey, it’s still a hot dog with mustard. Oh, and I’ve learned to love this card:

Snape kills Dumbledore and Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father.

The Incredibly Late DC Origins Celebration Day!

It’s time to party like it’s 2004 because today is the day I receive my three boxes of DC Origins. Oh what pleasures shall I find inside the second oldest set in the game? Will it be as good as finding a five dollar bill laying on the floor of a taxi you just got into? Let’s break it down.

Batman! About time! Finally I’ll be able to use my childhood hero in my Vs. System decks. To give you an idea of how much I loved Batman when I was a kid about every one in five of the old pictures set out during my graduation open house had me wearing a Batman shirt or with a Batman toy. He really is the greatest. Plus, the Gotham Knights have uncommon search which is going to be awesome in this small-house metagame. Will I be able to build a deck based around the above Fatbat? Highly unlikely. Still, that 5-drop Bats with double burn is looking mighty, mighty good.

Joker! Who doesn’t love an evil clown? In particular, I really like this one’s effect and art. The art reminds me of the Heath Ledger interpretation of the Joker in the upcoming Dark Knight film. Plus, random burn is great. It’ll be my younger brother who most likely plays this guy, though. He’s going to be “majoring” in Arkham Inmates. I even went so far as to grab him three copies of their legacy “Smiles, Everyone” rare from DSM just to help him out. Between that and Fear And Confusion, he should be able to build something usable.

State of the Site: Reason for lack of posts…

My apologies for lack of updates these past few days. I had some stuff lined up but because of family coming in today and getting ready for tomorrow’s graduation open house, I haven’t had the time to write anything down. Note that this is not a hiatus and new stuff will be up on Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

In other state of the site news, the Marvel Universe preview did wonders for my stat count. Hopefully you guys all stick around.

The Vs. Resolution continues to go well. I’ve got a pair of Golden Age decks, a Modern Age that is undergoing some reworking, and the Hellfire Club I hope to put up this week. So that’s all still on schedule.

Doctor Who, on the other hand, is undergoing some changes. I was recently contacted by frequent commenter Number6 about some ideas and it is looking like the set is going to go under a complete overhaul. Everything outside the TARDIS Crew theme of “remove from game” is being thrown out the window to start anew. Now that I have a second head in the mix and an actual structure for the set, I hope to actually get some work done on it.

On the home Vs. System front, my family got our “free check from the government”, which is a load of bull, but it still means I’ve got money to throw away and that means triple boxes of DC Origins. Combine that with the lot of common/uncommons from MOR, MMK, and MXM that I’m getting and things are looking good. In June I’ll hopefully get some MTU and then its time to try and build a fanbase at college in the fall.

So, that’s about it. Planet Kalee will return, hopefully rejuvenated, after this weekend is over. Stay tuned to see what I pull out of my hat.

And on a card note, The Source is borked. Seriously.

BYOS Modern: Make Mine Marvel, also more brainstorming ideas

The more I’ve thought about this MWS tournament, the more I’ve realized that Marvel is where its at for me.

All the DC sets just don’t appeal to me outside of the fact that they have some nice utility. World’s Finest, IG-Hidden, and JLA are all good, well-known decks which means I don’t want to get anywhere near them simply because that’s the way I work. Outside of those decks, however, there isn’t anything particularly powerful in BYOS Modern. Revenge Squad Front Row needs Mobilize or else you’re entire deck falls to luck. Outsiders Team Attack need access to at least Reset but preferably a team-up with X-Men or the Titans while Outsiders Up-Curve has no search in this format. About the only deck that I like the idea of running in this format would be Injustice Gang handfill which just feels so standard. Sure, Marvel doesn’t have much it can respond with but I still don’t like the idea of using handfill.

That leaves me with just Marvel which has way more access to good stuff IMO. Anything from MTU is cool (outside of mono-Spider-Friends, blech), and MVL has access to the almighty Mobilize. Just lots of goodness in those two sets with cards that aren’t often used. Sure, I’m likely to get smacked by DC’s negation tricks but I’d prefer to run a fun deck that I’ve personally built than just try and win by avoiding the tough choices caused by the metagame.

Also, I promised some brainstorm ideas for decks so…

Spider-Friends/Underworld (10/10 healing Morbius is nice. Also, lots of search, draw, and answers. Oh, and Pathetic Attempt in Trial By Jury)

Marvel Defenders (Hulk Smash!, Deck merely loses Flying Kick in transfer to BYOS)

SinSyn Chameleon Hax (Drop Chameleon on 2, Use Chameleon’s effect on Kravinoff/Deadpool/Demogoblin, flip team-up, recruit dual loyalty character on 5.)

MA Common Enemy (abuse Force Field Projection + Mystical Paralysis to make opponent’s swear)

Brotherhood Juggs/Magneto (Sheer beatiness that doesn’t rely on plot twists or too heavily on targeting)

Phoenix and Her Clone’s Alternate Future Son (Use Bodyslide to abuse Jean Grey’s 5-drop and 8-drop.)

Those are what I can list off the top of my head at the moment. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. At the moment, I think I’m going to play my Ghost Rider deck but I haven’t fully decided on that yet. Any comments or other ideas are always taken into consideration so feel free to leave your thoughts.

ROFLOL. Poker Spam

Okay, first technically non-Vs. related update on the site. Just ignore it if you don’t want too read me laughing at spambots.

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.

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.