Owenstar
Lets begin were we all began! Though for me it will be circular in nature which
you will shortly understand. I began my versus hobby/career/passion (whatever) where most games (for me at least) begin. My best friend John and I have always led the way among our group of friends when picking hobbies or anything really to break up the time.
From outdoor games of basket-brawl, to football, softball, and back into the house for those cold weather games of Monopoly and Heroquest. John and I have always led the pack curing boredom with our friends. We have played it all, from miniature games like HeroQuest, Warhammer 40k, and Battletech. We even invented a few of our own games just using the miniatures from others and making games that were fun and of the mind rather than restrictive like D&D. (Plus we used to smoke a ton of pot! Hahahaha so our minds were nothing if not creative)
So lets get to the cards right? We have played a bunch Magic, Rage (I loved this one), D&D, Vampire, Battletech (another really fun one), Star Trek, Star Wars, you name it about 15 years ago or so we tried it. Our group of friends for the most part hung in the entire time playing every game John and I jumped into. Sure it wasn’t cheap, but for the most part they came along just to see what we had gotten into. The passion never really burned as deep for any of them as it did for John and I. We simply couldn’t get enough, looking back I am glad we did it. As now that we are old and have families we have built in excuses for hanging out and wasting time together.
Ok, so back to the cards. Magic had caught on well with our group. The color wheel gave options to play so many decks. I loved the Agro of Red, Mike [liked] the death and horror of black (you have to know the dude, Joe patched together all kinds of random alternate fit wins decks or artifacts, Dave loved white, and John, my rival loved the control from blue decks. Everyone else fit somewhere in between. Magic was the game for us. Our group enjoyed it, but it didn’t hold us together as 15-18 year old guys.
We played Overpower, none of us understood how the game was actually meant to be played but it had comic book characters in it. Most of us had grown up reading comics, Mike worked in the local comic shop so we got smoking deals on product which is how our passion carried on for so long and through so many games. So Overpower was our real love, even though we had no idea how it was meant to be played. Making our own team with our personal favorite characters? You have to be kidding me! Looking back at how piss-poor the mechanics were and how difficult the game was to play, I cant believe we spent so much money on it. We loved it though and it probably laid ground work for VS to be made.
When Overpower went and reprinted many of its cards with some new mechanic everyone kind of lost interest. As kids who spent a lot of money we just didn’t want to do that again. So we played Magic but it was off and on. We hit an age where Jobs became reality and free time became less we kind of drifted apart. That’s not to say we didn’t all still hang out, it just wasn’t as much as we didn’t have that major excuse.
Fast forward a few years and Recharge hits the shelves! Whoo hoo this is it we think, but that fell on its face. Now we had been bitten by so many different games and most of our friends had really given up on John and my crazy games stuff. We really just had kind of given up. No one wanted to invest money that was now to mortgages and children into some silly hobby we wouldn’t continue playing.
BOOM! We had struck gold. A game that crosses over Marvel and DC? It plays
similar to chess? It’s not all based on luck? Had we just caught lightning in a bottle? To us yes we had. I found VS and brought it home to everyone. Of course my partner in crime was there from the start. He wasn’t gonna let me down. It took some time and convincing (not to mention the free cards) to get the other boys and girls all in, but it was well worth it. VS changed lots for our group, of the 8 people who play it most out of the 15 who know how, 4 are relatives of John. It keeps his family close! Some of our friends have dropped off at some point, but all of them keep a couple decks so when we are getting together, they too can join in.
I have so many “groups” I call home to. Lets call the one I just wrote about “Family” from now on. So the family group has done lots of really fun stuff. We have playtested for PCQ’s. We also read FAQ’s and would stay up playing before the release celebrations. We set up our own “hobby” league nights were we get together. We have had tournaments in our basements, ordering cases of the new stuff and playing sealed (inviting the actual store/hobby league guys into our homes). During the heyday we all attend our store’s hobby league and would even attend a few from the city 35 miles south. My favorite times have been our basement tourneys! Bring your own box, bitches! Hahahahaha. What we would do is order everyone a box of whatever set they wanted or could afford. John and I would buy two blister boxes of Spiderman and Marvel Knights or Superman to hand out as prize packs. So each person would get a box and donate 4 packs to the prize pool and we would rank the sets and throw in the cheap stuff too. I want to say even the last place person walked away with damn near 10 prize packs or more. We even ordered a set of the old tins once and had origins as prize packs to go with it. It was a blast cause you had no idea what you would face. I had so much product in my basement, it looked like I was a retailer. We are planning another one of these soon.
ONLINE: This was a new direction for us lowly basement players without high competition. I originally came online to search out card listings and previews. I went to all of the staples and started reading articles and such. I found myself fascinated by the community. Being a member of a few message boards prior to joining VS based ones, I had an idea what I was getting into. I was a great player in a small pond here at home. Meeting people online changed the way I looked at this game, but I will get to that later. So there I was learning more about VS than I probably ever wanted to. I honestly think what kept me online was the trading. I met guys like Mike Lopez, KardKrazy, VSU Dragon, and Ozzie from the TCG player site and became pals with them. I loved reading trade lists and trying to make trades. I got ripped off a few times, but it hasn’t stopped me. (And yes I remember each and every one of you and I will find you one day from California to Canada). I have traded beta magic cards for VS, I traded a PSP for VS. The trading community is what made online VS fun for me. I met lots of great traders at the realms too guys like Flashback, Lastchance, and Plaid Warlock. The TCG guys were always the fun to be around and chat with on AIM crew.
The realms guys were [mostly] dicks, thought I gained valuable insight on being a better VS player there. I loved reading about deck design and strategy. Updates on the Pro Circuit and what people were playing with. I know a lot of home school guys claim this huge hate on “net decking”. I always saw versions of decks being played in hobby league. VS cards go together in a multitude of ways, but avengers reservist is still avengers reservist no matter who made the deck. Small tweaks doesn’t change the premise behind how something is meant to work. I explained almost everything is a version of something else, so what is a net deck? I always changed my decks to fit the local meta. As a player who didn’t have time to work out all of the kinks, I enjoyed sharing ideas with other people. Net decking and online team playing really helped my game.
OSM Responds - The groups we enter the card game world with sure leave an impression. I'm glad you have such good friends that you have had these experiences with; it makes me think of the times I've turned cardboard sideways against my neighbor [Ryan]. On trading, I'm sorry that some of your trades have turned sour, hopefully the positive ones outshine the worse ones. You and I both have learned a ton from being members of the vs communities, from deck design to metagame adaptation. I'd be willing to accept your adaptation of netdecking, well except that there were people who would copy/paste the lists and run them. I'll be sending 10 MEV rares, 5 subset cards and a Coming of Galactus box!
One story left, be sure to check it out tomorrow!
- OSM
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