Not trying to pull an emo there, but of course I am refering to the resource symbol anyways, so if you are a whiny kid who thinks life sucks literally than feel free to cut yourself as I don't give a BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!

So there was my retarded moment of zen. To the topic. I have heard that Life as a resource sucks but after looking at some of the foundations that have released in the recent sets I can't help but be impressed by what life can do. With the latest set we get cards like Regretful Existence and Journey of Repentance. RE gives a nifty damage bonus as long as you kill a foundation, but its true strength lies within it's static text. JoR is basically Makai high noble w/out it's nifty static text. But it's second response of commiting it in place of a card your opponent calls out with Chinese Boxing is helpful especially for this symbol.

Genius Alchemist is redunkulus with it's abiltiy to pick a card that won't count towards Progressive diffulculty.When you combine some of these new cards with A Means of Self Defense and Heidern's Assasination Arts to name a few good life cards that I like personally and things can get pretty interesting for life.

In short, i feel that the LIFE resource is one to look out for for the future b/c it will probaly see more play in the coming months, but of course that is my humble opinion.

Life still sucks.

Certain characters can do wonders with it, but it's still pretty bad.

Life is a very anti meta symbol with access to cards like Make a Difference, Tough Outer Shell and Revnant's Calling

It also has access to power cards such as Battle Prowess, Forethought, and the Gorgeous Team.

The thing about Life, as it as been snce day one is that its attacks are absolutley awful. Seriously the best attacks Life has had that are not character exclusive are unai WIdow Maker and CSS. Once CSS was banned it left a void and how to actually kill.

Life has always been one of my favorite symbols but with no kill switch its just too hard to win.

NintendoMan said:

True. The problem is that Life characters can't take advantage of that. Especially Tough Outer Shell.

While I can admit that the attacks are not that great with the exception of Midnight Pleasure, I can't help but wonder what FFG has planned for this symbol in the newer sets. Life has been needing something to make it stand out and lets face it, there are a few things such as the foundations that I mentioned. I just think that evetually when it does hit, it is going to hit hard and that is something to be enthused about. Still good points from you guys.

Mt_Do said:

Personally, anything that happens after the Canadian Nationals is none of my concern because I will likely not be able to participate in any large-scale tournament happening after that. Meaning, the sets we have now are the sets I have to bother myself with.

To me, it seems that the "non-evil" symbols (exception Order) have always struggled. Even Life was best used in hybrid decks, and often as a secondary symbol. Less said about Good (SURE GUYS GOOD IS A CONTENDER FOR REAL~!), the better at this point.

One thing Life does have is 3 different attacks at 0-2/3, (Cross Madness, Swing Kick, Stepping Low Kick) and the capacity to break them with Siegfried...

Cetonis said:

Agreed, Siegfried upchucks damage like nobody's business, especially with his attack that pumps itself (forgot what it's called. 3 mid 3, 3/3). Life killed with Deceptive Look, and was undeniably the best symbol to use Deceptive Look. The problem is that Rejection has and always will be far too seen to make Deceptive matter.

Life suffers from an identity crisis.

It doesn't know what the hell it's supposed to do. It's all over the place.

Once Deceptive Look gets reprinted Life will be good. Life SUCKED in block 1 and 2 with the exception of Deceptive Look. With the exception of a few select cards (Idylic, Friends and Rivals) everything that was used was speed pumps to feed Deceptive Look. Once it rotated out, Life sucked even more. At the moment though, Life has a few decent things going for it:

Forethought

Battle Prowess

Genius Alchemist

Gorgeous Team

Rejection

And several decent attacks:

Senkutai (or however ya spell it)

Midnight Pleasure

And stuff from the new set I haven't seen

But still, apart from spamming out an ass ton of attacks, it can't kill anyone. Midnight Pleasure is laughable as Life has almost no momentum gen and most decks only need two momentum to kill anyone (read Feline Spike/Lunar Slash).

I happen to like Ryubi Kyaku into Gravity Storm, but not everyone is fond of running 8 2 checks.

There are many good Life attacks, just not many good Life easy buttons (coughCSScough), and that's why people don't run it.

Double Grounder Beta!

Earth Divide 2.0!

Chaos Flare!

Ivy's Attacks with the exception of that one bad one which is still okay because it's 3 diff.

Naruto!

Leona/Lu Chen/Naks/Tira/Siegfried!

Lack of solid momentum gain! err... wait..

yeah, the above is the only thing really keeping me from building this symbol. and even then it can do some crazy shenanigans. I wouldn't be suprised to see Good/Life control, Life/Water reversals, and Earth/Life aggro.

NintendoMan said:

Ukyo's Short Slash Attack would like a word, sir.

Life was my first aggro symbol, and I mis it dearly. It's gotten a lot better with this set, so I'll probably fiddle around with it a bit and see what comes out. I don't even care about Deceptive, since I never ran it anyway. I want my Unrequited Love and Won't Settle for Second Best back ='(

Life hasn't always sucked guys; it has banned characters and arguably THE most powerful character-only attack.

Speaking of banned characters and most powerful character-only attack, I wonder what character that pertains to who so happens to be plenty legal right now? =D

Life's main problem is what Fire's used to be: nothing but aggro, and not enough so to matter. Fire got BULLY aggro, so now it's important. Life, on the other hand, doesn't have the speed pumps necessary to really push its BS through. Plus, speed pumps are kind of convoluted seeing as how discard gets the job done much better.

*Yi Shan* + Battle Prowess + Torn Hero = wall <3

B-Rad said:

Waitaminute...when and where did you hear that Deceptive Look was getting reprinted?

I feel like wrath of heaven and Crane strike will be going a LONG way to make life more of a combo deck based aggro like it used to be, andIi like that. Ibuki of course can throw wrath of heaven turn one possibly 3 times in a row....

Protoaddict said:

Yum, Wrath of Heaven. It's too bad it's so strong it can kill; it's Combo E almost looks useless =/

Also, wasn't everybody here sparching their shorts over Siegfried's Earth Divide? Or did people finally realize that, while it IS a good attack, it's truly just another Spinning Beat, or balanced Tiamat's, so on so forth.

The big problem with Life is that its two main strengths are Life Gain (which is purely defensive, and not as good as damage prevention), and speed boosts (which are only useful if you have a way to get damage behind them).

Fire got the damage boosts AND the speed boosts, so does better.

But Life does have faster attacks, and better speed boosts generally speaking.

Theoretically, Life should function if players could adjust their playstyle. It's suitable for hitting with several high-speed attacks in a row, so that the opponent can block at most one, then takes a face-full of mid-damage attacks. This seemed to be the idea behind Yun and Yang. Support with life gain to undo the damage the opponent does, and it's a nice concept.

The problem is, this requires running more attacks, and therefore fewer (high-check) foundations. And we all know that this will make the deck less consistent, and it will be harder to successfully play those several attacks in a row. It's just far more efficient (control-check-wise) to run only a few attacks in the deck, and have them be mostly finishers.

So the real problem is either Life's lack of finishers, or the fact that weenie and mid-level fast attacks (especially in Life) never had abilities and control checks to justify running them (let alone running the necessary 20+ of such attacks).

If there were several fast 4- or 5-damage attacks that had 4-control and ONLY the Life symbol, we might see some interesting results without needing a finisher.

Life gained a LOT with this set. It got some REALLY good characters and some great counter control pieces. Yi Shan's attacks are almost ridiculously stat'd for some of the damage they output. Lu Chen gave us some more combat tricks to work with (though I think he boosted Good/Water more than Life). Ivy gave us some interesting weenies to mull over in decks outside of of Ivy (Ivy is insane, for the note), and her anti life-gain stuff can put a damper on others.

Let's not forget that Siegried's counter control pieces can open up a lot of windows for counter attacks. Or that No Forgiveness (his action) can be recurred to continually blank their foundations with Gorgeous Team (which will also be pulling Rejection). Or maybe Atoning for his Wicked Deeds for moar tricks?

It also gets Tough Outer Shell from waaaaaaaaaaay back in Domination to kill card draw/loops. Calming the Mind flat out stops Defender loops/slow down Spike decks, and Blood Stained Fate can control momentum as well.

If you want Momentum generation, consider going into a second symbol (White Magic can come over from Good/Life, Lord of the Makai can come over from Life/All), or running THE THIRST ALWAYS WINS.

Archimedes said:

Only for chicks though.

Which means unless I can draw a bra on my Starter Yi Shan I'm screwed.

Archimedes said:

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that a Life deck can run twelve cards that flat-out negate Rejection. That gives it one huge leg up on Fire aggro -- which has to either splash, or pray that Bitter Rivals does the job for them.

One thing I thought of last set was using Rare Ibuki with Deadly Ground+Heidern's Assassination Arts to mill your opponent out... but that's probably still really stupid.

Homme Chapeau said:

You lost the ability to shoop? D=

Chaos/Life Ibuki looks delicious...but I'm saving Ibuki for Hunger for Souls D=
(sooooooul...gimme SOOOOOOOOOOUL)

It would be interesting to see a ***Lien*** deck running mostly attacks + Ivy support to crank out a LOT of attacks every turn. Just needs momentum generation, but maaan...that sounds fun, actually

But yeah, thanks, Fred, for putting Wrath of Heaven + Ibuki into my mind. I think it just 'sploded =D

the nice thing about Wrath of Heaven and Crane Swoop is that the combo conditions are incredibly easy to fufill. It really isn't that hard to fill your attack lineup completely with attacks that have the reversal keyword to fufill the combo requirement.

That being said, I still don't think that, as a whole, Life is a good enough yet. Very few Characters can be piloted well off the symbol, but one is probably better off using the other symbols on that Character to win with.

MegaGeese said:

Yeah I've been having computer troubles lately.

Plus, as you can see with my "Trolling" card, I'm not exactly the best person to add or replace body parts.

Homme Chapeau said:

you know, i'm always ready to help a fellow shooper