So I have to ask, what are the problem with the Void symbol? What does void lack? Why don't we start with what void DOES have.

Card draw – Void has some of the best card draw in the game. Notably, it has Aquakinesis, which is, as we know, fantastic. High Tide is also here, as well as other of Sogetsu's support. It has Abelia's Friendship, which has some decent tech against against momentum gain, it has card draw, and life gain. Abelia's Friendship is also sexy with Researching the Past. Body of Souls is card draw directly from momentum, as well. Rootless is also here, while it being mediocre card draw, with fantastic stats. White Gi is also amazing card draw, and momentum gain to boot. It even has draw from your discard, with Abomination.

Board Commital – Well, here we have a few options. We have Experienced Combatant, when paired with a void/order character, can be very brutal. We also have Prankster for some nice commital, although it can hurt slightly. There's also the sickening Psycho Style, as well as Akuma and Akuma's Shoryureppa. I'm sure I may be missing a few here, set 10 and 11 are a little fuzzy to me, due to my break from the game.

Discard – Ah, Void's forte, it has a plethora of discard. We have things ranging from The Ways of Punishment, The Glare of the Abyss, Saikyo-ryu, etc. From ditching their entire hand with ways/glare, and selective discard with saikyo, you can really control their hand as well.

Anti-Draw – I could have possibly put this under discard, but it also has access to one of the few card-draw shutdown cards in the game currently; Tough Outer Shell. It also has Martial Arts Champion, which can also stop BRT. Mmm.

Control Check Hacking – Well, there isn't a whole lot of CC Hacks in void, except for Zhao Daiyu, Akuma, Seclusion, and his support.

Anti-Asset – Well, this is mostly for the mention of Olcadans, but since it's getting banned, this won't matter too much shortly. We obviously have Controller of Souls here.

Enhance Negation – Two things here; we have No Memories, which has an extremely underused void R, which can even result in card draw with Path of the Master (As can Tough Outer Shell's life R. Mmm.) There is also The Evil-Doer Destroyer. Enhance Negation is pretty well covered here. There is also Spiritual Center, for damage pump negation.

Card Blanking – Well, here we have all of Rashotep's support. Nothing else to really say here as it's a fairly new mechanic.

Momentum Gain – Well, we have mostly assets here; White Gi and Such A Popular Person. There's also momentum hate with Excitable, but I can't name the last time i've seen that played, to be honest. Abelia's friendship is fine with momentum hate. White Gi is my particular favored one here, as it's also card draw as earlier stated.

Card Readying – Well, we have Soiree's support here; who doesn't like re-readying No Memories to use again with Bust A' Cap? Shooting Capoera and The Angel of Evening are tasty.

Attacks – Void has some very sexy attacks. To start, we have Charlie's Fierce Punch, which saw a lot of play when it came out, although that had been reduced a bit lately. We have Heel Snipe, for some oh so sexy un-negatable discard, card draw, readying, whatever you want, actually. Also, i'm shocked! I have seen no one using Akuma's Shoryureppa + Juni's Spiral Arrow. I mean jesus. From here, we have the great multiples, including: Lunar Slash, Spinning Beat, Hoyoku-Sen, Kuzuryu Reppa, and the sorts. All fantastic attacks. Ryu's Shin Shoryuken is also still a good finisher.

Characters – So what about characters? Maybe void has no good characters? Well, lets see. We have Akuma here, an obvious great choice for void as it gives it access to CC hacks. We have the dreaded Chunners, as well, who can ditch your hand on your turn for playing foundations while throwing Akuma's Shoryureppa, and then Spiral Arrowing you the next turn. Oh, did I mention, you can Spiral Arrow loop with valuable experience? We also have Rashotep, who is not so bad although the stats aren't the greatest. Sakura, who is just the queen of finding exactly what she needs, as well. Promo Zhao Daiyu is gross as well, although without access to twilight embrace without multi-symboling, Akuma is probably a bit better. Other characters worth mentioning would be Zangief(s), Ukyo, and Sogetsu.

In conclusion, what do you think void's problems are? What could it use? Why is it not seeing any play? I realize it doesn't have much in terms of form and response negation, although between blanking, commiting, or just not letting them play it, I don't see a huge amount of problems with that, personally. This is also another symbol that I believe will be growing greatly with the bannings. Sure, it's not the powerhouse it once was in our first block, but that shouldn't stop it from being looked at.

Here are a few things I find wrong with Void.

1) It lacks a glut of foundation based threats: If you can keep No Memories and The Ways of Punishment under lock and key I've found that you have essentially neutralized a large portion of Void's game plan.

2) It lacks the ability to efficiently capitalize on what few threats it has: Ok, assume you can protect TWoP somehow. How are you going to capitalize on it? Charlie's Fierce Punch and Heel Snipe don't pack enough power, Kuzuryu Reppa is nice but for it to work properly you're first going to need a momentum (which requires you to get another expensive piece of puzzle onto the field), Lunar Slash checks for a one and can potentially hit for 18 (but once again you need momentum). Ryu's ShinSho is also expensive and inefficient for how much momentum you need to pump into it. Sardine's Beach Special is far too foundation hungry and slow in a Rejection based environment.

3) It's unable to protect itself properly: Abelia's Friendship may be able to alleviate some of this burden, but Saikyo Ryu and No Memories don't do nearly enough to keep you alive when compared to Rejection looping, Bitter Rivals picking your hand apart, BRT hacking your control checks to pieces, Cutting Edge strategically laughing at your face, or Air just being flat out FASTER than Void could ever pray to be. That's just from a damage aspect. How does Void protect itself from Order tapping every relevant piece down? It doesn't

I really love void and I have found it came into it own recently but it does have some short comings:

Blind discard - strong, but also useless against anyone packing any anti discard. Its really a coin flip as to if you should run it or not sometimes.

Kill cards - It's almost all momentum based. Reppa, spinning beat, Cervanties stuff. They are all strong but void really does lack momentum gen that can compete with other symbols methods, and have probably more momentum based kills than anyone else.

Water syndrome - Just like water before it, most of voids characters are better suited to a different symbols strategies.

Predictability - Oh look a void deck, so your running reppa and discard then. Let me prepare for this.

So it does have some short commings to be sure. I love void and i feel like reppa, my favoriate attack in the game, works much better off void than any other symbol, however it still feels lacking in the kills department. Hopefully next set will help that though,

wow Arch and Proto said it perfectly

Attacks without bite (at least without momentum)

Foundations too focused (Discard or draw)

Characters better suited off of other symbols

o btw like the op said Akuma's Shoryuppa -> Spiral Arrow is the sex

*raises hand Sieg hail-style*

Hey, just so you know, Aquakinesis does officially make any character better. Sure, you may need to commit 1 foundation (AK), but it gives your character +1 handsize, essentially.

As such, Aquakinesis makes any character better.

NintendoMan said:

NintendoMan said:

Isn't it?

I do agree with a lot of it, the kill conditions definitely require momentum unless you run something silly like Path of the Master with themed attacks or such. But void doesn't have horrible momentum gain. I mean, air requires momentum, and post-makai banning it's still obtainable via. Natural Leader. I would like to see void less focused on that. Plus, you don't HAVE to discard, you can snipe with saikyo ryu, look at their hand, and see if they have anti discard whenever. I mean it seems like you need to work a little harder to get done what other symbols do a little bit.

I still think void can be a viable symbol, just not as good as the trinity of order/evil/air at the moment

Eithinis said:

I would like to introduce your trifecta of order/evil/air to the new up and coming couple, Death/Good. Get to know eachother, they will all be spending some time together at the winners circle.

Smazzurco said:

o i completely agree with you... Death is absolutley amazing. It has control, tech, Kills with momentum or without, damage reduct... Its bomb.

Good is definately up and coming but its lacking something in my eyes, its too reactive in nature with all of its defensive tech cards. It needs momentum to kill and white magic just doesnt seem to be enough, prolly why Mignon/Felicia are goods best characters right now. It just needs a lil more IMO to be considered in top tiers but it def can win

at the the last regional i played at i got 9th place with void ukyo, and was a six check away from top 8ing. void is definately very good, but there were times when i was just sitting there with a handfull of lunar slash and reppa waiting for momentum. about void surviving order's commital, i would say that it's possible, because against mickyd's spiral arrow gill i was a six check away from winning.

Chasing the power = really good anti order card.

NintendoMan said:

Wafflecopter said:

With Good's new support i think Makoto deserves another look.

Good's best character is actually Kyo.

Massive unstoppable Lotus

Archimedes said:

Until he ends up on the wrong side of Hell Snipe.

I must say, Sage and company, best thread I've read in quite some time. This is what the forums should be like.

Oh and to whomever said Mignon and Felicia were Good's best characters, I'll also have to kindly disagree. For stats alone Gill can't be overlooked and Fight for the Future Raphael can be quite a beast quickly.

Eithinis said:

The biggest problem with void is the same it had in the first sets, only back then it had extremely powerful characters and discard. Said problem is that it's all over the place : It's a symbol that can do it all, but weaker than other symbols and not only that, in effects that don't exactly synergize easily.

Allow me to elaborate.

The latest sets gave us three characters with Void - Algol, Cervantes and Ivy. All three characters have their gimmicks (Discard/Draw with Algol, CC hacking with Cervantes and 3 diff attacks with Ivy), and said gimmicks do not exactly synergize well with each other. Algol support doesn't give much for Ivy through Void, and vice-versa. They're characters so mired in their gimmick (Algol specifically because of Alshain Najm) that their support doesn't do much for others with the exception of maybe one card.

Mixing with Block 3, however, nets interesting results, but are those results enough? We've seen a few Ivy's perform well. I don't know on what symbol, but there it is. Mixing her with Jivatma's support nets you a 6CC (Glare of the Abyss) and a powerful discard card (Ways of Punishment) on a character that does that already. The reverse, however, does not hold true with, of course, one exception - Razor's Bite.

Ultimately, we will need characters and gimmicks that synergize well together, or at the very least support each other in some semblance of symbiosis if Void, as a stand alone symbol, is to make it to the top.

Honestly, the Ivy Punishment deck sounds particularly interesting and if I had Gnomes and 2 Ivy starters I'd try it.

ROTBI said:

Heel Snipe + Akuma + Juni's Spiral Arrow = Mmmm.

Eithinis said:

How do you loop it?

ROTBI said:

fight for the future rotated.

He probably means Fight or Flight, 20M20 Big Cyclones are hot while... I don't even know what FftF would do for Raph

@hatman: Body of Souls works

trane said:

Wafflecopter said:

Ill give you Gill he is awesome just by HS alone, but he is prolly better off of Order/Dearth

Raph doesnt work, Ive tried numerous times with him, he just needs to many foundations to kill effectively.

Play attack (Big Cyclone, Dark Force Mirage, Darkness Blade) check a five commit 2 foundations, fight or flight enhance commit it (one foundation), Raph's speed pump enhance commit one foundation..... he has to commit 4 foundations at best to play one "kill" attack not to mention he cries to rejection.

Sure he can loop with his ability, Flurry or thrust and cards like The Mouse but that means you need to play check for and then check for all of the cards listed above again. Its amazing to go off but to kill you need upwards of 8 plus foundations and u still cry to rejection.

IMO Felica and Mignon are best cuz they drop turn to spike and can still run and hide behind Goods wall of tech and defense

Homme Chapeau said:

Well you dont need Heel Snipe it just makes the E's unnegatable.

But Akuma + Spiral Arrow + Body of souls works just fine....

NintendoMan said:

That sounds sick nasty someone should try it : D

Archimedes said:

Kyo Red Lotus is obviously amazing

But Good has better candidates.

Although I personally don't think he is the best, J. Talbain has been the only Good character to show himself during regionals (besides Goo's Kyo Mill which is all kinds of unorthodox).

trane said:

trane said:

Lols, it was late. I meant Fight or Flight...and there' s also no such thing as HELL Snipe, lol!