March Madness - Some more rnd 1 results

Ah, the joys of Good Friday being a holiday here in Canuckland… Spud and I were able to knock some more games over.

As mentioned earlier, Team Superman trounced those horrid nazis of the Thule Society. The game was played by the Eponymous Pablo and Babymama Carrie, so at this stage we have no comments on the game.

Negative Zone wins over Infinity Watch
Infinity Watch missed their 2 and 4, while the Negative Zone tossed out Alpha Primitives and Syphonn with wanton abandon. Negative  Zone flipped two Forged In Crisis, clearing off Gamora and Drax, further weakening Warlock’s troops. In the end it all came down to turn 7, where Blastaar and Annihilus mess it all up getting a stun on Adam for free. Despite missing drops the Watch still knocked the NegZoners to -5, but without maintaining board presence, the hidden Syphonn and Blastsaar whack through once Annihilus cleared the board, putting the Watch at -17

JLA win over Shi’ar
Shi’ar put up a valiant effort, including getting Soldiers to as much as 11 defense while they tried to fend off the JLA onslaught, but with their imperator absent, Gladiator was at a loss against the combined thwompiness of Batman, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Gypsy, Hawkman and even the Elongated Man. The bird folk still managed to drag it out until turn 7 before caving before Earth’s Mightiest, but in the end, this match was pretty much as predictable as the ending to Titanic. Not drawing Lilandra made for a sucky performance.

Emerald Enemies win over Darkseid’s Elite (Furies)
The Furies must have discovered a new show on the Home Torture Network – at no point in the game was there more than two of Darkseid’s femmes on the board, while the Emerald Enemies were blowing up their own resources for an array of effects. Despite entering turn 7 with 5 resources, the lack of drawing Kara Zor-El meant that the Furies were underdropping too, and after blowing themselves down to 2 resources, Major Force brickwalled Darkseid and powered through Bernadeth for the win.

As usual, the bracket has been updated at this link.

The Great DCL Easter Egg Mystery

Tis the time of year for small cotton-tailed, waistcoated lagomorphs to frolic though gardens, depositing cocoa confectionary cackleberries and leading to all sorts of improbable ponderings, such as where the heck the bloody rabbit got the eggs in the first place, while those of the Christian faith also celebrate the death and resurrection of the Messiah.

For those of us living in the age of the DVD, there’s another consideration at this time of year. The Easter Egg, for us, is not simply a candied hen apple, but it’s also a reference to little secret treasures hidden in less-than-obvious place, such as the Spider-Man cameo Easter Egg on the first release of the X-Men movie DVD.

Further narrowing the audience, those of us addicted to cardflopping and slinging of colourful rectangles depicting our favourite heroes are also familiar with the term as it applied to those little secrets hidden in our beloved card game, UDE’s VS System.

Thursday 13 #7: X-Men Legends

Welcome to another Lost Hemisphere Thursday Thirteen! Are you ready? Are you psyched? Okay, Fifi! Fly! (*toss… yip yip… thud*)

…. she wasn’t ready. Well, since the turtle is nature’s suction cup, let’s get rolling.

UDE took an amazing turn with they put Marvel Legends together, creating a focus on individual characters rather than just on teams (or raw toolboxing). All of a sudden you could build a deck around Wolverine, for example, and it didn’t matter whether you were playing an X-Men deck, a Marvel Knights deck, or a Spider-Friends deck - the support cards could be used in any of them.

Case in point, my recent efforts at City Champs - though I freely admit I crashed and burned harder and faster than something that crashes and burns quite quickly, I was able to include (and effectively use) Human Torch-specific support cards in a Spider-Friends deck (specifically, I was using Firewalls).

As usual, however, you can’t please everyone. As cool as the Juggernaut cards were, for example, there was much bemoaning his inclusion as one of the Brotherhood legends, when Mystique and Sabretooth were like, right there, man!

For the sake of this list, we’re going to look at arguably one of the most popular teams in comicdom, the X-Men. In Marvel Legends, we were given Wolverine and Jean Grey legends… but with Marvel Universe just around the corner, can we expect another X-Man to be elevated? If so…. which?

Hobby League: Of City Champs and Madness

Twas brillig, and the slithey toves did gile and gimble in the wabe… All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe…

After wrestling with deck ideas over the last week, hampered by a good chunk of my collection being tied up in March Madness decks, I slapped together a Spider-Stall variant and sauntered off to Hobby League with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

Little was I to know the forces that would be arrayed against me.

How I’d Do It: Episode 2

By Captain Spud

After spending last week talking about a character I don’t give two farts about, I figured I’d give myself a break this week and do something fun. I was a huge fan of the X-Statix comics, and I was pretty shocked– and delighted, of course, but mostly shocked– to see them appear at all in VS, never mind being a fully featured team in the game’s first year. I can only conclude that someone on the design team was a big fan, and nagged them in, because let’s face it– no amount of rational argument would be enough to get them included.

What made me even happier was when it turned out that they had a really interesting mechanical concept for the team– they strive for, and benefit from, having exactly one guy on the board. Considering the extraordinarily curve-based meta that existed at the time, with most decks using some variation on “my 4 into your 5, my 5 into your 4″ with the goal of outnumbering your opponent, the X-Statix strategy seemed, to say the least, ill-advised. And yet, it worked.

March Madness Deckcheck: Anti-Matter

by Gdaybloke

I’ve got an unabashed love for underdogs. Teams that just don’t get a lot of love, that no-one seems to froth over, that don’t have 100+ page strategy threads at VSRealms – these things are right up my alley.

I have playsets of every Squadron Supreme  card, every Manhunters card, even every Secret Six card (though admittedly, there’s not that many). Much as the Squadron had some success with their no-hand build before fading from the limelight, Anti-Matter had a brief moment of glory with the Anti-Green Lanterns before being pretty much written off by all and sundry in favour of… well, almost everything else.

DCL brought a little love back to the Anti-Matter affiliation with their twisted reflections of the JLA, but as great as they are in a hidden Injustice Gang build, I wanted to focus on something a little more “classic” for the March Madness deck.

That said, I’m always wary of tossing all my eggs in one basket, and traditionally play curve, so I couldn’t resist my own nature in ensuring that the deck had drops up to and including the 6-slot.

Bah, enough rambling. Deck!

The coolest team not in VS

We’ve determined throughout the establishment of March Madness that VS has in approx. 60 teams. Some are mini teams with only a couple of characters, others have been fully featured three different times.

Surely there’s enough their to appease any appetite, right? Heck, we’ve even had a teaser that Alpha Flight’s going to finally show up in Marvel Universe.

But there’s still something missing…

… and for my money, it’s the most fun damn comic I’ve read in the last decade.

March Madness Deckcheck: Crime Lords

by Gdaybloke

Since the days of MMK the Crime Lords have been a favourite team of mine, because the take one of the basic tenets of VS and turn it on it’s head. They DON’T want the initiative. They DON’T want to attack. They just want to sit back and let the opponent come to them, kicking said opponent in the teeth with a brutal stunback.

That said, the Crime Lords don’t have a nice alternate win condition, so they’re going to have to attack at some point – something they’re just not that good at in comparison to many of the other teams out there.  Despite having a good defensive game, the lack of pretty much any offensive game whatsoever hurts. Hopefully we’ll see some love in MUN, but for now it’s time for March Madness!

Thursday Thirteen #6: Beta Ray Goodness

Welcome one and all to Lost Hemisphere’s sixth entry into the world of Thurday Thirteening.

This time around I’m not going to serve you up a heaping platter of VS card art, nor am I going to bandy about a pile of comics or otherwise assault your senses with visuals to bedazzle, bemuse and beguile.

Rather, this Thursday Thirteen is dedicated to Lost Hemisphere’s spokesalien - the wonderful, the spiffy-keen, the probably-doesn’t-taste-like-chicken Beta Ray Bill!

You see, I’m addicted to underdogs - D-Listers are a source of enormous glee for me… and while Beta Ray Bill commands as much (if not more) power than Avengers heavy-hitter Thor, he’s been consistently relegated to the abyss of comic stardom, most likely due to a giggle-worthy name and a face only a zombie horse could love.

He still amuses the heck out of me though, and was thus adopted as Lost Hemisphere’s mascot and fictional front-man. To that end, I present thirteen factoids about Beta Ray Bill.

March Madness Deckcheck: Teen Titans

by CaptainSpud

Apparently Spud didn’t feel the need to put in an introductory paragraph, so I’ll take the moment to give a big thanks to Rian “stubarnes” Fike for the shout-out at  VSSyestem.com, affectionately termed The Mothership, in his new weekly article, Rallying Cry!

It’s high praise indeed to be recognised as “The meatiest, most magnificent blog of the group”. Of course, this just means Lost Hemisphere has a big target on its head for all the other blogs to aim at… bring it on! Let the VS Revolution continue! Aaaand…. on with Spud’s deckcheck.

 - Gdaybloke