Hobby League: Burny heads and stretchy bits

Hobby League was a wonderful experience tonight, with the Eponymous Pablo, Carrbear and Emmy in attendance. I don’t care who else turns up, I just love seeing this family show up.

Not only does it mean that there’ll be some fun decks and some fun games, it’s also almost a certainty that I’ll get to snuggle Emmy (who turned 4 months old today - Yay for Emmy!) while trying to shuffle a deck or play cards. So sue me, I like babies.

Anyway, I took the Ghost Rider deck as rambled about a few days back, with some minor variations. Notably, I took out the 2-drop Reeds and the Stretch Out’s, and slotted in a full set of 2-Luke Cage, and some Ant Man’s and some Clobbering Times. Why Ant Man? Because a concealed Ant Man with the Ultimate Nullifier is a headache for a lot of decks in BYOS format.

First round I played against Carrbear’s Insanity AI/GK build, and things went pretty well. The deck hit its curve, I got some Chains of Vengeance out and active, and it came down to a victory. I was pretty beaty .

How I’d Do It: Episode 7

This week, we’re going to cover some dry, boring theory.

Yaaaaaaay!

So, yeah. Our topic today is the delicate art of balancing effects. It’s not glamorous or tremendously exciting, but it’s something every card designer needs to know.

Itchy Scalp pt 2

Before we begin, just a reminder - it is Crime Lords Month, after all. Check out the latest entry by Runaway at The Brave & The Blog. With that out of the way, back to the buring skulls…

I went ahead and pulled out my Fantastic Four binder, as discussed, and set about seeing what I could build out of it in terms of an Equipment-based build, while slotting in enough Ghost Rider stuff to make it Legend legal.

Wouldn’t you know it, it ended up being yet another dual Legend deck.

Two things to bear in mind:

1. I have Family of Four together right now, so it’s holding all the Signal Flares, 3-Susies, Clobbering Times, etc. I was working with a limited card pool.
2. As usual, I tend to prefer mono team builds, so not so much with the splashy splashy. With the exception of one card (easilly switched out), the deck’s actually BYOS legal as well - a consideration, with the upcoming event.

Why Hulk hates Morlocks

Just a quick post to tease and tantalise… or, ya know, to fill in a few minutes.

UDE has done a pretty decent job of not making any cards completely obsolete, by and large. With only a couple of exceptions, you can’t really pick up two cards and outright say that card A is superior of card B in every single way.

That said, some cards do *appear* to be better in practicality. Spud and I have discussed this a number of times, most notably in respect to these two cards:

Itchy scalp Pt 1

I know everyone’s all about Marvel Universe these days, wrapping their heads around the Captain America and Hulk previews and whatnot, but something’s still bugging me.

It dates back February, when I was rambling about what to play for the Build A Legend event. See here, here, here, and here. Apparently I was indecisive enough to ramble on about it for four entries. Heh.

I’d slapped together a Heroes of the City deck, but didn’t get to test it in the end, so ran with Darkseid (who, admittedly, won the tourney for me, so I have no reason to complain there).

But what about the poster child for the evils of riding a bike without a helmet while smoking a cigarette after dousing your head with gasoline? You know, I’m still determined to figure out the right deck for him. We have four versions legal in Modern alone, for cryin’ out loud, we should be able to nut something out, right? Beuller?

Let’s take another look at Ghost Rider.

Crime Lords Month: The Task at hand

A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket… or however that thing’s supposed to go, I have no bloody idea… Today though, we return to Crime Lords Month with Marvel’s Master of Mercenaries, the Trainer of Thugs, the guy who somehow endeavours to make an ugly costume look menacing…

Yup, Taskmaster. A guy who’s shown up on a few VS cards (most impressively the alternate art version of Press The Attack), but it wasn’t until MHG that he actually made his appearance as a character proper.

But we’ll get to that in a minute.

FIrst, let’s take an eye-candy-ful wander through the fashion-challenged life of Tony Masters…

(yup, that’s right, Taskmaster’s real name is Mr T. Masters. Clearly the height of Marvel’s creative naming right there…)

Thursday 13 #11: Thirteen Defense

Welcome to another Lost Hemisphere Thursday Thirteen! This week I thought we’d get a little literal, and look at the number 13 itself, showcasing thirteen characters that are lucky enough to have this portentious number printed on their cards.

Since it’s Crime Lords Month, I’m going to narrow down the field further - The Crime Lords love to play a defensive game, and this Lost Hemisphere presents thirteen VS System character cards with 13 defense! In alphabetical order, nonetheless…

Crime Lords Guest Article: Right on target

Crime Lords Month is a wonderful thing. It brings people together, don’t you think? This world of disparate bloggery, why, it’s a wonder people even know how to talk to each other…

… but Crime Lords Month, it just brings the best out of the blogosphere.

Speaking of which, RanmaSolo, who has his own shiny little corner of the blogosphere over here, has penned a little something on one of his favourite Crime Lords, the master marksman Bullseye.

Hobby League: Nothing to see here

Regrettably, Hobby League didn’t happen this week. Spud, myself and Gamerette were the only ones in attendence (The Eponymous Pablo and Carrbear were occupied this week, and new players didn’t show this week) so we just played a quick three player game (TNB vs TNB vs Family of Four…) and then adjourned to the Gdaycave for Settlers of Catan.

Since I hate to leave you with nothing to see, here’s a picture of an Echidna.

How I’d Do It: Episode 6

Disclaimer: This is true of any article I write, but this week especially so: Nothing I make for these articles is tested. These are only initial ideas, the pack of test cards I’d bring to a full group discussion if I was actually making them for real. No “values” are final– if there’s a 3 on a card, it might be broken and need to be dropped to a 2. But that’s not what I concern myself with. I’m only spitting out ideas, I leave it to my nonexistant playtesting team to figure out if they’re any good.

With that said, let’s proceed with the article.

When the Coming of Galactus raid deck first came out, a thread popped up on the Realms where people started brainstorming new ideas for other comic threats that could be justified as a Giant Size. There were several valid suggestions– everything from Magneto to Imperiex. Basically, people were looking at the Galactus starter and thinking of characters who could fill the same role; they were looking to recreate the Galactus experience with new faces.

I found the excercise unsatisfying.