Alright, so he's been touched on here or there, mentioned once or twice, alluded to and even mentioned by name once or twice, but with the new forums on the go, I think it's time we talk about block 3's best man, and probably biggest problem.

J. Talbain 3 Dot.

Lets get his stats symbols and abilities out of the way,

6/28

All/Good/Water

At the beginning of your Combat Phase remove all Moon tokens on this character, if you did not remove any Moon tokens add 1 Moon token to this character. While this character has at least 1 Moon token, you may discard and draw up to your hand size during your opponent's Review and Draw Step and though it were your own.

After any player plays a foundation, their opponent may add a foundation they could normally play to their staging area committed from their hand.

And now I'm going to say the forbidden phrase on the old board.

In this current incarnation, I believe J.T should be banned from competitive play.

Why? I'll do my best to explain.

1. He breaks the fundamental rules of the game, a few of them actually. J.T Barely needs to follow symbol on his foundations, can play a higher difficulty curve the most decks can manage, uses his foundation drop and Handsize tricks to win the board size race 90% of the time and his deck forces you to play his style of game, except his plays it better because it is built for it and has the abilities to back it up.

2. There is no Viable counters or sideboard for JT currently in the game, and making one that would be effective would likely hurt the game. What cards do you put in for your sideboard against JT? More Attacks? Some Damage Pumps? Something to try and let you win without foundations? There is no cards that REALLY hurt JT specifically in the format. Lynettes is the closest. You cannot stop his abilities at all, there is no trigger to target, and his draw works in a unstoppable way. IF you printed a counter wouldn't it be a ridiculously strong card? Something that blanks his abilities or stops his draw dead would be a staple in ANY deck and while strong enough to slow down JT, would probably be super effective against everything else that is even a little bit like JT.

3. His vitality total is wayyy too high for the already obscene strength of his abilities. The Best way to beat a JT is by straight forward attacking him, and forcing him to build, and letting you build off his, the problem with this is, he has 28 vitality, taking down 28 vitality without any real board presence or advantage is not just difficult its nearly impossible.

4. When you are playing against him and allowing him to use his drop down ability, his deck mills at a slower rate, giving him a longer staying power in a dragged out game. Milling him is nearly impossible when he only makes a few control checks a turn and then sits on his hand and builds without control checks, you can take this advantage away by forcing him to build by attacking, but if your trying to win by mill, you need to build or you will slowly die to his hardchecked attacks.

5. JT will continue getting stronger every set, and never really lose any power level. Everytime a good asset comes out, JT gets better, He can get away with playing a abnormally high count of assets due to his hand size cheating and ability to play them without problem. More and more cards will continue to come out and support him and his ability to do this. Very few cards have come out to date that have stopped static abilities(Yoga Jab is the only thing I can think of) so there is no reason to believe more will come out, they are a incredibly strong effect that only belongs on a handful of cards, and they are just as effective, if not more effective against everything else that is not JT as well.

6. JT has no bad matchup chars, only ones that are less in his favor then others. No char can come across the board and make JT go "Crap this is going to be a uphill fight". To date I can think of two chars in Block 3 that are Harder on JT then the rest of the playing field Ibuki 4-dot for her ability to play attacks consistently without foundations, and Guy, his speed pump becomes a nightmare when your hand is full at the start of every turn(reusable +6 speed pump yes please!) and the ability to deny the momentum necccessary for a moontoken lock via fight or Flight. Beyond those two JT just outright beats up on everyone else. The better chars do better against him, but he fears nobody.

All of these points, and this is without even considering his ability to stack the 9 handsize with a moontoken version of himself, another unstoppable effect combined with his draw, and his ability to maintain moontokens with some ease by using the already strong Fight or Flight. Does any deck have better then a 50% chance against a 9/28 who redraws his entire hand at the start of every turn? I say no.

A lot of competitive players have known he was going to be a problem from the second he came out, Pre worlds 2008 The Olexa playgroups common subject talk was how terrified we were of some rogue JT deck that would be unstoppable and take this worlds, and we were almost right.

Goo(Jihan) from New york came with a absolutely devastating build of the wolfman that basically let the opponent lose the game, he just kept playing until the opponent played their deck out trying to keep up on board or kill him. His deck was murder on everyone and tore it's way into top cuts. The sad thing about it is there was a few chars that were rough on JT in Block 2, but most are rotated come block 3, also suzaku, ibukis ace in the hole against him is gone. Goo ended up getting bounced in topcuts to a Cervantes hack deck that really I'm not sure should of won that matchup, if you played those two again 10 times ina row, I believe goo's deck would win 8 of those times, but it happens.

Regardless, that was just the tip of the iceberg with him, he forces you to play his game,he is uncounterable, and basically he is unstoppable.

So I say, the wolfman has to go.

It really sounds like you have had a fair number of bad matchups against him. People made very similar arguments about Elena when she came out. She violates the game. Same thing with Promo Yun-Seong. Both of these characters are amazing, but they are beatable. Elena gets owned if you play cheap attacks against her first turn. She just dares you to hard check at her face first turn. Getting rid of his form makes Yun-Seong cry like the tool that he is. I don't have any answers for the wolfman at the moment, but I'm excited about playing with him and against him. Every new amazing character makes me excited to bang my head against it until I break through.

The whorst thing about the Wolf, is ALL of his character are pretty powerfull. So stacking them makes it more annoying. And, i think most of players agree: Its not that hard to stack the wolfs if you are playing the last Talbain

Talbian is a scary dude. I dont think hes really comprable to Elena or YS at all, simpily because his abilities are static. Elena and YS can be tag alonged and has to pass checks and match symbols with a lower vit, Talbain needs to do no such thing. While there are ways to 'play' against him there is no way to 'build' against him.

I have been playing him religiously latley and I have a tri symbol build that consistently wins turn one for block 2 and 3 provided I let my opponent go first turn. Unlike Elena you cant consistently just open up with attacks on talbain and expect to win cause his vit is too high and he has access to rejection.

So far the best thing I have found to fight him is block 2 and to some extent block 3 is ibuki, simpily because she can play out foundations and do a hail mary infiltrating with her +3 ability or attack turn one. There is not a single character that on its face will counter talbain.

I can't help but agree that this player card is above and beyond one of the most powerful come block rotatation if only becuase his numbers mixed with the effect make him so.

These static player card effects need to be looked at if you ask me simply becuase the game simply doesn't have a card for card answer for them atm. I know our meta had some serious problems with Alba (draw your hand, all reversals all the time) in Block 2, and I've had repeatedly hard matchups against this Talbain for many of the same reasons, I'd be lying if I said otherwise.

If you look at the recent talks about forethought and anit-k you see why. Simply put, Talbain put's control hacks on foundations and early build problems all but to complete rest. And control hacks early game are the emerging deck tech that seems to be the most powerful atm.

If Talbain had less vitality there would at least be a crack in the armor, or something that would force a lot of the free foundations to be supportive as opposed to agressive in nature. Thank God revitalize is gone, becuase this is what my group had the most problems with at Canadian Nats - a necessary one hit kill against a card that is gauranteed to at least be even with you in foundation-wars where we faced a good Talbain deck and an equally good Pilot in Kin.

If Talbain had one less handsize it would also help, especially early game before a certain stack occured. Granted, it is the fact that he almost always has enough foundations to take advantage of his tech that makes him deadly.

If the static was 'once a turn' it would be a lot easier to deal with too. (possible errata?)

All in all, I'd like to know the rigours cards go through before being released with numbers and effects that don't balance one another out, that is, before I feel justified in complaining at all.

Really though, I've simply coined this Talbain - Old Alba with a Block 3 Beard.

The symols on him also make you scream - water has access to feline, all has access to saikyo, bitter, blood, etc. and good is super great support for staying alive and dealing damage sometimes (very versatile holding ground).

Talbain should be looked at for an errata.

- dut

I agree 100% that J. Talbain is above the acceptable power curve, and this is coming from a Yun-Seong player whose team one a card. Am I the only person to pilot Yun-Seong to winning a card yielding title? Anyways, that's not that important, but I did play a deck that was intesively designed to have answers to the entire meta and my match records consistantly prove this. However, I have like a 5-15% chance of beating a well-built J. Talbain. Sure you can say that he's a bad match-up, but the fact remains that he is the only blatantly bad match-up that I have had. I'll be honest here and say that All was tough (but I revised my deck to handle it) and games against most other Yun-Seong's are toss-ups, as well as conceding that J. talbain is a logically bad match-up for the theory that my deck used. I've played, check this, 4 very different versions of J. Talbain3 and the odds were never in my favor. They were: Goo's Worlds Mill version, Protoaddict's Worlds Agohani Geri Loop version, AwesomeDhalsim's casual control verion and his Canadian Team Nationals Feline Spike control version.

Granted, this was in a Block 2 environment where Addes, Revitalize, and the Injury Assets were legal, but they did not play a huge part in my disadvantage because my deck handled them inividually rather well. The fact still remains that J. Talbain offers even more freedom than characters like Yun-Seong ever will, and its not very difficult for a seasoned player to take full advantage of it. Despite the claims that there are strategies to play around J. Talbain, they do not have a significant impact on the outcome of games against refined J.Talbain players.

I contend that any player who has not played against the level of J. Talbain decks that I have cannot rightfully disprove the main points in my post, and the odds are that if you have differing opinions then you have not played against comparable J. Talbain decks. I'm going to rephrase some of what I have said here: strong J. Talbain decks are easier to build than most other decks and provide an extreme uphill battle to all opponents, the likes of which are only paralleled or exceeded by banned characters and a handful of extraordinary builds (that probably played cards which are now banned).

I'll not say whether I think that he should be banned or not, but I will say that J. Talbain offers far more than the recent (and IMO really weak) standards of character design, and, by extension, J. Talbain may very well be an unhealthy influence to the game's meta. Although, he remains vastly unexploited and unknown.

Another problem with J. Talbain3 is that not only does he force you to play his game quite easily, but to truly DENY playing his game, you must play against "normal" UFS. No foundations, lots of assets.

1) He forces you to go second

Ever since the end of UFS's first year, going first was a synonym for winning in a lot of battles. Few decks win more consistently by going second than first. However, with J.Talbain3 on the opposite side of the table, you're at a heavier disadvantage by going first as he will be able to attack you very easily first turn. And that's if he doesn't have an asset hand, or just passes to timewalk himself and force you into playing your foundations first.

2) To not play his game, you mus t not play foundations

Congrats! You lost the die roll - prepare to have J.Talbain have as much foundations as you do by the end of the turn. Not only that, but if you decide to not play his game, you must destabilize the other player (a hard thing to do in high-level competitive play) by going with an off-beat rhythm such as attacking on the first turn. You have to force him to play foundations first, and considering he's playing J.Talbain and not you, he won't fall into that trap easily.

* * *

Ban? Meh either way. If he's in the meta I have to contend with him. If he's not, I don't. No skin off my back.

My first and only experience playing against Talbain was at Worlds, specifically against Fred/protoaddict's Agohani loop version. It was unreal. I was absolutely thrashed without mercy game 1, and finally started catching on to his tricks game 2. The problem there was that it didn't matter: I was playing Donovan, a character who is well-known for his ability to slow the game itself to an absolute crawl, as well as boatloads of denial, and there wasn't a thing I could do to stop the wolfman. The only reason I lasted until time was called game 2 (a good 40 minutes later) was because I DID have an answer to Agohani (Seals and MAC). Being able to only pay two foundations per turn doesn't mean crap against a character who plays them out indirectly and on your turn, you see.

As far as power curve, I absolutely agree 100% that he as a character he moves into an entirely uncharted territory of power, simply because it's so deceptive in nature. Alba could be dealt with, and so could Lien. So, too, can Elena be played around. But combining Elena with Alba makes for a very scary character. I definitely think that he's someone to watch out for in the coming meta of Block 3, because he is able to combine the most useful tools from different symbols (Chester's, Lesser, Brud Runs True, Destiny, Spike, and so on) in a cohesive deck without worrying about ANY kind of symbol chaining, or the need for in-deck card draw.

This could get ugly...

One of the best ways to fight talbain that is often overlooked, as much as I hate to say it, is PURE FOUDNATION OVERLOAD. One of the halmarks of his deck is to have enought foundations to match but not enough to get innundated on his own turns. If you play out like 4-5 foundations a turn, granted he will probably get 3-4 of them matched, but if you play a defensive foundation base that can weather the storm hes gonna bring your going to get one or 2 on him. Since hes NOT going to play foundations himself if he can avoid it you can actually start getting a leg up on him this way, especally if you can attack and use sakyo and the like to strip foudnations from his hand.

Only problem is not every symbol can do this and not ever character either. Promo gen has a good time with this. Nagase is a character who can play out her hand and use Lord of the makai and such to live through the assualt with her built in damage redux (first turn excluded) and zangief of course

And what if you just don't play anything? Like any cards at all...Even if you lose Die roll just don't play anything...What would happen then? Just wondering...

Protoaddict said:

Zangief is completely stupid right now if you stack his promo anyway.

You know one way to beat Talbain? Play his game. Although the clamor is all about how he wins the foundation war (and he does), it's not how much he has, but rather, WHAT he has.

Here's another thing: wait for him to play foundations. Sure, he can play all them assets (and WTF assets are you guys talking about? Olcadan's is the only good asset he would even play), but eventually he'll have to build, at which point you feed off his static...

But anyways, I agree he should go for the same reason I have, and will always think **Mai** needs to be banned: universal static abilities (Lien, Alba, Mai, Talbain, you get the point) can be built around. Immensely. And because they're static, they can't be Tag Along'd/Trade your Passion'd. Talbain is even more stupid because, as you yourself pointed out, he easily bispasses symbol restrictions, doesn't care about difficulty (and for that matter, control), and pretty much every game I've heard about involving my 'bain was the opponent being forced to play foundations.

Like I said, guys, it's not how much Talbain has, it's WHAT he has. Let's face it, his three symbols are limited in their options. Now, Water's looking amazing next block, but the other two? ...yeah... </3

Still, I'd say he needs to go just because he isn't really a fair character. Sure, he's never once won anything, but just because a character's never placed first doesn't mean they can't go (lolHugo).

MarcoPulleaux said:

Seal of Corruption?

And now for J. Talbain's best kept secret, one that we haven't heard about yet...

Begin Anew.

Begin Anew sets up the Worse Case Scenario for your opponent with J. Talbain. Basically on your Token turn, you play out 2-3 foundations, then play Begin Anew. All has plenty of Action protection, stuff like Lesser of Many Evils, KFT, etc. Now, you draw up to your hand size and your opponent is now left with a lose/lose situation. They play foundations, allowing the Talbain player to play MORE foundations and emptying their hand so that the Talbain player has less blocks to deal with plus foundations to support playing cards. Or, they can try to attack, with a Talbain's full hand size and support in their staging area, plus no support on their own if Talbain chooses to attack on their next turn.

It's not hard on All to fetch Begin Anew, either. So, a Talbain player can wait it out to spring their trap of which an opponent is going to be very hard pressed to get out of... and if they do, they just play it again. They can keep board advantage like no other character out there.

Sure, there's ways of playing around J. Talbain. It's not easy, and it's not fun. However, playing around the above scenario is going to be nearly impossible unless you can be very, very aggressive without many foundations.

Homme Chapeau said:

...do Talbain decks run that?

MarcoPulleaux said:

-corruption +Cessation

While not an 'uber' counter, ::Dhalsim might be able to do fairly well as he can drop a foundation without 'playing' the foundation. It is only one foundation, however, and you're still FUBAR'd first turn.

MarcoPulleaux said:

i'd go so far as to say "a JT deck w/o SoC is made of fail and should probably be thrown in the trash." i haven't met 1 person yet who likes to get hit with a multiple attack or powerful attack with an empty hand.

also, Kin's JT deck won canadian teams, so JT does have a card under his furry pelt.

Nyobari said:

Yet another Nasty Evil trick

MarcoPulleaux said:

All is quite good in block 3, and Good is playable.

Also JT at Can Team nats as piloted by Kin Im reasonably sure went totally undefeated, losing not a single game to anyone, much less a match.

failed2k said:

Yes I belive so. having ran into that team in round 2 put some what of a stopper into aspirations of our own shop card. while not actualy playing kin himself i saw enough to know that he is very competitive in block 2 let alone 3

As being one of the few players to have beaten kin and goo's versions of JT, I have to say, what you need is some awesome luck and board clearing, or retarded amounts of card drawing. The reason I was able to beat kin/Goo the times I did was because of foundation spill followed by Infiltrating followed chain throws and Kasumi Suzakus. Vs Goo I had to throw 2 chain throws and 3 Kasumi Suzaku's to kill him, and this was after an infiltrating on the previous turn (with fully loaded evil ibuki, btw). Vs kin, I've had to draw upwards of 5-8 cards in one turn, and hope he didn't have a way to make me discard my kasumi sukaku's before they came online (this is my water ibuki deck btw).

These decks are beatable, but you have to be methodical about it, and your deck has to be redicoulous already. Honestly vs Goo, I had my game plan as soon as I saw his character. The whole game was me trying to keep him under control and set up my hand for the kill (pretty much craft my hand for a triple suzaku turn with chain throws absurds and infiltratings involved), while making sure he had no moon token as it was impossible to kill him with one cause of his talbain defense foundations.

I don't know about you guys, but when you have to think up plans for roughly 30 minutes the night before on how to just beat one character in one match, it can be a bit stressful. J Talbain should get the axe, I concur with mr.failed2k and the rest of the board members on thier opinion on the Big Wolf on Campus.

First I'd like to say that this topic should be deleted because they used one of the "no no" words I jest I jest.

Heh seriously though ask Kin... My current Bishamon deck destroys JT. Now granted my deck may be an exception to the general rule, but it is possible to (yes I'm saying it) outbuild him. Jt plays a LOT of assets. As such, on your turn there's a decent chance that JT is going to have a mit full of green. How can he abuse his ability if he's got no foundations to play?

Anywho's he's only a six handsize, and with appairantly the main "competative" decks are all 7 HS (which is bull in itself, but another rant for another day) then what's the problem? You grow faster than he does on those kinds of turn. Play one foundation, see if he's got any to drop and if he doesn't, give 'er.

Cheers,

Brad

MarcoPulleaux said:

HALT. WRONG. Do you mean to tell me you can't find foudnations to use in ALL (bitter rivals, sakio ryu, Lord of the Makai) and GOOD (Buddhist Devotion, White magic). Also considering that J talbain dosent need to play one symbol, it dosent matter if you can find more than one awesome cards on that symbol for you build, you can still use it.

My geri loop deck used to win if my opponent played 1 foundation. ONE. All i needed was a buddhist devotion which would lead to Ibis and shinobi which usually meant game against someone with only one foundation.

J Talbain is my fav character the last 6 months so I am in serious conflict of interest to join the discussion. Let's put it this way, there is hardly a bad match up to a well-tuned J Talbain deck, pre-ban of military rank, revitalize, and addes. Talbain is very flexible, you just need to fine tune it to tackle the variety of decks you expect to see in your meta, and then, you will hardly face a bad match up. A well tuned J Talbain deck's weakness is few and far between. Very few decks can outbuild a good Talbain deck. I did not lose a game with the Talbain deck I played in Canadian Team National tourney. After several turn and I have built up, I should be able to commit (roam the world) 6-8 opponent's troublesome foundations in their staging area, destroy (Olcadon) a couple more if needed, then play 2-3 Spikes after that. The scary part is I can repeat the same thing every turn after I built up. How many turns of Spike Multiple 2 Spike Multiple 2 + 2 fight or flight you can take, after my Roam the world + Olcadon + Saiky-ryu? Not to mention Addes, BRT, and CoS is there waiting for your response and block...

With the banning of military rank, revitalize, and addes, there are 10 big holes in my deck to fill out. However, I think its just a matter of time and Sets that J Talbain replentish all the necessary pieces it needed. In the meanwhile when I am waiting for those pieces to emerge, I experiment by putting in more water cards and take out more all cards. After Canadian Team National, I am playing the deck with only 2 Spikes. Why? I returned the Spike to Keith. Thanks again, Keith, for lending me the card for the Tourney. As mentioned by Shajir, with some good luck and a ridiculous good deck, you can beat a Talbain deck. As for B-Rad's deck, yes, he beat my block 3 Talbain deck by 2-1. Its a block 3 deck with only 2 Spikes and I did not pack answer against a mill deck in my main or side board for a local tourney. Nevertheless, good games B-Rad.