with the news about the release of tekken i realized that its still a 99 card set is this going to be true for the rest of the sets as well? With only 1 set released at a time i fiugured the sets might get a lil bigger since were not gettin as many cards anymore

does anyone know if this is true? or will they stay at 99 forever?

One could assume that every set will be 99 cards with the exception of the February sets, which should be 2 sets, 8 characters a piece, 4 starters.

My guess is that 13 and 14 were originally planned for release together so 2 99-card sets would be fine. They probably were geting behind so they split T6 and SC to get ahead. Set 15 will probably be a bit bigger but maybe only a little to fit it one more char. I don't think there will be a problem getting to more chars...wasn't it mentioned the T6 release would have 16 promos?

Not 16 different promos, 16 copies of one prerelease promo. I'll echo that they'll probably increase the set size a bit starting with the winter set, though it'd also be nice if they went back to releasing more promo characters. Not crazy-lots like the first SNK promo set, but maybe like each month have 2-3 new promo characters, 1 new non-character and 1 new reprint.

I won't lie, I'm a little disappointed in only 5 character in the upcoming release.

Just Doin' Work said:

Well, hopefully it will be more in the future, but I would assume that they did not expect to only release one set at a time, so 5 characters per set giving us 10 per release would've been OK; but seeing how they have now changed their minds, I highly doubt they could go back and make a few more character cards and card moves. Maybe they will readjust this int he future, since they now know they will only release 1 set per 3 months.

Just Doin' Work said:

This was done for two reasons:

1. People were getting sick and tired of constantly pulling characters, namely, ME! >:|

2. At the rate this game was going at (11 characters per set, or 8), games were coming close to having everybody be printed too quickly. Darkstalkers has already had everybody printed, and every other game not named Tekken is coming extremely close.

With 5 character sets, it alleviates both problems.

Now, with the whole 1 set per release, however, it's going to be neigh impossible for any game to finish, because it has to worry about both printing new characters and reprinting old ones. I really hope the economy picks up, or rather, that UFS gets some sort of boost in popularity because this is the first problem I'd like to see relieved.

Keep in mind folks, that there will be promos, and prize support still. Which for the most part has traditionally been characters. It's fairly safe to assume going forward that there will still be promo chracters available.

Additionally, for all the concerns over diversity right now, how many characters from the existing sets never see play. If they make fewer, but better characters, more of them will see play, so diversity should be just fine.

One would hope that even if sets are only 5 characters, that the cards added to rotation will make other characters from prior sets more viable for tourneys, thus increasing the value of your older stuff, thus making diversity less of an issue.

Protoaddict said:

Part of me thinks randomly for a second:

With fewer characters, maybe this will force players to be more creative.

I mean at the Mini-Block Character card tournament at Gencon, there's going to be 9 SC, 9 SW, 5 Tekken, 4 World Champions for a total of 27 different charaters.

That means that more then 50% of the characters currently in the block will be represented in a top 16 cut.

Are people going to finally start looking at other symbols, and figuring out other deck types that work, causing a more diverse environment, so they'll have a shot once they make the cut?

I'm actually looking forward to this to see if people will start breaking out of the easy mold, and start looking for different ideas to innovate.

Antigoth said:

No they're not, and if they do, it will be through no fault of their own.

Antigoth said:

This makes me want to build what would by that time be voted as the worst character around, just for the sake of being the only one running it.

Church said:

And that is exactly how it begins.

So ragnar then?

Seriously though, set Zi Mei is amazing and might actualy see play in this format over her promo version (being as how its not legal). I'll say the same thing about Temujin and Z-D. Astrid needs no help in being awesome.

So while the format will be limited and brutal and people will get diversified, its also ripe to allow players with skill to take more advantage of it during play rather than deck building. A solid Yi Shan or Siegfried deck or even ivy deck, while they probably wouldnt stand a shot in hell in standard and would be looked at as gimick decks, will most likley punch babies in the face in this limited format with potential to take it all. Hell i can totally imagine with the lackof 1 and 0 drop foundation pure suicide aggro comming back, and decks running 20+ attacks.

I'm crossing my fingers in any event.

To be honest. I feel (most) decks i play will fair better in the future meta (more attacks). I hope I am right and this game goes in to a the meta everyone is hoping it to be Most sources viable, and not 1HKO

Protoaddict said:

Nightmare is dumb as hell in the Mini-STD format.

Crap, hadn't thought about nightmare in a format where spam is **** near impossible. Most of the control foundations are like 3/4s so he has to absolutly brutal against them.

bloodocean said:

i would definately put my money on nightmare, astrid or herr to take the mini even't.

Hayamachop said:

I'm looking forward to that.

I tend to think Diversity is dumb to begin with.

But Diversity would be dumb as hell in the Block format.

yeah i sure do hope that they make the sets bigger even up to like 140 or so a set

I just think that the meta would get stale with only half the cards going around unless you make all the cards appealing in some way or another

Hayamachop said:

The question is will the need for such attacks be needed in the future. I think one reason people run insane damage attacks now is because a person can heal up really fast and pretty consistantly. Life gain of all kind should have to be associated with the life symbol and those cards should have 2 symbols on the cards. This would make it so that the focus on more attacks would be viable instead of bypassing healing compeletly by having a one-shot.

Antigoth said:

I don't think the mini-block tournament will happen until all the sets of that block are released, so there will definitely be more than 27 characters available by then.

mattkohls said:

You're probably right. I just got word today that as of this moment, there will be no mini-block tournament at Gencon. (Which is too bad... I would have liked to have seen how that shook out.)