Thought I would post up about my first game, as I posted with some noob questions about a week ago.

So me and my gf just played our first game, akuma/ryu battlepack and the basic rules (just attacks and foundations). We picked it up very quickly and easily for two people who have never played a ccg before. My first impressions are that its nice and fast paced, throwing cards down, making checks, blocks etc. I'm somewhat suprised by how easy it is to play foundations and how soon the game becomes something of a war of atrition with both players having a whole load of foundation cards in their staging area. It seemed to quite quickly get to the point (with handsize 6 characters) that we both had so many foundations to call upon that just about all control checks get passed and scoring damage came down to how many attacks you use up vs blocks you hang onto for your opponents turn.

We both started on 28 health, I lost miserably (akuma) having chipped her (ryu) down to 13. I think I suffered from not getting enough foundations down early (she was super cautious and played lots of foundations, whi;e I got a couple down and then went out all guns blazing, heheh), plus I made a terrible call hanging onto a high damage attack card which I could have used to block, taking damage in the hope it would pay off on my turn. It didn't as said attack card was blocked thanks to a massive foundation shield!

I guess actions, assets and the advanced effects stuff mix it up a lot more? I just wanted to check if we did anything wrong, like only adding to your hand on your own turn and retaining foundations in your staging area (1 use per card per turn). We literally did what it says in the basic opening rules and they consist of like 3 short paragraphs. I have a suspicion that some of the flow of our game was very different to the full rules. I did have to dip into the full rules to find out what to do when our decks ran out, and that half damage is rounded up.

Er, anyway, it's fun. I'm pleased, the gf enjoyed it because it was so easy to pick up and she won (curses!), means we might actually get to play it regularly and get into it. I think we'll play another game or two with the simple rules until we know what to do backwards, then start adding the layers of the ufs onion so to speak!

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I remember back in the day I took my ex to a tourney with literally 0 knowledge of the game. She got top 4, and almost won the entire thing. Too bad I did =D

Also, I took my friend and his girlfriend to a Dallas tourney, same deal, with little knowledge of the game. They both won 0 games, but they had a lot of fun, and since his girlfriend won an Ivy deck and Ragnar deck for free, the two have been playing a lot against each other.

Once again, glad you picked it up, and hope you enjoy it.

Glad you and your girl enjoyed it, and welcome to the forums. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask. If you don't know already, there's a stickied thread atop the Q & A forum (title Advance Game Rules, I believe) that should help alot once you both have the basics down.

Welcome to the community ! Glad to hear you had a great time just to let you know the akuma /ryu battle pack aren't legal for standard play anymore. So if you want to play in standard events buy from the following sets.

Cutting Edge

Deadly Ground

Domination

Realm of Midnight

Flash of blades

King of fighters 2006

Warriors Dream

Flames of Fame

Shadowar

Soul Caliber 4

Most notably Soul Calibur IV: Tower of Souls and ShadoWar. Such starter decks as Astrid, Yi Shan, Siegfried, and Nightmare are all quite playable out of the box

Yeah given that all of your cards do stuff other than have a speed, attack zone, block difficulty, difficulty, control and zones, the game gets abit more nuanced.

your foundations also do things, like, let you draw in to more cards (meaning more attacks meaning pushing through their hand size of blocks they held back). Or adding speed to your attacks making them tougher to block. Or like reducing the damage of attacks, or increasing the damage of attacks and... like a thousand times more.

Thanks for the replies, I do plan on getting some more recent cards once I know what I'm doing, but at this point we're just learning and having fun with the legacy format.

I've just watched the online demo again and it's made me wonder, am I right in thinking once a card in your staging area is commited it stays that way until the start of your next turn? I.e. foundations used to help you make control checks in your own turn can't be used again to help with blocks in your opponents turn?

If so we got that bit wrong! Will check the rules later.

yeah everything that is commited readies on your ready phase at the start of your turn

once you use an ability on a foundation that commits or commit a card to pass a control check it stays that way until your ready phase unless you have a ready effect that says otherwise

If i might ask what were you doing exactly?

My guess is readying all cards during both player's ready phase. That would lead to a much bigger wall of foundations to get stuff through. I also would say that the Ryu and Akuma battle pack is uniquely balanced and lends itself to very long foundation heavy games. With other characters and other cards there's a much easier time breaking the stalemate.

Yeah what Baranor said. Silly us, I guess this is what happens when you just read and use the simple rules without looking at the rest of the sheet. The simple rules don't give you an overview of the phases and steps in an at-a-glance style, you have to pick through the 4-5 paragraphs to go back and see whats what if you're not sure what you need to do next.

Anyway, I've now read the full and current rules from the website. I don't really "get" the enhance step yet (I'm sure it'll make sense with some play time) and most of the text decsriptions for special abilities have me either totally baffled or at least unsure of what tactical bearing that ability will have on the game.

Heres a good example, for a little insight into where I'm struggling with my noobness. I'm look at akuma's instant hell murder. It's an action card, the form text says "commit an asset/foundation, commit 2 foundations to remove from your pool". On first reading I'm thinking so what the hell does the card actually do, besides using up a foundation to play and 2 if you decide to remove it? Surely thats a hinderance, not a help!? Then its reponse text says "after you check a 1, add all control 1 cards in your discards to your hand". So, I guess you play the card, costing you a foundation, then if you turn over a card with a control of 1 later in that turn, you get all control 1 cards from your discards back? I can see how that would be useful, suddenly adding a whole load of previously discarded cards to your hand, but I would think you need a lot of forward thinking to start making good use of this kind of stuff.

It's just a little mind bending for me as a new player to comprehend how to use these abilities well. I'm thinking intimate knowledge of your deck is probably the key! Lots of cards seem to depend on a certain control check further down the line to become useful, makes me also wonder how much luck is involved. I could be chewing up a lot of foundations on control checks for cards, just in the vague hope that myself or my opponent will meet the requirements later in the phase for that card to have been worth putting in play.

I apologise if I'm dribbling on a bit. Thinking out loud, so to speak, is helping me get my head round some of this stuff

Spectre_UK said:

No worries, learning is always fun.

Instant Hell Murder's Form allows you to commit any foundation or asset in play, including one of your opponent's card. So if they have Mortal Strike out which might reduce you attack's damage you can commit the card so that it cannot be used. If you wish you can then discard it from the card pool which helps with resource restrictions, although I'm not sure if you have read about that yet.

You may play the reaction part only after you check a 1 control card when you make a control check. So lets say you play Tenma Go Zanku as an attack and you discard the top card to make a control check. If that card has a control of 1 you may then play Instant Hell Murder as a response (you have to make a check for that card as well). If you pass the check then at that point you can pick up all cards with a 1 control from your discard. Don't forget that after you play Instant Hell Murder you still have to pass the check for Tenma Go Zanku, usually by commiting foundations.

The game can be confusing at times especially with responses able to interupt at almost any time, but with practice it becomes easy.

One more thing about Instant Hell Murder, Spectre.

If you use the Form ability on Instant Hell Murder, you cannot play the response from the same copy in your staging area. To give a physical example:

You use the F on Instant Hell Murder to commit one of your opponent's cards, and you choose not to discard it from your card pool, okay?

Now, let's say when you play your next card you discard a 1. You cannot use the R ability on the copy that's in your card pool; you'd have to use another copy from your hand.

That should be self-explanitory, but I've known people who thought you could play both abilities from one card.