Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Unleash This! #8, OP? I have your 2009 OP right here.

Let me first start by saying I hope you all are enjoying / have enjoyed the New Year celebrations.

Looking back at 2008, well how do you feel about our first PC-less year? Maybe I'm completely off my rocker, but it felt like we had more events then during the PC years; a feeling I think manifested from extensive travel to said events from a personal level.

I know you're worried about a couple things, like whether or not UDE will release more sets, or if we'll get more OP from UDE. Today, with this entry I'm gonna say screw that ideology. The Battle of the Border was the greatest success of any homegrown event I could have possibly imagined, and I am glad to be able to say more events like the BotB will happen within the first fiscal quarter of 2009 and beyond.

First up, the January Beatdown kits. while I've heard this 3rd person (thus if I'm wrong please correct me), but my understanding is that a kit was/is available to order for January.
Next, we have the Super Saturday NY coinciding with comicon, the weekend of Feb 8th. Major props to Filth & gang for putting this shindig together.
Then we've got Battle of the Border: Texas Edition the weekend of March 13th. If you're thinking about going (whether you're sure or not at this point), be sure to post in the thread on it to let unclechawie know. Also, unclechawie, keep up the good work.

... unfortunately, things look as if I won't be able to attend BotB: Texas Ed. And that is because I've been asked to help out with:

Anime Boston: VS Infiltration!*
Yeah, a local shindig for me. Good friend and fellow vs enthusiast Alex "Exiledforcefrea" Lasky is hooking us up with a weekendful of goodness. Look forward to standard constructed formats as well as Super X-over. That said, details are still being developed and things can change. This is my current understanding for his intentions for events. Again please correct me on this if I'm wrong.
This event will be May 22-24.

And that leaves us with ... Super Saturday SoCal!
My understanding of this event goes back to the "Is 12/20 too soon?" local events thread, when Eric originally wanted the Super Saturday in mid/late December. That event became the holiday event for his store and intends on having another event upcoming TBD.

That's pretty much it so far vsworld! Events packed with awesomesauce to last us through May! Great times, and Happy New Year indeed.
- Alex "OSM" Lloyd


* That's not the actual name. I said it just because I thought flavor-wise it was fitting since VS is going to be in AB, where in previous years we haven't had vs events there.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Unleash This! #7; Name this Deck

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Wow, what a crazy couple weeks it's been huh? I hope you all had a fantastic holiday with family, friends/equivalent.

I'm back after doing the tango on my school finals and the Christmas retail rush seems to have died down, I now have some decent energy to put into some hopefuly entertaining literature (would I call this stuff literature? no. But I work at a book store and as such I'm required by law to use big words =/)
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And that brings us to this week's entry. I was playing some MEV sealed with some of the BotB participants a couple weeks ago, and two cards popped out in my matches as performing rather stellar: Alex Wilder and Random, Alex. Jeremy "Sheye" on the realms joked that I should make a deck whose theme was that all the cards shared my first name -> well without further delay, here we go!

We know we need Alex Wilder and Random, Alex in the deck for thematic purposes. Luckily, their drops don't conflict. Although, there isn't too much synergy between the two. We might have to go into Golden Age to make this work, but that said I want this to "feel" like a modern age deck ... let's see what this gets us
+ 4x Alex Wilder, Child Prodigy
+ 4x Random, Alex

Who else is named Alex? After doing a quick search on Marvel.com, DC and wiki, we've got Havok and Alexander Luthor to add to our arsenal of vs cardboard. So, now we're up to 4 affiliations. Great. Lucky for us though, Villains United are very good at teaming up. Not only that but they even have a searcher whose name is Alex!
+4 Alexander Luthor, Duplicitous Doppelganger
+1 Alexander Luthor, Insidious Impostor
+3 Alexander Luthor, Diabolical Double
(Are you loving the alliteration these 3 Alex cards? I am.)

Let's talk about Havok. After doing some research [read: reading parts of a wiki article], Alex Summers is a pretty deep fella'. He's played many roles in his various teams, ranging from the Living Pharoh's play toy to the leader of X-Factor. Did some traveling with Wolverine, fought some terrorists in Mexico, and had a thing for Polaris.

While the most vs-scene impact Havok gave us was his 4-drop from MXM, unfortunately Havok, Critical Mass won't be making the list today. While GA cards are fine, putting him in would feel too golden and would stray away from the Modern feel I want the deck to have.
+2 Havok, Age of Apocalypse
+3 Havok, Mutant X
+2 Havok, Proud Son

And what would having Havok in mean without having his brother*?
+1 Cyclops, Mutant Messiah

While looking around at some other Alex lore, I found this. We got a Sentinel O*N*E* in MUN, but this deck is pretty stretched as far as affiliations go already. Instead, let's add Valerie Cooper to the deck. She's got some background in the O*N*E* program, or at least her flavor text says she does. Also, she's X-Factor. That'll be important later.
+ 4 Valerie Cooper
+2 Layla Miller (if you combine letters from her name and the "X" from X-Factor you can spell Alex. It's the truth.)

So before we leave the character discussion, we need some 3-drops. Well, with so many low cost dudes that are important, we might have to play dr. Light, Furious Flashpoint. What's cool about him is if you can recover from playing Alexander Luthor 1 on turn 2, fetching Flashpoint, and vengeance-trigger bring in Alex Wilder on 3. It gives you a ton of breathing space for recruitment, getting bodies on the board. This build is starting to seem a little character-heavy ... might need to do some cutting as we get further along.
+4 Dr. Light, Furious Flashpoint
+1 Dr. Polaris
+1 Riptide

So how are we doing?

4 Valerie Cooper
2 Layla Miller
4 Alexander Luthor, Duplicitous Doppelganger
4 Alex Wilder, Child Prodigy
2 Havok, Age of Apocalypse
4 Dr. Light, Furious Flashpoint
1 Dr. Polaris
1 Riptide
1 Alexander Luthor, Insidious Impostor
4 Random, Alex
3 Havok, Mutant X
3 Alexander Luthor, Diabolical Double
2 Havok, Proud Son
1 Cyclops, Mutant Messiah

38 characters! That's a little heavy, we'll have to do some cutting. But that'll wait until we're done with the plot twists.

Mutant Town Messiah: I like it. possible double-usage from Alex Wilder early on if teamed up, multiple uses of Random is good to preserve board going into the following turn. Making sure Random is the defender could be tough though ...

Underground movement: ding ding

Government Sponsored: Hm maybe there's something to this character-heavy deck thing. But with so many team-ups, we're not going to have too many tricks. Also, don't forget to team-up X-Factor and Runaways, otherwise Alex won't let you use his power.

Join us or Die: a bizarre move could be to force your opponent to only have one legal target to attack. lolol. Oh ... there's also the interaction with Dr. Light. Hey, that could be good.

So if I max those cards out, I have 6 slots left. Let's go with ... 3x Coercion and 3x Mobilize. Mobi might not be a 4x just because we have insane card draw/rally with Alex Wilder, Valerie Cooper, lexi and Government Sponsored, plus Dr. Light, our main turn 3 play, is searchable via Alexander Luthor. It's also worth noting that there are 17 characters that Valerie can hit in the deck.

Final List: Alex.dec

4 Valerie Cooper
2 Layla Miller
4 Alexander Luthor, Duplicitous Doppelganger
4 Alex Wilder, Child Prodigy
2 Havok, Age of Apocalypse
4 Dr. Light, Furious Flashpoint
1 Dr. Polaris
1 Riptide
1 Alexander Luthor, Insidious Impostor
4 Random, Alex
3 Havok, Mutant X
3 Alexander Luthor, Diabolical Double
2 Havok, Proud Son
1 Cyclops, Mutant Messiah

4 Mutant Town Messiah
4 Underground Movement
4 Government Sponsored
4 Join us or Die
3 Mobilize
3 Coercion

So there you have it! Version 1.0 of Alex.dec!**
























If your name is also Alex, I highly suggest you give this deck a spin and tell me what you think. To everyone else ... be sure to try making your own name.dec. Something truly chaotic and enjoyable might come out of it.
- Alex "OSM" Lloyd

* I'd add the other brother to this list, but Vulcan sucks. lol.
** I've never felt so good about a deck that has 10 1-drops and 11 team-ups in it ... ever.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Quick Heroes fanset link

So, I've been working on this for ... about 6 months now. That said, I don't even feel like I'm 2/3 done. Still to go, I have to take the text and put it onto card layouts, format the images, find the remaining images, and I want to redo the "vanilla" Heroes characters' theme as well as make minor changes here and there to be inclusive to the 3 new keywords (Sylar as a hunter? Flavor-hotness to the max).

But yeah. It's been long enough. Here's 171 cards worth of awesomeness:

http://rapidshare.com/files/175053548/VS_System_Heroes_TCG_Activating_Evolution.doc.html

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

It's Finals week!

This week and next week I've got finals, but afterwards well there's a ton of great things to look forward to! Including:
> The most ridiculous theme a deck could ever have
> Sealed play breakdown for MEV, including deck breakdowns/pools
> Maybe I'll actually get around to typing up a BotB tournament report for what I ran.

Thanks again for reading my stuff guys, and Keep VS in your prayers. We're not done yet; worst case is we take the game even further in our own hands. 'Till next time!
- Alex "OSM" Lloyd