Prizes for the Battle of the Border

Everyone is leaving with stuff. What, might you ask?
Well, there is going to be:
* Complete sets of two Golden Age expansions in foil AND nonfoil
* Modern Age Rares
* Modern Foils
* Foreign Language cards
* EAs/Promos
* Secret Super Duper Earning Condition Prizes of Grandeur
* Comics
* Movies
* Jetpack Comics discount / Store Credit

And This.

Edit: Thanks to Casanovapooh on the realms for the playmat's emblem and printing them.

"Paint-shopped" by yo. Feel free to send me criticism, but I think it turned out good. Also, there's going to be 12 of these badboys floating around. That's right! 12! If there are 30 people in attendance (as projected), that means you have better than 1:3 odds of walking away with this pretty.

* Prize support helper people guys include Matt Robertson, Chris Miller, Scott Hamilton, me and others.

So what do you guys think? Is this stuff worth treking out to NH to battle it out for? I think it is.
- Alex "OSM" Lloyd

Unleash This! #4, In preparation for BYOT GA in Mass

Welcome back to the Unleash This! series, and this time around, I'll give an in-depth look into the deck I'm more or less going to play at Your Move Games's GA BYOT event this Sunday at 2pm.

As far as what I'm running, well, let's just say I didn't want to play something that is 'predictable' of me (ie choosing SF). Thing is, I'm well experienced with Spidey. Figured this would give me an opportunity to try him out in a different setting where he wouldn't have his black cat, his ESU or even Sensational Spider-Man. So I wrote down a short list of the other affiliations he's been on:
Fantastic Four
Marvel Knights
Avengers
SHIELD

Next I thought about what I'd run into. For my local meta, that includes revenge sqad, Doom, Morlocks and I'm thinking there'll be some more short curve/rush decks.

With MUN relatively recent, I thought it would be most fun to put my recently spent dollars to work, and from the above Spidey list, the Avengers seem to have the most toys to play with in Golden Age.
Now the list:
-----------------------------------------------------------
2 Rick Jones, A Hero's Best Friend
3 Wasp, Janet Van Dyne-Pym
4 Natasha Romanoff <> Black Widow, Super Spy
3 Quicksilver, Mutant Avenger
3 Hawkeye, Loud Mouth
3 Iron Man, Mighty Avenger
2 Hawkeye, Clinton Barton
2 Sub-Mariner, Namor
1 Spider-Man, Secret Avenger
1 Monica Rambeau <> Captain Marvel, Lady of Light
4 Captain America, Super Soldier
2 Spider-Man, Stark's Protege
1 The Sentry, Mighty Avenger

2 Mobilize
4 Avengers Assemble!
4 Switching Sides
2 Pathetic Attempt
2 Gift Wrapped
3 Against All Odds
4 Legendary Battles
4 Carrying the Torch
3 Stars and Stripes
------------------------------------------------------
The deck wants odds.

While this deck doesn't have that much tech, at a first glance it's (hopefully it is) obvious that this deck is packing a ton of combat control. In the BYOT format, I think players are going to rely more on the combat phase than we've seen in Silver or even Modern Age (Wolvie.dec / Illuminati).

That said, here's the turn-by-turn synopsis:
Rick Jones is really there to enable the team attack effects and to protect me from scary-huge attacks. By two it'd be nice to hit a 2-drop. Hitting Natasha means if you hit Quicksilver on 3, you get to stun 2 guys and attack to the dome and they lose a guy (Natasha nails the 2 or 3, Quicksilver readies after taking down the guy you team attacked).
Speaking of 3, I've found that while Hawkeye is preferred against rush, because your main 4 is Iron Man, you can play hawkeye against normal curve decks too and watch Hawkeye's attack soar! Really Hawkeye is there to make getting evens much easier to handle.
Quicksilver, while making good on the team attack mentioned above, he's great if you can get a 2nd out; an awesome thing about Carrying the Torch is that you can break uniqueness, so on turn 4 you can have your quicksilvers team attack into your opponent's entire board with a legendary battles.

So that covers your players for the first 3 turns.
Moving into turn 4, again because of Carrying the Torch, you can have both hawkeyes in play. Realistically, I'd only imagine doing this against kree or Sinister Syndicate or Moloids. Everything else, Iron Man is your man. Name him Captain America, recover him with stars and stripes and recover your entire board (note, he'll have to be ready or exhausted whenever an adjacent character would become stunned, so Dr. Silva has one up on Iron Man I guess).

Also note this is the turn Switching Sides goes online.

Going into turn 5, you have 3 choices, and really none of them are bad. Spider-Man is there to handle the opposition during their initiative, Monica Rambeau is there to add insult to injury and Sub-Mariner is just an all-around really great 5-drop. Need to find your latecurve characters? Hope to row a search plot from his leader effect. Go ahead Hawkeye, stun their 4-drop with your 7 attack! (5 + 1 counter from Iron Man plus 1 ATK from Sub-Mariner).

Turn 6 is cap. He's got potential both on and off init, is a leader, and is named Captain America. What's not to like?

Turn 7 is Spidey. If needed you can break uniqueness again. Ya'll know what he can do, exhaust the problematic dudes.

Turn 8 throw them into the sun!

Quick recap of the combos:
Quicksilver + Carrying the Torch + Quicksilver + Wasp/Legendary Battles
Hawkeye 3 + Carrying the Torch + Hawkeye 4
Iron Man + Carrying the Torch + Stars and Stripes

As of now, something that might still question you is why the 1 copy of Big Leagues? Well, no card in the game, imo, more truly captures the flavor of the format than Big Leagues.

Alex "Orange_Soda_Man" Lloyd is a frequent poster on the realms and can't wait to see how Spidey faires in a different environment. Whether he'll pervail with the help of his Idol Captain America or if he'll be accused of acting phony, we'll soon find out. If you've hacked into the Avengers Mansion and uncovered this information in time for your own gain come this Sunday, then power to you. The Avengers have been Assembled.

Seeking Help from Artist: Battle of the Border

Basically, I'm looking into buying some custom playmats from casanovapooh, but I'm no artist. Actually, I have no artistic talent at all.

I'm planning on getting the playmats for the top 2 players from each side of the border, Canada vs USA.

As for the details for the image, I was given this link for the dimensions.
What else I'd like:
The words "Battle of the Border 2008" on there.
n that, go wild. Use existing images. Draw your own. Anything. Even sign it if you want. What will you get? The undying love of all the participants, some point cards and some MUN rares.

Heroes: Activating Evolution TCG fanset details

I apologize for the lack of posts this week; testing with school can do that. However that shouldn't be enough reason for me to deprive the vs community of effort on my part, and I will deliver.

As many of you know, I've been working on a fanset for the Heroes tv show, and all that needed to be done was to template the cards. Well, I've downloaded the program used to make cards and have made some. Why don't I go ahead and show you one?


Oops, forgot to make it a rare. Well, it is. I'll edit this enty later.


Now, I know the image looks a little choppy, and that this card doesn't show you anything about the flavor of the set, so here's the definition of the two new keywords, Surge and Accumulative!

Surge: When this character enters play, at the start of the recovery phase this turn, put a surge counter on it.

While this character has a surge counter on it, its surge text is active.

Reminds you of cosmic-surge, right? Basically, the name was chosen for that reason. The big difference here is that you don't lose the counter when you become stunned, and you can get the counter even if you're stunned at the start of the recovery phase. It's meant to show how characters learn about their powers, and can learn to strengthen them or they might even learn new ones - like Matt Parkman and Hiro Nakamura. Just a quick note, surge may change or refer to an existing powers text or it may add a new power to the card for this developmental reason.

And the next keyword, Accumulative!
Whenever this character would be KO'd due to uniqueness, you may remove this character from the game instead. If you do, the accumulative text on this card applies to all characters that share the same name as this character.

This power relates to those who can get more powers, like Sylar, Peter and Monica. It would be a bummer if you worked so hard to get them more powers, and then just have them KO'd due to uniqueness and lose their powers, right? Well, Accumulative aims to ease the pain a little bit. You might even see the power "Accumulative: character X has all the powers character X has had this game."
Oh, that sounds powerful. If I didn't know any better, this set might have a theme about people with powers or something.

* I'd like to give a shout-out to lupercal over at vsrealms.com for his insights and help with cleaning up some of the text.

Unleash This! #3: Heroes comes to VS! (fan set)

That's right Heroes fans, the Heroes tcg: Activating Evolution Set (fanmade) is coming out soon! Over the past few months, I've been designing/tweaking my own fanset for Heroes. With it comes the addition of two new keywords, Surge and Accumulative! The set is 171 cards, 57 rares 57 uncommons 57 commons. Teams that will be featured include:

Heroes
The Company
Level 5
Petrelli
Bennet
Yagamotto
Sylar

I am just one step away from releasing this set to you guys, what to know what it is?

Templating! That's it! I have very nice looking word and excel documents for the set at the ready.
If you would like to take a look at the text version, I'd love to hear some input! All you have to do is message me via e-mail or PM me on vsrealms.com about it.

Additionally, if you have any image suggestions (I have around 100 or so), post up and I might use it.

Oh, and if desired, we can go through a previews system like what DCU went through.
I hope you guys are enjoying MEV previews.

Until next time,
- OSM

Marvel Evolutions Preview: One Man Army

Welcome back to VS Unleashed X-Factor preview week! This time around, I'll be giving you guys an exclusive first look at yet another legend card for Multiple Man! Just a quick recap on what's been previewed already for the guy so far:
Jamie Madrox <> Multiple Man 5
Re-Absorbtion
Multiple Man, Army*Hydra
Multiplicity

So, that makes for 5 previews (including this one) so far. Well, the theme for him certainly seems to be about how well he works with other copies of himself; He can bring multiple copies of himself out, he can reform himself into card draw and life gain, exhaustion effects and he even has attack pumps via Multiple Man 1's activate power. ... what is missing? What could UDE possibly have left in the tank to throw at us? How about this.





That's right, folks! Now he can maintain an entire board! Now, before you start thinking that this card is very situational because of there being a limit to the # of Jamie Madrox 5s you're allowed in your deck, TBS gave me permission to tell you guys a secret:

He's getting a 2-cost army character card too.

There. By now, your mind has 'prolly exploded. Mine has. While I'm recovering, let's break it down:
* low threshold means it's going to be usable from the get-go
* serves as a counter to ko effects
* makes Multiple Man resilient to mass-stun effects like Hawkeye or The Stamford Incident
* will only be a dead card when you don't care it is a dead card:

For this to be a dead card, the only two situations (I can think of) are if your characters aren't getting stunned, or more specifically if your opponent is playing stall. Why I don't think you'll mind is because against stall, how in the world will they be able to keep your board locked down? With Iceman, as I previewed yesterday? Psh, you can use your guys for other stuff. You can To Me My X-Men (since he's got army X-Men versions you'll surely be using), and let's face it: Iceman can only lock down one or two guys. You're going to have a banquet-full of MMs. It's gonna be like:


yeah. Just like that. Oh Snap is right.

Now, if only there were a way to stun your MMs ...
wait. Here's some synergy:
Marvel Zombies! go ahead, stun your MM and recover a character - then use one man army to recover the MM too! if you have two non-MM stunned characters, then with this two-plot combo you can go into the next turn with a full board.

Next up:
How many of you guys remember Harvey Bullock from DOR?

now, he used to be a big part of a GCPD stall deck. The point? Multiple Man from MXM copies affiliations, right? I tinkered around with this interaction, included Invisible Woman Invisible Girl and her affiliation to be able to pack cosmic radiation. The only problem with the deck? It was too easy for my board to be destroyed.

That problem is now solved, thanks to One Man Army! OK, I'll recover my board. And while I'm at it, let's cosmic rad, exhaust some MMs for Harvey, and exhaust some more characters.

Another thing about this card --> It isn't phase-stamped. Use it whenever!

Honestly, if we get a generic "Stun a character you control --> Do X." card or a cosmic rad for Multiple Man, there's going to be a ton of crazy stuff that you could do with him, not that there isn't already a ton of awesome things that can be done with him now.

'Later gang, and thanks for reading!

Alex "OSM" Lloyd is currently suffering from multiple-tosis, and his mind has exploded from many ideas based around multiple man and multiple teams and crazy recovery-ready-exhaustion shenanigans like the one posted above. If you think you are suffering from multiple-tosis too, post here with your symptoms and we as a community can come up with a diagnosis.

Mavel Evolutions Preview: Iceman, Jack Frost

Welcome to VS Unleashed! I hope you're thoroughly enjoying X-Factor previews Week; Just incase you haven't seen all the previews thus far, check here.

Bobby Drake has had 6 versions until now; 4 of them involve keeping people down cold. You'll be happy to know that his flavorful theme continues:



Now, before I get into my impressions of the card, lets break him down:
* average 3-drop stats
* range
* fits the energize theme
* awesome picture
* his power:

Let's get into that. He basically can "lock down" two characters a turn. Starting turn 3. Um, wow! He is useful both on-init and off, since his power isn't phase-stamped or step-stamped. That said, his power is usually going to be optimized on your initiative, since lock down effects on-initiative are pretty much the same as off-initiative exhaustion effects (except better).

Now, this guy doesn't say remains exhausted this turn, but rather he remains exhausted. I don't think that's broken or anything, far from really. If you're facing off against quickfate, where characters can ready and attack again, this serves like a force field projection. That said, and what the biggest thing to overcome I think, is that he can only target exhausted characters.

That's fine and dandy for anyone who attacks, but here's something that might throw a wrench in your gameplan; his energize will trigger after the attacker has already exhausted. That means this guy has a huge target over his head. That said we've seen plenty of exhaustion effects in the form of Cyclops, Polaris and Concussive Force that should make this potential problem disappear.

Now, just based off of the previews we've seen so far, it seems X-Factor seems to be a bit of a stall team; I'm impressed. I'm impressed, and, I see potential. Possibilities. Who would you team this guy up with? #1 on my list is the Inhumans; waking the ancestors and consistancy and Attilan make for great stall tools. You'll be locking down so many characters, just imagine your opponent's frustration. Then there's the Spider-Friends; Gift wrapped, Sensational, and one of the game's strongest draw engines make for a good fit as well.

In Golden Age, this guy might be a tech pick against Rigged elections and is sure to see play in the GA X-Stall deck. Silver, as I mentioned the Inhumans and SF have synergy. Modern, well let's wait for the set to be released, but as of now, I think it won't have as strong of an effect; Hulk can go hulk 3 - brood - hulk 5 to straight-ko him, society can steal him, and Wolverine Direct Attack.dec can team into him first, then go to the dome. Then again, I think X-Factor definitely has/will have the tools to slow down that deck, and maybe that will be enough. For modern, again, it's too soon to tell.

If you have any combos, suggestions or would like to post your thoughts on Iceman, Jack Frost, feel free to post so and I encourage it. Check back tomorrow for more MEV Previews, and if you haven't already, check out VS-Blog.com for another preview!