Solstice said:

LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE DONE!

You've made the screen go all screwy, somehow.

I don't know if Christopher Nolan told you to do this, but if you're The Riddler, you must tell us your real name.

Come clean now. I know you aren't Johnny Depp (he sucks).

MarcoPulleaux said:

Neva D< i shall neva tell in fact... im not even here -throws smoke bomb- muahahahaha

Cascade said:

I could't agree more with you. I once saw someone with three Chinese Boxings on the table against a player playing his first game. It got real ugly real quick...

darklogos said:

First off, in no way am I trying to be a jerk and I mean no disrespect. The limiting cards to 1 of and 2 of is something I feel belongs in yugioh and mabye magic, not UFS. If you wanted to limit things just making them unique is a much better idea. The things you propose here mostly make deckbuilding a nightmare as well as severly limit creativity on the players part, as well as make a mill deck nearly imposible to build. Not only do they do this but they over complicate a game that is already complex and at the same time very very simple. I personally take any where from an hour to a couple days to make a deck, the rules you propose would most likely make me not even want to think about deckbuilding.

As I am not certain, but I have heard from a few friends that played the starwars game, that it was way too complicated which made them shy away from it. This is something I really don't want to happen since I am absolutely obbsessed with this game and don't want it to die. I've been playing since the second set and I have learned to just put up with the problems that the game has. I have always found it challenging to try and beat the unbeatable. Don't get me wrong though I understand that getting pounded with no chance is no fun but would that make you never want to play a chess game again? That and why are your vet players bullying the newbs.

Oh Solstice it's not me who runs these things. I am the scout...I want more players. I run fun stuff like Void, Good, Earth etc etc. There are other players however that run Mina Spinta Loop, Spike Li, etc etc.

I couldn't agree more with everything Tannerface said.

Here's a guideline I use: whenever there's new players, the only people they play with on card night is myself (the scout) or other new players, to start off with. That way the people who play more aggresively can play each other while the new people can learn together or through guidance. Once they learn how to play the game on their own, the long-time players play them but hold back just a little. Then after a couple games like that, all bets are off, it they're ready. We also do a fairly decent job of supplying them with cards to get them on their way too.

If only it was so easy. we don't have floods of new people coming in. we get like 1 if we are lucky. The only way to pair them up is again'st others and my players don't bully them Spikes/spinta/blood blah blah is what they run and they were not expecting a noobie to show up so they can't exactly do anything and I can't exactly tell them to let them win. We banned ownlface a while back but while it did help out in some ways it made it really hard for most games to not turn into grey wars so with the banning of owl the format changed and we found a lot of symbols unable to get through grey walls so now we want to see what else we can change to make our tournaments funner.

I would probably ban about a dozen cards, many of which aren't broken in my estimation but they still make the game suck.

I'd also bring forward a handful of cards.

Tagrineth said:

I don't believe you.

Bah...I'll try to make this abridged...

1) Make each and every card undeniably viable. I cannot stress this enough. Each and every time I make a card, I always ask myself, "Would I ever want to run this card?" or is it just some cute filler that's kinda nifty during pre-releases only? I know that might sound like it's "asking for too much" or "way too hard to accomplish", but as a fan card designer, having designed a crapton of sets, I can tell you the feat is simple, and the ability to do it is there.

2) This game has always, and likely will always need a huge banned and even bigger errata list. Not every loop and exploitation of a card will be found during testing, and when each and every single regional or tourney report comes up with the exact same result, a little synapse in your head ought to spark, causing you to think, "Gosh, maybe this requires some looking-into?" If they'd start costing cards more efficiently, and making thought and strategy become a bigger part of this game, then banning wouldn't be a huge problem. But, for so long as they print cards that are OBVIOUSLY over-the-top, banning must continue, and instead of saying, "Oh there are counters", "they aren't that big of deals", "there are other ways to win", etc, they need to stop kissing ass and trying to make their game look like it's in a good state, and they need to fix it. I don't care if they need to go to Cairo and quote the Qur'an, start speakin da troof and stop allowing nonsense to flow freely.

3) As I've said more than anything since June started, cards not only need much more responsible and mature costing, but effects need to be more situation-based. Where's my anti-stun support? Where's my support that increases desperation levels? Oh, right, it has never, and maybe never will exist. This game has so much blatant "whenever your opponent plays X, cancel its effects", without ever going in-depth on what X is. No, instead they just fill-in X with the word "enhance, response, abiltiy that targets your staging area, etc". Global effects call for massive costing, something only a card like No Memories has seen. Most people will say, "Stupid Shinji, that'll only make our game slower." No, guy who still high-fives, it will not. First off, and I'll get to this in a bit, a more attack-oriented game will increase the speed, obviously, and two, if you make foundations work more towards and during attacks, and less on anything not named attacks, then obviously games will increase in speed, while STILL managing to have control (for example, if they made support that tapped your opponent for using attacks of the same difficulty, or that made them discard when they use Stun, now you have control that can slow down turns, but only during aggressive times).

4) Make better attacks, and more cards that work on or during attacks. Perhaps moreso than anything else, every attack printed needs to have a dire incentive to be ran, otherwise it sits in the binder and only has use during pre-release tournies. Not saying every attack has to be some sort of utility Pommel or Ichi, but those non-effect vanilla attacks will NEVER matter unless they're stronger OR get support, and furthermore, this game, as I've mentioned, should only be won by either turns of attacking, or such attacks as Siegfried's Earth Divide (the static of needing 2 attacks preceding), or anything with Combo. This game cannot afford such "no-brainer" finishers as generic Multiples, or cards like Knight Breaker that not just function as a Combo kill card, but as an insanely well-status'd attack that has a usable ability.

5) Similar to 3, but no more free abilities, at least, not ones that are really any good. Free abilities take away from the fear of getting rid of your own resources, whether you're discarding cards, committing cards, or discarding momentum. Free abilities have to be meager, and only slightly helpful, and that is where their use stops. Every card in this game must have a cost, and the better their effects, the higher both the cost AND the diff/control ratio should be.

6) Make useless effects matter. Such things as speed pumps, speed redux, damage pumps, damage redux, and life gain have all but hit the deck, or never rose from it, and are "cute in theory but fail in reality" concepts. Are there ways to alleviate this curse? YES! BY MAKING THEM GOOD! Speed reduction is perhaps one of the best concepts we ever received from Set 11. It's too bad only 2 characters had 'em, and not too much of their support really worked with it. Allow Dr. Shinji to issue some antidotes for the swine flu-esque game mechanics:

Speed Pumps: Speed pumps may make your attacks "unblockable", but they need damage to actually win. Also, speed pumps fall in that line of "putting all your eggs in one basket". Speed pumps need ways to branch-out, and affect multiple attacks of yours (like Wind Dance), so that speed pumps matter, not just pumping an attack to a usually unblockable 20 speed, but it only deals like 1-5 damage, and then your turn is all but ended. Make speed pumps go alongside with some sort of damage support, and have various ways to grant speed pumps.

Speed Reduction: Needs blocks. Jeff's Gloves is the closest this game has to speed reduction support, and it's **** good, but honestly, we just need better ways to reduce speed, not ones that cause you to discard that card you were gonna block with . Speed reduction needs draw and it needs block tutor. It also needs support where, maybe you swap the speed with the damage after a certain amount of speed reductions.

Damage Pumps: Simply need to stop being wimpy and teehee. No Longer Controllable is the first step in the right direction. Give me my brouhaha! Give my something more balanced than The Way of the Mightiest, but packing the same, if not more gunpowder. Make each damage pump look more bad-ass than the next. It's a sad day when the best damage pump award often goes to "Brooding".

Damage Redux: Almost every time we see damage reduction, there's miraculously never a way to make the deck aggressive. Simply put, release support that can both reduce damage and increase damage somehow, so that big mighty walls of stall can become giant temultuous tanks of destruction. Also, again with the putting all eggs into one basket. Simply put, Red Cyclone of Mother Russia ain't gonna do ya crap. I'm sorry. Let's make more support along the lines of, "E: This attack gets -X +1 damage. X equals the number of times you have used this ability. After you have used this ability for the second time or more this combat phase, you must commit one additional foundation to pay its cost" or something.

Life Gain: Needs to happen on the opponent's turn. Why? BECAUSE THAT'S WHEN YOU DIE. As such, all I can say for life gain is that, in this badass game of UFS, either your opponent plays nothing, or they win. As such, let's release some life gain that works on your opponent's turn. Or perhaps, let's release some support where you gain vitality and they lose vitality (better than Tira's, people).

7) Understand that the lower your printed handsize, the more powerful your abilities and support cards must be. 7 handsize has proven each and every year to be THE best handsize this game has to offer, and it will remain that way until 6handers can chop iron boards in half with their nuts. Mr Karate, Seong Mi-Na, Yun-Seong (in two different forms, no less), LOLHUGOLOL, these are all examples of characters whose handsize meant nothing, because their abilities meant everything. Every character should be printed in the same regard.

8) STOP MAKING DRAW AND DISCARD SO **** SIMPLE! You need to understand two things: 1. A character with no hand cannot block, and under most circumstances, cannot thus hope to survive, and cannot hope to block your attacks. 2. Too much free draw support is going to change turns of, "Hmm, what do I play?" to "Well now that my handsize is double my printed, I could theoretically play half-assed and get away with it because my staging area has grown bigger, and I have a ton of blocks!" Aquakinesis and The Bigger They Are... ARE NOT GOOD EXAMPLES OF BALANCED DRAW! You know what was balanced draw? BEEFY! Beefy was balanced draw. Infact, it wasn't even really draw. Beefy, for those who remember, permanently increased your handsize. Of course, Beefy was also a 4/5 no block foundation. THAT is a card we could afford to see reprinted time and time again. Son of a Tychoon is probably the closest this game has to balanced draw, but as with most cards, it's simply SO balanced it won't ever see play. Seriously, discard is extremely dangerous, and too much free draw is almost even more.

If I was president I'd be elected on Friday, assassinated on Saturday, buried on Sunday. If I was president.

Blah. I'll stop my rant there. Enjoy.

What i would do is ask each person in your playgroup to chose 1 or 2 cards that they think are unfun to play against or just broken in general and ban those cards....of course that only works if the players are taking it seriously and not just saying cards to make someone else deck worse that they have a tough time beating or whatever

and to comment on the whole limiting cards to 1 or 2 in a deck that just means there are less counters to the broken cards that you can run in your deck 1 BRT still eats at you if you dont have that 1 olcadans or that 1 chesters to deal with it and it also makes certain characters better like ones who can draw more cards and find those one copies or ones who can tutor for cards....like starter sakura

One thing that has been bothering me lately is thinking about all the new damage pumps, and how we're supposed to be playing pumps like Ruthless and Brooding as our main damage bonuses.

I actually think that this is a mistake.

What we need is not quite Hammer-level oomph, but we need damage pumps that have reasonable costs (+5 damage = a commit and discard a card, +7 damage = two commits and a momentum... etc.) but still carry large numbers. Aggro needs to be able to pressure a control deck immediately , not just "Six turns later, when it can give an attack +2 damage eight times, but all of them get canceled and its hand gets discarded."

To this day, the most intense and arguably most enjoyable match I've ever played was my top 8 matchup at the Orlando AoP that I won... I was playing Death Nakoruru, and was up against Fire Elena.

Lemme tell ya, that whole match I was shitting bricks, just waiting for the Hammer to fall (literally!) at which point I'd look down and see Nakoruru's blood smeared all over the arena leading to her mangled corpse (and it did happen game 2!).

Part of that was due to the limitations of Control at the time - single cards with more focused negation e.g. only Yoga Mastery could reliably hit Enhances, high difficulty curve limiting the speed of the deck early on, high difficulty win condition which needs help to be pushed so win by turn 3 wasn't always possible, poor vitality character with poor/nonexistant blocks on most of the power cards - and part of that was due to the raw power the aggro deck could push through at a moment's notice. It's rather hilarious, actually, how bad Nakoruru was at blocking even with that 8 hand size.

This game NEEDS that kind of pacing. I definitely don't want to see a turn 1 KO ever again, but turn 2 *should* be possible on a good draw from a strong aggro deck. That's the entire point of aggro. A Control deck should by all rights be able to get at least one critical answer down on their first turn to prevent the aggro deck from killing them on the 2nd turn, but the way the game is right now, said control deck can already establish a near chokehold at that point with only a decent draw. They should be able to prevent the kill, but not prevent nearly all the damage that would be dealt like what's currently possible... or take some damage but gain it right back again by being rewarded for negation (hi Chesters).

Set 6's experiment - throwing a block onto every single card - was in retrospect an unbelievably bad idea, and heralded the release of an enormous amount of cards that wound up having awesome blocks.. cards that shouldn't have blocks on them at all.

The most important thing, though, if we start seeing a rise in aggro-based cards and more powerful pumps, is they need to have some limitation that prevents them from being splashed so easily among a wall of control cards. The Hammer made for a scary format because of how quickly attacks could become more enormous than is in any way reasonable, and even if it hadn't been printed with Evil, a card like the Hammer is far too easily splashed into a control deck to give an easy win condition. This is one of the things we are trying to avoid here, after all.

What I'd like to see is huge damage pumps with appropriate costs and additional limitations that prevent them from working efficiently alongside control. For example:

Foundation, 3 difficulty, 5 control, no block. Air/Earth/Fire. E Commit, discard 1 momentum: Your Earth or Fire attack gets +6 damage. Commit every foundation in your staging area with a Response ability printed on it.

Asset, 2 difficulty, 4 control, +2 low block. Death/Fire/Water. First E Commit, discard 3 cards: Your attack with printed damage 5 or more gets +8 damage. You may not play any more Enhances during this Enhance Phase.

Foundation, 1 difficulty, 4 control, no block. All/Earth/Water. E Commit, commit 2 other foundations: Your Earth or Water attack gets +X damage. X equals the total difficulty of the foundations committed for this ability's cost. If that attack deals more than 5 damage, your committed foundations at that time may not ready until after your next turn.

Foundation, 3 difficulty, 5 control, +4 mid block. Chaos/Good/Water. E Commit, discard 2 momentum, discard 2 cards: Your attack gets +X damage. X equals the highest control among the Momentum discarded for this ability's cost (to a maximum of 8). Only playable if you have no cards in your staging area that can cancel an effect.

Foundation, 4 difficulty, 5 control, no block. Fire/Evil/Order. E Commit, commit 1 foundation, discard 2 momentum: Your attack gets +5 damage. Only playable if no cards in your staging area can modify a control check.

Huge damage pumps that would hinder you severely if you were playing a control deck, or would not work alongside a control-you-to-make-this-unblockable strategy. They might not all be balanced in their own right - but that's not so much what I'm going for with these.

Sol Badguy said:

Perhaps you can arrange a low tier tournament =3 I did that awhile ago and it was a ton of fun. I played the old 3dot zangief. Ah those were the days.

[Foundation, 3 difficulty, 5 control, +4 mid block. Chaos/Good/Water. E Commit, discard 2 momentum, discard 2 cards: Your attack gets +X damage. X equals the highest control among the Momentum discarded for this ability's cost (to a maximum of 8). Only playable if you have no cards in your staging area that can cancel an effect.

Do you mean dif? or did they release an 8 cc card without me knowing? o.O

I understand that you want to make it so that control and aggro are different but the costs on those are a bit high despite the damage bonuses o.o How about something like this?

foundation 2/5 no block E:commit discard 2 cards, your attack gets plus 1 damage for each card in your opponents staging area that negates effects, If you have no cards in your staging area that negate effects your attack gains an additional 2 damage for each card that negates effects in your opponents staging area.

Rewards mostly agro but it doesnt nuke control as much.

I think bigger damage bonuses can be had, like say 4/5 no block 3symbols E commit, (+7): Your attack gets +10 damage. Only playable if there are at least 2 other printed attacks in your cardpool.

I would perfer to see damage bonuses have number of attacks restrictions rather than being riduclously overcosted. Also I say printed attacks so that multiples cannot benifit from damage bounuses that are so big. Also instead of tacking on a commit an extra foundation cost I threw on the +7 cost cause it will garantee that you will have to commit at least 1 foundation and at the same time brings on the risk of having to commit 6 foundations depending on the deck made with it.

On the subject of damage pumps -- Brooding is far far FAR away from the best pump in the format. Savage Fighter is one of the no-brainers that beats the tar out of it. Another is the combo of Unstoppable Warrior/Ymirfang + All Life is Prey. I played Death Donovan this past week and managed to play a 15 damage Shredding Vibrato T3, after a leadin of Shadow Blade -> Ichi no Tachi. In other words, I threw a 5H12 - 3M3 - 4M30 string, commiting 2 + 1 of choice foundations and destroying another, while destroying 4 foundations of mine and commiting 2 more as costs (at a difficulty curve of 5-4-3-4, the 3 being a foundation to activate Donovan). Turn 3. Hell, you could reverse the first two attacks, and stick a 3H19 Knight Breaker on the end.

You just have to look a little harder.

@Shinji: Your part on balanced hand manipulation interests me. What do you think of AlGore's support? How about Kuzuryu Reppa? (which is both an attack and one of the most ungodly draw engines in UFS) And balanced discard -- Ways of Punishment is quite strong, but it loses very hard to Warrior's Path, and Big Cyclone tends to make whatever you're trying to push through pointless {and prevents *** from being played either lol}. Sure it's possible to lose horribly to a heavy discard strat, but said strategy is by no means foolproof -- really quite the opposite.

I think useless effects have already begun to matter, to an extent. Think about it -- what's the most useless thing you can do with your damage redux pieces? Reduce your own attacks. A wild Hilde appeared! (almost wrote "a wilde Hilde" >_>) It's just a matter of balancing -- sometimes cards with new mechanics come out of playtesting too nerfed, and cards with old mechanics (Addes Syndicate) come out dramatically undercosted.

I dont think the game is broken nor does it need a fix, i think it needs tweaks. Honestly a lot of the changes made so far wont be felt untill rotation but i think hata is already hitting some on my list:

Blocks on attacks - Putting a bunch of +1 mids and +0 high blocks on 0/6 foundations was silly. I still blame higher caliber for messing up the games pacing. Hata has already made great strides in putting blocks where they belong, on smaller attacks and limited action cards, and I think if we keep it up with the next sets that come rotation deck building will be very different and people will actaully have to look towards using more atttacks just to get the blocks they need.

Very few 6 checks - Simpily put there are too many all over the place. The game should have 6 checks, they shouldnt be on every other foundation in your deck.

Higher controls on attacks - I doubt this will ever happen sadly, but i think we can easily make 4 and 5 control vanilla attack cards in limited quantites and it will really catapult thte game to a new place. I would love to be able to build a deck that can safley run 20-24 attacks and still win.

Simple Foundations / Complex attacks - More combo, more E: abilities, more situational effects and damage pumps on attacks. I hate to say it but more attacks that come closer to chain throw than the come closer to solid punch. Balance this with foundations that uniformly have decidedly less potent stats and 1 ability that is ok. Attacks should do your killing, not you just need an attack to activate your foundations.

More character merging - 6/6 with a +0 mid block has been the character standard forever and how often do they get nerged. The only sucuessful character merge character in history was Cody, and it's only because he had 4 versions, 3 difficutlies, broken stats, and silly good abilities. Im not saying we should take it to that level, but Really we need to get more creative with characters because the paradigm hasent worked.

Answers in the same set / Answers for all - Far too long we have been getting superpowered cards in ser 10 and no answers till set 12. A card can be unbalanced in an environment that does not punish it. ISpin for instance is so powerful because there is no direct counter for shoving crap into a players momentum, no card that says "when a player puts a card into your momentum, do x"

No more free momentum - I'm freaking sick of this. A momentum really is supposed to be generated from an attack that dealt damage. Having a card that commits to give you a momentum is not really comprable to pushing an attack through. I think we can have some alternate methods to get momentum, but they should all be attack based, period.

Alternate wIn condition - It's not really mandatory or a balance issue, i just really love when we had cards like close to the edge or soul hive. Neither of them were nessasarly great, but they were interesting to say the least. I would make at least one per rotation that did something similar, and not have them be UR's that you need 4 of.

I don't mind seeing momentum generation that comes from foundations if there's a "speed limit" on it. White Magic is fine by me, as is White Gi. Also, action-based momentum generation is fine as long as it doesn't generate giant heaps of WTFMOMENTUM like pre-errata OAM did. Power Up was fine.

Wafflecopter said:

Algol's support is all quite balanced. He has potentially massive draw in some foundations, but it takes a lot of skill to utilize anyways, and most of the time you HAVE to discard before you draw. Kuzuryu I'm OK with because it's a 6 difficulty mid attack that CAN finish the game, but isn't necessarily a finisher, nor a card you can spam easily. Ways of Punishment I'm severely against because everytime I've ever used it, it ditched my opponent's hand completely, and I always won the game thus. No card should have the potential to strip your opponent's hand in one shot, not without extreme costing to make it look almost unappealing.

I really think more needs to be done to not punish people for attacking. For instance Chinese boxing should have only been playable on your own attack. Throwing chip damage moves shouldnt be punished with being tapped out by a card that can ready on the opponents turn to tap more stuff out that wont ready. There are many cards that punish people for attacking such as battle prowess and the above chinese boxing that slow this game down way to much.

Protoaddict said:

Slim and Athletic can also do the same thing, but it's easier to get around.

I played Miserable Existance. It's funny, but honestly it's not a counter worth playing against iSpin.

the one thing we have wrong with this great game was an act commited long ago... and something that will be corrected in time... I can't wait for this old stuff to cycle out, so that the game can be fun again...

I'm talking about the rediculous promos and box toppers like Lord of the Makai, Blood Runs True, Chester's Backing, Olcadens Mentoring, etc etc etc...

Those cards are too powerful, should ALL be banned, and I plan on banning them all locally after the regionals and nationals are done, and I would tell FFG to do the same...

They are far too powerful of a card, printed in far too few in Numbers for people to get. Its supply and demand, and there shouldn't be cards that are that strong that people can't get by buying packs... NOT boxes. Sure you want to reward people for buying boxes... give them a good card, but not a super card of death and destruction that puts people into groups of haves and have nots.

Either you have those cards and you are playing at a high level, or you don't and no matter how good you are, the firepower advantage isn't going to make up for it.

I own some of these cards, and owned a lot more in the past, but I can't condone playing with them... they are not condusive to a competitive play envirionment in my area because we weren't playing until 4-5 months ago... and trying to get these cards is a matter of the rich kids beating the poor kids.

I want this game to do well in my area, to grow... to get more new players. After spending $200-$300 buying a few boxes of shadow war and SCIV, and finding out that the cards you have are worthless in comparision to these older promos.... People quit. I've seen it happen to a few of my players.

I have 5-6 players who play regularly, and 10 that refuse to play until after I ban the cards... if the 2 guys that have the above mentioned cards quit... I still have 8 more players than I have now... and thats good for the community.

Lord Aries said:

Honestly, if you don't plan on attending any large-scale tournament action, if it's better for your community to do so, then ban them. They will cycle out eventually, and with the very little support given to Legacy, only a few players actually play it.

Now would also be a good time to get rid of said cards if you currently have them. US nats, CDN Team Nats, US Team Nats and more importantly, Worlds are coming up in a few months and people are looking to buff up their decks. If you aren't planning on attending these tournaments and don't really enjoy the high level cards, it may be in your best interest to trade away said cards for Set 12 stuff, which will be legal longer.

Action on cards aside, I'm honestly getting the impression that they need to dedicate/hire more people to work mostly/exclusively on UFS. It seems like every set gets delayed, beyond the natural delay due to the set before being delayed. And apparently there are still some prize support/distribution issues in areas. And, putting aside the fact that he did a pretty good job, that they had to get an outside (or psuedo-outside or whatever his relation is) volunteer to work on the rules of the game they make speaks volumes for how critically shorthanded they must be . Plus the communication has all but vanished, as Steve hardly seems to have the time for a one-page (or not even) SoTG each month, much less any sort of announcements or update on things such as how exactly the reprints would be distributed (they had to have known well before the second week of May) or even the slightest bit of info on what's going on with the set that was initially supposed to come out in a few weeks. I'm honestly finding myself doubting they spend much more than two minutes each month thinking about whether or not any card action needs to be taken, because from all indications there's much more on their plate than they can handle. And people want to see real Legacy support with things such as a separate ban list? There's just no way. If the game has been more successful since the release of set 11, how about using some of that income to get sufficient manpower in there?