March Madness – Coming soon!
March 7, 2008
One of the cooler things about being part of a casual VS scene is the wackiness that ensues when one person gets an inkling of a hint of a grain of a kernel of a teensy bit of an idea that might be something fun… it bloody well explodes into a bunch of emails back and forth, a spreadsheet or two, and before you know it you’ve cracked open Photoshop and put together an image for a blog for…
MARCH MADNESS 2008
That’s right, my duckies, we’re going to have our own little March Madness.
From the creative soul of the Eponymous Pablo comes the concept, from the anal retentive nature of Captain Spud comes the rules, and from the keyboard of me comes the means to spread the news to the world.
Let me sum it up for you.
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Three guys with a penchant for absurdity.
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64 40-card “starter” decks, each a different affiliation or theme.
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63 games of VS, 63 losing teams.
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One winner, bragging rights included.
Now, let me expand a little! Mmmm expansions…
Looking over the teams available in VS, we’ve come up with 64 potential builds. We’ve had to cut some of the miniteams, like the Rogues and Speed Force, due to simple impractibility, but to fill in the gaps we’ve taken teams with radically different thematic builds such as the Morlocks, with Evasion and the No-Reinforcement builds.
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Each deck is 40 cards.
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One rare character is allowed per deck
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All characters in the deck must belong to the deck’s affiliation.
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Support cards must be either completely generic, or stamped for the particular team; eg, Slaughter Swamp can only be used by SecSoc.
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Support cards stamped for the team are encouraged over generica.
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No more than three of any card (Army cards excepted, of course)
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A deck can have a maximum of 15 uncommons.
There are, as always, exceptions to the rules.
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Additional rare character cards can be used in a curve if there are no other options, and/or all c/uc characters at that drop are already at a full three.
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Secret Six can include a single copy of Secret Six Victorious.
Decks are being constructed by all three participants (Captain Spud, the Eponymous Pablo, and myself); All decks will be made available to all three participants, so the deckbuilder will not necesarilly be the player.
Rounds will be single-game elimination matches.
Initial pairings will be generated randomly. Speaking of which…
ROUND ONE PAIRINGS
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Kang Council vs New Gods
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Doom vs Fantastic Four
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Injustice Gang vs Masters of Evil
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Manhunters vs Checkmate
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Spider-Friends vs Brotherhood (Big)
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Infinity Watch vs Negative Zone
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Hellfire Club vs Squadron Supreme (No Break)
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Arkham Inmates vs Crisis
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Outsiders vs Brotherhood (TNB)
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Fearsome Five vs Underworld
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Sentinels vs Shadowpact
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Heralds of Galactus vs Villains United
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Anti-Matter vs X-Men
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Shi’ar vs JLA
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Teen Titans vs Darkseid’s Elite (Mockeries)
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Secret Six vs X-Statix
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BPRD vs Marvel Knights
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Kree vs Morlocks (No Reinf)
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Heralds (MCG) vs Secret Society
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Horsemen vs Inhumans
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Doom Patrol vs Squadron Supreme (No Hand)
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Wild Pack vs JSA
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League of Assassins vs Unaffiliated
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Thunderbolts vs Birds of Prey
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Avengers vs Legionnaires
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Darkseid’s Elite (Furies) vs Emerald Enemies
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Team Superman vs Thule Society
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Future Foes vs Gotham Knights
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Morlocks (Evasion) vs Skrulls
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Green Lantern Corps vs Marvel Defenders
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Crime Lords vs Sinister Syndicate
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JLI vs Revenge Squad
Deck construction has begun, the earliest matches may well be completed by the end of the weekend. Pwnage!
BRILLIANT.
You sir, are AWESOME.
Here’s the bracket I’ll be using to track stuff:
http://www.captainspud.com/vs/mm/mmbracket_march7.jpg
We’ll get our first few games in on Sunday evening.
We were originally going to include EVERY team, including those with two or three characters. We’d supplement the small teams by choosing “feels like” characters to round them out– speedsters for Speed Force, reservists for Rann, etc. Ultimately though, it was decided (read: summarily decreed by me) that the speedsters team would be too broken in this format, and the rest would barely even include their team (Rann has one character and one affiliation-granting location), so they were cut. In their place, we looked at teams that support two different themes that don’t require sharing any (or very many) cards– Squadron, for example, has completely different characters and support for No-Hand and No-Break. Same with Morlocks No-Reinforcers and Evaders. I could’ve seriously made four decks out of Brotherhood (Big Bro, TNB, Reservist, Big Bullies) without repeating a card.
I really don’t think it was worth splitting Darkseid, but they’re Gday’s fetish at the time this is being written, and he kicked and screamed until I relented and let him have them.
Infinity Watch vs. Negative Zone? Hardcore!
Excellent job guys! I’m determined to find a way to make this work in my local Hobby League.
This is absolutely phenomenal. Among the greatest ideas ever, and probably the best for VS.
Are the lists golden?
Are Kang running cover fire? :p
Kang or Morlock Evasion to win!
Kang is running cover fire, but without rares and off-teams, it won’t be nearly as abusable as I’d like.
My head, she’s gonna splode. Too impressive for words. Go Salukis!!!
Awesome event!