I got into Warmachine for one reason, and one reason alone: Giant Robots. I love steampunk, and I love the idea of fighting robots, so Warmachine just seemed like a perfect fit for me. Of course, when I started playing, I discovered that it wasn’t quite that simple. While warjacks were the thematic focus of the game, in gameplay terms infantry tended to be a much better bargain. They operate more independantly, they’re often harder to wipe out in one swoop, and they do some tricky things with probability through the sheer quantity of dice they roll.

Now, as it happens, the game had one warcaster who could handle multiple warjacks… and by a fluke, he was the same faction as the battlebox I’d bought purely for looks. Edward Dominic Darius is, in Mk.I at least, the premier warjack caster. Other warcasters make their jacks move, but Darius makes his dance. Others make their jacks strong, but Darius makes his into gods.

He was hard to learn, but once I figured him out, that was when I truly started to enjoy the game. I spent nearly a month, and nearly $50 in parts, converting his model into something worthy of his rules. Darius truly defined for me the way this game should be played: load up on walking steel and slam it into your opponent’s face.

Fast forward to the afternoon of April 6th. The Mk.II rules have come out, and Darius is… gone. He is completely and utterly gone. Every one of his tricks– not just “most”, but all– has been deleted. Put simply, the new version is only a Jack caster by exclusion– he has no infantry buffs or self-buffs, so by process of elimination he’s a jack caster. But that’s about as far as it goes.

I’ve been ranting about the changes to my favourite model for three days now, and I’m… done. Ranting isn’t going to accomplish anything; the only way I can hope to see him restored is if I can convince Privateer that there are legitimate problems with the changes they’ve made. To that end, I’m going to undertake an exhaustive breakdown– not just of Darius, but of the very concept of Jack casting itself. I’ll dig into what Darius used to do, where I think his excessive power came from, and how that excess can be curbed without destroying the essence of the model. I’ll also compare Darius to other jack casters to give us a frame of reference for evaluating his true performance.

It may seem like I’m explaining really obvious things at various points, and it’s probably true; but I don’t want to make any unexplained assumptions, so I’m explaining my reasoning at every step of this process. If someone disagrees with any of my conclusions, this will make it easier for them to figure out where they think my arguments fall apart.

Alrighty, let’s get started.

Jack Casting 101

Warjacks in Warmachine depend on focus to perform. On their own, they lack the accuracy to hit high-defense models; they lack the damage to put an appreciable dent in a hard target; and they lack the sheer weight of attacks necessary to even the odds against superior numbers. A naked, focusless warjack really isn’t much use to anyone.

Focus evens up all of these deficits. A warjack with a pile of focus can boost its accuracy and damage output, and can swing repeatedly in melee to accomplish with four hits what it could never hope to in one. Focus is an incredibly powerful equalizer in this game. But for precisely that reason, it’s also a restricted commodity. Warcasters only have so much focus each turn, and can only hand so much of it to their jacks– both legally, with the three-focus allocation cap, and practically, with all the other things a warcaster might want to do with his focus.

This is why, traditionally, most warcasters are not warjack casters– most casters can very adequately support one heavy warjack at a time, but start to gasp for air a bit as more are added. Once you add a second warjack to your caster, you start having to make hard choices– what will help my cause most this turn? Should I cast a spell to hold off the enemy, or hand all my focus to my jacks and hope they cause enough havoc to keep the threat at bay? Most casters have strong spells, and end up choosing the former of those options.

This is where a jack caster steps in. If you ask most players what makes a jack caster, they may tell you that it’s a warcaster with spells that deal with your warjacks. And while this is a symptom of being a jack caster, it’s not what does it for you; Irusk has some powerful Jack boosts, but he’s first and foremost an infantry caster. What really sets a model up as a dedicated jack caster is the ability to adequately support multiple jacks through a little thing called a force multiplier.

Put simply, a force multiplier is something whose cost is fixed (ie, “pay 2 focus”, or “pop your feat”), but whose benefit scales depending on the number of eligible recipients. A simple example: the High Reclaimer’s Sacrificial Lamb spell costs him one focus and one warrior model, but puts one focus on every warjack in his battlegroup. In a large enough game, there’s no limit to how high this could scale– he could generate two focus, or five, or ten, or fifty-seven, all depending on how many warjacks he has. The cost is fixed, but the benefit is shared across every warjack he’s willing to lug into battle.

Not all multipliers work with a distributed buff; just as useful in this regard are the game’s many concentrated debuffs. Another Menite warcaster, High Executioner Reznik, has a force multiplier that works in the other direction. He can cast Brand of Heresy on an enemy model, and every model in his battlegroup receives boosted attack and damage rolls against that model. This kind of multiplier is more restrictive, but still extremely potent; it only applies to models attacking a single target (leaving any jacks who wanted to hit someone else high and dry), but it still produces a scaling benefit, giving its bonus to any warjack that is willing to poke the target. Any debuff you put on a model that makes it easier for “anybody” to walk up and hurt that model counts as a force multiplier– whether a DEF debuff or knockdown effect that makes it easier to hit, or Gorman’s Rust Bomb that lets any interested parties ignore a good part of the victim’s armor.

Whatever their form, force multipliers are the reason certain warcasters can support a large number of warjacks. Since it wouldn’t be balanced to simply give jack casters a massive pool of focus to hand out every turn, they all generally spend a fixed amount of their focus on a scaling benefit. They can’t afford to actually give 2-3 focus to five jacks, but they can hand out the equivalent benefit by buffing their battlegroup or debuffing their intended victims.

The Talented Mr. Darius

So, there were many jack casters before, but Darius was generally acknowledged to be head and shoulders above the others. I won’t argue the point– Darius had some problems. There isn’t a single model in Mk.I that a Centurion with 3 focus, Jackhammer, and Full Throttle can’t kill in a single turn of attacks. Most heavies even leave the Cent with one or two focus left over! The sheer amount of pain Darius’ boys can deliver is staggering, and his feat can be quite demoralizing for our opponents, undoing in an instant what took them several full rounds of combat to accomplish.

So what exactly did Darius do that was so good? Let’s look at each item on his résumé:

1. Full Throttle: With few exceptions, the first thing you do every turn when running Darius is activate him and fire Full Throttle. For an investment of three focus (half his natural pool), he can grant an additional attack die to every melee attack made by his battlegroup. If any two of our melee Heavies attack with both of their weapons, you’ve instantly made up your cost, and even profited by one! With every further warjack added, and every extra focus spent, the benefit gets even better– two more attacks from a third Heavy, and then spending Darius’ remaining three focus, puts you at a total of nine boosted rolls. Without doing anything more than firing one spell and hitting things with your jacks, you’ve doubled Darius’ focus pool (3 for attacks + 9 for boosts). This is Darius’ main force multiplier, ensuring that your relatively limited pool of attacks will at least all hit their targets. In addition, Full Throttle takes Cygnar’s slowish heavies and sends them catapulting across the board. Your whole battlegroup can run and charge for free, and the +2″ of movement gives them an appreciably larger threat range than your opponents– I can park my Centurion 11″ away from your Menoth or Khador heavy, knowing that I’ll be able to charge you next turn, and you won’t be able to charge (or even run into!) me.
2. Jackhammer: Casting Full Throttle and upkeeping Jackhammer leaves Darius with two focus, or three if he takes one off the squire (which he usually does once combat’s begun). The investment here is four focus, and it buys you eight attacks– two free ones Jackhammered from your initials, three bought legitimately, and then three more Jackhammers. As before, this doubles the investment, letting Darius make very efficient use of his limited focus pool.
3. Pit Stop: Darius’ feat was just an absolutely crushing moral blow to the opponent. He spends several turns putting all he has into wrecking my army, and then I erase all his work in an instant. Smart opponents would simply choose to completely ignore the Jacks and work on getting direct access to Darius, but even this was often quite hard– they couldn’t approach directly, and ranged or spell attacks on Big D had a lot of problems penetrating ARM21. So even the smart folks usually knuckled under and went after the Jacks.
4. Crane: An ability I scoffed at in my first couple games, this has ultimately become one of the deadliest tools in Darius’ arsenal. If you pick up a large-based model at the full 2″ from Darius, and drop it off on the other side at the full extension, you’re moving it 7.5″– almost a run for a Centurion. Combined with the Cent’s 11″ charge range, this often allowed me to take a Jack the opponent thought he’d boxed in and isolated, and send it streaking across the board over a foot and a half. This power turned Darius into a staggeringly effective assassination caster at lower point levels– the opponent exposes a flank because you have no models over there, and you take advantage of it by craning a Centurion onto that side and charging him up the empty space for a sudden and unexpected caster kill. Crane also has a lot of other uses besides adding movement distance– it can be used to pull a model out of combat, letting it charge a new target, or even re-charge back into the combat it just left (essentially getting a free damage boost). It could be used to jump models out of rough terrain, or pick up a blocker from behind Darius to protect him in front. Crane has a million uses, many of them game-deciding.
5. Jack Selection: A big part of the “problem” with Darius wasn’t so much his own abilities, as how those abilities interacted with the Jacks he had access to. For example, the Centurion and Ironclad both have abilities on their weapons that more or less guarantee that if they crit, they no longer need to roll to hit (Cent has Crit Sustained Attack, and the Ironclad has Crit Knockdown). These abilities are fairly marginal on their own– the odds of critting on two dice are only about 16%– but combined with Full Throttle, they become much, much better. The additional die added by the spell ups their crit chance to 44%– and they can still boost, which brings the Jack to a total of four dice, which give a 72% chance of critting. This is why these two Jacks made such powerful assassins– all you have to do is use one of your three focus to force a crit, and then you’re just “removing focus until you fall down”. Beyond the massive critical threat, Centurions are also simply the best Jack in all of Mk.I, with the best defenses in the game, period, and at least in the top 5 offensively. Setting up an unchargeable wall of two Cents and hiding Darius behind it really takes away most of your opponent’s best options, letting the Darius player take the initiative and decide where and when the combat happens.
6. Statline: Another very important thing about Darius, that Darius players themselves often forget, even when their opponents are acutely aware of it: Darius is naturally ARM18, and has easy access to a +3ARM upkeep through the Journeyman. 21 armor is very difficult for traditional assassin casters to crack (most caster spells are POW12s– dice minus 3 on an average caster, but dice minus nine on an armored Darius). He’s able to keep very close to the front lines with much less backup than most casters– which means he can start lending his own personal strength to fights in the mid-game, when there are still juicy targets around, instead of waiting until most of the big threats are gone in the late game like most other casters have to. With FT running, Darius is throwing out a MAT6+boost POW15 with critical knockdown, and a POW11 with dismantle. He won’t kill an enemy Heavy all on his own, but if you need one finished off after your Cents start the job, Darius can capably do the work without really risking reprisals.
7. POW13/14 to Everything in AOE4: Between the Pressure Cooker and the Halfjack mines, Darius can set up a really nasty battlefield that is incredibly hard for opponents to advance into. His big AOEs are hard to make work offensively (they’re both delayed a turn, making it difficult to drop it on an enemy and still have them around by the time it blows), but they’re a very effective deterrent for your defensive line. Drop a line of mines in front of your Jack wall, and an infantry-heavy opponent has a really unpleasant choice– don’t advance into the Jacks and let them run rampant, or advance in, do some damage that will just be healed back, and lose 90% of my squad when the mines go off. Darius has trouble aggressively pursuing large swarms of enemies, but he can keep them out of the fight through intimidation, so they “might as well” be dead. Even if the mines never go off because the opponent held back, that’s still a victory because it means the opponent conceded the initiative to you.

So in the end, what is the problem with Mk.I Darius? I’ve had people say it’s Full Throttle, or Jackhammer, or the Centurion… Cryx players whine about the armor. In the end, it’s not any one of those things– it’s all of them. Darius’ individual strenghts, already mighty on their own, overlap to become much more than the sum of their parts. Crane’s extra movement isn’t a huge deal without a strong threat when you get there; the ability to roll 4 dice and sustain your attacks with the Heavies don’t matter if you can’t get where it’ll hurt most. But combine both of those things, and you have a heat-seeking caster-killing missile.

Personally, if I had to name the one main thing that makes Darius the best Jack caster in the game (and in fairness, the thing that meant he really did need to be ratcheted down a few notches in the new rules), I would without any hesitation name his force multipliers. It’s not that Full Throttle and Jackhammer are obscenely high-yield for their cost– each one more or less doubles your focus investment, which is pretty standard for Jack caster force multipliers. The thing that creates problems is that unlike every other jack caster, Darius has two multipliers. This is the real problem– instead of simply multiplying the investment, it’s doing compound multiplication. The focus investment is doubled (or more), and then doubled (or more) again. That is why his math works out so splendidly.  Jackhammer on its own, or Full Throttle on its own, would constitute enough force multiplication to make Darius playable. But Darius takes that “acceptable level” of multiplication, and multiplies it a second time. It’s just far too much return for his 7 focus invested.

I’ll illustrate what I mean: here are some quick comparative scenarios, showing how five sample Jack casters– Darius, Reznik, Amon, Mortenebra, and Kharchev– multiply their focus. You can see that Darius gets by far the best deal of any of them.

Focus Multiplication in Action

Here’s the basic scenario I’m going to use across all five examples: Steve controls the jack caster, and three heavy melee Jacks. Bob controls two “threats”– one that needs to be killed right now, and one that only needs to be dinged up. Steve is going to send two heavies into the larger threat, and one into the smaller threat.

For the purposes of these examples, I don’t really care about damage inflicted or how much better one faction’s jacks are over another’s– all I’m looking at here is the size of a caster’s investment, and the size of the return. For the purposes of these demonstrations, I’m going to give each caster one extremely common “crutch” piece– things that you will reasonably expect to see accompanying these casters. Specifically, I’m going to give Cynar a squire, Menoth a Vassal, and Mortenebra her Skarlock, Derelyss. I couldn’t really think of any standard crutches for Khador without really twisting the example beyond reason (ie, “Greylords immobilize the main target”), so Kharchev is on his own. It’s not really fair, but it is reflective of how a real game with each of these casters would run. It’s simply how Privateer set the factions up!

Also of note here: if any of the multipliers are upkeeps, I’m assuming the caster is upkeeping it, and not casting it fresh– as that is generally how these things work.

The metric I’ll be using to analyze efficiency is to look at how much focus went in, and then how many focus worth of benefit was reaped. Anything that would normally cost focus– an extra attack, a boost, a power attack, or a charge– will be considered one focus worth of benefit. For any casters who are giving their jacks a bonus to attack or damage, I’ll add up the total bonuses accrued over the series of attacks, and divide the whole thing by 3.5 (the average result of a rolled D6).

Standard Scenario:

The jack caster controls three warjacks in his battlegroup: A, B, and C. He is facing down two threats– a large threat, X, and a small threat, Y. The threats are close enough to walk into, but far enough to get a charging bonus. The jack caster is going to send A and B into the large threat, and C into the smaller one. I’ll enumerate the best series of attacks (efficiency-wise), and count the focus or pseudo-focus being spent, as well as the focus benefit being reaped, at each step.

First up:

Mk.II Mortenebra

UPDATE: As has been pointed out in the comments here and on the PPS forums, I made a mistake in Mortenebra’s math. I thought she boosted attack and damage, but she only boosts attack. I’ve updated the math here and in the section conclusions, but if you see any other stray references to her having 300% efficiency somewhere else in the article, it’s because I missed a reference when I was editing.

For Morty’s example, we’re assuming that Bob’s two “threats” are living warbeasts, as that’s what her multiplier triggers off– her spell Terminal Velocity gives her Jacks boosts to attack anytime they’re hitting a living model.

• A charges X. TV boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• A makes second attack. TV boosts attack. Onefocus benefit.
• A pays Morty’s three spare focus for additional attacks. TV boosts attack on each. Six focus benefit.
• B charges X. TV boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• B makes second attack. TV boosts attack. One focus benefit.
• C charges Y. TV boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• C makes second attack. TV boosts attack. One focus benefit.

All together, Morty spent seven focus (four for TV, three allocated), and got 15 focus worth of benefit, a little over double her investment. Note that Derelyss didn’t do anything in the example– none of the spells he can cast from her would have any effect on the overall efficiency of the Jack chain, as he can’t cause extra attacks, and TV is her only multiplier.

Mk.II Karchev

Karchev allocates three focus to A. During his activation, he takes one focus from the Arcantrik Turbine and uses it to cast Unearthly Rage, then pops his feat.

• A charges X. UR boosts attack– damage was already boosted from the charge. Two focus benefit.
• A makes second attack. UR boosts attack and damage. Two focus benefit.
• A spends Karchev’s three spare focus for additional attacks. UR boosts both sides of each. Nine focus benefit.
• B charges X. UR boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• B makes second attack. UR boosts attack and damage. Two focus benefit.
• C charges Y. UR boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• C makes second attack. UR boosts attack and damage. Two focus benefit.

Karchev spent six focus (three for UR, three allocated), and got 21 focus worth of benefit. He got about three and a half times the benefit for his investment.

Karchev’s math works exactly like Morty’s– he had one less to hand out, but his multiplier costs one less to cast, so it’s a wash.

Mk.I Darius

Darius takes a focus off the squire, upkeeps Jackhammer on A, and gives three focus to A. Darius casts Full Throttle during his activation.

• A charges X. FT boosts attack– damage was already boosted from the charge. Two focus benefit.
• Jackhammer triggers. A makes an attack with the first weapon, boosted to hit. Two focus benefit.
• A makes second attack. FT boosts attack. One focus benefit.
• Jackhammer triggers. A makes an attack with the second weapon, boosted to hit. Two focus benefit.
• A pays Darius’ three spare focus for additional attacks. For each focus spent:
  • Attack is made, boosted to hit. Two focus benefit.
  • Jackhammer triggers. Attack is made, boosted to hit. Two focus benefit.
• B charges X. FT boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• B makes second attack. FT boosts attack. One focus benefit.
• C charges Y. FT boosts attack. Two focus benefit.
• C makes second attack. FT boosts attack. One focus benefit.

All together, Darius spent seven focus (FT, upkeep Jackhammer, allocate three), and got 25 focus worth of benefit. That’s a little over three and a half times the benefit.

Mk.I Amon Ad Raza

Amon doesn’t allocate any focus. During his activation, he enters Meditative Stance and gives the two focus to A. He pops his feat, and casts some random spells to blow his 5 focus, including Synergy (casting it fresh lets him allocate one more focus than he could if he upkept). He gives one focus to A, three to B, and one to C.

Amon’s totalling is going to be a bit of a headache to track… I’ll be totalling F (focus) and B (buff) after every line.

• C walks into Y and makes its attacks. The one focus can be spent on anything (C cannot get a Synergy bonus since it is first in the chain). 1F.
• B walks into X and attacks. Attack and damage are at +1. 2B.
• B makes second attack. Attack and damage are at +1. 2B.
• B pays its three focus for three attacks. Attack and damage are at +1 for each attack. 3F, 6B.
• A walks into X and attacks. Attack and damage are at +2. 4B.
• A makes second attack. Attack and damage are at +2. 4B.
• A pays its three focus for three attacks. Attack and damage are at +2 for each attack. 3F, 12B.
• Vassal has A make another attack. Attack and damage are at +2 for each attack. 1F, 4B.

Amon spent eight focus (Seven on spellcasting (which became allocation), one pseudo-focus from the Vassal). He got eight actual focus back, as Synergy doesn’t directly multiply any focus. The combined total of all the buffs was 34; divided by 3.5, that’s just short of 10 focus worth of benefit. So for Amon’s eight focus investment, he got 18 focus worth of benefit– a little more than double.

Mk. II Amon is almost the same math, though he gets one less real focus to give to C, so his investment and return both drop by 1, which actually makes the return about 2.5 times the investment. Also note that Menoth has a ton of extra ways to increase their efficiency– in this example I could’ve added three focus from a Reclaimer and one from a wrack. I’m also not including the Choir, which is another powerful Menite multiplier.

Mk.II Reznik

I’m using the F and B tracking system from Amon here again.

Reznik upkeeps Brand of Heresy on X, and Iron Aggression on A. He allocates 3 focus to A, and one to B.

• A walks into X and attacks. BoH boosts attack and damage, IA gives +2 to damage. 2F, 2B.
• A makes second attack. BoH boosts attack and damage, IA gives +2 to damage. 2F, 2B.
• A spends three focus to make extra attacks. On each one, BoH boosts attack and damage, and IA gives +2 to damage. 9F, 6B.
• Vassal has A make another attack. BoH boosts attack and damage, IA gives +2 to damage. 3F, 2B.
• B walks into X and attacks. BoH boosts attack and damage. Two focus benefit.
• B makes second attack. BoH boosts attack and damage. Two focus benefit.
• B spends one focus for an additional attack. BoH boosts attack and damage. Three focus benefit.
• C walks into Y and makes its attacks. C receives no multiplication bonuses.

Reznik spent seven focus (two for upkeeps, four allocated, one pseudo-focus from the Vassal), and got 23 back. He also got 12B worth of buffs, or about 3.5F. Spending the focus on an attack with B instead of upkeeping IA would’ve given him 3F worth of benefit, so overall it’s a wash. Actually, without the Vassal it’s slightly less than 3F returned.

Also note that this depends on upkeeping Brand instead of recasting it. If you cast it fresh, you get 3 less returned. If you need to boost to hit to apply it (ie, applying it to a target you’re already engaging from last turn), that’s another 3 less. So Reznik definitely gets his best efficiency on the second turn of combat, while other jack casters (Darius, Karchev, and Morty) generally get their best return on their charging turn.

So, to recap:

Mortenebra: 214% return (7 in, 15 out)

Karchev: 350% (6 in, 21 out)

Darius: 357% (7 in, 25 out)

Amon: 225% (8 in, 18 out)

Reznik: 328% (7 in, 23 out)

What conclusions can we draw here? Well, Darius comes out on top, but only by a hair– Karchev is more or less tied for the 3.5x efficiency mark, though his total output is less. Reznik is hot on both their heels. Amon seems to be way behind the pack, but as discussed, he really reaches his peak with lots of lights, and the “three heavies” case I used for all of them puts him at a disservice. Mortenebra brings up the rear in pure efficiency.

So, if most of them are around the same efficiency, why is Darius so lauded and the rest of them relatively marginal? Well, it’s a few things. First of all, Darius’ overall package just brings more to the table– every spell and ability on Mk.I Darius revolves around jacks; so he’s giving you huge return on your focus, and providing a ton of other benefits as well.

More specifically, his feat does some odd things that the math doesn’t really show– most of these casters get one turn of huge power, but then their efficiency drops as they start losing Jacks. So they get one explosive turn, but the return swings are likely to cripple them, and then they have trouble recovering. This hits various casters more than others– as I mentioned above, Reznik gets his explosive turn on the second turn of combat rather than the first, and it’s quite likely that by that point, he’ll have lost a piece critical to his efficiency chain, and his actual return will be a fair bit less than the ideal situation I outlined.

Darius gets his one turn of explosive power, just like the others– but when the retaliation kills his posse, he can just bring them right back and get a second explosive turn. These are the real equalizers– Darius’ explosive power isn’t limited to one turn of the game, and he gets two full turns of output to take down the threatening pieces on the other side of the board, where other casters would only get the one unfettered chance. It’s very hard to completely neuter your opponent with three Jacks in one turn– but in two turns, it’s quite feasible. So Darius’ ability to sustain his threat level longer than the others is really what puts him a head above.

There are a few other advantages in Darius’ favor that don’t show up in the math– the two jacks Darius is likely to use in his example are the Cent and Ironclad, who both effectively have Critical Sustained Attack; after the first two attacks, every attack Jack A makes is probably going to auto-hit. Whereas with everybody else’s jacks, they’ll still be missing here and there even with a buff/three attack dice, so they’ll then miss out on the associated extra damage die, lowering their efficiency.

Meet the New Boss

So, with all of that groundwork laid down, let’s get to the matter at hand: Darius’ treatment in Mk.II. Here’s the full list of changes:

Gains

• Manual Control’s cost reduced to 1
• No more Pressure Cooker (if you hated this effect, which some people did)
• Gained Jump Start (an awesome spell, credit where credit’s due)

Losses that hurt

• Full Throttle no longer gives an attack die
• Jackhammer is gone
• Pit Stop no longer repairs wrecks
• Halfjacks no longer start with three in play– it takes three turns to get the full complement onto the board.
• Crane is an action instead of automatically happening, and only moves a model 1″ from its own reference point, instead of 2″ from Darius’ reference point.
• No more Pressure Cooker (I loved this, I always looked for ways to auto-miss by firing too far or shooting people with cover)
• Fortify no longer stops out-of-turn movement (I never used this, but apparently most Darius players are mourning the ability to form a wall of Centurions)

Losses that don’t matter

• Lost Dead Lift (meh, I’ve never used it)
• Stun Bolt (spell I never used) changed to Arcantrik Bolt (spell I’ll never use)

Let’s not mince words here– Darius needed to be nerfed. He was far too powerful; the combination of high efficiency and the ability to resurrect the dead made him staggeringly effective, especially compared to other Jack casters whose forces were very fragile and whose entire gameplans could be derailed with surgically-applied disruption.

• Crane needed a nerf, as Darius is supposed to be about a unified wall of force; I don’t think the developers ever intended him to be sending heat-seeking missile streaking across the board.
• Jackhammer was, admittedly, over the top. It wasn’t just that it let you make lots of attacks– it was that it let you make lots of attacks with the same guy. It’s often impossible to get two big beaters into contact with the same big threat, and under ordinary circumstances, you often just can’t muster enough weight of attacks to completely annihilate a tough Jack (Cents, the Avatar, etc) in a single round, meaning you’re taking heavy retaliation the turn after. By being able to cluster all of his attacks onto a single body, Darius ensured that he could surgically remove big threats with a near-guarantee of success.
• Full Throttle’s ability to trigger easy criticals was, in my estimation, not an intended benefit of the spell. The die was there to help accuracy, but in reality it was interacting too strongly with Cygnar’s stable of melee jacks, who almost seem to have melee criticals as a faction theme.
• I really do stand by the adjective I used to describe Darius’ feat above– demoralizing. I often point out to people that there are things in the game– Temporal Barrier, or Legion’s “flying circus” army builds– that, while not necessarily hard to beat, are simply not fun for anyone involved. They confer an annoyingly one-sided advantage, and force an opponent to play his army in a way it was never intended to work, robbing that player of the ability to enjoy his army in the way he’d hoped for. Darius’ feat was one of these “just not fun” effects– outside of blocking Halfjack access, there’s really nothing an opponent can do to stop you from erasing all of their hard work. It’s just not any fun for the opponent to have to plan around resurrected wreck markers, and while I’ll mourn the loss, it’s not something I can really be mad about. I play this game to have fun, and I like my opponent to be having just as much fun as I am.

Darius needed a nerf, and a lot of the things that were removed from him really did need to go. Jackhammer offered too much attack density, Full Throttle was stupidly good with Cents and Ironclads’ auto-hit crits, Crane was doing things it was never intended for, and the feat just wasn’t fun. They all needed to be removed or changed, and I’m not really arguing with any of the individual changes. It sucks to be losing all my toys, but I can understand that it’s for the best.

So, why the hell am I writing this gargantuan article if I agree with the changes? Well, like I said just now– I agree with the individual changes. On their own, each of the changes I mentioned would be acceptable and would go a long way toward bringing Darius in line with other jack casters’ abilities. The problem is, Privateer didn’t just pick from the list– they picked the entire list. Presented with multiple choice, they answered “all of the above”. And that leaves Darius with, not just less than before… but nothing. Nothing at all.

I’m really not exaggerating here– Darius has no tricks left. He has a pool of six focus to hand out, and that’s all. Jack casters live and die on multipliers, and Darius’ multiplier has gone from 3.5, to 1. He puts 6 focus in, and gets 6 focus out. That is the worst possible return, short of “no return” by firing Jump Start six times in a row for giggles.

This change really baffles me. Darius’ problem was that he had two multipliers, and they compounded on each other for too high a return; but rather than only stopping the compounding by removing one of the multipliers, they removed both of them to stop him from multiplying at all. I really have to ask… why? Privateer clearly doesn’t have a problem with multipliers in general, because the other four jack casters I analyzed above kept their multipliers, entirely unchanged from before. And this was the right thing to do– Privateer’s goal in Mk.II was to re-emphasize jacks, and the only way to really encourage a player to take multiple jacks in this game is to tell him he’ll get good efficiency out of his focus by doing so. Otherwise, it’s simply a better choice to load up on Stormblades and Longgunners and not bother with Jacks at all. Jacks really do need focus to earn their points back, while most squads exist in fairly self-suffient packages, not needing any extra support to pull their weight. Every focus given to a Jack is one the caster can’t use for himself to cast spells and make attacks, so getting good return on the investment really is critical.

I’ll even go ahead and debunk the counter-arguments that have been presented to me to justify Darius’ current state:

“Sorry, man. You can’t argue that a model needs a buff because it’s worse than in Mk.I. Things in Mk.II need to stand on their own.”

Yep, that’s completely right. One of the things I’ve tried to do with this article is really emphasize that I’m not arguing that he needs a buff to return him to his old power level. I don’t want him nerfed, “so he’ll be the same as before”. I’m analyzing Mk.I and Mk.II versions of Darius as separate entities– looking at Mk.I Darius to see why he was problematic in that game version, and looking at Mk.II Darius to see why he doesn’t compete in this one. Nowhere in this article have I, nor will I, argued that the reason to improve Mk.II Darius is because he “had it before, and needs it now”. That’s not a reason, and I actually fully agree that the people who are making that argument (and yes, there are a ton of them), are wrong. They’re asking for the right thing, but for all the wrong reasons, so in the end they’re wrong.

I just can’t emphasize this one enough– Mk.II Darius is awful on his own merits. He doesn’t need to be compared to his old version to look bad; the new Darius compares unfavourably to every caster in both Warmachine and Hordes, and in both Marks of the game. Compare him to Mk.I Amon, or pKaya, or pDoomshaper, or any other “I have better choices so I just won’t bother” caster, and he’ll come out the loser. Mk.II Darius is simply the worst army leader in the game, full stop.

“Darius was broken! He needed the nerf.”

Yep, I fully agree with you. The problem is that the nerf went way too far. Pretend that there’s a scale for measuring caster effectiveness, where “10″ is perfectly balanced. Instead of dialling Darius down from 15 to 10, which was what was needed, he was dialled down from 15 to 2. It’s not that he does literally nothing now (ie, he can still hand out focus, and attack with a big hammer, so he’s more effective offensively than, say, a swamp gobber), it’s that he does far, FAR less than all of our other warcasters. There is simply no reason to take him– all of our other warcasters can pull the same trick he can– handing out focus– but they also do other things. They have more spells to support their Jacks, or their troops, or their spellbook directly hurts the enemy. They hand out focus, and they have other effects on the game. Darius only hands out focus. That is the problem. He needed to have some toys taken away, but taking all of them away is just creating an entirely new problem.

“Warjacks got better, so the jack casters needed their power dialled down to compensate.”

There’s some merit to this argument, but it’s more or less entirely deflated by pointing out that none of the other jack casters had their multipliers nerfed. Mortenebra, Reznik, and Karchev’s efficiency are exactly the same as they used to be, and Amon’s is slightly better. Everybody’s Jacks got better, not just Cygnar’s– so why were we the only ones to lose our premier melee Jack caster?

“Darius isn’t as bad as he looks. Manual Control (the spell now called Jackhammer) is his thing now, and it’s great!”

It really hurts me to see this being brought up, because I almost don’t even know where to begin explaining the problem to the people who say this. This is generally brought up by people who don’t understand how focus accounting works, and aren’t (consciously, at least) aware of why multipliers exist and are necessary. Being a jack caster doesn’t just mean your spells target jacks. Being a jack caster is essentially making the following statement: “I, the jack caster, am as effective, or more effective, in my overall performance by using a primarily warjack-constructed force, as another non-jack caster is in using their own ideal force.” It’s essentially saying: yes, there’s a reason to take me instead of the ten other warcasters available to the army, and if chosen, there’s a reason to fill my army with jacks, within reason (I’m not saying they need to take exclusively jacks– but at least a plurality of a the force should be jacks, and support for them, to qualify for this). The new Darius simply can’t make this claim– every other caster we have can hand out focus just as well as he can, but they do other things, too.

Certain people have been really hammering the point that the new Jackhammer is full of possibilities, and presents enough tactical options and abilities to make Darius viable. I will grant that the new Jackhammer (I just can’t bring myself to call it Jackhammer… how about I call it Manual Control, because that’s all it is) presents two tactical options that standard casters can’t replicate by simply handing out focus, but ultimately neither is really very impressive:

1. Run a jack into melee, and then fire attacks with Manual Control. Essentially, it lets a jack fight after running, letting him engage in fights that were outside charge range, or couldn’t be charged to in a straight line. This “advantage” is, in my estimation… kind of “meh”. I don’t really find myself needing to charge around corners very often (like, ever), and Cents’ “can’t charge me” shields ensure that if I’m short on charge range, I can just walk forward and wait a turn– the enemy Jacks aren’t going to get charges on me (and may not be able to engage at all), and then next turn I just charge the rest of the way.
2. Make nine attacks in one turn with a single warjack (main attack, Strangewayes’ focus buys a second, Darius’ six+squire makes seven more). As mentioned above, this was always one of Darius real strengths, so you’d think I’d be all over this advantage. But really, it’s not the same thing. Eight attacks from a Darius jack in Mk.I weren’t just “eight attacks”– they were eight guaranteed POW18 damage rolls. They were eight damage rolls after making the Jack immune to free strikes and Craning it across the board like a cruise missile– totally stranding it away from support, where there’s no possibility of it being backed up by the rest of your army. Those eight attacks had to do the job, because there was no way in hell you were getting a second jack up there to finish the job if the first one failed. Fast forward to Mk.II… your army is going to be much more huddled together now. Crane can’t send missiles flying around. Manual Control only has a 6″ range, so if you DO manage to fling a Cent across the board, it isn’t making more than its base attacks. Manual Control only works AT ALL if Darius or his arc node is practically in the fight– and if they’re that close, you can just get a second jack to walk up and help. Why do I need to make eight attacks with one jack, when I can just make 4 with one, and 4 with another? Why is the first really preferable over the second? Darius doesn’t offer any buffs to single jacks, so the second jack’s attacks are just as good as the first one’s  (unlike the Nemos and eStryker, for example– they DO have one jack that is better than the others thanks to STR buffs, so making lots of attacks with that one is an advantage).

Manual Control doesn’t offer any efficiency, and doesn’t offer any tactical advantages that really amount to anything. It’s not that it’s a bad spell, per se– there are reasons to use it. It’s just that it’s not anywhere near enough for this to be Darius’ only trick. Give Darius this spell so that he can decide to use it, in addition to whatever his main plan is, when the tactical need arises; but don’t try to tell me that this one spell is enough to consistently make Darius an equal choice to our other options. Because, you’re just wrong. Do the math, and really think about it– this just isn’t much of a spell.

“He does have a multiplier– Full Throttle lets all his Jacks run and charge for free!”

Darius’ Full Throttle does retain the ability to multiply your investment, as long as Darius is running four or more jacks. It still costs 3 focus to fire, so in order to get any advantage out of using it, he needs to get one more free charge/run than he’s paying for. This means running four jacks, but since the new Darius gives no real incentive to do this, it’s a serious waste of points.

Multiplying your resources is only ever valuable when demand for them exceeds the supply. The new Full Throttle only gives you advantage in the stage of the game when you’re travelling to the battle; once the fight is engaged, it no longer confers any benefit. And unfortunately, during the travelling segment, I actually already have plenty of focus to go around. Darius only has one upkeep spell at this point, and it costs two to cast; if Darius had lost Full Throttle entirely, he could still cast Fortify on the travelling turn, while having enough left over to let four jacks run “the old fashioned way”, by spending allocated focus. Focus just isn’t in very high demand during the period when both players are maneuvering. The point where players start to need every focus or pseudo-focus they can get their hands on is once they’re in a fight– this is where all other jack casters’ multipliers start doing their work, but this is where Darius’ stops being helpful. So, he’s completely backwards here. He helps when you don’t need it, and offers no assistance once you’re actually in need.

“Dude, I’ve totally been winning with him. He’s awesome.”

First of all: anecdotal evidence is meaningless. You could be far better than your opponents, or you could be slanting your reporting because you always hated the old Darius, or you could be outright lying to win an argument on the internet.

Second of all: Jacks got better. Jacks are now very good, compared to how they used to work. I, myself, won a game with Mk.II Darius the other day, purely on the strength of Cygnar’s jacks– I cast no spells, popped no feat, made only three repairs all game (all bodges with the Halfjacks, something any Gobber Bodger could do). I won despite Darius doing absolutely nothing but be a focus bank, because 1) Jacks are really good now, and I’m very good at knowing where to place them for maximum effect; and 2) because my opponent made mistakes. I won because of every factor except Darius– and my victory would simply have been even more crushing if I’d gone with someone else.

This… complicates things.

So, here we are. Mk.II Darius is a worthless warcaster. The problems aren’t hard to see, but the solutions are tricky. There are some major roadblocks to fixing him; I’ll enumerate some of them here.

• All warcasters have the same point cost now. Jack point bonus aside, all warcasters in Mk.II were standardized– essentially, they were all made to be worth roughly 70pts under the old costing system. Casters in the 60s got slight buffs; ones in the 70s and 80s got slight nerfs, but were left essentially intact. The problem was the casters in the 90+ bracket. These ones were all staggeringly powerful, precisely because they were so expensive; the player is willing to pay a premium for his army commander, and in exchange, he gets a holy terror on the field. Terminus, Darius, eThaggy, the Harbinger– these casters are far and away stronger than their contemporaries, and that fact was acceptable, because they cost a lot more to field. With all casters being standardized at 70pts, they had to lose abilities… and lots of them. They couldn’t just lose one ability or two, they all essentially needed to be stripped down to one gimmick– Harbinger kept Martyrdom, but lost most of the rest. eThaggy will likely keep his statline and Glory of Everblight, but I doubt that feat will survive the transition. Darius needed to be brought down to his core gimmick, and unfortunately, Privateer decided that the reason people played Darius was for his repair feat. The feat was awesome, to be sure… but you played Darius because he made his jacks sing. Focus efficiency was the reason he worked, not his feat. They distilled him down to the wrong thing. But even if they’d picked the right aspect of him to keep– he was losing the rest. There’s no way in hell a 93pt caster was going to go down to 70pts without some serious collateral damage.
• He still has that repair feat, so he’s always going to get one more turn of smashing than other Jack casters. I went through the overlap between the focus efficiency and Darius’ feat above, and it’s a really important roadblock toward balancing him… as long as he retains a way to resurrect all or part of his army, his multiplier has to be less than other casters’. It’s just not fair in a face-to-face fight otherwise.
• The model still exists. This one’s a little odd, but think about the burden it adds. The Crane ability was open to a lot of abuse, and the new Jump Start spell does a lot of what Crane used to. I’m sure Privateer would love to drop the Crane rule altogether… but unfortunately, the model still has a gigantic crane on the back. They can’t just wish this one away, the crane does still need to be there somehow. Similarly, the statline– part of the reason for Mk.I Darius’ high cost is his huge personal stats– his ARM and STR are huge for a caster, and he has a massive hammer with an awesome crit effect. They couldn’t very well reduce him to “standard” caster stats, since he’s quite obviously stronger and tougher, dressed as he is in a light warjack. They can’t tone down his weapon and say it’s not a Quake Hammer, because it very clearly is the exactly same weapon the Ironclad is holding. They can’t say Darius doesn’t come with Halfjacks anymore to tone down his feat, because they’re in the box. The fact that so many of Darius’ special abilities are carved directly into the model is a huge lingering burden for the designers– they have to address these doo-dads with some rules, otherwise the model just doesn’t make any sense. Which means, he has to keep most of his old statline, which is probably why his spells were nerfed so badly in the first place– they couldn’t edit out the things that were inherent to the model they’re selling, so they edited out the pieces that weren’t. Unfortunately, the rules that need to be there because of the model are some of the least important ones, so we end up with a model that’s been stripped of everything that really mattered, and left with everything that never did, because they had to stay true to the sculpt.
• Epic Nemo’s feat could potentially cause some problems. The feat, which used to give three focus to every jack in his battlegroup in his control area, has now been expanded out of his battlegroup; if Darius is given a high-yield focus return, letting Nemo pump all of his jacks up with three focus, even for one turn, could be just a massive, massive beating. That said, this doesn’t mean he can’t add any multipliers– the army already has an effective +2 to hit from pHaley, so as long as Darius doesn’t get too far beyond her buff, there shouldn’t be a huge problem.

These problems don’t have easy answers, but they can’t be ignored when trying to turn Mk.I Darius into Mk.II Darius. Which finally brings me to:

You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?”

Rather than assume I have the one and only solution to “the Darius Problem”, I’m going to suggest a large number of things– different possibilities for making him more worth taking. The “correct” solution may be one of these suggestions, or several of them… or something else altogether. I’m just going to throw out a few different possibilities to create some discussion and open up consideration.

Restoring Efficiency

The #1 priority for me is to restore some of Darius’ focus efficiency. There are a couple ways to do it:

• Have Full Throttle boost melee attack rolls. Not an additional die, as I wouldn’t want to get back into the “four dice to hit = auto crit” shenanigans from Mk.I. I don’t think this solution is ultimately a very good idea– with the overall +1MAT/RAT bonus to our jacks, this would put Darius’ jacks PAST their old accuracy, which was already incredibly high for a warjack. Also, even as a boost and not an additional, this springs the crit threat from 16% to 44%, which is a massive jump. Cygnar’s melee crit effects are just too good, and additional attack dice really do need to be at a premium. So, I personally wouldn’t suggest this solution, for balance’s sake.
• Have Full Throttle grant +2 to melee attack rolls. This seems to be a fairly popular suggestion on the Cygnar forums, and it’s the measure I most strongly support. Several of the game’s “additional die” effects got this same treatment in Mk.II– Aiyanna’s “Harm”, the Bokur’s client bonus, etc. This change would essentially bring Darius’ jacks to the accuracy they enjoyed before, but without inviting the problems you get when you add extra attack dice and raise the critical threat.
• Bring back the old Jackhammer, but restrict it to triggering off initial attacks. This one is inspired by the new Hammersmith, whose Beat Back only triggers from initial attacks, stopping him from careening 17″ across the board in a single turn. Similarly, if we restricted Jackhammer to triggering only off of initial attacks instead of all attacks that jack makes, it’s essentially paying one focus for two attacks– and quite often, the second attack is with a much less desireable weapon, like a shield or open fist. I’m not sure whether or not this change would invite problems, but it doesn’t seem too bad at first glance. Of course, if Darius gets a large multiplier elsewhere (ie, more than a full focus on each attack), then this is right out.
• Let him borrow someone else’s multiplier. Darius with Unearthly Rage or Terminal Velocity is probably asking too much… but what about Synergy? I think that’d be a great spell for us– it’s been demonstrated that it’s very difficult to break (as evidenced by Amon’s near-pariah status among Menite players), but still gives enough of a bonus to make players think there’s something to be found therein. Really, that’s all I’m asking– give him something that at least makes him seem like he has potential. I’m not asking that his power level go through the roof again– just give me something to latch onto and hope for.

Ancillary Abilities

If it’s decided that Darius just can’t have focus efficiency like other jack casters, there are still some other tweaks he could get to make him desireable.

• Restore the old feat. This is asking a lot, and I don’t think it’s likely, or even an especially good idea. But, it would definitely give us a reason to take him.
• Give him a defensive focus. If it’s too dangerous to give him offensive power, how about refocusing him on defense? It would certainly fit the fluff– refocus his feat and spells specifically to make his jacks very tough to kill, to let him engage in a war of attrition with enemy forces. I’m not sure exactly what changes would help here… maybe let Fortify transfer its ARM buff to others? Maybe give a spell that denies extra and boosted damage dice when dealing with his Jacks? I dunno. There are lots of directions this could go, but it would certainly give him his own niche apart from our other jack casters.

Paying For It

Of course, if Darius is going to receive any buffs, he needs to pay for them somehow. I have two main suggestions here:

• Put Manual Control back at 2 focus. It’s clear that the developers intended for Manual Control’s reduced cost to “make up for” the loss of every other ability Darius had, so obviously they think this is a very high-value spell. It really isn’t, so I won’t shed any tears if it’s recosted or lost entirely to make room for something I’d actually use.
• Remove most of his jack points. The point of giving out free jack points is to give players an incentive to take them– but Darius doesn’t need any incentive. Or at least, he shouldn’t, if he’s built right. He should simply be giving such a compelling buff to his jacks that no bribe is required to get him to run 2, 3, even 4 jacks at full cost. By bringing him down to 4, 3, or even 2 jack points, the developers could justify giving him much more efficiency than he currently has, at the expense of having to buy all of his jacks at nearly full price. Personally, that’s a sacrifice I’d be more than willing to make.

Aaaaaaand I’m spent.

So, yes. Privateer said that if they’re going to listen to any feedback, it helps for it to be reasoned and even-tempered. The preceding 10,000 words were my best shot– I simply don’t know any better way to explain the problem and need for a solution than what I’ve just written.

I’m going to submit the link to this blog post as field test feedback, and hope that a sympathetic ear at Privateer reads it and understands just how much Cygnar players care about this issue. I really want to stress this: we’re not mad that Darius lost his power level. At least, we shouldn’t be– he was clearly overpowered, and any objective evalutator had to conclude that he needed to be ratcheted down. What I want to make clear is that this is an argument about fun, about fluff representation, about the fundamental essence of a model. Darius wasn’t just nerfed, he was entirely gutted. The current Mk.II Darius isn’t fun, and doesn’t really give players a reason to choose him over our other casters. I want so much to continue loving this model, but as he stands, I just can’t.

Privateer, please don’t make me fall out of man-love with Eddie Darius. For myself and many others, he’s the essence of this game– a caster who reminds people that this isn’t a game of wars between men, but rather of clashes between iron titans, where men merely spectate. Please, I beg of you: don’t take Eddie away from us.

Thank you for reading, and for your patience. Please leave your feedback below, and especially send your feedback along to Privateer through the field test feedback form. If you don’t tell them what you’re thinking, they won’t know how deeply we care about this.

-David Tierney

Burlington, Ontario, Canada

captainspud@gmail.com

MEV Review Part 2: X-Force

by:

	and
Captain Spud		Deranged Bear

This week we review X-Force. SPOILER ALERT: It doesn’t rock our socks.

Download MEV Review Part 2: X-Force

We intended to record a whole pile of episodes this weekend and then release them in rapid-fire this week, but Bear had some scheduling issues this weekend and we only got the one segment done. Hopefully we’ll have time sometime this week to catch up.

Comments are, once again, appreciated.

-Le Spud

MEV Review Part 1: X-Factor

by:

	and
Captain Spud		Deranged Bear

I asked the Bear if he wanted to do a review of MEV with me… he agreed, but didn’t want to write anything, so we settled on a podcast format. It’ll take us six or seven sessions to work through the whole set; today you can hear our thoughts on the set’s first team, X-Factor.

Download MEV Review Part 1: X-Factor

We’ll have the next one done for late this week or early this week… we’re shooting for two teams a week until it’s done.

Comments are appreciated.

-Le Spud

No, it’s not just you. If you check the HCRealms URL, they’re posting server status updates on there. Apparently they had a hardware crash. Hmmm… I wonder if that has anything to do with cramming all eight Realms sites on one server, which has been slowly imploding over the last year?

Nah, can’t be that.

by Spud

I’ll let Gday cover the ancillary anecdotes, and just cut to 11:00. Sophie (Gday’s GPS) tells us to make several illegal turns on the way to the Governor’s Inn, so it takes a little longer, and involves a few more loops, than expected. Gday and I led a convoy (followed by Aaron’s crew, followed by Cliff’s crew, followed by the Eponymous Posse), and once we arrived, I think just about everybody who attended the previous night’s festivities was present. We waited until around 11:40 to start, as the Rhode Island crew took a little longer to arrive than expected.

I spent the pre-tourney time talking to people I’d met the night before, trying in vain to get my laptop’s WiFi to connect (one bar might as well be no bars), and being molested by a large bearded Latino.

International House of Waffling

I waffled long and hard over what to play for the Golden BYOT event. My first instinct was to play Negative Zone, as the Golden build of that deck is a hoot and a half, and won the day for me at our own BYOT event. It tends to be a little inconsistent (if you don’t pick up the relatively limited number of draw effects, you can really screw your hand), but it’s insanely good when it hits (“I stun your 4 and 5 on your init, and then they both KO at the start of recovery”). I discussed modifications with Squire as he was considering running it for his own upcoming BYOT event, and he brought up another possibility for me to play: Arkham Insanity.

There were two advantages to playing Insanity. First of all, Pablo needed my Mobilizes for his deck, and playing Insanity meant I’d only need one of my four copies. Secondly, playing Insanity, I’m “covered” no matter how I do in the event; if I do well, I can cackle madly and say, “MWAHAHAHA! THIS IS WHY YOU MUST FEAR THE INSANITY!”. If I don’t do well, I can scoff and say, “Dude, it’s Insanity. You can’t expect that much out of it.”

I continued waffling between the two until Saturday morning (and, rather unhelpfully, I also added a third option to the mix, given how awesome SecSoc performed for me the night before), but ultimately I decided to give in to peer pressure and play what Squire and OnyxWeapon demanded.

“No Sane Chicks”

1-drops:

1x The Penguin – Gentleman of Crime

1x Catwoman Cat’O Nine Tails

1x Amadeus Arkham

1x Mad Hatter

2-drops:

1x KGBeast

1x Calendar Man

1x Charaxes – Moth Monster

1x The Penguin – Crime’s Early Bird

1x The Riddler – Brain Teaser

1x Tally Man

3-drops:

1x Blockbuster

1x The Penguin – Arms Merchant

1x The Penguin – Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot

1x The Joker – Out of his Mind

1x Great White

1x Charaxes – Drury Walker

1x Mr. Zsasz

4-drops:

1x Poison Ivy – Pamela Isley

1x Hush – Mystery Man

1x Hush – Silent and Deadly

1x Batzarro

1x The Joker – Headline Stealer

1x The Joker – Laughing Lunatic

5-drops:

1x Killer Croc – Waylon Jones

1x Matt Hagen <> Clayface – Mud Pack

1x Scarecrow – Fearmonger

1x Scarecrow – Fear and Loathing

1x Catwoman

6-drops:

1x Two-Face – Heads or Tails

1x Sondra Fuller <> Clayface

1x The Joker – Killer Smile

1x The Joker – Crazy for You

7-drops:

1x Two-Face – Split Personality

1x Basil Karlo <> Ultimate Clayface

10-drops:

1x Death – Second Force of the Universe

Consistency

1x Jack-In-The-Box

1x Ego Gem

1x Secret Origins

1x Usual Suspects

1x Mobilize

1x Beside Myself

1x Pick A Card

1x Certifiable

1x Prison Break

Pump

1x Stryker’s Island

1x SKREEEEEE!

1x Burn Baby Burn!

1x Savage Beatdown

1x Glass Jaw

1x Flying Kick

1x Nasty Surprise

Board Control

1x Money Talks

1x Kidnapping

1x Finishing Move

1x Death Trap

1x Smiles, Everyone!

Misc.

1x Frog of Thunder

1x No Man’s Land

1x Chilly Reception

1x Roshambo

1x Have a Blast

1x Siphon Energy

The deck is a very straightforward Pump/KO deck; the high number of “consistency cards” ensure that my draw can never be THAT bad, and I’ll almost always have SOMETHING to play. Granted, you sometimes need to play sub-par characters (I really wish there was a better seventh 3-drop Inmate than DOR Penguin, but sadly… there isn’t. ), but the fact that your opponent can’t predict your plays is a HUGE advantage.

Key cards in the deck are Siphon Energy (getting a second Mobilize, Roshambo, or Money Talks can be absolutely devastating), Death (searchable with Jack In The Box as it’s my only 10-cost), and Stryker’s Island (with the random plot twist contents, this is almost always a +3 or +4).

Sooo… let’s see how I did. I’m doing this all from memory two days later, so my apologies for forgotten details.

Round 1: Scott (shamilton777) playing Fatal Five

FYI: Scott is awesome.

Scott hits a decent early curve of Emerald Eye on 2, boosted Emerald Empress for a second Eye on 3, and Mano on 4. I hit a turn 1 Beside Myself (spoiler: this is the only time I hit it all day), and flipped it up on turn 1 with Mad Hatter on the board. Turn 2 brought me KGBeast, followed by 1-drop Catwoman on 3, and Poison Ivy on 4. On turn 4, he swings into Ivy with Emerald Empress and an I Still Hate Magic (ensuring that Empress can’t be recovered this turn), and then makes “safe” attacks down into my other peeps. Neither of us loses anything, though Empress enters turn 5 stunned.

Turn 5, I hit Catwoman (nuking the 1-drop), to his Tharok and Daxamites. I know he’s going to try to kill me next turn, so I pump up into Mano with Ivy, send Catwoman into a reinforced Tharok, and take down the Daxamites with KGBeast. I know how stupid-good multiple Fatal Five dudes can be on turn 6, so I bust out the board control, putting Mano on top of his deck with Money Talks, and playing Death to take down Tharok. Grumbling, he recovers the Empress and goes to turn 6.

On 6, he has an Eye and the Empress, and adds a boosted Validus to the mix, which will double my stuns. He has a fairly hefty endurance lead up to this point, but I have much better characters. I play The Joker – Joker’s Wild as my 6, and form with Joker protecting KGBeast, who’s beside Ivy in the back. Scott plays his -DEF pumps, putting Ivy at 0DEF, then sends Emerald Eye in for the first swing. I pump her up to 3DEF with Joker (pitching a Flying Kick at the same time… d’oh!), he powers up, and I pump to 4DEF. He… has nothing else, having used his only other pump to stun Ivy on 4. Emerald Eye goes down, and can’t be recovered.

Scott then sends Empress in… forgetting that Joker’s pumps are for the turn. I pitch one more card to get to 5DEF, and Empress goes down, also unrecoverable. Sighing, Scott goes into her with Validus; I pitch my remaining hand to block some break and ensure the stunback, and it’s a dual (with me taking an additional 2 for Busted Knee). On my return swings, Joker and Catwoman don’t quite finish him off, but seeing as he can’t recover a single character, he extends his hand.

(Spud is at 1-0)

Round 2: Vinny playing Marvel Defenders

Vinny is a Yu-Gi-Oh player from Cliff’s crew who moonlights in VS, so I hope I’m not being a dick saying he’s not quite a flawless VS player. Still though, he’s a very nice guy; I played his hastily assembled X-Men/Crime Lords deck the night before, and it was quite a fun game.

That said, our game went pretty badly for him. Turn 1, he whiffed, while I hit Penguin, who made us both draw. Turn 2, I hit 2-drop Riddler, and he again whiffed. Direct for 3, and we both draw. Turn 3, he… once again whiffs. Ouch. I have no 3, so I Moby, selecting Charaxes as my recruit; he can’t do any damage this turn, but with the initiative next turn I can munch his one and only character with a team attack. On 4, I bring out The Joker – Headline Stealer, and do a team attack to eat his first recruit, Samantha Parrington.

On 5, he hits the Hulk to my Catwoman. Somewhat perplexingly, he elects not to swing into me, instead exhausting Hulk to Crimson Bands to exhaust-and-can’t-ready my Joker. I activate Riddler to lock him out of One Man Rampage in case that was his plan (apparently it wasn’t), and then I team into Hulk to eat him. On 6, I bring out Sondra Fuller to his Surfer– the first thing he has all game that will actually cause me to do some thinking. After deciding who I want to lose, I team Charaxes and Catwoman into Surfer, bouncing the kitty and KOing the Surfer thanks to No Man’s Land. I pile my remaining stuff into his face, but he’s still alive and we go to 7.

On 7 he gets Hulk, while I get Basil Karlo and a free random lowbie. He swings his 7 into my Sondra; I reinforce, and he responds with BlindSided and two pumps (I want to say Beatdowns..?) for a fairly hefty swing. Still though, I’m alive at around 10, and after I team to take down his 7, I pile everybody else in for the kill.

(Spud is at 2-0)

Round 3: Ryan (barakus) playing X-Men Recovery Shenanigans

I’m a little fuzzy on some of the exact details on this one, especially the early game, so this is going to be more of a “general impression” of the game than an actual literal report. We both hit most of our curves for the first three turns; he had Sage on 3 to my Penguin – Arms Dealer, but my plots weren’t fantastic anyway, so there wasn’t much I wanted to play. On 4, he hit Havok, and I had Joker- Headline Stealer. I formed with Joker in the back row; he put Havok through Penguin, and then stunned Havok during recovery to get my 4. I tried a KO effect, but he had Children of the Atom to dodge it.

5 was my init, and I hit an earlier-discarded Matt Hagen. He had search cards, but couldn’t play them thanks to The Joker, so he completely whiffed on 5. Whoo! I sent some guys into his guys, and when the combat smoke cleared, he was wiped and I’d taken nothing. He flipped a Siege Perilous on 4 that now had two counters, so I played Have A Blast on it before it could get to 3. Despite that, he planned to do the Havok Shuffle during recovery to stun my 4 and 5, but I had enough no-exhaust KO effects to chain around his recoveries and PAs to ensure he never got to recover, and he went into 6 with only Sage.

I honestly can’t remember what either of us played on 6; all I know is that I had no cards afterward and he was dead. We checked to see what turn 7 would’ve been– I had Basil from my KO’d pile, and he was going to topdeck 7-drop Wolverine, so I’m glad it ended when it did.

(Spud is at 3-0)

Round 4: Phou playing Curve Sentinels

Phou was also 3-0 going into this round, and was playing a notoriously solid deck, so I was feeling pretty apprehensive when I sat down. That said, I had a pretty awesome opening hand. Turn 1, I put down Mad Hatter with an Ego Gem and started drawing cards. Turn 2, he brought out Hounds, but I had a big-butt Calendar Man. I drew two, and he killed the Hatter.

Turn 3, I hit Charaxes. I flipped No Man’s Land last turn, so he knows there’s no point playing his 3-drop Sentinel, and opts instead for Bolivar into another Hounds. Charaxes predictably eats Bolivar, I draw two more cards, and he teams his Hounds into Calendar Man.

On 4, he hits Sentinel Mk.V, but I’m ready for it– I Moby for Batzarro, who he’ll need to pump to stun, and form in a block (sacrificing Calendar Man’s draw for a turn). He sends the Mk.V flying into Charaxes, and then pumps a Hound into Batzarro with two Beatdowns (ouch). His last attack is a Hound through Calendar Man with a pump, so I end the turn by losing Cal and Charaxes while he keeps his board.

I know he’ll hit Nimrod this turn, but I don’t care– I kept my opening hand entirely because it contained Scarecrow – Fearmonger. AKA Scarecrow – Eater of Any Counters. He plays him anyway, and at the start of Combat Scarecrow turns the Repair counter into a stat boost for himself. For my first attack, I send Scarecrow into Nimrod for a one-sider; for my second, Batzarro into Mk.V for another. I pass and he passes… and then I Money Talks his Nimrod on top of his deck. WHOO!

Turn 6, he has the predictable Bastion, but again I’m not that scared because he only has three cards in his hand and there’s only one character in his KO’d pile. I play Siphon Energy to replay Moby, and bring out Two-Face – Heads Or Tails to exhaust his 4-drop and give him only one attack. He uses it to plough through the Two-Face with a pump, and I pass my remaining attacks.

On 7, I hit the requisite Basil Karlo from the KO’d pile (I actually searched out Two-Face and went to recruit him, but Phou sportingly pointed out that doing that would nuke my 6, and let me go back), getting a freebie Poison Ivy along with him. Phou’s 7 was Cassandra Nova, who he formed in front of Bastion.

I’m going to skip the play-by-play here and simply tell you how it ended: I didn’t use my brain. I had way more guys than him, and plenty enough to make safe attacks into his guys and still have a 7-drop to swing direct for game. But I wasn’t paying much attention (the topic of lunch had come up, and I was more interested in that than in my game), and I declared a greedy attack of Two-Face and Poison Ivy into his Cassandra Nova. I was being way too cheap with my attackers, and he bricked me with two Cover Fires. After that, I lost too much board and he got an attack-back with Bastion, and I lost by around 10 life.

I have nobody to blame for that result but myself– the deck performed admirably and gave me everything I needed to win (Charaxes on 3 to force an underdrop, Batzarro on 4 to force pumps, Scarecrow on 5 to neuter Nimrod, and Two-Face on 6 to cut out half his attacks), but I didn’t play with my brain, so I threw it away.

I have mixed feelings about this game… I’m mad at myself for making such a stupid play, but on the other hand, I can consider it a “moral victory” for the deck itself, as piloted by someone less dumb than myself, it clearly demonstrated that it could’ve pulled this off. The tools were all there, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to put them together.

(Spud is at 3-1)

Round 5: Pablo (the Eponymous Pablo) playing Defenders Hulk Legend

I know my deck has a really solid game against Defenders (nuking the Backup characters = game), so I assumed that Pablo’s would be the same. It turned out to be a bit more complicated than that. I once again don’t remember the exact early-game details of this one, but the end’s pretty accurate.

We both miss 1. He gets Beast on turn 1, and I get [something]. Turn 3 he has Tania Belova, and I Moby for Charaxes. He makes a smart attack to stun Charaxes, and we go to 4. He hits Samantha Parrington after I drop Headline Stealer, and forms her behind Beast. He smartly doesn’t Backup Tania or Sam, only giving Tania Beast’s power. I send Charaxes into the exhausted Beast, but he goes Evades him to avoid the stun. Char readies; I now have Charaxes AND a Smiles, Everyone!, but only a single way to exhaust people (a No Man’s Land in my row), so I can’t get the KO on both of them, and opt to nuke the 4-drop. I tap her town, and then send in my 3 and 4 to take her off the board. Tania is ready in the back row, sitting at -1/6 mathematically (the -2ATK remains all turn for calculation purposes), so Pablo drops a Mega Blast on her to send her through my 2-drop at 3ATK, making me lose it (whatever it was).

On 5, he hits the extremely annoying Hulk and passes. I have Catwoman, and recruit her visible to absorb some damage. Tania taps on Hulk, and then he goes through Charaxes, forcing me to reinforce. My back row is then open, so he plays a Flying Kick on Hulk, then Righteous Anger to ready (annoyingly, he has EXACTLY four cards in hand, so it’s playable despite Joker’s power), and dives through my 4 for a ton of break. On my attack-back, I send Catwoman through Tania with Smiles, Everyone! after determining that Hulk is currently immune to ALL of my KO effects, since they all require either a) a targeted exhaust, or b) a targeted KO. It’s a little annoying.

On 6, I hit Sondra Fuller and Pablo gets Quasar. I try to Frog the Hulk during build to get rid of his counters, but Pablo has another Righteous Anger to become untargetable, which once again means he can’t be taken off the board at all this turn. Frustrated, I do team attacks into his 5 and 6; he loses Quasar, I lose Joker.

Turn 7 is predictably brief. He has 7-drop Hulk, and I have Two-Face. He uses Great Arena during build to exhaust my 7, and then discards to ready him and smack the 6-drop I parked in front of him, backed up by two Hulk Smashes and who-knows-what-else. I have guys to swing back with, but nowhere enough pump to close the gap.

I didn’t feel cheated at all by this loss; I didn’t make any hugely bad plays and my deck gave me pretty good cards, but ultimately Pablo was prepared with exactly the right counter-cards to shut down my deck’s efforts. Well-played, Legless.

(Spud is at 3-2)

Round 6: Kevin playing Moloids

Game 6, as expressed through Kevin’s side of the board:

Turn 1: Klaw.

Turn 2: Moloid and Moloid.

Turn 3: Doom. Doom gets KO’d.

Turn 4: Divinity. KO two Moloids to flip Doomed Earth. Divinity then gets put on top of the deck.

Turn 5: Moloid and Reed Richards, getting two Moloids. Moloid declares into a 3DEF 2-drop, Doomed Earth gets Have A Blasted mid-attack for a brick.

Turn 6: Doom and some Moloids. Reinforce lots of attacks, but ultimately take 15 break from an angry 6-drop. Doom gets KO’d. Siphon Energy. Reed gets KO’d. Both players are on 1.

Turn 7: Nothing. Scoop.

(Spud is at 4-2)

Round 7: Glenn playing Avengers Reservist

I won’t bother with a play-by-play: I had maybe a 10% chance of winning this, and only that much if I pulled six KO effects like in the last match. The only one I got all game was one I had to search, so after I nuked his 3-drop Panther, he never lost another character. It ends on turn 6 when he replaces into a bazillion pumps and murders my face.

(Spud is at 4-3)

And that, as they say, was that.

The initial plan was to cut to Top 8 at this point, but it was past 6:00 and we were running out of time for SuperCrossover, so we voted to just cut there and award prizes. So in the end, I went 4-3, and one of my losses was winnable if I wasn’t so dense, so it was a “5-2 capable deck”. Not too freaking bad for Insanity.

I ended up in the top 8 (7th overall) thanks to my good tiebreakers (all three of my losses were to T8ers), and took home a BotB playmat as my prize. The participation prize everyone got consisted of splitting up a ginormous stack of donated cards– prize cards, foreign-language rares, and Modern rares and foils. I got some hot stuff in my prize stack– a couple random DCX and MUL cards I needed (Atomic Axe, Crossing Over, etc), a Spanish MOR Invisible Woman, and a freaking MUN Avengers Wolverine!

At this stage, it was time to tally the scores and determine which country won– we were simply averaging wins. I sat there with Tauron and crunched the numbers, and in the end, the result was… a tie! Honestly, that was the best possible way to end the main event– nobody felt gypped (my apologies to Gypsies for the hateful slur, but the English language lacks a proper alternate term. Stupid Brits.), every was happy, and it just means we HAVE to organize a followup event to properly determine the winner.

Crossed Over, Superlatively

At this point we lost some players (Carrie had to go feed the baby, and the Rhode Island players had to go home), so we had 17 players for this round. Orange_Soda_Man had acquired seven different boxes for the event (MOR, DOR, MSM, DSM, MMK, MAV, and DLS), and I had a box of MUN with me to bring it up to 8. We split the boxes up into 17 piles of 8 packs; everybody took a stack, cracked it, and built a 40-card deck (with Dual Loyalty dudes disallowed… not a very stringent requirement when you have a 112-card pool to pick from).

I can only describe the pack-opening process as “barely-contained glee and revelry”. We were opening awful cards that suddenly because insanely good in Crossover. People celebrated when they opened suddenly-spectacular garbage like Underworld Star, Dragon Man, and Kaine. The player across from me got both Collect Them All and Wild Ride; Pablo picked up Roy Harper and Teen Titans Go (and apparently got the combo off in game 3!). Alex on my left pulled Dr. Tzin-Tzin… and played him.

I don’t really remember much about my games, as they were just a constant onslaught of random cards flying all over the place. But here were the highlights:

• Dragon Man = 12ATK all the time while attacking. Kaine = always KOs defenders he stuns.
• We all started to notice very quickly the EXTREME lack of both flight and range on older cards. In game one, I was holding six characters in hand, and had three on the board, as well as another two in my KO’d pile. NOT A SINGLE ONE HAD FLIGHT OR RANGE.
• My deck unintentionally had a discard theme: Chain Lightning, Asteroid JS-1967, Museum Heist, 5-drop Xavier, and… something. Can’t remember the last one. I busted most of them out in my game against Alex, but it didn’t really help.
• Speaking of my game with Alex… Boss_Man took over eleven hours to construct his SCO deck (that is SOLID FACT, and I challenge anyone to produce proof to the contrary!), so we swapped decks and played again. I beat him badly with his own deck… confirming that, yes, it was much better than my deck.
• Game 3 against Scott Hamilton was… weird. I butchered him… absolutely tore his board to shreds, and used KO effects to make it stick. I hit a 7, he hit a smattering of lowbies. We went to 8, I dropped a second 7-drop, he dropped… Loki. I have one 3-point pump, and that’s it. 19-point team attack into the 2-drop in front of him… no randomize. “Wait, that’s optional?” “Hell yeah.” Well, crap. 7-drop Hank Pym into an unreinforceable 3-drop… redirect into… Loki. “CRAP.” 6-drop into that 3-drop… redirect into… reinforced 2-drop. “CRAP.” Other 7-drop into that STUPID 3-DROP… redirect into… Loki.

“Scott.”

“Yes?”

“That… was the classiest play… I’ve seen all goddamn weekend.”

And then we went home.

Aftermath

…to the hotel. The night staff left the breakfast room open for us again, so we went in to decompose before ending the event. For the first while, we just sat and talked. Gday bored everybody with an explanation of how cricket works, while I trolled around looking for trade binders I hadn’t raided yet (I didn’t find any). After a bit, people busted out decks and started playing some final games to close out the weekend. Alex asked if anybody wanted to test against his Spider-Friends/Illuminati deck, and I jumped up and said yes.

What ensued can only be described as:

The Most Peaceful and Relaxed Game of the Weekend

Turn 1: I have 1-drop Professor X from MUN. He has nothing.

Turn 2: I have 2-drop Black Bolt. I don’t replace a resource. He has Aunt May for 4-drop Sensational Spidey. I dive in.

Turn 3: He has 1-drop Black Bolt hidden. I have 2-drop Dr. Strange (hitting Character (a 1-drop Prof), hitting Plot Twist (Essence of Zom), and… hitting Location (Birthing Chamber), despite there only being three locations in the entire deck), and I Clash for a second Professor X. I flip Clandestine during recovery.

Turn 4: I play 3-drop Subby, exhausting him in response to Clandestine to put Clash back on the deck. I don’t think I filled my last point. He had Spidey; he exhausts my remaining dudes, and it’s off to turn 5.

Turn 5: He has some Illuminati guys. I have some 3-drop Iron Man and 2-drop Reed, completing my set. He attacks one of my Profs, but I power up to shut the attack down. Exhaust exhaust exhaust, turn 6.

Turn 6: Time to let the cat out of the cage. After he draws and ESUs, I recruit 4-drop Strange and Gauntlet his hand. I still have two ready guys in case he tries to PA… but he uses Spidey beforehand to tap one down, leaving me without a negate when he PAs. He recruits some more Illuminati dudes.

Turn 7: I Gauntlet his hand again, but through a series of exhausts on his side for draw and effects, enough of my guys are tapped down again to stop the PA from being negated. He recruits a 3-drop Black Bolt to nuke the Gauntlet, but after the earlier drama he doesn’t have a spare guy to tap along with him to get a replacement. I have my 8 in hand, but not my 7, so I Clash again to bring out some miscellaneous junk… I think a 5-drop Iron Man? I’m not sure. I’ve got ten or so guys by now. The turn is as uneventful as usual.

Turn 8: He starts the turn by Black Bolting my Gauntlet before the draw. I respond by Gauntleting his hand; he exhausts two guys to flip Elektra Situation and shut down Dr. Strange’s negation power, then plays PA. I play my own Black Bolt’s power to replace Elektra, and finally exhaust my last two ready guys to negate the PA. His hand hits the dirt, including his 8- and 9-drop and a ton of plot twists. I then put my Murder Machine on the field: Starfire, X’Hal’s fury. He doesn’t have much of a play anymore, putting some other dudes on the field, but he lacks the ability to take Starfire down or Elektra her, so his whole board stuns at the start of recovery.

Turn 9: He doesn’t have anything, and scoops.

That was a surprisingly enjoyable game to play… there were no attacks, it was just a very peaceful, reserved war of “My effect.” “Ok, negate your effect.” “Ok, exhaust your guys so you can’t negate again, then my effect.” “Ok, it goes through.” See, the whole “massive board lockdown” thing really sucks when you’re trying to kill it with fighters, but when BOTH sides are happy to not attack, it’s surprisingly nice to play.

Kudos to OSM for giving me a relaxing game before bed.

So, yeah. It was 1am at that point, so I packed up my crap, said goodbye to the assembled throng, and gave Cliff an extended hug (which mostly consisted of me using him as a pillow for a few minutes because I was so exhausted) while he finished a game against Pablo. Helpful hint to all: Cliff is an awesome pillow.

I’d like to thank the Academy

So, yeah. That was my weekend. Gday will be discussing our travel adventures in his posts, so I’ll leave you today with the requisite kudos list.

Orange Soda Man: I don’t feel that people have adequately heaped the necessary amount of embarassing praise upon OSM for his efforts this weekend. He fronted a ton of cash to get the weekend going, and ultimately did not get it entirely returned– but he didn’t get bitter about that. He just sat back and enjoyed the weekend, and was a totally cool guy who I regret that I forgot to lick.

Many, many thanks, OSM. Even if you do still hate freedom.

TauronNox: For sitting out the event (as a judge) without complaint. I definitely could not have pulled that off– I would’ve squirmed and whined until I figured out a way to cram myself into the play area. Tauron, on the other hand, sat cheerfully at the judge’s table, setting up matches and entering results, and just generally keeping the day flowing.

That said: Cut yer hair, hippie!

OnyxWeapon: For acquiescing to my demands and playing Ultimates. Yes, yes… everybody told you to play them. But we both know it was my suggestion that finally set you on your path.

Steph: For keeping Gday out of my hair all weekend. I cannot stress enough how appreciative I am for that.

CLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFF: For molesting me, over and over and over again. Meeting Cliff was one of the main reasons I came to BotB, but to be honest, in kind of a weird way I regret meeting him, because now he’s not a magical radio pixie anymore. I needed the illusion, man! I needed to believe that you existed solely to entertain! But no, you had to ruin my dreams by proving that you do, in fact, exist to also play cards and haunt the nightmares of children. For shame, Cliff. For shame.

Ah well… I’ve still got one magic radio pixie left.

*creepily strokes a torn photo of Squire*

Big_Boss_Man: For being amusingly exhausted all weekend. Seeing you woozily stare into space all weekend was very amusing.

Scott Hamilton: Ok, honestly, how are you so boring online? I’ve “seen” you on the Realms for years, but never “noticed” you once. You’re like the bizarro version of me– utterly boring online, complete spastic in person.

Also: LOOOOOOKIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!

(*shakes fist at the heavens*)

Some Guy: For trading me the Outsiders rares I needed. I honestly have no idea who this was; it was Friday night and I didn’t know anybody yet. But whoever you are: thanks.

Baby Emma: For giving me something to do between rounds. Remember: we roll the die in front of ourself, we do not throw it across the room. Uncle Spud has to save his knees!

Pablo and Carrie: For bringing the entertainment.

Gday: For snoring for over two hours on the night before I needed to drive for ten. That was a lot of fun.

Really.

And finally…

Sophie: For not being able to tell the difference between two very close, yet ENTIRELY DIFFERENTLY-FACING ROADS on the map. Also, for sending us to a post office that isn’t a post office. Also, for deciding that the dashboard power socket doesn’t meet your standards, half a mile before we’re supposed to make three turns. Also, for sending us to a restaurant that doesn’t exist. And telling us to turn left through a traffic median. And take an exit that’s closed. And falling off the window repeatedly.

Grrr. Stupid Sophie.

To everybody else: If I didn’t mention you, it’s because I hate you and could barely contain myself from stabbing you every time I looked at your ugly face all weekend.

Just be glad I’m a coward.

Soooooooomewheeeeeeeeeeeeere oooooooooveeeeerrrr the raaaaaaaiiiiinbooooooow…

And that’s my tourney report. Overall the weekend was a blast, and I can’t wait for the next one. Everybody I met was awesome, and everything I experienced during the weekend was awesome.

Except the pizza.

Oh my god, that pizza. I can’t lie anymore. I hated that pizza so much. I hated the crust (too hard), I hated the sauce (tasted like pickles), and I hated the top (coated in an inch of grease).

The only compliment I can give it was that, whew, it did not go down without a fight later that evening.

Yes, that means what you think it means.

Wait for it… wait for it…

…there. You’re welcome.

-Spud

Bluh. Very tired.

1. Left Burlington at 8:30AM. After a combined hour and a half of stops, we get here around 7PM– not making bad time!
2. I was worried we’d have trouble finding the other VS people… but when we showed up, Cliff and his crew were checking in, and in the span of the ten minutes it took us to get booked in and grab out bags, we also ran into the second half of Lost Hemisphere (the Eponymous Posse, who drove up earlier to let them take more driving breaks to walk the baby), the New Brunswick contingent, and OSM.
3. The hotel’s been really nice so far. They changed everybody’s rooms to put us all together on the same floor (more for the benefit of the other guests than to be particularly accommodating to us, I’d imagine. ), and they gave us the breakfast room right off the lobby to play in all last night!

Let the VS begin…

We ended up with around 20 people in the Breakfast Club last night… not bad turnout for the preamble event. From 7:30 to around 11:00, we bummed around with mostly Modern decks and did trades.

1. My first game was against the one, the only… CLIFF! He was playing Modern MKKO (hmmm, since when is Big Leagues still modern? ), and I’m playing the only deck I can find in my deckbox that’s modern: TBolts Counter Abuse. Yeah, I know… kind of a dick deck to play. But it’s all I could string together without digging into my extras box. He ends up with an early lead due to killing RM on 4, but ultimately the easy face-beats put him down on turn 7. Yay! FIRST BLOOD!
2. Next up, I played Steven Boss, the Big Boss Man, and his Avengers deck (based loosely on Carlos’ Cap/Iron Man deck). It occurs to me that one of my other decks is also close to being Modern– my Secret Society Big Guys deck. I swap some Mobys into it and sit down… Steven regrets not mulling (he gets a 2 on 4 and a 4 on 5… if he’d mulled, he would’ve had a perfect curve), while I turn an opening Moby and STTG into a completely flawless curve and excellent support suite. Even better, he plays two Death of the Dream– replacing my Gorilla City into a Hidden HQ, and then later my Hidden HQ and Master Plan into a replacement Master Plan and… the Unnatural Selection I need to KO his Iron Man on 6, which results in a complete board wipe thanks to Deathstroke. This is a total pounding– God Draw vs. Screw Draw. Sorry Steve.
3. I’m thinking a bit, and I believe those were the ONLY games I played last night. Wow. So, after that I bummed around to talk to people and do some trades. I picked up the Kimiyos, Recruiting Drives, and Batman And The Outsiders I need to move my Outsiders deck from Mini Deck to a real deck, and help a couple players finish off their decks for tomorrow.
4. We start discussing the possibility of a MUN draft around 9:30, but we ultimately don’t start until 11:00. We have 16 players, so we split into two pods.

I feel I should remind you that I have no idea how to draft.

1. First pack, I convince myself that Underground Movement is a great Draft card (…it isn’t…) and grab it. Pack 2, I need to decide what I’m playing– and I settle on Crime Lords simply because the pack contains a MODOC Squad. Through the rest of the pack, I end up filling out my curve fairly well, including Elektra, a foil Master Man and The Hood… I hate draft a 2-drop Cap in a boring pack, and end up with four cards in my “junk pile”.
2. Second pack, I make what was probably a mistake– I’m looking at a 5-drop Red Skull and a My Name Is Pete in the same pack, and I choose Pete. I ultimately end up being low on 5-drops in the end, so I do suffer for my choice. The rest of the second pack was fairly unremarkable… I realize I’m short on 2s, so I grab an Aaron Stack and a Kang. I hate draft a Human Torch 4-drop, and when I send a Scientist Supreme around the table in favor of an Enemies of the State, I’m happy to see that it does come back around to me in the end. Yay.
3. Third pack, I realize that my deck has some major holes in it… only one 5-drop, and no 7s. I spend this pack looking for them, but the only worthy 5 I find is Annihilus (putting me at two 5-drops in the end), and I never find a 7-drop, as I feel I need to pass Venom to take Outmatched.

Here’s what I played in the end:

2x AIM Agent

2x Hydra Recruit

1x Aaron Stack

1x Kang

2x MODOC Squad

2x Red Skull

1x The Hood

1x Master Man

1x Crossbones

1x The Centurians

1x Elektra

1x Annihilus

1x Baron Strucker

1x MODOK

1x Caiera (played as a surrogate 7)

1x My Name is Peter Parker

1x Outmatched

1x Enemies of the State

1x Slobberknocker

1x Underground Movement

2x (frick, I can’t remember… some other cards. Bleh.)

1x Satan Claw

2x Negative Zone – Harvester of Sorrows

1x Alias Investigations

Moo.

1. Game 1, I’m matched up with a local Rochester player named Jeremy (Sheye? I think?). He’s playing SHIELD off-curve swarm. I miss 1 and 2, hit Red Skull on 3, hit Master Man on 4, and miss my 5, playing The Hood instead. The bevy of missed drops, and the very successful hits on Alias, give me a massive 9-card hand to tap his swarm down on 4, leading me to only take one stun on his init. I’m pretty happy about that. Turn 6 I hit Baron Strucker with a Satan Claw to his continued swarm, plus a Cap 2-drop that puts counters on his seven guys. I do the ol’ smashy. Turn 7, he brings out 6-drop Invisible Woman to my Caiera; I activate Strucker to kill her, and he can’t do enough damage to kill me. I smash with my hidden guys for the win. (1-0 so far)
2. Game 2 I’m up against Ryan, who is doing Curve SHIELD. The game is relatively uneventful… we both miss a drop (I missed 5 and I think he missed 4), but otherwise beat each other’s brains out. Turn 6, he sends Doc Samson into my MODOK with an Outmatched, then flips License to Kill to nuke my 6-drop with his own when the stun goes through. Ouch. Turn 7 I get a Centurians with Satan Claw and a 1- and 2-drop Army CL dude; he plays 4-drop Magneto to kill the Claw and some other littl’uns. He’s down in the endurance; I borrow his trick from last turn and kamikaze my 1-drop to let me Outmatched my Centurians into his 6-drop Mar-Vell; he plays Helicarrier to bounce him and a couple other guys. I ready, and then smash my three 4s and my 5 through his board for the game. (2-0 so far)
3. Last game is against Steven Boss, playing SHIELD/Tbolts. Early on, his hidden 1-drop Gobby makes my life sad by making people EVER SO SLIGHTLY dodge my stunbacks, giving him an early board advantage. On turn 4, he sacrifices his 4-drop to swing into Master Man with lots of pump to cause an endurance swing and make me lose my 3– but I reinforce with an AIM Agent and flip My Name Is Pete to keep my board. There is much weeping. We both hit the rest of our curves pretty well, with him having a 5-drop Tabby to steal Master Man’s counters, but I manage to finish it off on turn 6 by putting an unstunnable Satan Clawed Centurians through Tabby. For his return swing he sends Sharon Carter through the protected Centurians, and once again loads up on pump– but I have the No Retreat to reinforce, and that’s game.

Whoo-hoo! 3 and 0! I end up 2nd overall due to tiebreakers, and grab a 5-drop Spidey, My Name Is Pete, Beyonder, and foil 5-drop  Radioactive Man when we backdraft the rares. My “official” 2nd place prize is Doom and Gah Lak Tus from the Ultimates prize packs, and that’s certainly better than a kick in the teeth.

At that point it’s almost 2am, so we pack up the breakfast room and head to bed. Supercrossover starts at 11:00 today, so I’m going to head down to grab some Complimentary Continental Breakfast ™, then we’ll probably tweak decks until showtime.

More updates tonight, maybe!

-Spud

He commented that he liked my new shirt; I replied that the printing on the front was kinda rigid and scratchy, and made my nipples hurt.

To illustrate the point, I lifted the shirt and demonstrated the colour difference between the left nipple (unirritated, greyish tan in colour) and the right (irritated, hot pink at the tip).

I feel like this has really cemented our friendship; you cannot truly say that you know a person until you know what colour their nipples turn when painfully irritated.

Remember that.

-Spud

by Spud

Nobody reads the text before the preview card, so I feel safe admitting to my unclean thoughts regarding mackerel in tutus. They just look so elegant… so agile… so smooth.

Wow… it feels so good to finally get that off my chest. @_@

The Good Stuff

It lets you mimic the abilities of characters who aren’t even on the board.

Implications:

• Copy the powers of your missed drops
• Copy the powers of hard-to-recruit characters (ie, Loyalty 3s and 4s)
• Use Mimic to toolbox characters– make sure you hit Mimic, and then spend the game picking out the specific powers he needs at different times.

The Bad Stuff

There are, of course, some negatives to keep in mind:

• It only copies payment powers and keywords. No triggers, no modifiers.
• It costs you a discard to use, so in an average game, you can probably afford to fire this twice before it begins to force you to run card draw.
• The effects last for one turn only before needing to be refreshed– and if you want to renew the same powers, you’ll need to find another copy of the discarded card, or recur the old one.
• Once per turn, so you can’t overlap powers to create stupid combos.
• Unlike the 6-drop, this Mimic doesn’t coopt team-stamped powers.
• Can’t get the powers of larger characters.

Applications

Alrighty, so those are the nuts and bolts of the power… but what can you do with him? I’ve gone through every 4-drop and under ever printed that has a payment power, and I’ve identified eight key “areas” of abuse with Mimic. I then listed every card I could find that fits cleanly into that area, though I could of course have missed some.

Many thanks to TDB for helping brainstorm these.

1. Put a good power on a more useful large body

If you read my Balance article back in the day (who am I kidding… nobody read that article), you’d know that an important part of balancing any ability is “who to give it to”. You can put an awesome power in one of two places: on a very large character, because the player’s waited long enough to get it; or on a very small character, because the character’s not likely to survive very long. Mimic lets you take advantage of the latter category, using an effect that was balanced around a 1- or 2-drop using it, but with the beefy frame of a 7/7 4-drop to back it up.

1. Quicksilver, Inhuman by Marriage (Readying an 7/7 for free = not bad)
2. Slipstream, Qwardian Conglomerate (He has to be VISIBLE?! NOOOOOOOOoh, wait.)
3. Bart Allen <> Impulse, Hyper-Accelerated (Readying a 2/1 1-drop is useless. A 7/7, on the other hand…)
4. Speed Demon, Second Chance Speedster (Okay, I think I’ve covered the fact that there are a LOT of ways to ready him.)
5. Wiccan, William Kaplan * Young Avenger (On Wiccan this is for team attackers only… Mimic can get some use out of it on his own)
6. Natasha Romanoff <> Black Widow, Mighty Avenger (Tasha can use this to stun 5s. Mimic can use it to stun 6s.)
7. Barry Allen, Crimson Tornado (7DEF lets you waste even more of your opponent’s work)
8. Morph, Exile (Recovering your 4 > Recovering your 3)
9. Luke Cage, Steel-Hard Skin (This is a gamble on a 2-drop… less so on a 4)
10. Rex Tyler or Richard Tyler (The Hourmen get +4/+4, but start on crappy bodies. Starting on 7/7 is much more helpful)
11. Oliver Queen <> Green Arrow, Bullseye (Ollie was balanced off by his awful defense. Mimic doesn’t need to be)
12. Bart Allen <> Kid Flash, Generation Fourth (Now your additional team attacker doesn’t automatically stun when hitting things bigger than 1-drops!)
13. Alan Scott, Golden Age Engineer (Mimic, unlike Alan, doesn’t enter play exhausted. This one’s stamped, but it’s so good I’d start looking for ways to get around that…)
14. The Question, Victor Sage (MUCH more useful on a guy who doesn’t start small)
15. Punisher, Frank Castle (-4DEF is nice… -7 is better)
16. Mattie Franklin, Reserve Webhead (Having another 3ATK to work with is gold here. Three exhausts instead of two = win)
17. Crippler, Carl Striklan (Crippler needed to pump or team attack to get any use out of this. Mimic doesn’t.)
18. Adrian Chase <> Vigilante, Street Justice (I never found this ability useful on a hidden guy. It’s much more useful on a large visible one)
19. Valentina Vostok <> Negative Woman, Bishop (Same thing. Visible > Hidden when you’re creating an environment of rampant stunbacks)
20. Melter, Bruno Horgan (A 4/1 isn’t going to survive into turn 5 to use this… a 7/7 probably will)
21. Rocket Red #4, Dmitri Pushkin Gorki (Huge turn-length pump on a puny guy = useless. Huge turn-length pump on a standard-sized guy = more useful)
22. Manhunter Protector (Activate for 12/12 while defending)
23. Kiman, Chief Weaponer (Kiman rocks. It’s okay, you can admit it.)
24. Bloke, Mickey Tork (Hey look! A big buff on a useless character! Methinks I’ll help myself to that…)
25. Cloak, Child of Darkness (Stopping a 3-drop’s attack isn’t that great when their 4 gets a free swing to your face. Standing in the way with a solid 4 is much more helpful)
26. Silver Banshee, Siobhan McDougal (It’s easy to make preemptive throwaway attacks into KOing lowbies. Less so when the nuker is a full-size 4)
27. Jackal, Dr. Miles Warren (It’s hard to survive turn 4 as a 6/6. Is 7/7 big enough to pull it off?)
    
28. Roy Harper <> Arsenal, Sharpshooter (That’s right. I went there)
29. Dr. Tzin-Tzin, Master of Hypnosis (Fantastic ability on a pathetic body. On Mimic, as a surprise… this can swing an entire attack step. No, I’m not kidding)
30. Dazzler, Alison Blaire (This doesn’t specifically improve on a 4-drop, but it’s good enough that I’ll mention it anyway. )
31. Human Torch, Hotshot (Same great burn, no “Crap, his 2-drop stunned me” aftertaste)
32. Puppet Master, Philip Masters (PM was always a tradeoff– get an exhaust, but take tons of break in return. Mimic doesn’t have that problem.)
    

2. Work around conflicting drops (if you want to combo two different 3-drops, you can do it without losing size)

It’s really hard to come up with examples of this, but the theory’s sound: if you really need two 3s for a combo, Mimic lets you access both without underdropping.

I can’t think of a single example, though… it really depends on what you’re trying to combo around.

3. Getting two copies of a character out, again without underdropping.

1. Blade, Nightstalker (It expensive card-wise, but could completely lock an opponent down…)
2. Ahmed Samsarra (and Mimic doesn’t copy the King Kill part, only the good half!)
3. The Riddler, Riddle Me This (Poison Ivy has shown us how useful this effect is in multiples)
4. Brainiac 13, Mental Giant (-4DEF is hot. -4DEF twice is hotter)
5. Air-Walker, Gabriel Lan (More exhausts = less pain.)
6. Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff (Get them both out and you almost guarantee you’ll fire one or the other!)

4. You only get the power for a turn, but some powers leave their trail behind.

This is, again, a fairly slim category of use, but MEV might present some more interesting options…

1. Atom Smasher (Get and keep a +1/+1 counter)
2. Sugar Man, Age of Apocalypse (Do it without tapping!)
3. Ogre, Weaponsmith (This way you can put it on ANYONE, not just Mimic)

5. Getting access to the powers of characters who are difficult to recruit or painful to maintain

Loyalty on a 1- or 2-drop is a pain in the ass, as it more or less demands that you swarm. Mimic lets you get around this– he tells you to ignore the costs and requirements of getting that character out, and just cut straight to using their powers.

Similarly, there a lot of characters who are given a great power, but with a painful drawback to keep it in check. Since Mimic only copies payment powers, and most of these drawbacks are continuous modifiers, Mimic gives you all the payoff with none of the risk.

1. Avalanche, Earthmover (Awesome power without nuking a resource? Yes please.)
2. Blackheart, Black King (Loyalty’s for chumps. Chumps, I tells ya!)
3. Punisher, Judge (This ability was never worth underdropping for. On-curve, it has uses)
4. Oberon (Hey, a power-up’s a power-up. )
5. Professor X, Mutant Mentor (If you’re playing Mimic in an X-Men deck, the recursion might be helpful)
6. Black Thorn, Elizabeth Thorne
7. Masked Marauder, Frank Farnum (Same as Ahmed above– get the good part without the drawback)
8. Alicia Masters, Blind Sculptress and Franklin Richards, Child Prodigy (Mimic doesn’t come out exhausted and doesn’t run away when attacked. Combine this with Mimic’s easily-acquired readying (see above), and you could easily bring out something several drops above the curve)

6. Toolbox your silver bullets

In recent sets, UDE’s started putting some of the most effective “tech” effects on characters– if you want hidden hate, or equipment hate, or resource hate, many of the best options will cost you resource points. Mimic makes the best of this situation, giving you access to whichever hate you need on a given turn. Mimic’s often better at using these powers than their actual owners would be, as you can surprise your opponent by picking up these usually-telegraphed powers in the middle of a crucial attack.

1. Jared Stevens (unique equipment)
2. Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon (equipment)
3. Harvey Bullock, White Bishop (equipment)
4. Dr. Psycho, Demented Dwarf (weenies)
5. Merlyn, Direct Hit Man (weenies)
6. Rose Wilson <> The Ravager, Titans Tomorrow East (weenies)
7. Hawkeye, Clinton Barton (weenies)
8. Batman, Earth 2 (resources)
9. Quakemaster, Robert Coleman (resources)
10. Faust, Sebastian Faust (hidden characters)
11. Kate Spencer <> Manhunter, Fearless Renegade (hidden characters)
12. Rot Lop Fan, F-Sharp Bell of the Obsidian Deeps (hidden characters)
13. Luke Cage, Street Enforcer (hidden characters)

7. Putting an affiliation on an X-Men body

This was TDB’s idea: being an X-Men character is actually a very useful thing, because X-Men characters are very easy to recover. If you have a character who wants their power to fire after some combats have already been resolved, Mimic may be a safer way to ensure that happens.

1. Abyss (Attack their 4 for a dual, then recover and remove their 5)
2. Vykin, Forever People (Lock down all 2-drops? Yes please)
3. Atomic Skull, Joe Martin (This guy never survives an opposing attack step unstunned)
4. Bernadeth, Leader of Female Furies (Much more useful during recovery!)
5. Katana, Tatsu Yamashiro (How often does Katana survive a team attack? If only she was an X-Man…)

And of course, there are about a billion characters who’d love easy access to To Me My X-Men…

8. Oddballs

1. Spider-Man, Zombie (How’s this for fun? Pitch Spidey <> Zombie to exhaust an opposing guy… leave the board, and come back during recovery, where Mimic is a new object and can copy another power!)
2. Masters of Evil (Just a general thing– Shift lets you pre-pay for larger drops, which on its most simple level allows you to have a couple resource points left over after you recruit a turn drop. The Exiles encourage you to use these to pre-pay even more Shifters, but you could just as easily mimic some old Masters of Evil characters. Pay a resource to be unstunnable or KO whatever you touch? Yes please!)

Conclusion

To be honest, I wasn’t that thrilled with Mimic when I first saw him, but I can definitely respect after running through this excercise that he enables some interesting combos. And that’s just my inner jankmaster thinking; the #1 application of Mimic’s power will likely be “using the crap you have in your hand that you missed the chance to recruit”. And even if that’s all you use him for, that’s still pretty damn good.

So, yeah. That’s all I could come up with to do with him. What can the rest of you lunatics think of?

Get crackin’, folks. I want this card errataed by sundown.

-Spud

by Spud

It’s my birthday today, and as my present to myself, I’m going to allow myself to change out of my cheerleader uniform and be blunt. Yes, more blunt than usual.

So, yeah. MEV previews are about to start, and we’ve gotten semi-official confirmation that X-Statix will be returning, as evidenced by the handful of X-Statix cards in the uncut proof sheet TBS leaked to us.

I think it’s fairly widely-known that I’m a pretty huge X-Statix fan, both in the comics and in our game. So, you’d think I’d be pretty excited right now– the team that defied all odds to be included in VS at all (in its first year, no less!) is making a comeback! I can finally stop proxying Hulk as my “Modern X-Statix” and just play ACTUAL Modern X-Statix!

You’d expect me to be excited, but oddly enough, I’m… not. It’s weird. I love me some X-Statix, but what excitement I’ve been able to conjure up seems to be overshadowed by something else: confusion. Having the team show up the first time was a major curve-ball– nobody expected it to happen, so it was almost like a prank UDE played on us. And hey, they got a cool-as-all-get-out theme to go along with their weirdness, being VS’ very first Loner team.

Their first feature was neat, but I’m having trouble figuring out why they’re being refeatured. Let’s look at some facts.

• X-Statix as a comic was more of a “cult classic” than a bestseller. Thus, it probably doesn’t have much marketing draw.

It’s no secret that VS isn’t doing well. Personally, I’m in the camp that says that continuing to sell out sets will save the game– I refuse to believe that our year of gangbuster sales haven’t helped us.

That said, I accept that the only way we have a future is if we CONTINUE our pattern, and keep selling out every set. It seems to me, then, that UDE should be focusing its efforts on printing new cards that are marketable. It’s already pretty bad that they’re using that incredibly lame shot of Cable Mama as the box art (seriously… what the hell were they thinking?), and featuring low-profile niche teams isn’t helping.

Basically, I worry for the game. I know we’re on a tenuous branch; I firmly believe that we can help our fate by acting with our wallets, but that strategy depends on UDE making a super-marketable product like they did with the last three sets. Making the diehard fans happy is great, but at this point I’m objective enough to say that it needs to take a back seat to making marketable sets. I’d happily give up my beloved X-Statix for YET ANOTHER GODDAMN X-MEN FEATURE if it helped the set sell.

• X-Statix as a team affiliation is probably one of the least popular teams the game’s ever seen, duking it out with the Manhunters for that bottom slot. People who didn’t read the comics don’t “get” the characters, and a lot of people just don’t enjoy their passive gameplay style.

The X-Statix are fun, but are they going to make anybody buy the set? I suppose it’s possible… I think most old-timers have warmed up to the X-Statix a bit over the years, so they’re now seen as kitschy and quaint. But have they warmed up enough to actually make anyone spend more on the set to track down the Statix cards?

Let’s face it, there are about three voices in the community who have requested this refeature. I really don’t think there are very many players left with strong nostalgia for the team.

Now, with that said… there’s a benefit to teams being printed, regardless of whether they get played or not. Basically, it adds color to the game’s landscape. Nobody’s ever going to take NextWave to a tournament, but the mere fact of their existence makes the game more entertaining and diverse. If one player a year shows up with NextWave at your hobby league, that’s enough for them to make a footprint in your mind and highlight a corner of the game world. Let’s face it– the game is usually dominated by three to five teams at a time, so the existence of these marginal teams can be a breath of fresh air after the dank cellar of tournament metas.

I’m not sure if that made sense… but, yeah. I think that even people who will never play the new X-Statix might still enjoy them simply existing and popping up every once in a while. It’s what adds spice to the game.

• There are a grand total of two characters who appeared in the X-Statix comics who didn’t get cards.

Kind of an odd complaint… just about everything that could be done with the X-Statix IP has been done. There are only two more characters who popped up in the comics who could be justified in getting the affiliation: spunky owner Spike Freeman, and a dual-affiliated Wolverine. That’s it. Other than those two, every single speaking-role member of BOTH incarnations of the team has gotten cards, so you kind of have to expect that they’re not going to cover any new ground IP-wise.

I know that sounds like a weird complaint–”GRRR! How dare they only feature my favourite characters instead of filling the team with nobodies!”– but it goes back to the last point. It’s important that the game feel new and fresh, so when a team gets refeatured, they generally get handed a few characters that have never gotten cards before. New faces help the team look new and exciting.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to seeing my old friends come back… I just wish there was more room to expand them. I just feel like there’s only SO MUCH mor exciting they can get when the roster’s 100% refeatures… yaknow?

• I’m not sure how much further the loner theme can be taken.

Let’s face it… teams can be refeatured and have their old themes dropped entirely. We’ve seen it before (MXM brotherhood, for example), and we need to expect it every time a refeature is announced. But, there are some things you really can’t change. You can’t take away the Injustice Gang’s hand flood theme, because that was absolutely their signature theme. It’s two-sided: they did it better than anybody else, and they did it to the exclusion of everybody else, because it’s a theme nobody else would want to touch. It’s their theme, pure and simple.

Same thing with the X-Statix. The exact nature of their lonering will certainly follow a different track than before, but I just worry that we’re running out of things to do with that theme. Hellfire, X-Statix, and Hellboy all play essentially the same, and Hulk is just the same with ATK pumps instead of DEF ones. They all have the same “controlly feel”, and I don’t feel like there’s much of a change when I switch from one to another.

However.

Alright, so I’ve bitched for 1100 words. I’ve looked the gift horse straight in the mouth and called its teeth into question… but I’m done now. I actually feel better now. Writing all that down really has taken a weight off my shoulders; I’ve said my piece, and now I can move on to just being excited again.

All of what I’ve just written are my worries, but paradoxically, I’m not that worried by them. These are the things I think can go wrong if the developers are stupid, but I think we can be pretty sure after the awe-inspiring MUN set that they’re anything but stupid. I have faith in them after that masterpiece, and I’m positive they’ve foreseen and solved every one of these issues.

I’m positive that the set will leverage its higher-profile elements (like the Cyclops, Deadpool, and Gambit legends) to drive sales; I’m positive they’ve treated X-Statix like the quirky sideline it was always supposed to be; and I’m positive they’ll make the roster seem fresh even with little variation in the faces.

I have faith in the S and the Z. I won’t say they’ve never let us down, but I can at least say they haven’t let us down recently. They’ve done their best for us and given us the best sets in the game’s history, and I believe in them enough to know that MEV will rock hard and sell well.

And finally.

I was going to add this item to the list of concerns above, but unlike the other worries I had, the solution to this one popped into my head less than ten seconds after the problem did.

• Given the trend toward merging teams and the fact that the X-Statix team wasn’t mentioned on Ben’s preview draft roster, we can reasonably expect X-Statix to be rolled into the X-Force team.

This really bugged me at first. I thought to myself that I’d almost rather not have a refeature at all, than have then refeatured without the respect I feel they deserve. They NEED to be their own team, damnit!

But then it occurred to me… holy crap.

X-FORCE NUMBER ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN.

Never read it? Here’s a synopsis: the “new” X-Force is having a press conference, and it gets crashed by the “Old” X-Force– Domino, Cannonball, Boom-Boom, and Warpath show up, and they’re pissed at having their name coopted by a bunch of rock stars. What ensues is a huge brawl between the two teams for the right to use the name.

Of course, it’s all staged. The managers of the “new” team just wanted the publicity that only a fierce rivalry can provide, and so this internecine squabbling was entirely to the team’s benefit, unbeknownst to its members.

So, yeah. Go ahead, UDE: Stick the new and old members on the same team. Make them fight it out over who’s the best choice at each drop.

And then print this.

And a few of these.

Go on, do it. Reward my faith in you. Show me you’re as brilliantly insane as I know you are.

Rock my world, UDE.

-Spud

by Captain Spud

Gday: “…no, I don’t really know either of the decks.”

Spud: “Bwuh? But you don’t know any of the decks we’ve played.”

Gday: “Maybe, but Pablo DOES know this deck, so let’s let him pilot it.”

Spud: “You’re just inherently a bad person.”

*time passes*

Spud: “Sit. You’re playing TFR.”

Pablo: “Sweet, that means I can play drunk!”

Spud: “I know. I hate you so much right now.”

********************************************************

Warp Factor 9 (Spud) vs. Task Force: Revenge (Pablo)

********************************************************

Suggested Accompaniment: Load this YouTube link in a new tab/window. Nothing says drama like Gustav Holst.

Pablo wins the die roll and takes odds. Both players keep.

Turn 1

Pablo hits Sue Dibny, using her power to get Booster Gold. Spud hits WF9’s 1-drop for the first time in the entire tournament, putting Galan on the board. Spud activates his 1-drop to gain 2 endurance; Pablo dives into him with a power-up to chip a little of Spud’s score back off. During recovery, Spud plays Kindred Spirits to put Silver Surfer and Air-Walker on top of his deck.

Yes, that’s right: that was absolutely the most action-packed Turn 1 to date in Summer of Love.

Pablo 50, Spud 51

Turn 2

Spud recruits Silver Surfer, and in another landmark event, immediately hits the Board without needing to search! Surfer hides, and Spud flips Dr. Fate’s Tower to get a Cloak of Nabu for Galan, then passes. Pablo brings out Winslow Schott, and then a half-cost Mr. Mxy in the back row, before passing to combat.

Surfer starts things off by flying into and bouncing Mxy. (“Oh yeah, he flies.”) Galan goes into Winslow Schott for a stun, and doesn’t stun back thanks to the Cloak; Winslow puts the Sue Diny power-up back on top of the deck. Speaking of Sue, Surfer runs her over; she makes a phone call to the UN General Assembly as she arcs through the air, picking up a 5-drop Martian Manhunter before she hits the ground.

She doesn’t get back up.

Pablo 48, Spud 51

Turn 3

Pablo leads off turn 3 with Ruin, followed by a freebie Mxy in the back row. Spud brings out Air-Walker, transfers the Cloak to him, and then adds a Helm to the ensemble, forming him in the back.

Ruin dives through the 4/7 Herald, with Pablo giving him a Mob Mentality to ensure a dual; Air-Walker exhausts Winslow, and Ruin searches out Justice League Task Force as he goes down. Next, Mxy goes into Galan with a second Mob– Galan gains 2, then eats dirt.

On Spud’s swing-back, he first bounces Mxy to Pablo’s hand, and then decides that none of the available targets are really worth killing, so he activates to find 4-drop Barry Allen and passes. Galan is lost to recovery.

Pablo 45, Spud 47

Turn 4

Spud has turn 4 and recruits Barry Allen, transferring the partial Fate set to him. Pablo recruits Sue Dibny, flips a Justice League Task Force in response to her effect, and then searches out a Brainiac 13. Booster Gold comes out with boost, followed by Terra-Man and a freebie Mxy.

Surfer bounces Mxy for the third consecutive turn. Air-Walker goes into Booster Gold for a one-sider, followed by Barry Allen into Winslow Schott for the same (Winslow puts a recently-discarded 5-drop Manhunter on top of the deck as he goes down). Surfer closes it up by going into Sue Dibny.

Knowing he can’t let good attacks go to waste against this stall deck, Pablo sends Ruin into Barry Allen, playing the third Mob Mentality of the game for a dual, digging out a Toy Soldiers on the way down. Terra-Man then goes through Air-Walker for a one-sider, and combat’s over.

Spud plays Kindred Spirits during recovery to put 6-drop Terrax and 7-drop Surfer on top of his deck, then rallies with Alias to grab the former. Spud loses Air-Walker to recovery, Pablo loses everything but Ruin and Terra-Man.

Pablo 27, Spud 39

Turn 5

Pablo’s pretty happy with his recruit for this turn, putting Brainiac and a free Mxy on the board– followed by an Atomic Skull, who can finally nuke the hidden Surfer and shut down Spud’s search engine. However, Spud spoils his fun, bringing out Wally West – Fastest Man Alive, who activates to stun Atomic Skull before combat. Before passing, Spud completes his Fate set by putting an Amulet on Barry.

Pablo flips Justice League Task Force, then thinks for a while– he has a really solid board, but it’s mostly based around team attacking. After a few minutes, he sends Ruin (6/5 thanks to Toy Soldiers and Battle For Metropolis) into Wally West, but Spud activates Surfer and Alias to dig out a power-up, then discards it along with a second from hand to brick the attack. Ruin goes down, but digs out a second Toy Soldiers as he does so. Pablo’s second attack puts Mxy and Brainiac into Barry– combined they’re at 13, so Spud simply activates Barry to negate the attack. A little frustrated, Pablo sends the 9/9 Terra-Man (2/2 + five face-ups + two Toy Soldiers) into Wally, powering up for a one-sider.

Atomic Skull is lost to recovery.

Pablo 22, Spud 29

Turn 6

Spud activates Surfer and Alias during draw to dig out I Hunger, then rows it. He recruits Terrax and passes. Pablo activates Brainiac on Terrax to try to force him to transfer the artifacts over for the negation, but Spud, after pondering it for a while, ultimately elects not to, and takes a 6DEF hit on his 6-drop. For his recruit, Pablo brings out Martian Manhunter in the hidden area, followed by the ubiquitous Mr. Mxy. Before combat, Wally activates on Ruin.

Spud’s first attack is the now-customary Surfer Into Mxy. Next, he sends Barry (12/9) into Terra-Man (8/8). Manhunter pays 2 to move visible and give TM the +2ATK he needs to cause a dual; Spud responds with I hunger to gain a bit of life, then both characters go down. Terrax fires his payment power (replacing the Tower) to stun the hidden Brainiac, then goes in direct after Manhunter runs away again.

On Pablo’s return swing, he sends Manhunter through Terrax at Some Ungodly Amount for a dual. Recovery sees Terrax and Ruin leave the party.

Pablo 5, Spud 16

Turn 7

Pablo leads off turn 7 with Blue Beetle and Mr. Mxy. While the latter is on the chain, Spud activates Wally on Ted Kord, causing Pablo to activate him to find Booster Gold, who he recruits once the stun resolves. Lil’ Surfer grabs The Beyonder, then is replaced by his big brother, who slides some useless character into Spud’s row. Before passing, Spud plays a copy of Full Throttle from his row to ready Wally, then activates him to trade with Terra-Man, yanking out potentially Pablo’s strongest piece. Pablo’s on 2, Spud’s on 11.

Manhunter dives into Barry at 13ATK, but Barry activates, merely taking the 4 break. Mxy and Booster go into Surfer, and due to the obscene amount of pumps in play, the 7-drop goes down.

With no further ready characters in play, this ties the score… on 0.

The Beyonder recovers Silver Surfer, and play moves to turn 8.5.

Pablo 0, Spud 0

Turn 8

MWA

HA

HA

HA

HA

HA

HA

HA!

Final Score: Warp9 -13, TFR -73

********

Spud: “DAMNIT.”

Pablo: “Dear god. He’s still in for another round.”

Gday: “Another round at LEAST.”

Spud: *weeps uncontrollably*

Gday: “There there, buddy. We’ll DQ him next round.”

Spud: *sniff* “Super-swear?”

Gday: “Super-swear.”

Spud: *sniff* “You’re a good friend. I mean it.”

Gday: “That’s nice. You still can’t have your insulin back.”

Spud: “AAAAAARGGGHH DIE YOU $*(&(!$!!!!”

*sound of crashing pots and pans*

********

Out of interest: if you’ve ever wondered just how classy we are here at Lost Hemisphere, I think I’ve finally found a way to answer your question in a single image.

That, my friends, is a Warp Factor 9 deck composed of 44 proxies.

Classy.

-Spud

Gday: “So, I guess we should get round 3 started.”

Spud: “UUUUUGGGGHHHH. NOOOOOO. Do we have to?”

*Spud makes a pouty face*

Gday: “Yes. Yes we do.”

Spud: “Ugh. But there are still two TDB decks in the running. That sucks all the fun out of it.”

Gday: “Well, maybe we can knock one out today.”

Spud: “Really? You’re volunteering to play as it, guaranteeing the loss?”

Gday: “…”

Spud: “The implication being that you always lose.”

Gday: “…”

Spud: “Like, every time.”

Gday: “…”

Spud: “…”

Gday: “…see, this is why I’m always stealing your insulin.”

Spud: “Hey! I need that insulin to live!”

Gday: “I know.”

********************************************************

Wild & Sticky (Gday) vs. New Birds (Spud)

********************************************************

Spud wins the die roll and takes odds, and both players keep their openers.

Spud whiffs on turn 1, while Gday hits Aunt May, who digs out Sensational Spider-Man. She hits Spud direct, but he doesn’t notice.

Gday 50, Spud 50

Gday hits Black Cat, and puts her in front of Aunt May. Spud hits his first character in a hidden Gypsy (using her power to chuck two of the top 3 cards of his deck). Cat goes in direct, then evades to try to find a pump for May, pitching Sentry to draw. Finding nothing, he passes to Spud, who rolls over May with Gypsy.

Gday 46, Spud 48

Spud hits his all-important 3-drop, Big Bear, while Gday matches him with Man-Eater (who will be a bit of an annoyance for Spud’s concealed-heavy deck). Spud’s first attack is Big Bear into Black Cat, with Aunt May reinforcing. Next, he declares Gypsy into Man-Eater, hoping for a little crossover action, but is disappointed when Gday flashes an Entangle to exhaust her. Spud sighs and passes.

Gday 44, Spud 48

Spud’s reason for taking odds was to avoid the utterly wasted turn caused by turn 4 Sensational with a Gift Wrapped, but Gday has a great plan B now that his Turn of Annoyance is not required, dropping Silver Sable behind Man-Eater. For Spud’s part, he plays The Exchange from his row, pitching Big Bear and Beautiful Dreamer to grab Izaya <> Highfather, who he forms behind the Bear.

Man-Eater uses his power to make Gypsy hittable (not that she isn’t already– OH! Giggity…), then smacks into her. Spud decides that a one-sided attack doesn’t sound like much fun, so he plays Birds of a Feather to make it a dual. Gday weeps… a little. Next, he sends Sable into Big Bear– and sadly, Spud had to pitch his potential powerup to get his 4-drop, so it resolves without a stunback, and Bear bounces. Gday passes, and Spud makes the only safe attack (since Gday may have a power-up for Sable), sending Izaya through a reinforced Black Cat, who exhausts for ESU, and is subsequently lost to recovery. Spud nukes ESU with Have A Blast! during recovery.

Gday 39, Spud 40

This is the turn Spud planned to make his main offensive, so he brings out Cassandra Cain hidden and passes. For Gday’s part, he flips and uses a new ESU, then examines his options. He has a Sensational Spidey he grabbed earlier, but as Spud lacks a 3-drop, he decides it’s a better idea to use an Indebted to get Spidey – Secret Avenger, who he forms in front of May, then passes to combat.

Gypsy starts things off by diving into Man-Eater; once it’s legal, Spud plays No Man Escapes the Manhunters to drop him to 1DEF. Gday shrugs, and reinforces with Sable. Next, Spud declares Izaya on Spider-Man– but it’s not legal, as Gday breaks out his second Entangle of the game to exhaust Highfather outside combat. Upset that he can’t force some extreme board loss through Gday’s side, he sighs and sends Cassie through Sable for two break. Man-Eater retires during recovery.

Gday 30, Spud 38

Gday starts off turn 6 by teaming up his board, then uses exhausts Aunt May to dig out an Omnipotence with Powell. He plays Omni as his resource, then immediately plays it– Spud responds by using Have A Blast! on the new ESU, and Gday resolves Omni, locking down The Source. For his recruit, Gday brings out Daredevil, who’s a little less impressive than usual given that he can’t exhaust Spud’s growing hidden board. Speaking of Spud, he counters Gday’s shenanigans with some shenanigans of his own, putting down Big Barda in the support row beside Izaya (Gday’s board has flight thanks to Stealthcraft, so protecting is kind of pointless).

Combat starts when Daredevil dives into Izaya, forcing Spud to reinforce with his 6. Next, Gday sends Spidey and Sable into Barda at 16ATK– just enough to make Barda’s power useless. Spidey stuns; Barda stuns and bounces to hand. Gday passes to Spud, who plays Rabbit Fire on Gypsy to send her flying into Aunt May for 4. With reinforcement now cut out, Cassie takes out Silver Sable.

Sable and May are lost to recovery.

Gday 15, Spud 32

Spud really isn’t thrilled with his turn 7 recruit: replaying Barda. That said, Gday also missed, and puts down Scarlet Spider behind Daredevil.

Spud teams up with Royal Decree, then teams Izaya and Gypsy into Daredevil. Once it’s legal, Spud closes the gap with Blinding Rage; Gday has no response, and Izaya and Daredevil go down. Next, Spud sends Cassie into Spider-Man, but Gday has the Gift Wrapped to shut that down. Spud’s next attempt is Barda into the now-unreinforceable Scarlet Spider. Gday uses Spider’s power to switch off Barda’s text box– annoying, but Spud has enough pump to put Gday exactly on 0, playing No Man on Scarlet to drop him to 10/9. However, Gday has a second Scarlet in hand, and survives the turn on 1.

Spud sighs for the fourth or fifth time this game as he watches Gday KO Scarlet Spider.

Gday 1, Spud 28

Turn 8 really isn’t somewhere the New Birds want to go, but it doesn’t turn out as bad as it could have; Gday still has 5-drop Spidey on the board, he pitched Sentry early on, and his only option for 8 is now Cosmic Spidey, which wouldn’t be a problem, except Spud forced Gday to pitch his spare last turn to avoid dying, so Secret Avenger is going to die if he wants to upgrade. It’s Gday’s turn to sigh– he exhausts Spidey for Powell to get Omni, uses his power to blank Barda again, then nukes him when Cosmic Spidey enters play. Spud’s turn 8 is much less impressive, but it’ll still do the job– he recruits Vixen and Barbara Gordon hidden, and now has enough hidden stuff to swing back on Cosmic Spidey for a stun and the game.

Gday sends Daredevil into Barda, and Spud has no response. Gday can now send Cosmic Spidey through the unreinforced Izaya, but that will leave Spud’s entire hidden board ready to murder him, so he has to pass on the extremely tempting bait, and uses Gift Wrapped on Izaya and Vixen instead.

Spud’s remaining board can’t take down a 22/22 8-drop, so he passes to turn 9.

Gday 1, Spud 22

Spud doesn’t recruit much on turn 9, but he doesn’t really need much, either– he brings out Big Bear and a fresh Barda (for intact Cosmic), fully intending to simply team into Cosmic Spidey with everything he has. For Gday’s part, he doesn’t have much either– he digs with Daredevil and ESU, but doesn’t find anything helpful. Everything he can recruit is itty-bitty and just an invitation for Spud to smash through, so he recruits nothing, Gift Wraps Bards and Gypsy, and then passes.

Spud decides not to screw around, and sends his entire board– Cassie, Vixen, Izaya, Big Bear, and Card Draw Barbie– into the 23/23 Cosmic Spidey at a combined ATK of 34. It’s enough, and Cosmic trades with Cassie.

Final Score: New Birds 16, Wild & Sticky -7

Despite the irritating exhausts and Sable bounces, I felt pretty confident about that game the whole way through– the New Birds are simply a pile of large characters with lots of pumps, and Spidey just can’t keep up the exhaustion shut-down on a curve deck forever, whereas he can keep a swarm locked down more or less indefinitely

I knew taking odds would be key here, as every even turn from 4 through 8 is a horrible turn to be swinging into Spidey– Sensational w/Gift Wrapped on 4, Human Torch on 6, and Sentry on 8 make it almost impossible to make gainful attacks. On the other hand, the deck has no real answer on turn 3, and MUST hit Gift Wrapped AND a 1-of Spidey to make a shutdown on 5. My strategy was pretty simple: make conservative attacks, go for board control instead of break, and expect my best attack to be shut down every turn.

******

Spud: “That was great. One less TDB deck to worry about!”

Gday: “Why don’t you like his decks?”

Spud: “My metric is, if you can’t play it drunk, it’s too complicated.”

Gday: “You don’t drink.”

Spud: “I know. I use the metric to justify my intellectual laziness.”

Gday: “…”

Spud: “…you’re so right. Pie IS awesome. So, got time to knock his other one out now?”

******

-Spud

Last game of round 2! Going by the bets, Villain Potpourri are the heavy favourite… will the bettors’ confidence be vindicated? Or will this be the latest in what’s been nearly an entire round of upsets?

Let’s find out!

-Spud

********************************************************

Villain Potpourri (Gday) vs. Stranger Danger (Spud)

********************************************************

Gday wins the dice roll and takes odds. Both players keep their initial hand.

Gday has the game’s first character in the form of Nathan Garrett <> The Black Knight. Spud also hits his 1-drop, bringing Jakeem Williams to the party. Nathan and Jakeem get in a really embarassing slapfight.

Gday 49, Spud 48

Spud hits Jack Knight, while Gday answers with Dr. Psycho. Spud labors over whether he wants to draw or swing with Jack; ultimately, the fact that he’ll have to also discard makes up his mind, and Jack goes into combat ready. Combat is exactly what both players expect: Jack Knight eats Nathan Garrett for a one-sided stun, and Jakeem trades with the 1DEF Dr. Psycho. Nathan dies during recovery.

Gday 46, Spud 47

Gday brings out Dr. Light on 3, forming him behind Dr. Psycho.  Spud starts his recruit by activating Jakeem Williams to get Katar Hol; he then activates Jack Knight to draw a card, and finally recruits Elsa Bloodstone behind Jack. The players pass to combat.

Dr Light takes the first swing, flying over Jack Knight into Elsa Bloodstone. He’s 1ATK shy of the stun, but that’s quickly corrected by a Blinding Rage; Spud takes 6, and Gday puts Weather Wizard into play from his hand. Next, Dr. Psycho goes into Jack Knight for a dual, and the Wizard dives in direct.

Psycho and Jack Knight are lost to recovery.

Gday 39, Spud 36

Spud leads off turn 4 by bringing out Katar Hol, and follows up by equipping Katar and Elsa with Nth Metals, effectively making them an 8/8 and a 6/6. Gday, knowing Spud can’t apply much pressure with only two characters, swarms out; Beetle gets Yellowjacket, Yellowjacket gets Shocker, and Cheetah fills the last point. Gday forms so Vengeance characters are the only options in the back row.

As Gday hoped, Spud wusses out and makes sub-optimal attacks. Elsa goes into Beetle; Yellowjacket reinforces. Katar goes into Weather Wizard; Dr. Light reinforces. On his return swings, Gday opts not to use Cheetah, and Beetle dies during recovery.

Gday 35, Spud 36

Gday’s recruit on 5 solidifies his swarm. He teams up, then bounces Yellowjacket with Baddest of the Bad to get 5-drop Talia. He recruits her, then plays Hard Sound Construct to put last turn’s lost Beetle into play, discarding Shocker. Talia’s power triggers, and Shocker enters play. Beetle’s search nets another Beetle (presumably for next turn..?). A second Hard Sound Construct brings Dr. Psycho onto the board, and brings Gday’s board count to 7.

Spud’s recruit is much simpler; he plays The Captain from his resource row, and fills his last resource with a new Jakeem. The Captain sits in front of Katar, who is beside Elsa.

Gday’s first attack is Cheetah into Elsa; Spud expects a pump, but none is forthcoming, and Cheetah simply stuns to fire her Vengeance power, giving Gday’s board +1ATK. Weather Wizard makes the same attack, with a similar result.

Gday now has five warm bodies with +2/+1 each. He sends Shocker into Jakeem, who runs away to get The Phantom Stranger. His first real attack is Beetle and Shocker into Elsa Bloodstone; Spud has nothing, and Elsa duals with Shocker. Next up, Dr. Psycho goes into The Captain at 6/2; The Captain is powered up by The Phantom Stranger, going to 8/8. Gday plays No Man Escapes the Manhunters to drop him to 5DEF, but Spud powers up with 6-drop Power Girl to bounce the attack. Not at all discouraged, Gday then sends Talia into The Captain at 11/10. Spud plays Messiah Complex from his row to return The Phantom Stranger, exhausting both his characters to gain 7. He powers up to get to 8/8, then plays Advance Warning to get to 8/12. Gday is out of pump, and the attack bounces, though at least Talia doesn’t stun.

Spud has no ready guys, so it’s off to recovery. Beetle and Psycho die since they were Constructs, while Cheetah and Wizard simply die.

Gday 29, Spud 40

Spud missed his 6 (he had to spend the Messiah Complex last turn for a powerup), but he has no trouble filling his resources; he recruits Kendra Saunders (bringing his powerups to +2/+2), Jack Knight, and Jakeem Williams. Gday, meanwhile, brings out Beetle, discarding Cheetah (who enters play for free) to search out Paul Ebersol, who’s also recruited. Gday has 3 resources left, and uses them with Shocker to stun Elsa Bloodstone. No amusing insult graphic this turn.

Spud’s first attack with his newfound swarm is to send Jack Knight into Cheetah; she goes down, and Gday’s board pumps. Next, Kendra flies into Dr. Light; Jakeem activates to find a powerup. The Captain goes into Beetle; Talia reinforces. Katar goes into Shocker unreinforced for yummy break.

On Gday’s return swings, he sends his 3/1 Paul Ebersol into Jack Knight. Spud flips Justice United to crossover Katar’s affiliations and return Phantom Stranger, who powers up the young Starman and bricks the attack.

Gday loses everything but Talia and Shocker.

Gday 8, Spud 37

The writing’s on the wall, but Gday’s determined to go down in a blaze of glory. He recruits Dr. Light and Count Vertigo, and once again denies Spud the opportunity to make an Elsa graphic for the turn. She exhausts in response with Kendra to grab the Phantom Stranger, who Spud recruits.

Gday can’t completely neuter Spud’s board, but he comes pretty close. Light flies into Jack Knight, and Spud’s nearly-empty hand has no answers. Next, Talia eats the Captain; and finally, Count Vertigo bounces to exhaust The Phantom Stranger.

That leaves Spud with one remaining ready character: Katar Hol, who dives into Shocker to drop Gday just barely into the negatives.

Final Score: Stranger Danger 25, Villain Potpourri -2

Simple explanation for this one: Gday drew plenty of characters, but that meant he had almost no pump. When the Strangers laid on the DEF, the Villains had no ATK to answer back with.

My one regret: Not going into turn 8, and being able to use one last graphic.

It is a shame I will carry always.

-Spud

Spud had some help today. TDB wrote a breakdown of how his deck wanted to play out this matchup; he suggests an intriguing strategy, and Spud will give it a shot to see how it works out.

This way, Spud can pass off the blame if it fails, but can still claim credit if it works.

It’s a great system.

-Spud

********************************************************

Dark(seid) City (Gday) vs. Warp Factor 9 (Spud)

********************************************************

Gday wins the die roll and takes evens. Both players mull.

Turn 1 is uneventful; both players miss. Spud plays a Kindred Spirits during recovery to put Silver Surfer and Air-Walker on top of his deck.

Gday 50, Spud 50

Gday has the game’s first recruit with a hidden Nocturne; Spud matches him with Silver Surfer, and then crosses his fingers in the hope that Gday won’t have any way of pumping– if he can cause one breakthrough, he can steal Surfer and nuke Spud’s search engine.

Gday, however, does not have the pump. Spud searches his deck for Omnipotence and puts it on top of his deck, and both players take 2.

Gday 48, Spud 48

I already did the "Surfer Santa" gag last round. I've got nothing. NOTHING.

Spud has the turn 3 initiative, and puts Air-Walker on the board; he also plays Cannibal Tech to grab a Silver Surfer’s Board, which he attached to its owner. The board taps to hide Surfer and restore his counter. Gday meets Spud’s tap-tastic new threat with Dark Firestorm, also hidden, drawing a card.

Combat is uneventful; Spud uses Surfer to get Alias Investigations, and uses Air-Walker to tap Nocturne. On his swings, Gday can’t get Firestorm over Air-Walker huge butt, so he passes.

Gday 48, Spud 48

Turn 4 is the start of Gday’s “get a massive blocker on the board” gameplan, and he doesn’t disappoint, hitting the optimal Darkseid – Apokaliptian Oppressor. Spud’s recruit is Barry Allen – Crimson Tornado, who sits in front of Air-Walker. Gday flips Truth and Justice before combat.

Gday starts his swings by sending Dark Firestorm into Barry Allen; Barry taps and runs to the back row, negating the combat. This leaves Air-Walker unprotected, so Darkseid goes barrelling into him; Air-Walker exhausts Nocturne, and then goes down.

During Spud’s attack, he simply uses Surfer to dig out the deck’s second copy of Omnipotence, which he immediately draws by flipping and using Elemental Converters.

Gday 48, Spud 45

Spud has turn 5, and makes the most of it: he places a resource, then immediately plays two copies of Omnipotence. Gday looks for responses, and settles on Uncertain Legacy to grab 6-drop Darkseid – Uxas before passing. The Omnis resolve, and Spud names Ancient Throne and Ancient Evils, effectively cutting Gday off from ever having non-unique Darkseids. For his recruit, Spud activates Surfer to dig out Wally West – Fastest Man Alive, who he draws with the Converters before recruiting him in front of Barry. Gday thinks long and hard about his recruit– he has a 5-drop Darkseid, but can’t play him now without losing his 4. He ultimately decides to keep the 4-drop (as most of Spud’s good cards come from his row), and passes his recruit entirely. Before combat, Spud activates Wally to stun Darkseid.

Spud passes his attacks. Gday declares Dark Firestorm into Barry Allen; Barry activates to negate the combat, Air-Walker activates to exhaust Nocturne, and Surfer activates to get Destroyer (Terrax would be the better play, but he was discarded earlier to flip the Converters).

Another combat phase passes by with little successful combat.

Gday 44, Spud 40

Gday has the initiative on 6, and brings out Darkseid – Uxas with an Nth Metal, flipping Lost City more to intimidate Spud than from any real expectation of getting to use it. Spud brings out last turn’s searched Destroyer, and activates Wally to stun Nocturne. He forms with Wally in front of Barry, and Air-Walker in front of Destoyer, then passes.

Gday frowns– Darkseid can’t fly, and Spud can reinforce either of these attacks. He sighs and chooses the one that causes more damage, sending his 15/16 Darkseid into Wally West. Spud predictably reinforces, then uses Air-Walker to tap Firestorm; Gday passes.

Spud doesn’t expect that Destroyer can accomplish much in combat, so he exhausts him to a discarded Jaime Reyes to get a Cloak of Nabu. He then searches out “something” with Surfer (I forgot to write it down), and uses Alias Investigations to draw whatever it is.

Gday decides he might as well use Darkseid’s power while he can; he removes the cosmic counter to KO Wally and Nocturne. Spud weeps.

Gday 42, Spud 35

Turn 7 is Spud’s, but he has a bit of a dilemma here– he wants to do 7-drop Surfer directly into Galactus, but he has neither of them. If he searches out the 7-drop, he won’t be able to get Big G next turn. Sighing, he simply searches out and plays a new 5-drop Wally. He’s also got a full Fate suite on Wally this turn courtesy of a flipped Tower, but he’s not excited about the play. Yaknow?

Gday determines that his only chance of getting past Spud’s vast array of out-of-combat control effects is to swarm out with people NOT named Darkseid, so he does just that, recruiting Random and the MEX Pyro. With Random on the chain, Spud transfers the Fate gear to Destroyer, then activates Wally for a dual stun with Dark Firestorm. Random activates to reduce Air-Walker’s DEF, and then Pyro burns Spud for 7 (yikes!). Gday pitches a card to ready Random, and then passes to combat.

Spud needs to get that huge Darkseid tapped down, so he declares his first real attack of the game: a 19/19 Destroyer into Random. Gday shrugs and reinforces with Darkseid (since Air-Walker’s just going to tap him if he doesn’t).

…aaaaaand that’s it for combat. Dark Firestorm is lost to recovery.

Gday 36, Spud 23

Gday has turn 8, but he knows it won’t be very productive. He uses Uncertain Legacy to search for the DLS 8-drop Darkseid, and then KOs his 6-drop to recruit him. Spud’s deck has no 8, so he performs what he’s decided is the deck’s signature move: I Hunger, tap Wally for a dual with Random (only losing 2), new Wally, stun Pyro (gaining 3). Pyro burns for 8 as he goes down.

During combat, Gday… gets his Darkseid tapped down by Air-Walker.

…yeah.

Gday 36, Spud 16

Spud drops Galactus.

Gday recruits nothing. He taps Random to drop Galactus’ defense, but Spud slides the Fate gear over to him to negate it. Pyro activates to burn for 9, which readies Random.

Spud figures he can just pass combat, but decides not to wuss out like that; he sends Galactus and Destroyer into Darkseid at a combined 44ATK (I wonder how many times Galactus has ever been declared as a team attacker? My money’s on “less than twenty”). Gday does some quick math… and then, through a combination of search and recursion, powers up EIGHT TIMES to go to… 43. One pump short of dodging.

Spud listens to the lamentation of Gday’s women.

Final Score: Warp Factor 9 on 36, Dark(seid) City on -17.

As soon as Spud got those Omnis flipped, the game essentially came down to Gday’s ability to draw lowbies not named Darkseid (to get around Air-Walker’s rather frustrating effect). He couldn’t dig out enough of them, so he never got to make unreinforced attacks.

Sadness.

-Spud

Paul “TheDerangedBear” Sung has been badgering Gday all week to play out one of his two round 2 matches, so of course when it was time to work out today’s match, Spud said “**** HIM! Let’s play my deck!”

And Gday, knowing that giving Spud an inch will cause him to demand a league, said, “Sure.”

Let it not be said that we are not fair.

-Spud

********************************************************

The Looney Bin (Spud) vs. /r/ Moar Cards (Gday)

********************************************************

Gday wins the die roll and takes evens. Spud reveals Two-Face – Split Personality from his hand for an UBER-MULL. Gday feels humbled, and must take a mere “regular mull”.

Gday leads off the game with an Alpha Primitive; the recruit is not matched by Spud, who passes and takes 2 direct.

Gday 50, Spud 48

Gday also lands the SECOND recruit of the game, dropping Pip the Troll and putting a Mind Gem on top of his deck. He also drops an Ego Gem on him, and then passes. Spud’s 2 is the ideal KGBeast. During combat, Gday swings his 2/1 1-drop into Spud’s 4/1 2-drop for some break and a dual, and then rather than clobber Spud for 3 with Pip, he activates to draw a card.

Gday 49, Spud 45

Spud does not hit his ideal 3 (Julia), but still manages something delicious: Charaxes. Gday digs for options, but only comes up with a hidden 2-drop Mr. Fantastic.

Spud makes what he knows will end up being a costly play, but does it regardless for the board advantage: he plays Glass Jaw on Pip, then sends Charaxes through him for the KO. It’s a waste of the Jaw because Charaxes can’t cause break, but it nets a KO, so… meh. KGBeast dives in for 4 direct, but is then clobbered for the second time by Gday’s hidden Primitives. Spud weeps– Beast is getting killed to recovery. But he’ll at least be of some use: Spud flips Arkham Asylum, and bounces the stunned 2-drop to his hand.

Gday 42, Spud 39

Gday took turn 4 so he could manipulate the attacks to keep Moondragon for more than a turn, and he now sets that plan into motion, recruiting her visible and giving her a Mind Gem to draw 2 and pitch 1. Spud misses his ideal 4 (DCR Hush), but hits his alternate– the hidden Hush from DGL. Both Inmates are formed up front, and it’s off to the beatings.

Moondragon swings through Charaxes for a one-sided stun. Reed and the Primitive go through Spud’s face direct. This last play telegraphs to Spud that Gday doesn’t have the dreaded board-clearing Negative Zone Gateway (since he would’ve needed the Primitives ready for it to fire), but he still declines to take down Moondragon, as it would be a dual stun, costing Spud his 3-drop.

Basically, Spud is a coward.

Gday 42, Spud 30

Spud has shaken, for the most part,  the “miss turn 5″ pattern that plagued him in round 1 of this event, but it rears its head again in this game, as Spud has a Call In A Favor, but has no Alpha Flight dudes to pitch to get Sasquatch. Yes, that’s right: Spud was an idiot and didn’t include an Inmates 5-drop in the deck. Because– did I mention this?– he’s an idiot. Still, he manages to fill his points, putting a Julia Carpenter and a KGBeast on the board. As it turns out, Gday also misses his 5, and recruits essentially the same pattern of a 3 and a 2, dropping Pip (with Ego Gem) in front of Moondragon and 3-drop Professor X in the hidden area. He exhausts his two Illuminati members during build for two cards.

Spud’s holding a pretty beefy hand of pump, so declares Charaxes into Moondragon. Before it’s legal, he removes CIAF and Alpha Flight Reborn from his hand to power Bat’s Belfry, causing Moondragon to exhaust when the attack starts. Spud plays a Flying Kick from his hand to get to exactly the 8 he needs; Gday plays Gathering the Watch for a pump, but Spud exhausts the Asylum for 2ATK, and both characters go down– though Moondragon goes a little further, straight to the KO’d pile.

Spud’s second attack is Hush through Pip, and there are no effects, so the 2-drop eats dirt. Spud flips No Man’s Land to discard Tally Man, exhausting KGBeast for a KO on Pip. Finally, Spud sends Julia into Gday’s face, and taps No Man’s Land to exhaust the ready Alpha Primitives, JUUUUUUUUUST in case Gday’s got that annoying Gateway ready to go.

Gday 29, Spud 27

Gday has turn 6, and plays Annihilus – Ultimates (flipping Negative Zone Gateway at long last to make him stick around). Spud finally uses his Call In A Favor, pitching a spare KGBeast to dig out Charaxes – Killer Moth. He forms with Julia in front of KGBeast, intentionally leaving KGBeast as a breakthrough window (if Gday takes the bait, Spud can’t lose a character this turn, and feels he’ll win next turn).

Gday does indeed decide to swing through KGBeast when he discovers Spud has enough cards in his KO’d pile to power Charaxes, causing 15 damage total through the soviet bruiser. As Spud hoped, Gday can’t get through Julia with his Illuminati members, and passes.

Spud sends Killer Moth through Annihilus, tapping the Asylum for 2 extra ATK. It’s a dual stun, and Spud fires Charaxes’ power to KO the opposing 6-drop. However, it turns out this was just the bait in Gday’s trap– he plays The Annihilation Wave to KO all stunned characters, which isn’t tough considering he has none himself! Spud loses KGBeast and Charaxes, but consoles himself by sending Hush and Julia into Gday’s face.

Gday 10, Spud 6

Spud doesn’t have anything terribly inspiring to play on 7, but realizes he can at least manage a 6-drop. He puts down Omega Flight to team up, then plays Alpha Flight Reborn to recur and replay the lost Charaxes. Gday’s deck doesn’t actually CONTAIN a 7-drop, so it’s no shock to anyone when he underdrops a 5-drop Annihilus with a mind gem, followed by two Alpha Primitives in the hidden area.

Spud can’t explain why, but he finds all those ready hidden characters very threatening, so he sets about a plan to get them tapped down. He sends Julia Carpenter and Hush into Annihilus, and once it’s legal, he pays 1 with Hush to tap the devourer, and then plays a Flying Kick on Charaxes, and a Smiles, Everyone! on Annihilus. These two plot twists trigger Julia’s power, and she taps down two of the Primitives. Annihilus stuns and KOs, but takes Hush with him.

Gday plays Realm of the Mind to cause a discard, not really in response to anything.

Spud sends Charaxes direct for 16, then finishes off with a tapping of No Man’s Land to exhaust the last ready Primitive. With the score in his favor, Spud passes.

Gday cackles, “THE GAME IS MINE!”

He plays… The Annihilation Wave, KOing Spud’s 4-drop.

“That felt good, didn’t it?”

“Damn straight.”

Final Score: Looney Bin 1, /r/ Moar Cards -11

Yikes. I don’t know exactly what it is that makes Moar Cards able to pump out all this damage, but this is now two games where it’s just absolutely savaged the opponent. It has absolutely no pump and nothing bigger than a 6, but somehow it knocked the Inmates to a single point of endurance.

Scary.

Ah well… my remaining deck advances to Round 3. I’m a happy Spud.

NOW PRAISE ME!

-Spud

Yaknow what? I’m tired and it’s late. You get no preamble and no illustrations.

Because I’m a jerk.

-Spud

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Psycho Reservists (Pablo) vs. Task Force: Revenge (Spud)

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Pablo wins the dice roll and takes odds. Pablo mulls his opener, while Spud hits his mulligan condition and keeps. Turn 1 is uneventful– Pablo passes, while Spud drops Sue Dibny to search out Booster Gold, and then smacks for 1 direct.

Pablo 49, Spud 50

Spud has evens, and drops Maxwell Lord on 2, pitching another Maxwell Lord to search out Justice League Task Force. Pablo shows his love for fisting, recruiting Razorfist and Iron Fist (getting Wolverine – Secret Avenger from the rally).

It goes to combat, and Spud makes the only attacks he can without pump: Maxwell trades with Razorfist, and Sue trades with Iron Fist. The latter two are lost to recovery.

Pablo 45, Spud 47

Pablo has turn 3, and puts down Captain America, hoping to rally into something to fill his last point– but it hits a plot twist and misses. He passes to Spud, who also has to underdrop, putting Terra Man on the board. Spud flips a Justice League Task Force from the row to team up, and then brings out a free Mr. Mxy, who forms at the corner of an L, hoping to exploit Pablo’s lack of flight to get a reinforcement this turn. Spud flips and fires Executive Privilege, also hoping to hit a 1, but hits Ruin instead. Pablo flips The Contract before combat.

Pablo burns for 3 at the start of combat thanks to Razorfist, then starts his attacks by sending Cap into Maxwell Lord for a dual stun. Next up, Razorfist runs into Mxy to bounce him, and then dives into Terra Man. He plays Call Down the Lightning from his row, replacing a 3-drop Punisher to put RF at 6/5 to try to dodge the stun– but Spud flips a second team-up to go to 5/5 and get a dual. Max and Razorfist bite the dust in recovery.

Pablo 39, Spud 40

On 4 it’s back to Spud, who recruits Emil Hamilton <> Ruin and a new Sue Dibny, who grabs Atomic Skull when she hits play. Mxy also rejoins his comrades.  Pablo’s recruits are equally swarmy; Dagger and Fusion hit play, and then Pablo plays Avengers Reassembled with boost to row a 2-drop Hawkeye <> Ronin, who attempts a rally to kill Sue Dibny– and fails, hitting another plot twist.

Spud’s first attack is the unstunnable Mxy into Fusion; Pablo nukes a resource for a card (he’s drawing very little in the way of characters, so at this stage he’s not really “losing out” on a full recruit next turn), and since neither player has any pump, Fusion goes down. Spud then sends Terra Man into Dagger, flipping an inactive Toy Soldiers (both players have 4 characters) to pump up to 6/6. Finally, Ruin and Sue team to Pablo’s face, getting +2ATK each from the pair of Justice League Task Forces, to drop Pablo to 23.

Pablo elects not to put Captain America through Sue Dibny, as there’s nothing really to gain (Spud has no stunned dudes), and a single powerup will make Pablo lose another character.

Pablo 23, Spud 40

Turn 5 is theoretically Pablo’s kill turn, but the fact that Spud’s been matching Pablo’s swarm has meant that very little break has been caused. That said, he still gives it a shot– he drops Iron Fist, missing his third straight rally, and a 3-drop Punisher. Spud has a fairly beefy swarm in hand, but elects instead to exhaust Sue Dibny to UN General Assembly to grab the reinforcement-tastic 5-drop Martian Manhunter. Spud forms with Mxy and Terra Man in the back row, protected by Sue Dibny and Manhunter, respectively. Ruin is left unreinforced, as Spud wants to bait Pablo into triggering his power (at least, that’s what he says).

Manhunter makes Pablo’s attacks slightly sticky, so he declares Hawkeye and Cap into the alien– but Spud chickens out, paying 2 to hide him. The Avengers ready, and Pablo changes gears, sending Iron Fist into Terra-Man; he KOs a resource to play Spider Hunt, and then plays Call Down the Lightning to put Iron Fist at the 7ATK he needs to stun Spud’s 2-drop. Next, Fusion trades with Sue Dibny, with Mxy reinforcing in the back. Punisher bounces the now-unprotected Mxy, and Hawkeye trades with Ruin, who searches out Battle for Metropolis.

Pablo declares Punisher and Cap to the face to get Spud to unhide his 5-drop; but Spud gambles that Pablo’s not-very-beefy hand probably doesn’t have the fuel for a kill shot, and declares it hidden. His bet pays off, as the 2- and 3-drop are only able to put Spud at 19 (tie score). This leaves Spud with a ready 5-drop (11/9 thanks to two Battle for Metropolis), who he ploughs through Pablo’s beard. Spud loses Sue and Ruin to recovery, while Pablo loses Dagger.

Pablo 8, Spud 19

Turn 6 is likely going to be the last of the game, so Spud figures it’s time to swarm out with all the crap he’s been picking up from Executive Privilege (did I mention that? He’s hit two cards a turn off it. His hand is beeftastic). He boosts Booster Gold to regain a resource point, and then drops General Glory and 2-drop Atomic Skull. Pablo looks at the Skull and groans.

The bearded one debates his play for a while– he can play a 4-drop to try to block some break, or a pair of 2-drops to try to reinforce. In the end he figures there’s little different between the two plays, and simply puts Carnage on the board with no boost.

Spud’s first priority is to take the big red blocker out of the way, so he sends an 11/9 Terra-Man (6 face-ups, one Toy Soldiers, and two BFM) through him. Pablo powers up to reduce the break, and the two bite the dust. With Pablo’s board now wide open, Spud declares a 5-man team attack to Pablo’s face– he has 22ATK of flat stats showing, and each attacker is getting the benefit of two Justice League Task Forces, two Battles for Metropolis, and a Toy Soldiers, for 25 points of ATK bonus. He also tosses in a Mob Mentality for good measure, putting his opponent on -47. His final move before passing is to reveal a Blue Beetle from hand for Atomic Skull’s effect, stunning Punisher out of combat, and bringing Pablo’s endurance total to a nice, even -50. He passes to a wide-eyed Pablo.

This does not discourage Pablo, however– he plays Avengers Reassembled with boost to row a 2-drop Hawkeye, then plays The Big Three, boosting with that Hawkeye and another Reservist, to pump what’s left of his board, including the now-stunned Carnage. He sends a 5/2 Cap through Booster, and a 5/1 Hawkeye through Atomic Skull, to let the Psychos go out with a bang.

Final Score: Task Force Revenge 6, Psycho Reservists -54

Needless to say, that score would’ve been dramatically narrower had Pablo’s recruits leaned more toward visible guys– Spud got a huge team attacking bonus on 6 that he would’ve missed if he’d had to go through live bodies.

Aaaaaaaand I’m going to bed. No further commentary, and still no images, because I’m still a jerk.

-Spud