So since usa nationals is around the corner i thought i would make a post about the event over the past three years. Ill go year by year and talk about my opinions of the meta at the time each championship took place.

US Nationals 2006:

This was the first national championship UFS had, it was still under the banner of Sabertooth games, and only the base sets of street fighter and soul calibur had been released. At the time the power curve centered around 4 characters (in my mind): Promo Zas (now banned), Rare Cassie (now banned), Ultra Rare Dhalsim, and Starter Ken; i cant remember if tycho was out at this time. Void was the strongest symbol in the game and held the majority, if not all, of the power cards in the game. All four of the characters i listed anchored decks that heavily padded on control cards like yoga mastery, lost memories, and ring vet; cards that were commonly known as the Void trinity. Wess Victory's Cassie deck emerged victourious at the end of the day, and soon after Cassie and Zas would be banished from the UFS world.

US Nationls 2007:

When this event rolled around Evil had become a major symbol, some would argue the best symbol, in the meta of UFS. Characters like M. Bison and Tira were the two big players on evil's side of the spectrum and much like void evil ran many heavy control pieces. However void was still powerful and also packed its own asortment of high tier characters, both old and new. If i recall the final match saw methodical fighter void Rock taking a willy promo Cassie deck piloted by James Hata. In the end Hata would emerge victorious and Cassie would become the first, and still only character to be credited with winning multiple national or world titles.

US Nationals 2008:

Ah how the times had changed by the time this event came to pass. Void had changed its methods of winning games, mill was now its best bet, and evil had transformed into a solid hybrid symbol with cards like chain throw and hammer. Cards like Higher Calibur and Brt had become staples in every evil deck around and character like Cody, Akuma, and Athena were forces to be feared in UFS. The all symbol had gained a very powerful force in the form of Promo Alex and a new kill card found its way into the majority of decks; that card was Concealed Shallow Swipe. In the end one deck rose above all the others, a mill deck anchored by Voldo and run by Omar Chavez. The after math of this event saw two big staple power cards banned: CSS and Happy Holidays.

Will this year's US nationals bring the same kind of excitement as the previous ones? We will find out and less than a month at Origins in Colombus Ohio. See you there!!

Man...those were some good times

Much more so than now. The fact that my guess at top 8 is likely gonna be close bothers me =/

Still, congrats to whoever wins! And apologies to Lubbock for being on almost the same day, but hope all is fun there too!

From the looks of it seems that air for sure make a showing maybe its force is greater then order and even evil now....

Thank you for the walk down history lane ^^

I guess the first question that needs to be answered is - what is legal for the big kahuna of tournies?

a) Will there be any erratas or bannings in June SOTG? Have we seen enough Chun-li? Is all of the Nincompoop-ery re: what some people consider problem cards going to shake the tables before (after?) US nats?

b) What of the recently (currently) distributed watermarks will be legal? Cursed Blood? Mark of the Beast? Martial Arts Champ?

c) What promo cards/(characters?) are released in June, and will they have an impact?

d) I take it the Tekken set will be released shortly after US Nats? (Or will there be pre-releases of this set at the US Nats or on sale there for attendees only?)

Conjecture and answer as appropriate!

- dut

GeneralReaction89 said:

Except for Tycho, who won UK Nationals 2007 (piloted by Scott Mence) and 2008 (piloted by JJ).

Funny how the UK nats tend to get forgotten.

GeneralReaction89 said:

Tycho was out before any of the other characters you listed and I'm pretty sure was at least top 8 at every major event ever held while he was legal.

You neglected to mention the fact that James' Cassy deck was a death deck. Otherwise a cool analysis.

Scubadude said:

I wouldn't say "greater than", but "equal to".

And while I agree, I think every pro player is gonna look at that whole Air Olexa vs Air Mignon thing and start planning.

There will be far too much sandbagging into Chunners.

And that's not implying anything about the character. God Forbid people get creative =/

HolyDragonCloud said:

Exactly it kinda feels like ibuki back last year not as over powered of course but at can nats 2 chun li's were cut thats got to start saying a little .

Scubadude said:

With 2 cut from top 8 AND decks running Chun in the sideboard, I'd say that's saying more than a little...

MarcoPulleaux said:

^- pre-cut, there were 3 Chun-Li mains and 2 decks with Chun-Li in the sideboard that could very easily side into her. Also, there were 5 Chun-Li mains, and I guesstimated at least 5 decks with Chun-Li in the sideboard, so a whopping 25% of the decks at Can Nats were or could be Chun-Li?

mildly depressing.

I won't be completely satisfied unless a new character wins it. I'll accept it coming from a former champ if that's what it takes.

No disrespect to any former champ. I just like the idea of a new guy winning.

HolyDragonCloud said:

I agree, I thought Kirk's victory was not just mildly inspiring, but mostly, just look at the deck. Running Spike, Spinta, and Turnabout? Mignon's E abuse? Yeah, wow.

Needless to say, I will not be happy if any character I openly hate (and the list is quite long) wins. At the same time, isn't Tekken and Soul Calibur IV supposed to come out before Worlds? =/

Protoaddict said:

Purely because I love talking about pre rotation UFS because it was the most fun I've ever had playing the game by far, I thought Tycho wasn't really a big deal over there? I know when I went to LA I don't think anyone was playing him at Gencon (the SNK promo characters had just been released).

When everyone talked about Void, no-one talked about Tycho despite his ridiculous draw power. It was all about Zasalamel, Ken, Cassandra and Dhalsim (after he got his life promo) Then after they were banned and Ken recieved his errata it was just all about Dhalsim (and to a much lesser extent, Rock and the errata'd Ken). Tycho barely ever seemed to get a mention.

Playing Cassandra was the most fun I've ever had playing UFS. The game psychology I could use while playing her was overwhelming. Somehow holding three cards my opponents always assumed I could negate all five of their foundations AND stop both of their attacks. But the more time that passed the less and less I used her ability (due to the increasing need to keep blocks and the increased quality of foundations available). In the end practically the only time I used it was to negate blocks and the odd actions (like Start Over). When she got banned 3 days before UK Nationals 2007 I was pretty gutted since I had a decent chance of winning it with her. Some months later, I started playing Tycho and realised that while Cassandra could stop people blocking most of the time, Tycho stopped people doing anything at all by destroying their hand size with Emptiness while keeping four times as many cards as them in hand due to drawing so many extra cards off of his R AND a free block. From the time that Emptiness was legal up until around the time that Evil became good, Tycho was ridiculous and should probably have been banned. I think that the only reason he wasn't is because he DIDN'T have a good showing in top 8s due to a lack of play (or perhaps a lack of a decent netdeck for him),

Over there you guys were all about Dhalsim, Nakoruru, Matt Kohls, Tira, Cassandra3, Vega, anything with Rolling Storm while it was un-errata'd, and later Hugo, UR Adon, anything with Evil and a few others that varied from event to event. I remember you were getting massive diversity issues in teams because so many people were running a Dhalsim and a Matt Kohls, haha. Tycho never really got a look in.

Being massively overplayed or having consistent top 8s isn't always the best way to judge whether a character is too good in a particular environment or not. That said Chun Li seems to me to be a little bit like Cassandra. One of Cassandra's greatest strengths was that when she was going second she could feasibly fail her first checks and not fall behind in tempo because she could use her normally dead foundations as Yoga Teleports to deny her opponent from making any sizeable progress on her. Chun Li's ability to play her attacks in her opponent's turn means that she can keep up tempo even with a poor draw or bad control checks. What Chun Li loses to Cassandra in utter denial, she arguably more than gains back in the chance of killing her opponent and hampering the stuff that's already in play on her opponent's side of the table in the process of disrupting their turn. Another of Cassandra's strengths was punishing your opponent's poor draws by denying them the chance to recover while still building her own board. Again, Chun Li does the same. On the other hand, there's a lot more support to deal with Chun Li's ability than there was with Cassandra's. Still, the resemblance is certainly there, and the chance of her taking at least one of the Nationals/Worlds has got to be pretty high because doing well in tournaments tends to be due to maintaining consistent control checks without sacrificing too much power because of it or having a reliable way to cheat the fact that your control checks aren't consistent (the most reliable way, of course, is being due to an ability printed on your character card because it's always present in every game at all times).

Does that popularity prove that she deserves a ban? If she is too good, is it just her, or is it just another case of Tycho and Emptiness/Fortune Teller or Matt Kohl and Fireball because she gets the best use out of a particular card she plays due to her ability? I don't know - I don't run a card game producing company.

I will say this once and once only.

Kirk Polka and Andrew Olexa did not run sandbag into chun li decks. They ran Minon and Andrew Olexa. Kirk Polka's deck was a air good deck with cards like turn about which ussually are not played in chun li, he only sided into her if he needed more speed. Andrew's deck was seriously stronger then any chun li deck because he hacks you and uses a new low to hit you on your turn.

Polka could do plays that chun li was not able to do like attack with heel snipe, get reversaled (which he was expecting) then blocking a feline spike and hitting a feline spike as a reversal to the 1st spike and then playing turn about on the 1st feline spike. oh and he would do this off the good symbol so good luck with your argument about too many chunners in top 8. The only reason andrew sided into chunners was for rejections cause he knew i would transform into an agro deck.

Honestly this is how i see a breakdown of this year's US nats. Air will bring three strong characters: Mignon, Chun- Li, and Olexa. Each character has its own strength; Olexa is great on control and can just be a nightmare for people who dont prepare for it, Mignon is a wild card and not highly known about in most metas, and chun li is just plain fast. If your gonna play an air deck you have to sacrafice something; playing chun li makes the user rely heavily on dictating the pace of the game, if you cant you will probably lose. The great thing about this game is that no deck is unbeatable, even chun li can fall to a well constructed deck and a talented player. The fact is this nationals will be unlike any before it, this will be the year of the air symbol.

sir_shajir said:

I think everybody knows this by now. They were running their characters for their characters; dodging diversity was merely a plus. However, the point is simply THAT they had Chun-Li in the sideboard, putting aside the fact that there were not just 5 Chuns in Can Nats, but 3 in the top at pre-diversity

We're not saying they were sandbagging. The principle is just there is all.