Teaching the massses…

So since I am back in college, I’m with all my college buddies again. And being the Video Game Design majors they are, they are always eager to learn new games. Enter Vs. System. So at two in the morning (standard college afternoon), I began to teach my friends how to play Vs. System. And it worked to varying degrees of success. One of my friends, Phil was playing Phoenix Wright the whole time, and making Yu-Gi-Oh jokes. I later dueled him using fake duel disks, cards, and acting ability. My other friend Dave, was very interested in learning, but I think the game is a bit too complicated for him. I’ll keep him on it. And my last friend, Steve seemed to grasp the game quite nicely and wanted me to give him a copy of Magic Workstation (since I only have a box of cards on me at school). Now I have a playtest partner once I get him up on the rules.

Gotta find Steve now, so I can give him Magic Workstation. See ya on the flipside

Gotta have some bling too….

So a while ago, I showed you guys my Modern Age Spidey Stall deck. I like it alot, still has to be tuned a bit. Now I gotta build a Silver Age deck. Now I’m pretty much done with Checkmate (unless it’s Infinity Gaunlet!) or Quicksilver. Bizarro is a good playtest deck, but I would PROBABLY not play it in a tournament. And I have a thing for drawing cards, it’s like a first date every time I draw a card. And I don’t mean those awkward “Hi, how are you? That’s good” and nothing else dates. Let’s just say the girls is usually a hussy after these dates (Music Man reference).

Anyway, here is the deck I like to call…..

Xavier’s Mental Hospital for Gifted Psychos

2 Destiny, Freedom Force

4 Sage, Tessa

4 Tarot, Hellion

1 Sage, Xavier’s Secret Weapon

4 Professor X, Headmaster

1 Psylocke, Armored Empath

3 Emma Frost, Friend or Foe

1 Jean Grey, Red

1 Madelyn Pryor, Goblyn Queen

2 Exodus, Acolyte

1 Rachel Summer <> Phoenix, Phoenix of the Future

27 Characters

4 Enemy of My Enemy

4 Against All Odds

4 Psionic Storm

4 Savage Beatdown

4 X-Treme Maneuver

4 Mutant Massacre

3 Mutopia

4 Duck and Cover

31 Plot Twists

2 Soul World

2 Locations

Standard X-Mental deck. Sage, Tessa is one of my favorite cards in the game because of her card drawing ability. Plus she doesn’t exhaust which I like even more. Basically its a curve deck. So standard make good attacks, get up-curve stuns, and use the 2-drop Sage to Massacre people. I was able to lock down one of my opponents with 2 Mutant Massacres on turns 3 and 4, and a constant recursion with Emma Frost on 5 and on. In the later turns, Emma is gold, she is incredible for brickwalling, up-curve stuns, KO’ing, drawing more cards, she does it all. Jean Grey is more vanilla to me, I don’t use her ability very often, but it does have its uses. Exodus has that suprise factor, you never expect his ability to be used, but when its used, its golden.  And on 8, Rachel is good game everytime.

As for plot twists, Against All Odds is a little clunky and doesn’t usually work without a Mutopia, but its still a solid effect. Other than that, you have your standard attack pumps, defense pumps, and KO’ing ablilities. If you can stun their Bizarro on 4, Mutant Massacre will make you smile.

So here’s my bling, and they’re all crazy. Check back tomorrow, I actually have class on Saturday. But afterwards I’ll be back. Maybe I’ll write up a match report on one of the games I play online. Later all.

Little bit of rust

So I played one game yesterday with my Spidey Stall deck against the well known inkedlawyer, Shane Wiggans. And I was dominated. I got my preferred odds, but misplayed on turn three after getting my Kate Kane brickwalled by Black Manta. I should have just used Crimson Band of Cytorrak to exhaust his Manta and Gift Wrap his Grodd. Other than that and a wasted turn 6 due to Coup, I played well enough by my standards. Now it’s time to play some more games. More to come tomorrow.

What’s the Meta right now?

Finally got my Mac installed with Windows so I can use Magic Workstation at college. I have to rebuild all of my decks again though :-/ However I made this first deck for Modern Age (It could also be Silver Age, I just need to see if there are some cards worth including). It’s a very toolbox-like deck designed around Aunt May/Spider-Man stall.

4 Aunt May, Golden Oldie

2 Wong, Mystical Manservant

4 Night Thrasher, Dwayne Michael Taylor

2 John Walker <> U.S. Agent, Loose Cannon

4 Barabara Gordon <> Oracle, Hacker Extroadaire

1 Hawkeye, Loud Mouth

1 Kyle Richmond <> Nighthawk, Heart of the Team

4 Spider-Man, The Sensational Spider-Man

1 Richard Rider <> Nova, Xandarian Nova Corps

2 Kate Kane <> Batwoman, Katherine the Younger

1 Mr. Sinister, Visionary Geneticist

1 Venom, Lethal Projector

1 Daredevil, New Kingpin

1 Batman, Cape and Cowl

1 Two-Face, Heads or Tails

1 Spider-Man, Stark’s Protege

1 The Sentry, Golden Guardian of Good

2 Onslaught

33 Characters

4 The “B” Team

4 Indebted

4 Gift Wrapped

4 Secret Defenders, Team-Up

3 Crimson Bands of Cyttorak

2 Chilly Reception

21 Plot Twists

4 Empire State University

2 Stark Tower, Team-Up

6 Locations

This deck runs like a stall deck. Mulligan for a way to get 4 drop Spider-Man. Usually everything draws into itself through search or card draw and The “B” Team is extremely versatile to get almost any character you need for the matchup. I love the three drop slot in the deck as all three have substitute so you can adjust your game plan midway through the game if need be. Against rush, 3 drop Hawkeye and Kate Kane is golden. Against curve, I still enjoy Kate Kane on 5 to get rid of an attacker. You want odds with this deck for Onslaught. Obviously if this were Silver Age, Galactus would be the 9 drop. Here’s a card for card breakdown of the deck. 

Aunt May- Auto 4 of, she’s that good, exhaust for Empire State, search for Spider-Man, she does her job well.

Wong- Mainly in the deck for The ”B” Team, but can search out Defenders cards for later turns and bounce back to the hand for “B” team. I like him alot.

Night Thrasher- Search for Team-Up, the deck can go offensive with multiple Secret Defenders and Night Thrasher can help find more. However I don’t like the early discard.

John Walker- I usually never play him and he is just “B” Team fodder, but reinforcement can be big.

Barbara Gordon- Card Drawing Machine!! I love her and with substitute, you can use her Free power, sub in another one, and use it’s Free. Drawing cards is my favorite thing to do.

Hawkeye- In for weenie matchups, and “B” Team fodder. Can be substituted in if I need to stave off the rush later in the game.

Kyle Richmond- Another Team-Up searcher, and has a big body to soak up damage, never upset to see him on 3 as he can be substitued out.

Spider-Man (4)- This guy is the glue of the deck, you miss him on 4, good luck winning.

Nova- “B” Team fodder, but I actually like his Backup ability on off initianves.

Kate Kane- Great card, love her, gets rid of an attacker, gets stun damage through, and can swing on 5 with preferred odds.

Mr. Sinister- Only Human on a Red, except they still have flight. Hardest card to get to though because of Unaffilation.

Venom- An alterante on initianve drop, that basically makes Spider-Man not need a Gift Wrap.

Daredevil- Great on evens, swing into a low drop and exhaust whole visible board.

Batman- Tech against Secret Society, and any other payment powers

Two-Face- Another alternate on initianve drop, Keeps the Gift Wraps for later.

Spider-Man (7)- Amazing card, Amazing art, just make sure you use his power after you finish attacking on initianve.

Sentry- This guy stops an offensive force all by himself. Make sure you attack with him if you have evens before you use his ability.

Onslaught- Finish Him.

Plot Twists

The “B” Team- Psuedo Enemy, the versatility of the card makes it the best choice for tool box decks.

Indebted- Another way to get Spider-Man, or if you have too many Spider-Mans, another Friend of the Spider.

Gift Wrapped- I love getting presents and getting them Gift Wrapped makes me happy.

Secret Defenders- I love this team-up because you can turn offensive with multiple copies and not worry as much about trading stuns.

Crimson Bands of Cytorrak- Most people don’t see this card coming, and around mid-game (turn 4 or 5) can really lock up a game for you and force it to late turns. ALWAYS target a four drop with it, unless there are circumstances that don’t make that the best play.

Chilly Reception- Additional on initiave exhausting power, sometimes overkill, but can turn a bad draw into a good turn with a couple planted ones.

Locations

Empire State University- I love drawing cards, and this does it for me. Exhaust Aunt May all day.

Stark Tower- Another team-up, but catches people off-guard when I swing with Kate Kane from the support row after activiating this.

There you go, that’s the deck. I’m still testing the deck online. It hasn’t been winning much, but I haven’t played much since August. Once I get the ins and outs of the game figured out again, I can have some success with this deck I believe. It’s very much like Patrick Yapjoco’s deck at the Mega-Weekend.

Now for the metagame, honestly, I’m only going on hearsay, but these decks I think will be prevelant in Silver Age…

Bizarro

Checkmate/Villians

Checkmate/LoA

World’s Finest

Quickfate

Outsiders/Whatever Army card people use

Torch Abuse

Obviously nothing that hasn’t been mentioned. Now for Modern Age…

World’s Finest

JLA

Spidey Stall

Torch Abuse

Guns Blazing

Outsiders/Army

JLA I believe is an underlooked deck. It has big characters, lots of ways to power-up, and can hang with World’s Finest with gives it credibiltity.

Obviously, this is just my opinion, and I’m still getting back into the game. I will be playing more and more, and some of my friends some school are interested in learning how to play, which makes me very excited, I might get to play real life games again!

The Phoenix is giving life to those who never had it.

You can’t leave something you love

Hello guys, my name is Jason Dishong, dietseto on VsRealms and d1sh0ng here, and I love VS. However we have had a rocky relationship. It began with the Beanie Boyz in Stroudsburg, PA (weird cause I’m from New Jersey). My friend Mike demoed the game for me, and before long, I was hooked. Made a Wild Vomit deck and took to my local gaming store which was now Dark Tower Games in Denville, NJ. Started going to PCQ’s, but one thing was consistent, I was terrible. I was a scrub. Yet I continued to play. 10k’s, PCQ’s, I didn’t care, hanging out with people that weren’t from my high school was awesome, I didn’t like high school. Anyway, Vs became my escape, sure I wanted to play on the PC, but I didn’t care how bad I was.

We had a team, it was the stupidest team ever, we were Team Stupid. We were a rock-jock team from the tri-state area that consisted of….

Jason Dishong

Robert Paasch

Matthew Glickman

Harvey Meeker

We dominated the local PCQ area, correction, THEY dominated the PCQ area, and by dominated I mean, one or two of them T8ed. They always tanked at the PC, but we always had a goodtime and if you know the phrase, “You’re a $10k”, that was us.

The team stayed together for quite a while, then Harvey got hitched, and left us cause that’s what marriage does. So the rest of Team Stupid forged on. And the greatest story of my Vs experience occurred soon after…..

It was GenCon 2006, my first GenCon ever. Me, Rob, and Matt got a hotel room with a rotating fourth person every night. This was also the same year as the Team $10k, and Team Stupid was ready to storm the scene. So Friday, Matt meets a girl and starts hanging out with her all day. She ends up spending the night in our room. The next morning we wake up to get ready for the tournament and Matt got a total of 1 half hour of sleep. I don’t want to know what happened so me and Rob walk to the Con as a two-man team. So we are looking for a third and we find one in the name of……

Duncan Tang.

And lo and behold, we go 8-2 in the swiss and make Top 8. But being the scrub I am, I went 2-8 in my individual games. However, I made $600, and I have Matt’s girlfriend to thank. By the way Matt and his girl are still together and are living together. I wish him the best.

That was the key, my key to the one place I had been wanting to go for years. The Pro Circuit. But then we had a falling out, the announcement of the reduction of prize money on the Pro Circuit. Then World of Warcraft came calling and I fall into that trap for awhile and shifted my focus from Vs. Then GenCon came around once more and I was torn, I had been with Vs for years, but she was ripping my heart out. Then there was WoW, who was amazing, made me happy, but was playing hard to get by not letting me onto her Nationals. So I stuck with my baby and played on the Pro Circuit. But I had NO preparation, and bombed at 0-4 drop. I was done at that point. No more Vs for me. I played WoW the rest of the day.

Then Saturday came and the BYOS $10k came. I had nothing to do that day so I figured, what the hell? I had brought a Checkmate/Villians United deck like everybody else did. Surprisingly, I went 7-3 and won $200. I lost to Common Enemy, Wild Vomit, and a Kree/Heralds Press thing. But I won every mirror match, and I went 7-3

All By Myself.

After GenCon, there was nothing to do Vs wise. The local store was focusing on WoW, and I hadn’t played a game since August. Then a couple of days ago, I went to VsRealms and checked out the forums and for some reason, I wanted to play Vs more than ever. So I downloaded Magic Workstation and just built decks and decks and decks. And I’ve never had more fun ever. This was just an intro, but for everyone out there this is the theme of my blog.

Phoenix Rising

Time to get leopard on my Mac so I get Boot Camp, and Windows, and Magic Workstation, so I can play at college. Good night.

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