There are points with my playing of this game where I learn to look out for what cards to play, to trade, to avoid, to watch. Majority of those cards are indeed the power-housing ones such as Olcadan's, Chester's, Feline Spike (0,0), Ira Spinta and so forth with them. But thus far with those cards they don't have a supremely broken combo condition that makes any character they play with unstoppable. When the Injury Assets were still out to be played I had built B.B. Hood ** deck to avoid virtually all damage and so forth and to keep her readied so that I can use her abilities all the time, however since the Injury Assets went to boot I had to recon that deck so that it can be reformated and ajusted to the new/current list. The loss of Addess Syndicate was fair as well because then EVERYONE played those symbols with those things out all the time and you were beyond lock down. If any cards were to be banned or thought of I would put the AOP's in the list because of how I don't like them (xp) but then again they are just and fair to what they can do as a balance (difficulties, cc and ability costs). Cards such as Feline Spike and Olcadan's ARE POWERFUL but they have their own weakness to balance; Spike the difficulty and cc, Olcadan's has the fact that you give the opponent a foundation in replace (which in recent times, there are lots of annoying foundations out there). Chester's Backing, can stop any ability however can be stopped itself because of vitality negation. i.e. that ivy foundation (remember that article) and vega promo for example again.
Saying that there are cards to be banned because of their over poweringness is useless unless they can give a majority of cards that definite upperhand, i.e. Injury Assests... because they had infinity everyone could use them. Addess, everyone played those symbols or they comboed the AOP's required (cessation I think) to be able to play it, yet the AOP's don't get banned because they are used for other reasons instead of just negation, clearing, powering, nulling or whatnot... they grant some open windows to be viewed through. Plus my personal view of losing Spike and Spinta would suck for me because then when I get some from box pulling I can't trade them to anyone for collector stuff I need.
Banning a card needs to have a multiverse reason for it; Everyone uses this, it does this to everything, it unfair to all but you. But that's said to everything powerful right? well if you're trying to get new-er players to get into the game then build your own starter decks to catch them easily then pull out the guns for them to see or eventually get themselves. I did this with my roommates, built two decks to be used as starters to show how to play. Bishamon ** versus Ryu :::: with simple cards having simple gameplay. after a few games I edited the decks to be faster-ish and with the promo and tournament quality cards; Chester's, Olcadan's, Blinding Rage/Makai High Noble/ (siegfried 'dation) and so forth. After one game they were appreciative that they played with some 'slum' cards before the more 'quality' cards.
To the people saying "Learn the game" or "This is for better players who put time to the game" know this; I've been playing this game since it basically started and I'm still learning everything I can take in and no matter what's going on against me, I still play the game and keep going with it. So my answer to Trips' question about personal-preferred bannings; I'm all for it but only if it makes sense.
