People have always said I can be quiet about something til it becomes to late. I decided instead of having it bother me, I would share what is bothering me, and some ideas to help it.

When hearing that old saying of “I’m on the fence”, in the words of gaming, it’s always referring to a player deciding to jump into a new/existing game or to jump out of the game. I’m Rochester, New York my local playgroup has private forums as to which we use to talk about our newest decks (looks toward quazark), rant about whatever bothers us about the game at the time, or just wanting to get the group together for some TF2 or L4D at the local LAN center (now looking toward Wafflecopter). But as of late a new post came up, on both our forums and also on the main FFG Forums, noting this past evening by Sir Sajir, in deciding to make a indefinite or permanent leave from the game of UFS. Now as the local judge I laid next to my fan during these warm nights in New York and began to wonder, “what has begun these drastic changes in player moods to be?” I decided to make somewhat of a short list of ideas to help mend the moods of both player, and scouts alike.

1. Have a posting link on the Q&A forum for when game changing errata’s or major ruling is stamped. The rule arbiter that stamped the ruling and could be assistive to scouts when in need of rulings could likely make these quick notes.
2. When a release date is posted stick to it. I would love to see for the first time in a long time, a set released when it was first announced.
3. More promotional system ways to get new players into the game. I think the free starter deck system helped somewhat at our local level but it didn't do the real trick. I would love to see something like Magic's old Guru program where if you do x amount of store demos for the game. You could receive something like alternate art characters, or something that defines you as a Scout or demo staff of UFS like a cool shirt.
4. In connection to number 3, giving back to your scouts. I know the constant feed of cool promos is always nice thing to see in each months tourney kits but like I said, a shirt or something that defines you as a TO/ Scout for the event would make it worth it for just about any player to want to start you his or her local stores player group.
5. Being vocal back to the players on a regular basis. I can understand for both Steve and Hata that a free moment can be a leisure, but hearing from either of these gentlemen, the men that representatives of the company more than once a month would make many players have confidences in the game. One of the things from the days of Sabertooth I cherished the most was chatting with Dave Freeman (one of the original developers), and feeling that he understood the players concerns and wanted to assist and make the game better.
6. Finally, the return of the Scout Forum for UFS in the form of making a actual Scout Forum or even a gmail or yahoo group where Scouts can ask questions among each other would help network the community at the judge level where I find it can be the most important for a game to stay connected to the players.

If you want to call this a rant, you can, if you want to call this speaking of the truth, you can, but do not call this in anyway negative. I in no way want to speak negative about UFS, FFG, or anyone related to game. I just felt that something had to be said, and I wanted to make my voice heard. If no one says anything then how can change truly begin.

Deck dont matter said:

Hey Jesse! Some interesting points... since #1 speaks almost directly to me... I'll ask - can I get you to elaborate on exactly what you're referring to?

When you're saying gaming changing errata, are you referring to what's contained in the document here:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=30&efcid=5&efidt=113308

Or are you referring to something else?

What defines a major ruling?

Please don't take this as me being critcal of your suggestion, I'm just trying understand what specifically you're looking for, to see how I can accomodate your request.

I think this concerns a lot of us. The search function of these forums are almost usuable since it searches every word you type in in every forum. (Not just UFS) If there was a master sheet that contained answers to questions for easy access, it'd be great. I've spent an hour just to find one ruling sometimes, its nuts.

I think what I am meaning to the Q&A section is almost exactly what mistress is going with. I hate when I have to confirm a ruling that I have said at I tournament. I read the Q&A often but I have sometimes missed a few bigs ones (case in point "dead for 1000 years") (elaboration-At US Nationals this past year I learned during the middle of a match that "Dead for 1000 years" blanks the textbox of the card and all copies of the card that dead for 1000 years is responding to, but also since there is no text for the ability to reference to, the ability...just doesn't happen?? I wish that situation of WTF on no one). my recommendations should have been aimed more for a better searching system, or even the idea of a card Omifaq. And anyone who knew of the game once call Raw Deal will know exactly what a Omnifaq is. And for those who don't its pretty much a word document with card to card ruling for a game. Omifaq's are made either via a complete update....usually monthly...so players would be able to stay up to speed with current rulings and any previous ruling on a certain card, or the ability to update said document is limited to a few specific people and is just continuously updated.

Thanks for listening though Mr. Mitchell, knowing you took the time to read my post means alot.

When the old STG forums were going away, I attempted to compile an Omni-Faq for UFS here:

http://www.teamcanadaonline.net/index.php/board,33.0.html

All of three or four people were willing to help compile the Omni-Faq, and this was before I was a rules arbiter.

The problem with compiling the Omni-Faq now is that there are over 3300 cards in the game. We ended up giving up because it was too much for us to do, in the time that we had, and people didn't seem interested in helping at the time.

In a perfect world, I would love to have a document like this one:

http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/index.php?line=rulings <You don't need to play the game to understand how the rulings are issued>

However to make something like that work, there are a few logistical problems:

1) I don't have write access to the main website.

2) Currently to get things updated like:

http://app.fantasyflightgames.com/ufs-banned-errata.html

I have to put together the information, get it to an FFG employee who then forwards it to the webmaster. Initially any updates that I wanted to the above linked document had to go through a number of layers of the FFG foodchain, as well as a few other things that have been stickied on the forums.

While in theory to keep the Omni-FAQ running as I would like to (see above link) is doable - there's the time issue that's involved.

It would entail me writing the file, forwarding it through the food chain, and possibly each time I submit it, it would have to go through the FFG editors before it would hit the website.

Please note - I'm not saying it's not doable. I just have more stuff to deal with regarding the omni-faq then Creed did for Raw Deal. (Some of the logistical stuff mentioned above) For Creed it was pretty simple, update the document, forward it to Neil or Ron, it was uploaded, and Bam! it was all good. <No coding required.>

For White-Wolf - LSJ who maintains the document currently is a paid employee of White Wolf. I honestly have no idea what hurdles he may have to go through, but he also issues all rulings through the V:TES rules group, which is searchable by google, and is hellaciously awesome in it's detail.

I guess what I'm saying is - I'd like to make this happen, but to get it started in terms of compiling it, I think I need some help, and I'm not sure where I can go to get it.

I'll be quite frank, if Set 13 is delayed further, or set 14 is delayed, I'm done. Not gonna sit around waiting to play a hobby. Not to mention if we ever get another Set 8 or Realm of Midnight, I'm not really interested in a year of untested stuff being put into the card pool and having to wait on bans.

that's really about it for me, I love the game and the community, but it isn't worth my time if it's not going to be out on time and busted.

quarzark said:

Whoomp there it is.

To be completely honest, I've only been playing the game for several months now, but it seems to me that all signs are pointing to UFS eventually failing. I do not believe that the "failing" market is causing UFS to cutback on their cards. Don't get me wrong, the economy is poor right now and inflation is at an all time high, but do you see ANY other card games 'not print foils' or 'stopping to release one one set at a time'? Given most games only pump out a set at a time, but they are ALWAYS on time. I can't tell you the last time one of my other 3 games release date has been postponed, but I can tell you in the past year, I feel like UFS has been postponed more times than I'd like.

Ok, I'm not saying lets jump off the UFS bandwagon or anything, but I am saying, "Be wary of sinking too much money into this game, because it looks like it might die." A lot of our playgroup around here has already decided to quit after the recent delays and apparently removal of Foils was a big thing to team (not so much me, but to each their own) and move on to a new game. We were all excited to play miniblock with the new Tekken set, but that does not look like it will be happening, we all spent money and trading cards away to get stuff that was banned the next week, but that is not the real problem. The real problem is that bannings and Erratas, may help the game in some manner, but they also drive others away. I'm not saying give me my 4 Chesters back or anything, but as opposed to outright banning them, why can FFG not take the route of other card games and restrict them? That would allow the people who spent countless of money to actually SAVE some money, as opposed to sayiny, "Screw you in the face!"

Blah, now I've rambled on and didn't even get to the main point of my post; but here it is, UFS looks like it is going downhill, regardless of what some people may be saying, it is very obvious with the minor cut backs. While in the long run "the bans and erratas" MIGHT bring new players in, but who are we kidding? Barely anyone even knows about this game, and I'm pretty sure a guy down the street won't start to play UFS because Lord of the Makia is banned. Give me a break.

I gave my playgroup notice that I would be showing up much less. I was really looking forward to starting miniblock, because it is still much to easy to just wall up even with the bans. Cards like battle prowess, abelia's, amy's etc... make getting damage to stick next to impossible. Playing attacks is for idiots is what I've been told and I agree.

Delay after delay is killing a game with an already small playerbase. While we wait until Feburary for set 13 to come out I'll be playing Magic.

I've already sold a large chunk of my cards in the past week to make sure I can get some return on what I spent on set 12. I came out about even with just a handful of cards w/o having to sell the dancing menuettes but I might just keep selling cards while I can and just get back into Magic permenantly.

I completely understand where you guys are coming from the delays shouhld have been completely gone at this point. While they were dealyed last year that was bad enough . But now look at it set 12 dropped in april after being delayed a month . Then for set 13 not hitting till September thats a 5 month delay with already the player base declining its only going to get worse. I see it in my area most are quitting UFS to play games like naruto and MTG I just hope some changes happen soon.

whenever releases don't come out on time it signals the instability of a game. heroclix had more release problems than ufs in the last year of it's existance, especialy right before wiz kids went under.

iam a fellow scout in the playgroup with Scuba and honestly like i told him it seems like this game is on its way into the tarpits, which is really sad because i dont really likeany other card games, i used to play Vs. and thats been cancelled and is no longer in print, i dont do the 40 card deck kids games, and i quit playing magic back when Mirage was released, UFS is the only game i feel at home playing and i really dont want to see it go but unless something big, and i mean BIG happens to change this game and get a player base i am afraid that i will be playing the same 4 guys who show up week after week with our base ball bats to keep beating this horse.....its sad that as a developer of card games FFG, Steve or whoever else is in charge is okay with scenerios like the one happening to our playgroup, which used to house some great talent...what do we do now?

Sitting on a time bomb
Staring into space
There's an ocean of unpleasantries
we are not prepared to face

Sitting on a fence post
watch'n the storm roll in
And terrified of the damage it will bring
when it begins
It will begin

Yay my turn to say something.

First off I was one of the people that helped on the omni-faq, along with Jdub and a couple others. The problem we kept seeing was that there was an immense amount of work to be done, people constantly whining that the rulings would be lost, and no one else interested in actually doing anything to preserve what we had, which was incredibly disheartening.

Release Dates.

This is something that I assure you everyone involved in the creation of UFS is trying to get nailed down. It does absolutely no good to have delays from a scheduled relese, so if there was a way they could release everything on time, rest easy knowing they would do it. From what I understand there was an issue with the printing of the set itself,which is the reason for the large delay.

That said, if you didn't expect delays in releases, you haven't been gaming enough. Unless you are Upper Deck or Wizards of the Coast, and have extensive development teams/times and schedules. they also have a lot more experience in the CCG realm than FFG does. As a former Raw Deal player, (and decipher game player as well as many others) I am quite used to delays in releases, and delays would be the last reason I would quit playing a game.

Promotional materials:

I do agree we need more promotions to bring players into the game, but this is also something that can be accomplished on the scout's end. Rewarding people who volunteered to run demos is neat, but not pratical for many companies. I don't know about your store but we have TONS of now-legacy league prize support that I use as sales incentives or giveaways to excite players. Hell I gave good portions of league promos to a few local scouts that hadn't gotten any to help them grow their playgroups.
Don't have extra promos? Well then do you have extra characters from those sets everyone complained there were too many character cards? Give a few duplicates away to prospective players or "with purchase".

Another great idea that has been done a few times is to make new player decks with all commons and a character card. Give them away or loan them to new players to get them into a tournament! These are ways to help build a playgroup or community locally with a positive player experience.

If you wanna show that you are a scout print out a picture of you with OFFICAL UFS SCOUT under it in a cool font, put it in an ID badge holder, and there you go! Why do they need to send (albeit very cool) shirts when they have more important things on their plate....like that new set that people are upset is delayed.

While I am somewhat sad to see the scout pack gone from our kits in recent months, I know our players well enough that if there is a card i REALLY need, they will trade it to me for a reasonable trade. Most playgroups aren't that huge where people are leaving empty-handed.

as for being vocal to the players: FFG is vocal to the players. If you have an issue, email the company and they usually get back to you if they can, and your message warrants it. The monthly updates are also a very nice touch, and really I don't see the need for much more. "these cards are banned, this is what's coming up, heres an update". This solves much of the issues that most people will want to know. you have to remember that there aren't nearly as many people working on UFS now as there were in STG days. James and Steve are the primary guys doing things now, and they may have help here and there, its just them for the most part.

Scout Forum:

That would be neat, but really if you want a yahoo group, make one. Invite all the scouts you know and ask them to invite the scouts they know. There you go, problem solved.

In all reality it seems like people are wanting the STG days again, but want things given to them instead of putting forth effort to get what they want.

Email this list to FFG and see what they say. If you want more promotions, make them happen. If you want a yahoo group/forum make one. These are things that the players can do themselves and don't need FFG to do for them.

Honestly the old scout forum became flame war after flame war and constant bickering over nothing as well as ridiculous in-jokes that made it more like a "cool kids club" than an actual useful forum for scouts.

bloodocean said:

When people ask me "what's UFS", I've always said "it's a card game based on video game, fighting game characters from Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, etc."

The fact that the above statement can be made is a tell-tale sign of things gone wrong. When we first started playing the game you wanted to 33 to 50 percent of your deck to be attacks. I've made a deck that worked and was 100% attacks (with the exception of the character card of course). Now, you're considered crazy if you're playing more than 10 attacks, and most don't even run that many. At the last event I went to I was just as guilty, because of the current meta I just ran 4 Tiger Fury's. I'll stop here before I go on a rant, but yes, the above comment is currently sad but true.

Also, if I didn't have to work for a living and/or knew I would be compensated for the large chunk of time it would take, I've been wanting to make a UFS compendium ever since the days of Bo Rush.

its true that UFS isnt in its glory days nor is it anywhere close to where we all want it to be but the way i see it in a year or so thats where it will be with all the bannings and stuff that has happened its getting away from the STG days and onto the future

yeah it sucks to be in the middle of all this but once things settle down and FFG gets everything under control and the game is totally under their influence it should turn it back on and bring in alot more people we have had quite a few people start saying they will get back into UFS once the older cards cycle and its all 5 point with the balancing thats been in the last two sets

How is the Tekken set delayed? There was never an annocment saying "Tekken will be out in August" then they changed it to September. Steve said it might be out by August but I'll know for sure in a week, then announced it will be out in Sept. If anything the normal from FFG is one set every 4 months. Back in the STG days it was a set every 3 months, but I've never seen FFG say "we release one UFS set every 3 months". You all just assumed the Tekken set would be out in three months, but there really has not been a "delay" because they only announced one release date. Now if they come out and say it won't be out until late Sept then you have an argument.

I thought it was supposed to come out in July?

I agree and disagree with alot of things that some of you said. I remember when u wanted to play attacks, i loved and still love to play attacks. I got upset at the regonials in mich (by second round i was see two) because it seamed like everyone was playing the same three attacks and only like 3 attacks when i has tons. There needs to be another you will no escape, reprint it or make a new one do something so people play more attacks. I'm tired of playing till time agaist some one who sits there and stalls the whole time. Can i call stall because thats what it is. Back when the first sets came out the only stall deck was tycho. while i played something that boosted damage and rocked face. where did those days go?

then you have all the people that where hardcore into the game bought all the good cards won all the tournaments to get first dibbs on the promos, then they quit because there were a frew ba sets. boo hoo, why spend all that time and money on a game if ur gonna quit? there was like a total of 15-20 people that played ufs all the time at our store now its down to 3 that want tournys and 4 others that play but dont want to play. Its sad.

I seriously dont want to play anymore if it werent for the fact of how much money i have spent on th game. i love playing the game i just dont like playing people. because one they have all the good expensive cards and two they take for ever to play. and i do and dont like deversity it is and isnt a good thing. But compare it too something else what else has that rule? i dont think ne thing does.

i dont know i guess i'm just mad and want to rant and ramble like every one else I NOW KNOW WHY i havent played since worlds. the meta as u say it is bad in so many ways. At least now everyone isnt playing the same charater. Now we just have to get people to not play that same boring style, or stallness.

Thoughts, from a UFS newbie...

First off, the game has a delicate "costing" system. Games like Magic and WoW (the other two CCGs I'm very familiar with) use a resource system that limits power cards to only come out in later turns. Granted, there are ways around the costs, but those too are limited in scope or power somehow (and those that weren't limited enough were banned). UFS's costing system relies much more on random chance and how many cards you can play in a turn, instead of which ones. Granted, I can't talk too much about the costing system since I'm new to the game, but it seems like it may be too easy to get the good cards into play.

The other problem I see is that the game has a bit of a barrier to new players. It doesn't seem like there's much info for "how to play" - the first time I looked at the game, I had bought a starter, looked at the rules, was incredibly confused, and didn't try it again for a few years. The main reason I know how to play now was because the store I play at had some demo decks and one of the other players was willing to teach me. Something as simple as a 2-player starter set would help immensely (just two 30-card decks that are about equal in power, perhaps with "stacked decks" and a turn-by-turn play order for the first few turns, would be enough).

Another problem with the new player barrier, in my opinion, is the size of booster packs. Just 10 cards is really not enough to build a collection on, when you're on a budget. While goodies like the free starters and the fight night boxes help, I don't think it's quite enough. If the booster packs had 12-15 cards instead of 10, it would raise production costs somewhat, but if it lets you get more players in, it would probably be worthwhile. Granted, I don't have access to any kind of market research you guys have done regarding pack size and sales, so I may be completely off here. But from my own experience, I can definitely say I'd buy more boosters if they had more cards in them.

Anyway. That's just a few random thoughts I had about UFS. Don't get me wrong though, despite my complaints, I really like the game and want it to continue for much, much longer. So hopefully this little tidbit into my own thoughts about the game will help you guys make it better.

Chance is a factor no matter what game you play. It happens in Magic and YGO, and it happens quite a bit in board games like Starcraft and Arkham Horror. If you were able to know every little detail about how a match was gonna go then what would be the fun in playing?

I agree with LinkN about the new player barrier, although I'm pretty sure that's one of the things being worked on behind the scenes right now. As far as cost goes, well you either want it or you don't. I dont think the cost is much worse than most other games by any considerable amount, but if you could find something cheaper it's probably because they've been around for more than a few years. I think the starter decks are designed well enough to give new players a pretty good feel for the game at a decent power level.

Also, to continue to address your concerns LinkN. The one thing about UFS is that things generally happen a lot faster than in any other game you might have played. You need to be able to get the good cards out early to set up whatever your deck is doing. It gives players the ability to avoid being hosed by a single card from your opponent and it gives people a reason to play more sub-strategies instead of a single one trick pony, especially with the recent bans/erratas. You have to watch out for possible counters to your plan and work around it. The tradeoff is that most foundations have a cost associated with their abilities, usually to commit it, and most of the killer attacks either have high difficult of 5 or 6 or they require multiple foundations to become a kill condition.

Basically saying part of the chance you mention is based on how you build your deck. Want to throw down a lot of foundations turn 1? Use a lot of high check, low diff foundations. Want to throw out four attacks turn 2? Better be packing a lot of cheap attacks with damage boost foundations. You get around chance by building your deck properly. It happens in Magic when you need to draw any decent card and you top deck a land. It happens in every other game you can play, just in different degrees. I remember going to a regionals last year where one player next to me threw a fit because this game is "all about luck. It doesn't take any skill, it's all about luck". What he did after every game was pile up his entire staging area on top of the rest of his cards and give it a few quick shuffles. Then wants to know why he's drawing too many foundations or why his deck isn't working right.

And now...for my opinion to those of you who say this game discourages attacking. I know how strong mill can be, and how good damage redux gets sometimes. It's not the end of all things. If you really want to play an aggro deck you should be prepared for stall tactics. I'll conceed that attacking was discouraged before a lot of these bannings happened, but now full aggro is just as available as stall mill and anything in between. If you want to attack, do it properly. Don't call your deck aggro when you only run 12 attacks, and don't always plan to be on the winning side of things. Stall decks don't necessarily discourage attacking as much as it seems. What they really do is encourage attacking creatively. Staring down 20 points of damage reduction and stalls? Do 50 points of damage that turn.

That's my opinion, hope I didn't offend anybody. The point is, the recent bannings opened up a lot of tactics that were locked out before. There's more options than ever if you know where to look. There's still going to be that one matchup you have almost no chance of winning, but for the most part if you can't go left around something, either go right or go straight up the middle.

Just want to point out a few things that Judas said that intrigued me...

Chance is a factor no matter what game you play. It happens in Magic and YGO, and it happens quite a bit in board games like Starcraft and Arkham Horror. If you were able to know every little detail about how a match was gonna go then what would be the fun in playing?

[...]

Also, to continue to address your concerns LinkN. The one thing about UFS is that things generally happen a lot faster than in any other game you might have played. You need to be able to get the good cards out early to set up whatever your deck is doing. It gives players the ability to avoid being hosed by a single card from your opponent and it gives people a reason to play more sub-strategies instead of a single one trick pony, especially with the recent bans/erratas. You have to watch out for possible counters to your plan and work around it. The tradeoff is that most foundations have a cost associated with their abilities, usually to commit it, and most of the killer attacks either have high difficult of 5 or 6 or they require multiple foundations to become a kill condition.

Basically saying part of the chance you mention is based on how you build your deck. Want to throw down a lot of foundations turn 1? Use a lot of high check, low diff foundations. Want to throw out four attacks turn 2? Better be packing a lot of cheap attacks with damage boost foundations. You get around chance by building your deck properly. It happens in Magic when you need to draw any decent card and you top deck a land. It happens in every other game you can play, just in different degrees. I remember going to a regionals last year where one player next to me threw a fit because this game is "all about luck. It doesn't take any skill, it's all about luck". What he did after every game was pile up his entire staging area on top of the rest of his cards and give it a few quick shuffles. Then wants to know why he's drawing too many foundations or why his deck isn't working right.

I think you misunderstood somewhat - I meant that UFS tries to use chance and risk as its "card cost" mechanic. In Magic, for example, once you have two forests on the board you know you can pay the mana to play a Grizzly Bears. You may not know when you'll get those forests, especially depending on the deck, but you never attempt to play a card without knowing whether or not you can pay for it. (Granted, the other player can Counterspell it, but that's beside the point.)

In UFS, the cost is essentially how high of a control check you can make. Personally, I think that the difficulty mechanic just isn't being used to its full potential (although again, I'm new, so I may be missing things). Some of these high-power cards I look at and wonder "why does it not have a difficulty of 5-6 or higher?". I suppose the best example I can think of offhand is Switching Weapon Styles, which is very cheap to play (cheap=easy, not unfair), and it lets you completely ignore one aspect of the game's play limiter (progressive difficulty) for a certain subset of cards. While it does have counters, that doesn't mean that the counters are easy to use, and if you happen to not have one of those counters available at the time, you can pretty much say good bye to your chances of winning.

I agree with LinkN about the new player barrier, although I'm pretty sure that's one of the things being worked on behind the scenes right now. As far as cost goes, well you either want it or you don't. I dont think the cost is much worse than most other games by any considerable amount, but if you could find something cheaper it's probably because they've been around for more than a few years. I think the starter decks are designed well enough to give new players a pretty good feel for the game at a decent power level.

See, the starters make a great second step for players. However, the rules can be pretty hard to digest at first brush, and you still need to get two decks. Hence the desire for some kind of starter deck to play your first game, that essentially has everything you need to actually teach you how to play. As for the cost, it's mainly a combination of boosters not giving you very many cards for the cost, and needing a full 60 card deck with no "filler" (to compare, Magic decks usually only have 35-40 nonland cards and still give 15 cards to a pack, and while WoW doesn't have filler cards, you still get 19 cards to a pack there). I'm not saying that UFS should emulate Magic or WoW, but to a new player seeing how many cards he can get for a few dollars, UFS just doesn't look that appealing.

Actually, the thing about Switching Weapon Styles is that the effect is limited to a single character and a single deck type, and it's a completely new mechanic tailored for a specific strategy. The other thing is there's always a chance, although rare, that after Switching Weapon Styles the Ivy deck just doesn't draw attacks. It's a small chance, but it's still there. So it's not so much that you have to counter the specific card, but you know almost exactly what's coming and can plan ahead. Counter the action, block an attack or two, counter the character ability, there really is quite a few ways around it. Other than that the recent bannings just got rid of or fixed a bunch of overpowered, undercosted cards that had very little solutions.

You may not know when you'll get those forests, especially depending on the deck, but you never attempt to play a card without knowing whether or not you can pay for it.

That right there is a perfect example of how risk works in UFS. Barring a few specific effects, you never know what you're going to check next. And in order to play the game you have to take that chance. With decks running anywhere from 6 to 18 attacks plus other cards with low checks, a single check could mean the difference between playing two foundations or five in one turn. Then once you start throwing attacks, one low check maybe isn't a big deal, but two low checks will hurt if it's still early or you're playing something big. It's that element that people have to consider when building and playing a deck.

Another example of chance which I've seen happen a lot, is when you give an attack a speed boost, and your opponent needs to check a 6 to block or that's game. You're basically assuming that your opponent isn't going to check a 6, and your opponent has no choice but to hope the next card is a 6. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Again it goes back to deck design. How many 6's do you see, and how many are still hiding.

About the starter decks. I believe they are designed to showcase both the characters with their specific strategies and the new utility cards that a lot of decks can use. Astrid and Ivy out of the box work wonders from what I hear. The starters aren't designed to be top end decks, they're designed to give new players easy access to a number of cards and a few different strategies from the beginning. You can pick up two copies of a starter deck and actually make a pretty nice deck that would at least have some success at the local level. Or you can pick up two different starters and swap cards from one to another. Zi Mei's Wheel Kick into Nightmare is a good idea. Siegfried defensive foundations into Ragnar maybe? There's possibilities for a lot of things. Pick up Zi Mei starter and play the deck with a different character off one of her symbols if you want to.

I think I'm rambling now. Kinda tired. Basically for the price of one starter and some kind donations of older commons from other players you can come up with a decent deck. Then when you can afford something else you can add to it or build a new deck. So I'd at least consider the starters to be the first step. At least it's guaranteed to give you a playable deck from the start. As for the prices...well that's always something that can be argued. But the common/uncommon distribution is usually good enough to give you multiple playsets of useful foundations, while the rares and ultras are always tradeable.

Anyways. I'm tired and I might have lost the point halfway through this post. Hopefully I made some sense and welcome to THE game.

Let's all quit until they give the rest of us real prize support!

yeah trust me i know that throwing two starters together works wonders.....ever played against two mai starters together pre-ban?

Dont because it really sucks and made me want to shoot myself after the first 30 minutes or so...then i milled to death and it was all over