Editor: Paul Van Der Werk. Saturday 24th July 2004.
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Editor: Paul Van Der Werk. Saturday 24th July 2004.
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 "Accept no Limits – The State of VS Limited." Hello you big, bad, beautiful world. Let’s put on our dancing shoes and go toe to toe on the street corners, and in the coffee shops, gaming shops and pubs. This procession; this dance; this battle; this life is all a game and I want to play. This is my first article for this or any game playing site, so I hope you will indulge me in a brief introduction of who I am, and why am writing this, and my plan for a series of articles on VS limited play. This article will then look at the DC Origins release tournament I recently played in. I am a game player. That is the short of it. I have been playing games as long as my memories go back. My father was a keen card, board and war game player and briefly a game designer, though only one of his games reached production and distribution by a game company. Understandably, I grew up playing games. I quickly moved though draughts to chess to board and war games myself. My ‘misspent’ youth involved periodically losing friends due to my evil machinations in weekend after weekend of Diplomacy (still the ultimate war/board game). As life moved on and time was harder to come by my gaming moved more to computers and the internet. Having learned canasta and slowly progressed to a top ten ranking in an International internet league of a thousand odd players I realised that I missed the ‘human element’. I had played Magic a 2-3 times over the years in a very casual sense with some friends cards. I bought a ‘learn to play starter’, convinced my girlfriend to ‘give it a go’ and enjoyed that for a few months. I played in my first pre-release earlier this year and have been hooked ever since. One day while playing in my local card shop, I saw some guys playing a new game - Marvel Vs. They showed it to me, but I wasn’t interested. I had a game. But, more and more people were playing this game over the weeks, and the game player in me had to work out what thew rules were, and how it worked in general. I played the online demo. This game was clever. I bought a few boosters. The art work wasn’t up to the high standard I hope it will reach, but the game was great. I tried to get my girlfriend to play, but halfway though our first game she decided she preferred Magic, and wouldn’t play anymore. I got some friends to play. I played in PCQ (and missed top 8 on tie-breaks – but I made a huge play error that cost me a round so I feel I deserved that ). I was hooked. My preference for CCG’s is limited play, sealed or draft. I love cobbling together the best deck with what is at hand. I am planning to write regular (weekly to fortnightly) articles on VS limited, as my knowledge of the format grows. I would love feedback as I claim no great knowledge at this point, but am constantly striving to improve my understanding of what works in limited, and do have a lot of thoughts and ideas on this subject. My articles will be based around ideas and theories, that I attempt to put into practise. They will not be dogma. Though I am an average to good player in a practical sense, the theory behind the articles is hopefully sound. Recently I attended the Card Heaven (in Melbourne) launch of DC Origins. This was played in a sealed format, using four boosters of the DC Origins set. For those who are not familiar with the sealed format of VS system a short explanation follows. Each player receives 4 boosters from which to construct a 30 card minimum deck – though I believe new UDE official rules are changing sealed tournament to 5 boosters. Players then play best of three matches against their opponents. There are no draws! For those interested in the various rules regarding how to ascertain the winner at the end of a match with a time limit I recommend checking out the tournament rules at www.ude.com/rules. Turn out was not as high as might have been hoped for with only six people actually playing in the tournament – including Ben Seck who also ran it!. However, there were numerous spectators at various stages of the day. These ranged from Magic players who were interested in having a look at this ‘new’ game, to interested ‘others’ who had been attending an art exhibit at the venue. I was particularly impressed by Ben’s answer to their question about the game - “No it’s not like Dungeons and Dragons. There is no role-playing involved. It is more like chess with cards”. I have approached the International Chess Federation for comment, but am still awaiting a response. More important than turn out (unless you are the people running the tournament) is fun had on the day. And it was a great day. So as to make the tournament more accessible, and as most of the players had seen none of the new cards yet, rounds were not timed and games were played at a very casual level of rules enforcement. This brought home just how long games can take for new players, but I think it is an important step in building a base for this great new game. I certainly benefited from the low level of rules enforcement with my vast multitude of play errors – just how many times can you forget restrictions loyalty places on a card? Quite a few it seems when you have only just seen a key word for the first time while constructing your deck (for those of you who have not experienced DC Origins yet loyalty is a new key word meaning “Recruit this card only if you control a character that shares at least one team affiliation with this card”).However, all playing seemed to simply enjoy the experience of new cards, and playing the great game that VS is proving itself to be. I opened my 4 boosters like a little kid with a birthday present. I have a method I follow for creating limited decks (once cards are in hand after drafting or cracking boosters in sealed) which I will discuss in my next article. Lots of 5/6/7 drop charectors, with the curve further smoothed out by boost. First round I played a nice chap named Josh. He seemed to know a little bit about the new cards before we started, and about card playing etiquette. We both Mulliganed our first hand, and I came out on top. He didn’t drop a character till the forth turn. I dropped characters on turns 2, 3, and 4. I also got out my nifty combo of Tamalan and T-Jet. I don’t think I missed a drop after that and the game was mine. Game two was close, but I lost due to the awesome work done by 'Spoiler' – a lousy one drop that gains at least 2 endurance per turn if you can't get rid of it. I didn't have a character drop till turn 3 and was running behind all game. I was also impressed by the Hank Hall and Dawn Granger ‘Boost’ combo. My luck in having both a “Worlds Finest” and a “The Brave and the Bold” in my boosters along with a few other nifty cards, such as the amazing 5 drop Teen Titans Dick Grayson, and the cool 6 drop ‘Gotham Knights’ Dick Grayson meant I came out on top. Having 2 Megablasts in the deck kinda helped as well. Round Two – TBS. I can never seem to beat Ben. Must be something to do with him being a better player than me. We played 2 long close games, both of which I lost due to Ben’s great end game oriented strategy. The first game went to turn 9, and the second to turn 8. Ben made great use of his 6 drop Dick Grayson in both games, and wonderful use of Whisper A’Daire and Catwoman to play a bit of Control. Card advantage rocked his way by the end of each game to great effect. The number of play errors mostly by me was huge, but we both managed to miss placing a resource in the Resource step, but played on as if we had! Ben had the additional disadvantage of serving customers while he played though. I’m still working on mine and should have it by the next article. I had to drop at this point, and miss the last round. The untimed rounds, though important for learning, meant things were taking a bit longer than I could afford time wise. So what did I learn from the day. I already knew the importance of character distribution through the curve, and importance of the late drops, of team-ups, and many other things. But, how did this change in Origins. Loyalty makes a big difference to how you construct your curve. Control is going to play a bigger role in VS than it has previously, but it’s still about the Beats. Late drop power wins games. Until next time, in the words of Stan Lee ‘Nuff said |