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Top Teir Decks?
Topic Started: Mar 16 2012, 07:44 PM (1,500 Views)
Titustc
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Is it just me, or when looking at deck from tournament play, or "Golden Age King", or anything like that. Every deck runs, Straight to the Grave, Pathetic Attempt, Only Human, Cloak of Nabu, Slaughter Swamp, Avalon Space Station.
You are playing against the same few lockdown, and shuffle through deck quick cards, and then whatever character cards they want to run to call it a "---" that team deck. I'm not trying to insult anyone, but that takes no skill if everyone uses the same 20-25 cards to build a deck around and then add in other character cards, most of them not even from the same team(and I understand team ups) but when you have 4 different teams just to use Character A's ability to help out Character B who then shuts you down with Character C's powers. It seems to me that when the game first came out it took more skill to build a deck even some of the abusive powers, you couldn't just shut down you opponent on any card that they could play wither it a character or a plot twist. You can just shut them down with a plot twist, because other cards say that they cant target your cards.

Thats my little rant.
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OMB
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Those cards are in so many decks because they provide powerful effects that make decks better if you have the space for them. TNNB doesn't run any of those cards and still competes. Don't romanticize the past too much. In early stages there were two decks that ruled the game: Titans and Curve Sentinel. Dr. Light was in basically everything that won until he got banned.

It's been said before, but there are monsters lurking in Golden Age. There is a reason that many later events were not Golden format as people kept having to come up with new decks to compete as the old kings cycled out.

The real issues are that big time organized play is dead and, unless you're playing with council approved cards, the card pool has become fixed. The great decks have already been made. Once in a blue moon someone will find something new, but it's just not going to happen very often. One example was the deck that led to the errata on MVL Nick Fury. That deck was brilliant, but it probably would have been found a lot sooner if the PC was still around. Most of the staple "great" decks have been around awhile but since there are no new cards coming out they have become permanently optimized.

A game without support stagnates. It's just a fact. Your best bet to build new decks is to use some of the alternative formats that place restrictions on your card pool or use the council approved cards. Who knows? Maybe one day the license will be resurrected and the game will begin to grow again... We can all hope for the best.
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blues686
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hey if constructed becomes stale, you can always do the next best thing! draft or sealed! its a different experience everytime!!
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kariggi
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I think this is a very valid discussion on the topic http://w11.zetaboards.com/vssystem/topic/7284050/2/#new
and it includes my disection of the Nick Fury deck which includes none of those cards and is the best deck ever engineered in VS.

Which is why Nick had to be errata'd.
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VSzeus
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wow I never saw that deck before !!!!
AWESOME !!!
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Spider-Man2099
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Only Human is a card that helped kill the game in my opinion.
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Wallywest1988
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That card came pretty late and wasn't that easy to get a hold of.

In my opinion that card had to be made with the characters getting so rediculous. Cards like Lex Luthor, Metropolis Mogul. He alone shut down almost every deck aiming past 7.

Only Human only had to be played in some decks. I don't want to downgrade the card too much. Any deck with space it fits in.

Only Human was never on a pace that Pathetic Attempt and Omnipotence were. Those cards should not have been usable in reg formats, but since they were in the game they could make extremely good targeting effects knowing you could play things around them.
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Wallywest1988
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kariggi
Mar 17 2012, 04:36 PM
I think this is a very valid discussion on the topic http://w11.zetaboards.com/vssystem/topic/7284050/2/#new
and it includes my disection of the Nick Fury deck which includes none of those cards and is the best deck ever engineered in VS.

Which is why Nick had to be errata'd.
How did haywire not have loyalty? x.x

When they made the card did they not see it was breakable? It was obviously only made and aimed for squad yet no loyalty. Failed design.
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ukyo_rulz
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Titustc
Mar 16 2012, 07:44 PM
It seems to me that when the game first came out it took more skill to build a deck
When the game first came out, decks were built using the following algorithms:

1. Pick a team with oversized drops from turn one to five (or a way to consistently make those drops oversized)
2. Put all the oversized drops from turn one to five in a deck
3. Add as many good combat pumps as you can get ahold of
4. If there are any slots remaining, add burn or KO effects
5. Finished!

1. Pick a team with a good character search card
2. Is the curve from two to seven full of oversized drops?
2.1 If yes, fill out the curve with those oversized drops
2.2 If no, team up with a team that has oversized drops
3. Add as many good combat pumps as you can get ahold of
4. If there are any slots remaining, add hate cards or an 8-drop
5. Finished!

The fact of the matter is that early in the game the card pool was limited and people just played whatever pile of characters and pumps they could. Deck builders didn't have to consider too many options as to character selection, because they were constrained to work within the characters available to their team. You had decks like Common Enemy playing Hulk on six or TNB playing Lorelei because there just weren't any better options. I wouldn't even call those decks. They're just piles of characters and pumps.

Nowadays decks have to be carefully engineered to dominate the board, either by winning as soon as possible or by completely stalling out combat. Any gaps in the lockdown can and will lead to a quick death at the hands of the most efficient aggressive strategies ever developed. A deck that can hang with the best is extremely hard to design. And even once such a deck has been designed, it is difficult to be sure that any given version is the best possible build of that design. You may have a deck that plays 8-drops on turn five, but is it the best possible build of that deck? Hard to say.

Of course, once the decks have been built, it's possible that they might be pretty easy to play. It's also possible that they might be extremely difficult to play. The skill required to play the best decks varies greatly, but the skill required to design and build newer decks is light-years away from the skill required to build decks before.
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Wallywest1988
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ukyo_rulz
Apr 6 2012, 01:47 AM
Titustc
Mar 16 2012, 07:44 PM
It seems to me that when the game first came out it took more skill to build a deck
When the game first came out, decks were built using the following algorithms:

1. Pick a team with oversized drops from turn one to five (or a way to consistently make those drops oversized)
2. Put all the oversized drops from turn one to five in a deck
3. Add as many good combat pumps as you can get ahold of
4. If there are any slots remaining, add burn or KO effects
5. Finished!

1. Pick a team with a good character search card
2. Is the curve from two to seven full of oversized drops?
2.1 If yes, fill out the curve with those oversized drops
2.2 If no, team up with a team that has oversized drops
3. Add as many good combat pumps as you can get ahold of
4. If there are any slots remaining, add hate cards or an 8-drop
5. Finished!

The fact of the matter is that early in the game the card pool was limited and people just played whatever pile of characters and pumps they could. Deck builders didn't have to consider too many options as to character selection, because they were constrained to work within the characters available to their team. You had decks like Common Enemy playing Hulk on six or TNB playing Lorelei because there just weren't any better options. I wouldn't even call those decks. They're just piles of characters and pumps.

Nowadays decks have to be carefully engineered to dominate the board, either by winning as soon as possible or by completely stalling out combat. Any gaps in the lockdown can and will lead to a quick death at the hands of the most efficient aggressive strategies ever developed. A deck that can hang with the best is extremely hard to design. And even once such a deck has been designed, it is difficult to be sure that any given version is the best possible build of that design. You may have a deck that plays 8-drops on turn five, but is it the best possible build of that deck? Hard to say.

Of course, once the decks have been built, it's possible that they might be pretty easy to play. It's also possible that they might be extremely difficult to play. The skill required to play the best decks varies greatly, but the skill required to design and build newer decks is light-years away from the skill required to build decks before.
Well said.

This is confirmed if you just look at TCGplayer.com and see the early decks that won VS 10k/PCs.

Play them and notice how under powered and average they were. Just curve decks.
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Spider-Man2099
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Wallywest1988
Apr 6 2012, 01:14 AM
That card came pretty late and wasn't that easy to get a hold of.

In my opinion that card had to be made with the characters getting so rediculous. Cards like Lex Luthor, Metropolis Mogul. He alone shut down almost every deck aiming past 7.

Only Human only had to be played in some decks. I don't want to downgrade the card too much. Any deck with space it fits in.

Only Human was never on a pace that Pathetic Attempt and Omnipotence were. Those cards should not have been usable in reg formats, but since they were in the game they could make extremely good targeting effects knowing you could play things around them.
Maybe my view is skewered but in my opinion it was cards LIKE Only Human that were the reason cards Omnipotence was so important. Let's face it, there was always something that could completely shut a specific deck down. It's no wonder that underdog affiliations like Spider-Friends hardly ever saw much truly competitive play, even if they DID use heavy anti-meta methods.

But yeah... that Luthord WAS pretty ridiculous.
Edited by Spider-Man2099, Apr 6 2012, 06:09 AM.
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Canadian Bacon
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ukyo_rulz
Apr 6 2012, 01:47 AM
Titustc
Mar 16 2012, 07:44 PM
It seems to me that when the game first came out it took more skill to build a deck
When the game first came out, decks were built using the following algorithms:

1. Pick a team with oversized drops from turn one to five (or a way to consistently make those drops oversized)
2. Put all the oversized drops from turn one to five in a deck
3. Add as many good combat pumps as you can get ahold of
4. If there are any slots remaining, add burn or KO effects
5. Finished!

1. Pick a team with a good character search card
2. Is the curve from two to seven full of oversized drops?
2.1 If yes, fill out the curve with those oversized drops
2.2 If no, team up with a team that has oversized drops
3. Add as many good combat pumps as you can get ahold of
4. If there are any slots remaining, add hate cards or an 8-drop
5. Finished!
Although this deck building theory was turned on its head as early as the second set, with the appearance of Titans.
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pptmaster
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Any CCG will inevitably have the powerhouse decks especially in the early stages of its life. I think where VS really showed its value was in the fact that where there would be 2 or 3 decks that would win in Yugioh and from what i've heard Magic, there would be 7 or 8 in VS. And while I never played in the Pro Circuit or even at any of the other big tournaments due to $, i played quite extensively for years throughout VA and the surrounding states and ultimately whether you won or lost came down to 3 things:

Deck- how strong your deck is and how well it matches up against your opponent

Player Skill- in my opinion the biggest part of the game. You can have the best tier one deck on the planet but if you don't know how to make the hard decisions, work with what you draw, or switch strategies depending on your opponent's playstyle you will nearly always lose.

Surprise- Nothing throws a hardcore player off like a deck they've never seen before. There was a guy in my local play group who was the most ingenious deck-builder i've ever met. If half of his decks ever went up on here they would spurn more discussion than this site has seen in a while. And they wouldn't always work! but what they always did do was completely throw off the Worlds player who always played the top tier decks because he never knew what to expect from this guy.

Bottom line is, in my opinion even non top tier decks can be tier 1 decks when placed in the hands of a skilled player and when they have been out of the meta for long enough.
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Spider-Man2099
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pptmaster
Apr 6 2012, 04:48 PM
Any CCG will inevitably have the powerhouse decks especially in the early stages of its life. I think where VS really showed its value was in the fact that where there would be 2 or 3 decks that would win in Yugioh and from what i've heard Magic, there would be 7 or 8 in VS. And while I never played in the Pro Circuit or even at any of the other big tournaments due to $, i played quite extensively for years throughout VA and the surrounding states and ultimately whether you won or lost came down to 3 things:

Deck- how strong your deck is and how well it matches up against your opponent

Player Skill- in my opinion the biggest part of the game. You can have the best tier one deck on the planet but if you don't know how to make the hard decisions, work with what you draw, or switch strategies depending on your opponent's playstyle you will nearly always lose.

Surprise- Nothing throws a hardcore player off like a deck they've never seen before. There was a guy in my local play group who was the most ingenious deck-builder i've ever met. If half of his decks ever went up on here they would spurn more discussion than this site has seen in a while. And they wouldn't always work! but what they always did do was completely throw off the Worlds player who always played the top tier decks because he never knew what to expect from this guy.

Bottom line is, in my opinion even non top tier decks can be tier 1 decks when placed in the hands of a skilled player and when they have been out of the meta for long enough.
That's one thing I always loved about this game. "Top tier" or not, there was always a lot of variety and creativity. I'll never forget how blown my mind was the first time I saw the first Gamma Doom decklist, lol.
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Wallywest1988
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Spider-Man2099
Apr 6 2012, 06:06 AM
Wallywest1988
Apr 6 2012, 01:14 AM
That card came pretty late and wasn't that easy to get a hold of.

In my opinion that card had to be made with the characters getting so rediculous. Cards like Lex Luthor, Metropolis Mogul. He alone shut down almost every deck aiming past 7.

Only Human only had to be played in some decks. I don't want to downgrade the card too much. Any deck with space it fits in.

Only Human was never on a pace that Pathetic Attempt and Omnipotence were. Those cards should not have been usable in reg formats, but since they were in the game they could make extremely good targeting effects knowing you could play things around them.
Maybe my view is skewered but in my opinion it was cards LIKE Only Human that were the reason cards Omnipotence was so important. Let's face it, there was always something that could completely shut a specific deck down. It's no wonder that underdog affiliations like Spider-Friends hardly ever saw much truly competitive play, even if they DID use heavy anti-meta methods.

But yeah... that Luthord WAS pretty ridiculous.
See there were cards that shut other decks down even since launch of the game but they were harder to put in decks wich made them normal

Random example

Launch of game - To beat Titans a player could play LoA and run Tower of Babels and have a great win ratio vs titans.

End of game - Put omnipotence in any deck going to 5+ and/or PA. Beat anything.

Its not worth complaining about those cards since you can simply choose to not play with them but it made alot of other "tech" bad.

Null-Time Zone was the balanced version of Onnipotence.
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