I think Antigoth's right in that we need to play more legacy.

But I do think there's a lot about Legacy that's not that much fun.

I think we'll be running Block 3, full Legacy, Highlander Legacy etc.

But it really SUCKS that they refuse to support Legacy. It (or some version of it, if you call Block 3 a version of Legacy now) is clearly a game SOME people want to play. Some people don't want to wait most of a year (or a full year) to play with Street Fighter or Darkstalkers characters. Or SNK characters. Our newest player just got into the game HARD. He's been buying box after box. And now I'm supposed to tell him he can't play his favorite characters in Standard? THAT's the thing that sucks.

I guess we should look at it this way: the scouts will run what they want to run. This really only affects major tournaments, including the CityFight OP stuff, and Nationals, Worlds, etc. Since most of the major tournaments are a ways out, that's not too bad (there will be more cards by then).

The CityFight stuff starts this fall, and that's fine too. We'll think of CityFight as a plan to drum up Mini-block.

Just keep playing what you want to play, and scouts: announce (here on the forums, and in your store) what format you're running.

ARMed_PIrate said:

So... Steve told me today that the new OP system will consist of kits. The stores can get 1 kit for the month, and each kit will include the exact same cards. Then you can run whatever tournaments you want, and distribute the prize cards as you see fit.

Legacy, Standard, alternate formats - what ever you guys will enjoy playing locally.

As the guy who is behind on writing the tournament floor rules, there is going to be a list of suggested alternate formats included, but the TFR will state that for local events, each store can maintain their own banned list for legacy as long as it's publicized in advance.

Basically... whatever it will take to get people playing and make the environment fun for your players - do it.

No that's not the coolest prize in gaming, but at the same time... what more do you need?

Quagaar said:

Should everything be blocked? No. That is what is happening now. There are many of solid players who admitted that throwing attacks was to much of a risk because of the retaliation that followed. That is antithetical to a fighting game to sit back and wait to build up your haymaker to kill your opponent. There is momentum generation but not like Lord of the Maki. Generating momentum requires playing throws. It also requires people to play more plink cards and not just big attacks. Ivy with some Yi Shin cards can make a scary combo off of life symbol. For some elements of control you can look at seigfried's and rashoteps cards that blank foundations. Attacks can go through because there is less shinangians and control check hacking like it was before the decession.

I said the following "Heavy tapping and destroying enemy cards is gone." Knightmare's card destruction comes from attacks and actions primarily. The attacks have to do damage to destroy cards. It is not an automatic effect. Your not looking at cards like instant success that just blows stuff up whenever with no risk then you use it again next turn. Most of the foundation cards that destroy cards either destroy themselves or have an added cost to destroy cards. So Knightmare could waste a lot of his foundations blowing up stuff but he doesn't have check support cards like other characters so he will have problems getting future attacks through. He would have to have at least 1 turn of rebuilding his staging area. So no Knightmare is not like anything in block 3. He blows up stuff at his own risk many times. To blow up stuff he has to loose his field outside of attacks. So balance is there.

Christie's 1 attack that I have seen seems very blockable. I haven't seen a spoiled pdf of all the cards like you have. Its the cost that is the issue. The 1 spoiled card from Christie has a Combo E that creates the loop. You have to do the following. Play the other attack first. Make the check. Play the spoiled attack make the check. Only if the attack does damage do you get the option to put it back in your hand. Its not automatic like defender looping. There is risk and reward for playing the loop. At the same time your getting less damage off then Starter Zi Mei if you can't get the loop off more then once. If there is more cool stuff then that I would have no clue because again I don't have a spoiled .pdf.

Kazuya is the character that makes this progress suck. At the same time you have to look at it like this. Kazyua's ability doesn't feed all life is prey or anything else that would buff his damage because both fields are wiped and neither players have cards to trigger. Unless Kazuya has a card that gives him an advantage when the field is clean that can be played as an action card then there is no direct benifit of running Kazuya with Knightmare cards. Now if Kazuya has lots of perks for destroying cards that allow him to fish for cards then Knightmare may be difficult to deal with. That will only be true if there are no cards that negate card destruction.

If your play group is dwindling I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you find another game more to your liking.

B-Rad said:

Vit loss through lingering effects was always a deck I've wanted to play, but it wasn't even a quarter as supported as mill is.

Protip: Your friend is most likely a playtester required to sign a non-disclosure agreement which forbids him to share the pdfs with anyone who has not signed a NDA as well. So, well, you may wish to edit that out of your posts lest someone take interest. You can do that by clicking the "Report to Moderator" link and changing the word "reportar" to "editar" in the URL.

Anyway, Quagaar, I don't think the game is going to be nearly that one-dimensional. Can your Nightmare deck deal with Ivy playing 11 attacks a turn, with the last one being buffed for +33 damage from Path of the Master? How about a Zi Mei deck that throws out a Multiple:7 Fury of the Ancients that doesn't need momentum? How about a Ragnar aggro deck that starts playing things like 5H8 Upper Claws on turn 1?

Quagaar said:

seems kind of strange your first and only post mentions a leaked pdf file.

First of all, I think a little empathy is required. If your not familiar with the term empathy is the ability for a human being to recognize and understand another persons mental state or emotional well-being. It's one of the things that seperates us from animals.

With that being said im sick of hearing "suck it up, man up, and grow some balls" e.t.c. If you have enough time to post that crap, you have enough time to find a better hobby. The dicussion at hand is far more problematic and requires logical thought and tact with as little subjective preaching as possible. It's an old addage that people will be afraid of change they don't understand and it's true to a point. I propose that while change can be very good, bring new life and vitality to game, it cannot be blindly accepted without a great deal of constructive critisism and disection. The concept of 'mini-block' is quite impressive, and it's popularity is growing more and more as people dip their feet in to get wet. It come as no suprise to me that Horvath and Hata want to push for its incorporation as soon as possible.

Now we come to what happens to all the cards, the promos, the sea of characters that are being threatened with rotation. There are two defense mechanisms that are being used to justify the rotation that lack an amount of logical reasoning. The first is the advice to "just play legacy." Even though scouts are free to run their own legacy tournaments, Steve himself has pretty much given away via his demeanor and remarks that he just doesn't give a **** about legacy. Of course he used more politically correct terminology and kind words, but anyone can see where his loyalty lies. While not everyone may like legacy, I believe it gets a bad rap. I think it's worthy of people giving it a shot. The issue is what if someone wants to continue playing their block 3 domination sakura deck or block 3 Terry? The only way they can play them now is in a format that contains shoulder rush, tiamats rampage, FoP, shinobi tradition, and Rolling Storm? I'm sure that sounds unapplealing to a great number of people.

The second defense mechanism involves the price of cards come rotation. I can't count the number of times I've seen people say "If your worried about your cards being worth nothing, play legacy." The logical fallacy here is that the conern isn't with the cards losing all value and becoming as worthless as the cardboard stock they were printed on. It's that they will dramatically decline in value, much more than they are comfortable with. History has proven to us time and time again that in a CCG when a card rotates to an older format it almost ALWAYS loses monetary value. There are exceptions but ratio-wise its not enough to matter. I will give you an example to help you understand what may be the plight of many unfortunate UFS players. "Hi my name is Bob. I really like UFS and I've got 7-15 deck ideas lined up in my head that just need cards to finish them. I just placed in order at CSI for 4x Spinning beat @ $24, 2x Neo Raging Storm @ $26, and a bunch of other rares and c/unc from KOF2006, Flames of Fame, and Cutting Edge. I just found out today that when Tekken releases all these cards I bought will become legacy. After talking with my playgroup they don't want to play legacy. I tried convincing them, but not everyone feels the same way about UFS as some of our other hardcore fans. Since I don't have a whole lot of extra money (it was hard saving up for my CSI purchase), I had planned to slowly buy Tekken and incorporate it into my collection. I can sell rotating cards back to CSI for pennies on the dollar (if they will even buy it back). I can try to trade away rotating cards for some more Tower of Souls, Shadowar, or Tekken; but for some reason less and less people want them or are willing to give much less for them. I am **** out of luck?"

Sucks to be you Bob, sucks to be you. No matter how you look at it, players will be losing money(monetary value) and FFG will be profiting. Since the standard cardpool will be reduced to Tower of Souls, Shadowar, and Tekken they will be seeing boosts in sales on those sets. I believe it was Antigoth who made mention of a new system that includeds kits which will allow you to run whatever tournament you see fit and still have monthly prize support? If this is true, it is the saving grace they make. It will allow playgroups to give the big middle finger to rotation and say "we're going to continue to play block 3." When all is said and done, a companies true objective is to make money. It usually helps to listen to your customer base and take feedback. While there are a lot of supporters for mini-block - Antigoth, Hatman, Tag, A.P. and more - there are also a vast amount of people unhappy with this decision. If you enact a proposal that makes 45% of your playerbase happy, but pisses off another 45%, did you accomplish anything? It is my hopes that they hire more pro players like Hata to keep the game balanced and prevent this from happening in the first place. They need an R&D team, who do extensive playtesting of sets WELL before they are actually released. This would allow for a rotation system that is announced months and yeards ahead of time. It's this iron-clad stability and fortitude that a professional gaming company needs. If you put careful thought into it, make sure you get it right the first time, and keep a reasonable level of quality assurance with customers, you will make far more profit then it takes to hire said individuals. *Phew* And I'm done

They need an R&D team, who do extensive playtesting of sets WELL before they are actually released

They have one to the best of my knowledge, they've just been absolutly moronic, or enjoy being twinks to allow the crap they've let through in the past two years.

Tader Salad said:

Do I have empathy? Yes. I've played games where stuff like this has happened. At least you didn't buy a bunch of product then have the company know they were going under. Then after you buy a bunch of product the company announces they are going out. That happened to me. So I understand. I had to tell this to people in my previous game. Your hobby should not be a source to get a cash return from. In the end by reselling your cards you are saying to the retailer "hey please by a card that you may get no profit from at all so I can buy new product." It just happened that this time the retailer didn't get hosed. So who should I be more empathetic for the player or the retailer? If money is tight then you need to put your money in more important places. If you want to make money and get returns then invest in stock or bonds. If product price an issue go together as a playgroup to buy boxes. Or you can just buy singles and save yourself a ton of money in the first place.

As for legacy sucking I know the feeling. It is the same feeling I had when I found out how the current meta was. I was expected to go into that world with a few cards. The issue is that if people are selling back their cards for the cheap buying legacy cards should be easy to get on the cheap. Again you can't assume that your the only one yo-yoing cards before they rotate.

This change caused my playgroup to actually consider going out to other venues to play. We just didn't have the cards to go to another venue to win. Very few people had empathy for that. But now I feel we have a chance to go out and throw down. The issue is that there was no chance for new players to have a chance of winning without massive investment. The biggest voice of this is people paying to go into Worlds and then saying they are not going to play due how ugly the current block was. They said that IN the pressence of the people that run the game. That speaks louder then any forum post. If you believe so strong throw down the cash and tell them in person that you don't like the change. Does this mean that developers are off the hook? No it does not. But it proved that a group of people were willing to put down money to make a point. I encourage everyone to do the same. If you agree or disagree put your money down and do something.

I think this change will be great for my area. We had a few new people buy a TON of SCIV and build decks. They got turned off by not being able to compete with or even able to buy BRT, shooting cap, feline spike.. you get the idea. Hopefully those players start coming back to play with this change.

While, I'll admit this rotation seems rather sudden and desperate it really is needed to get this game back on track. There was no possible way for FFG to create cards that could compete with the 4 mark cards w/o the meta spiriling out of control. Hell, look at most legacy decks. The majority of the cards in them are 4 mark with the likes of chain throw, absurd and pieces of hate thrown in. When set 8 came out I remember thinking "dude, that card BRT has to be a fake." Same with Akuma and Addes. Set 8 was so freakin' bonkers of a power jump set 9 and 10 had to be also. Set 11 from what i've heard was going to be so bad of a power creep one of our locals and a playtesters quit the game when she seen what was coming down the pipe.

The game def. needed this reset, I just wish they had waited until the release of set 14 to do it. Two weeks is a bit sudden. They probably should have just let the people who wanted to do mini block run those tournys and let people who wanted to do block 3 until October with the release of SCIV 02.

No, they should've waited until all the licenses were spoken for to 'reset' rather than forcing us people who do not like and have never liked 3D fighting games to play characters we have no desire to build or play in a game with decent, but not stunning mechanics. I don't care how bad the meta was, there's no excuse for what was done. There's no large scale tournaments in the near future, FFG should've just waited instead of screwing the fans over so that they could achieve 'game balance' where half the cards were printed as answers to old and now non-existant problems.

DrUnK3n_PaNdA said:

lololololololololololololololololololololololololololololol

So I have to ask this question does everything rotate the 28th or the 1st of Sep.

Rotating cards as soon as Tekken is shipped was the best decision they made in a LOOOONG time.

Not only that, but cards will now be rotated after Gencon. They'll be legal for two years, then rotated after the world championships. This is the way it should have been all along.

Shaneth said:

So, any set that is released after Gen Con gets a full two years under the sun, and is rotated at the next Gen Con?

Or am I gonna have to wait until the post-Worlds SotG?

Yes, you get 2 years with current 5 points at least, they don't rotate until 2011 at GenCon. As far as the future blocks/watermarks, who knows.

Yes, because telling half the fans 'Bite the pillow, I'm going in dry' is a good business decision. Less players buying less cards apperantly equals more money in FFG land.

Christ man! Someone stole is sack lunch!

DrUnK3n_PaNdA said:

Communities were stagnating and dying do to the current meta. Not all communities but a lot were. New communities become easy prey for established communities to take advantage of if they chose to. That was the big concern for my play group that just started this game. Fortuantly the game is so dead around us there isn't a serious threat within an hours drive. But since we play on the weekend it would be possible for folks to drive in from the closest venue a hour and a half and play. Understanding you have no chance to win only makes you want to hedge your bets and walk away.

DrUnK3n_PaNdA said:

Antigoth stated that communites can house rule in b3. JUst don't expect new players. So you loose nothing. City and Store championships will have to be mini-block and that is all.

DrUnK3n_PaNdA said:

Panda, were you at Worlds?

Did you get to see the sheer amount of not fun that the environment was? I DROPPED from the tournament after the fourth round and went to draft magic with Scott Gaines and Havoc because sitting on my ass wasting 50 minutes of my life trying to win one round in a best two out of three match was not why I came to GenCon. I will mention I was playing Order and playing it aggressively and I still hated everything about the environment.

80% of the time, playing that round of UFS was not even playing it a game. It was sitting there and watching the opponent build and build and build and build and build and build and build and build and build.....then win. You so much as try and put a ***** in that grey wall of armor and you're dead.

Coming back from drafting I watched a LOT of mini-block matches (dozens of them) and everybody who played in them was enjoying them. There weren't any shoulders slumped or heads in hands. There were orange cards, green cards, and blue cards. Being able to see it first hand gave me hope. Your failure to observe and compare the two formats belies your ignorance to what UFS is supposed to be. Remember that the design window for this game is 3-4-5 turns of play.

Financially, it may piss a bunch of people off. But it's suicide to let this block continue on its current course. Yes, I'm not able to play my 8 BRT (or my 12 Owlface that were banned Earlier, or my LoTM, or my Spikes or ANYTHING ELSE FROM THIS BLOCK), but I am able to return to playing the game I like playing instead of being frustrated for 50 minutes then reporting a game loss because the opponent killed me with foundations.

B-Rad said:

Please remember that a large portion of the block that is going out was largely a product of STG designs (therefore Freeman/Yaple). Hata only came in fairly recently and it has been revealed on these boards that he only got a quick redesign run at set 11 with Set 12 being his first official design.

The playtesters are/were volunteers and can't catch everything wrong with every set ever, and I've heard complaints that they were largely ignored by Freeman (which is how cards like Addes and BRT got through).

B-Rad, if you think you can do a better job, then volunteer to play test and do it. Other wise shut the hell up and get off my lawn.

Archimedes said:

Well said!

Archimedes said:

Or rather, his unabashed selfishness in deciding for everyone else that the only redeeming factor of UFS was that it had SF characters. I've not seen such ignorance and stupidity since BSE.

Archimedes said:

Archimedes, I love you.