Whats got you excited? will be a new installment for this preview season of MEV. In it, I will highlight cards which I think will be on my top list, and explain why it is that I like them so.

We’re into week 2 of previews for this new set, and I’m sure most of the VS world will agree with me when I say, WOW.

Some intense cards have popped up this week, but I think the thing on everyone’s mind is the new mechanic that we were introduced to; Shift. The ability to pay for future recruits, and the ability to completely maximize, (and in many instances, cheat more) one’s resource points seem to be the central theme to the Exiles, who, from  what we have seen so far these last 2 weeks, seem to be one of the teams to beat once this set sees release. Being able to fully use your resource points is one of the key factors to winning games, and the fact that this team does it so easily will make them the focus of many power decks, and will probably be one of the first Tier 1 teams to come from this set.

Moving on;

We saw some really cool cards this week that showed us that Shift and the Exiles will be fun and competitive to play with. We saw 2 new legends, and probably one of the most powerful Legend cards out there, but looking past all that, we also got to see a card that has me totally excited, and hoping that I pull a four of.

This guy has me excited for a few reasons. Firstly, I’ve always been a fan of the famous webslinger, and ever since I got into VS, I’ve loved building decks that feature him. While the curve for Mono-spiderfriends has improved dramatically in the past couple of expansions (including a fantastic 3 drop in MUL, and a game-winning six drop in MEX) it always seems that the best spideys are hard to keep on the table, mostly because their unique characters, and its always hard to draw into those oh so necessary Carrying the Torch that you need to keep up board parity. Miguel Hara changes this dramatically though, for the following reasons;

• He’s a spiderfriends 3 drop
• His name IS considered to be Spiderman, which means he’s targettable by all those cool Spidey legend pt’s including Giftwrapped
• He has the same stats as other spider-men on

• He can exhaust on turn drops, something MUL Spidey can’t do.
• Since his name is Miguel, you don’t have to be worried about him KO’ing when you play 4 drop Spidey.

Sure, his power removes him from the game, but it might not be too far of a stretch to team-up the Spider-friends with Exiles, especially seeing as the core Spider build is pretty flexible when it comes to teaming up. I’m sure playing Sensational Spider-Man along with another 4 (say, Mimic maybe?) would defeinitely make for a strong and fun play =)

Here in my neck of the woods, its something that pops up every once in a while. You see, the majority of guys that I play with, and those that most often frequent my HL are very much a casual player base. We don’t own the moeny rares, we haven’t had the experience of playing VS (or any other TCG for that matter) in an enviorment where being competitive actually paid off.

(I don't know who this guys is, just popped up after google image search, seemed good enough)

Sure, we enjoy winning (who doesn’t?) But we never really honed that edge that many others out here in Cali have, that edge that pushes them to win, and that makes them very formidable players. I for the most part, don’t mind the competitive player, those that truly were competitive when the game was intense, are for the most part nice guys that will help you out and give you pointers if you ask for them. But make no mistake, when these guys play, they play to win,

So what is one to do? Lets say you have your own HL, and want to encourage new players who want to learn and play their janky, not so powerful decks, but also want ot keep those competitiveminded players who can help your HL grow and flourish. Create new rules. Shake up the woodworks and use new constructed formats that force players to build new decks, and use rules that will even the terrain. Force cards that you might deem too powerful out, but allow for creativity and flexibility. If you do it right, most people will be happy. We do it at our league every week, and while we’ve lost some players, they still show up from time to time, and they respect the rules that we enforce.

It might not be the best of both worlds, but as long as you get a balance, everyone will have a good time. And thats really the basis of this (or any other) game isn’t it?

I’ve been playing with the new MUN set since it came out this past month, and I’ve got to say, its phenomenal. Actually, one of the things that been hard for me to write about is the fact that, even though the sites original premise was to try and give players with smaller wallets a way to play competitively and still stay cheap, I myself can’t really give that great advice, seeing as Josh and I both put down some cash and decided to buy a whole case for our selves. Still there are some teams that look like you will be able to build on the cheap, and thats one of the teams I’ll talk about now.

Say hello to
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This card is pretty much what makes your average avengers deck the NUTZ! Add the fact that the majority of your avengers team up is uncommon, with the only solid rares for the deck being
Avenger Reassembled
Punisher, Secret Avenger
Spiderman, Outlaw
Wolverine, Secret Avenger

You can totally build this deck on a budget. Just sub either Justice or Tigra for Punisher, and run a full 4 copies of Black Panther on 5 and you’re set. All the rallying and resource replacing will be more than enough to ensure you hit your drops, and will allow you to smash face into your opponents, all without you skipping a beat.

I’ll try and build a Random Punks Avengers build soon, just so I can give a more fleshed out deck lists of a inexpensive, but winning deck.

Well, that morning, I got into work at 5 in the morning, and seeing as I thought I’d be off by 2, I figured I could go home, build my deck, get some rest, and then head out to the Realms for some light playtesting, before heading to the tourney.

Thats not what happened.

I ended leaving work at 5, and having no time to build my deck, I headed home to pick up my DLS and DSM cards, after which I sped to Realms, with the idea of building a Darkseid deck, based around “All Hail Darkseid” and using “Hordes of Apokolips” and “Dark Fury” to up my ATK, and do double burn damage by equipping my characters with “Beta Clubs”

Unfortunately, that was not to be the case.

Josh failed to show up with the DSM box i had let him borrow, and as such, many of my power cards were gone. Add to that the fact that I had built a Darkseid clone deck, thinking that both “Ancient Throne” and “Ancient Evils” mentioned Darkseid’s Elite somewhere in their text; lo and behold, they didn’t. So after a few minutes of “man I’m screwed” I ran with a deck Josh and I had both thought about taking, and whose skeleton, Andrew just happen to have available in one of his decks;

Gotham KO

I’ll post up the decklist a little later, but let me tell you, it sure got the job done.

RD 1 Ludin, playing Team Superman

My KO of his 3 drop (Thanks to the crux of the deck, GCPD HQ) sent him back, and after negating some search, and sending his 5 drop Metropolis Marvel to the KO pile as well, Ludin scooped, unable to have come up with a character to play

RD 2 (1-0) Patrick, playing x-men off-curve

Playing no 1, and then TIm Drake, and then Huntress concealed put me back a ways. After that, a nice “Power nexus” to stun my 4 drop bats on his intiative was enough to slow me down and let Pat easily grab the win.

RD 3 (1-1) Wayne(?), playing X-men curve

While it was kind of close through most of the game, his guys just ended up getting too big for me to plow through. Not just that, but being forced to overcommit on Colossus to KO him and not risk him being recovered was enough to put the game out of my favor, and into his.

RD 4 (1-2) Billy Zonos, playing FF4 fantasticar

I honestly think Billy wasn’t having the best night, and it got no better against me. He missed 1 and 2, while I had curved with alfred, huntress, and Babs. He dropped Luke on 3, and IW (the doom one) on 4. But my KO of both his Luke and 5 drop Reed but him back a lot. After that, I KO’d his six, and then used babs to seal the deal, discarding 4 cards to get a +8 from “Taking Aim” and winning the match.

RD 5 (2-2) Christine, playing Underworld

Did you know that Gotham Knights is one of the few affiliations with a stamped hidden hate card. Guess who knew, but forgot to include it in his deck; thats right, me! Luckily for me, Chrsitine had a terrible draw, and wasn’t able to get anything online till turn 4. Couple that with Tim Drake absorbing damage thanks to GCPD HQ, and I was able to pull off the win with relative ease.

Finals (3-2)

My record was enough for me to make the top 4, but I was nearing exhaustion, and after pairing up with Patrick again, I knew chances were slim for me to pull off the victory. It became even more saddening as, even after my mulligan, all I drew was characters for the 4 turns, and all those characters were already in play. Pat got the win, but I still had a blast.

You see, in honor of the BYOS events being sanctioned by UDE, as well as the fact that when it comes to building on a budget, BYOS is one of the coolest options, we’ve decided to honor Sets. BYOS is awesome because it gives you a limited card pool, and allows you to make flavorful as well as competitive decks. It allows you to find focus, and also makes it cheaper to build decks, seeing as you only have to invest in a set that features heroes (and villains) you feel a connection with. With this is mind, Run and I came up with this little project.

We’ll take it all one week at a time, and we’ll learn different things about a given set each week. Hidden Gems, High Tier Decks, story lines that influenced the set, we plan to discuss all that and more. It should make for some very fun, and hopefully very informative, 22 weeks or so.

And which set are we gonna start this all off with? While it would make sense to go straight from the beginning, Run and I felt that maybe the least loved sets should get the love first, and after a coin flip, this guy came out a winner. For our first installment of Ready, Set Love, we present;

Released officially on September 20th, 2004, the Web of Spiderman expansion for the VS system marked the second Marvel expansion for VS, and would be one of 2 sets released that would only feature 2 teams as its focus. While many consider this among the weaker sets, and most notably, as the weakest Marvel set, it did end up having some impact on the game, most specifically with some of the legacy cards that it provided for teams from the previous set. It also had the honor of introducing the first of what would later become many different keywords. For this set, it would be one that I have greatly enjoyed; Evasion.

Well, thats all I have time for today. Stick around, as we plan to cover a lot more about the Web of Spiderman expansion, and the impact it had when it first came out.

Did you check out Stu Barnes article on the mothership yesterday? Along with being full of his usual clever and encouraging writing style, it also happened to talk a small bit about our HL, and used the pics that I posted up last week, showcasing our champs.

Not only that, but he called me a CREATIVE GENIUS! While I definitely appreciate the statement, I also feel that I’ve got to give the blog a little more love, as well as make some tweaks here and there too truly earn that remark.

Luckily for me, Runaway and I have been coming up with some schemes to keep us more involved with our blogs, as well as making it all fun.

Be ready, because fun and games are definitely coming up, and it all starts next week.

He’s been sitting on this card for I think close to a week, and the cheeky bastard wouldn’t even give me a hint as to what it is. “Why kill the anticipation I know you get when waiting for a preview. Why destroy that small piece of imagination and fantasy you got going on, as you try and figure out what the card is, or what it might do? You know you love it.”

Whatever!

In any case, I recommend all you guys to stay close to your computers, as RUN let slip that the preview should be up first thing Tuesday. And when I say first thing Tuesday, I mean, when the clock here strikes 12.

BTW, we’re on Pacific Standard time.

And who took home the sweet Insanity card, Roshambo?  TheBravanadtheBlog’s very own Run!

Run magicked his way to a 3-0 standing with his Shadowpact deck, which used Blackbriar abuse, along with the Fate set to make large characters that hammered the competition.

The meta consisted of the following:

1 DWF Super/Bat ladies

1 MVL Fan4

1 DLS Subsitbuse (my own)

1 DLS Emerald Eye legend

1 MAV Avengers Reservist.

While I didn’t get the 1st place (I actually ended ranking 4th =/ ) I still had a blast, and I can’t deny that we all walked away happy with our participation cards, and 2-4 were definitely happy with their Superman/Batman robots.

Now, if only I could build a deck to put him in…

In any case, as we got closer, Run started suggesting that I should maybe run one of his more powerful builds, and he would run the other, (In this case, Worlds Finest, and a fairly strong Insanity build) but he had recently just built (see here) an interesting deck that I wanted him to play. To encourage it, I decided to go with a completely odd build I had been working on for a while. As such, I went with this little thing I had posted before.

Thats right ladies and gentlemen, I played the Knight deck!

Knightly Aspirations (redux!)

9x Aspiring Pawns

2x Surveillance Pawns

2x Jacob Lee

3x Sarge Steel

4x Graziella Reza

1x Fire

4x Harry Stein

2x Amanda Waller

1x Roy Harper <> Arsenal

Locations

4x Birthing Chamber

3x Secret Checkmate HQ

3x Brother Eye

4x Brother I Satellite

3x Rook Control

2x Hunte Castle

2x The Hellfire Club

Plot Twists

3x Poker Night

3x Ravaged

3x Relentless Pursuit

2x Furious Assault

While still not completely fine tuned, the deck played fairly well, and did the exact job which I wanted it to do, stun my opponents by the sheer oddness of the deck, and manage to make it a little difficult for them to beat me.

The meta at the tourney ended up being a lot more modern than silver, with just about everyone running
Modern decks with a few key Silver cards being put in. I chuckled a bit as one of the players was running a JLA build with the Fate Set as his silver deck. Heh. I did end up having a blast though, and though I don’t remember too much, I’ll give a brief rundown of how I did.

Round 1 Against TBZ!

My first match pitted me against VS very own Billy Zonos. He ran a Fan4 deck that looked to abuse “The New baxter building” to draw excessive cards, as well as giving him a reason to run Unstable Molecular Suit, and other doohickeys. Needless to say, when I first put out my Pawns, he was quizzical, and he was the first to shout “What madness is this?” when I played Harry on 4. I tried to Pop off his attacking Thing on turn 5 with Roy, and ran into clobbering time. After that, being behind a resource (as well as realizing then that i had forgotten to put in Huntress) led to a route, not in my favor.

0-1

Round 2 RocketGurls Jean Grey legend deck

This game might have gone in my favor, had I not missed Harry on 4. After that, Jean got huge, and while I was able to stifle damage, I just couldn’t get over his 2 huge Jeans, and after he dropped 8 drop Jean, and played Bodyslide on his 2 Jeans, all I could do was scoop.

0-2

Round 3 ?’s IG Concealed deck.

Both decks curved out well, but me pulling Owl-Man into the visible with Relentless Pursuit apparently proved to proved to frustrate a great amount of his plans, as well as my board getting bigger and bigger each turn as the pawns kept on getting bigger. My stunback of his White Martian on turn 5 put him to low to win the game, so I got the W.

1-2

Round 4 Daisuke Hanaoka’s World Finest/JLA

This was a bit of a rematch for me, as the last time I had played Daisuke had been at the top 8 table of MW LA’s BYOS tourney. I had lost there, and it happened again, as his 4 drop Wonder Woman redirected a crucial Ravaged, and his 14/14 Superman proved an annoyance that refused to get stun.

1-3

Round 5 Bye!

I got to play against Erick twice during my bye, and the deck finally hit all 4 gears running, as it got 2 wins against his MKKO. Lets just say that with all my bonuses finally going for me, I was able to hit for over 25 pts of damage on turn 3, and Erick couldn’t mount the comeback.

All in all, Run and I had a blast, and I achieved my goal of puzzled looks from my opponents, as I played many cards they forgot existed. My new goal is to tweak this to the best I can, and after that, maybe take it to a big Silver Age tourney, hopefully sporting an Aspiring Pawn on my hat, a la Stu Barnes with his Wild Sentinel.

(I think thats enough)

So yesterday marked a cool occasion at our Hobby League. You see, last week Josh and I decided to attend Erick’s “SoCal boring Silver” tourney out at Edgeworld. There we found to our surprise and amusement that a lot of the players were Realms regulars, and recognized us from our screen names on realms, and thus knew that we were trying to get our own HL started in Fullerton. After confirming times and locations with us, we went about playing in the tourney, and as we left, they mentioned that they would try and see if they could make it on Wednesday.

And make it they did.

When I got to HL on Wednesday, I found that about of the “regulars” from Edgeworld decided to join us. Not just that, but our other 2 members from HL decided to invite some of their friends over as well. All in all we ended up having about 14 people attend, which made for some real fun times. I decided to try a new deck out (I’ll post it up later) and ended up going 3 and 1 for the night with it, and playing a much different set of decks that I’m used to  playing, and having a blast doing so.

So, like I said last time, if you’re trying to put together a Hobby League, don’t lose hope, you never know when you’ll encounter some folks who want to play VS just as much as you do.