The Best Team Combinations

So, just wondering what people are thinking about teams right now? Does anybody think they have the ultimate team?

Here's the team I'm thinking about.

Fire Ragnar - Death Nina - Earth Rashotep

This is what I'm thinking to be the best team:

Fire Ragnar: Fire Ragnar is used to send out and kill 7 handers easily. Ragnar, has the best abuse of his own support, especially Heir to the Storm and
Stormhammer. Build turn 1 with such cards as Enraged Golem, Heir to the Storm, In Search of Plunder, Brooding, etc, then next turn, use Crushing Embrace.
Calculation:

Crushing Embrace (5 damage, 0 vitality lost)
E with Brooding (6 damage, 1 vitality lost)
E with In Search of Plunder, commit brooding (8 damage, 3 vitality lost)
E with Berserker Rage (13 damage, 6 vitality lost)
E with Enraged Golem for a theoretical +4 damage (17 damage, 6 vitality lost)
E with Heir to the Storm's first E destroying Enraged Golem (20 damage, 6 vitality lost)
E with Ragnar, committing In Search of Plunder (23 damage, 8 vitality lost)
E with Heir to the Storm's second E (31 damage, 8 vitality lost).

As you can see, a relatively small investment grants you a 31 damage Throw, dealing 16 if it is fully blocked, and with 2 cards in the card pool, passing a
Fire Shadow or Leg Slash is simple. Either way, Ragnar is used to basically kill off 7 handers, and play his aggro game at a more controlled pace against others.

Death Nina: Death Nina functions as the "I don't know what to expect" deck. Although at this point in UFS not much can ever really come as a surprise, Nina is one of the more flexible and surprising characters, and no matter how much you've seen the deck in action, you will never know what the top 4 cards of your deck are until they bite you in the ass. Nina has an ability that gets around Rashotep and taunts JJ into overextending. One may say it's game over when she faces a deck with anti-discard, but that's what makes Nina such a wild card; she doesn't HAVE to fall victim to anti-discard if she's smart and is using more intelligent discard such as Purple Army Suit and the Void E on Wipe the Floor (which helps with the regular E if they don't have anti-discard). Off Death she can use the control given to her by Intimidating Presence (keep their staging area in check, nice n' slow), Purple Army Suit (amazing pro-Nina selective discard), Ka Technique (blanks any troubling Regretful Existence, etc), the list is big. All in all, the only way to truly counter the deck is to hear about how it plays inbetween rounds.

Earth Rashotep: Although it may seem simple enough, Rashotep to be used as the control, unfun character to face against, he is ran off Earth because of his ability to double amazingly well with King, losing Double Crown for Jaguar Mask, and losing One-Handed Rooster Grasp for Cobra Clutch/Flinging Half Nelson. Rashotep does exactly the job you'd think he'd do: ruin the game for the unlucky opponent to face him. One-Handed Croc, Double Crown, Ka Technique, Ancient Burial, and Rashotep completely cover a staging area by blanking anything problematic. King sides in to play the aggressive game when necessary. He murders 7 handers, especially if you sided in your Reverse DDTs, and LOLs at 6 handers by using the unrestricted King of the Ring and Cobra Twist to limit what they draw.

I love this team because it doens't fall victim to a lot of expected cards.

Some other good teams (that I won't go into huge detail about) include:

Death Jin Kazama - Death Kazuya Mishima - Fire Astrid (Balanced aggro)
Fire Hilde - Death Tira - Life Cassandra (7 hand aggro)
Void Rashotep - All Steve Fox - Life Lu Chen (Defensive team)
Death Zhao Daiyu - Void Cervantes - Chaos Algol (extremely crazy/misunderstood team)

Anyways, I include some common match-ups for MY team below to explain why my team owns face. Otherwise, post your favorite team and why you think it's best!

Common match-ups:

Hilde: Ragnar smashes her skull. A Nina going second can use her F to snipe Dual-Wielding, Purple Army Suit to declare it, Valued but Not Trusted to stop Hilde instantly. Rashotep blanks her if not Pommel Smashed, for Pommel he has Torn Hero to commit Hilde. Only a Good Hilde (yeah right) can use Torn Hero, so Rasho stuns any Fire Hilde, which is likely what she'll be ran off of.

Astrid: Ragnar has to learn to control his rage, and not pray on one attack. However, Ragnar has a hidden talent: Stormhammer says vitality lost, meaning a cocky Astrid that reversals and omega pumps it but doesn't kill him is only asking for Stormhammer CRUSH on his next Desperation Embrace. Nina definitely needs her A-Game face on, because she doesn't particularly have any strategy against Astrid. Unknown Son helps to RFG weapons, Proficient Sniper as well. Nina can also side into Nightmare or Kazuya to control Astrid's foundation happiness. Rashotep is a no-brainer against Astrid, and while one may say she still has Paying Respects, I say he still has Ka Techniques.

Paul Phoenix: Ragnar likely has to play defensive, unless of course he gets a huge upper hand over Paul. With Ragnar versus Paul, since Fire 'nar has no defense against Stun, he's likely going to rely heavily on his Desperation First F to get revenge on the Phoenix, who likely over-extended during his last turn to bring you down there. Nina has Perfect Sense to keep him somewhat in check, doesn't care about being committed, and has EASY Proficient Sniper and Purple Army declarations. Rasho has Torn Hero, and plays the Stun game on a similar level to Paul, who doesn't have defense against Stun. Also, since Paul isn't likely to run much draw, King can Cobra Clutch-Twist + King of the Ring him basically every turn, and can side in MAC if running it to stop Financial Distress.

Kazuya Mishima: Ragnar definitely doesn't like this fight as foundation-based as he is. It's going to be a very thought-provoking match, as the opponent may be RFGing themselves, they're also setting back Ragnar way too far a page. Of course, if Kazy doesn't blow up the world and kill you, Ragnar is the king of SMASH! Oh yeah, Ragnar can side into Astaroth, who just LOVES being behind in building! Nina is an auto-win. Sniper them, discard copies (when you know they don't have Hunt is On), Purple Army their Kazuyas or Spinning Demons, play the discard game against
him ftw. Rasho sides into King for this one. A smart Kazuya won't attack a Rasho if they intend on blowing up, and Death really has no foundations Rasho cares too much about blanking (because Kazy will be ran off Death, duh). Siding into King helps because Death has no draw (I don't believe), meaning Clutch/Nelson-Twist + King of the Ring owns his soul, and as King can tutor AND play Throws without control checks, he can afford to be behind in the building game.

Jin Kazama: Another sideboard into Astaroth against Jin. Jin will likely build quicker due to his control bumping, which can be canceled by Astaroth's R
(AFAIK, Jin's F constitutes modifying a control check). With Jin's F constantly in check for not being used, he has to play a slower game than he's used to, meaning you've already got him playing somewhat at your pace. Furthermore, Ragnar's Fire build works great with Astaroth whom loves blowing stuff up for damage. Nina is another auto-win IMO for the same reasons against Kazuya. Not as much of one since Jin kills quicker than Kazuya, but the fear of having your stuffs blown up is alleviated when you realize he's but a mere beatstick that you can Sniper his copies. Siding into Nightmare may help keep him in line. Rasho is interesting because he CAN blank Jin, but by the time you do, he is likely already good to go. As such, against such an aggro character with assumedly next to no draw, King is likely to see play here, using Half-Nelson for aggro and of course Twist-Ring to limit Jin's shoddy draw.

Nightmare: Doesn't matter if you use Ragnar or Astaroth, both aren't particularly afraid of Nightmare. I think Astaroth would be best since he doesn't fear his stuff being destroyed nearly as much. Kinda anything goes match, but Ragnar and Astaroth simply have better aggro than Nightmare, and more health. Nina kills his Knight Breaker, Purple Army claims Midnight Launcher, very simple to play a game agains a predictable character when you're a prediction character. Rasho LOLs at his character's existence, blanks his Balances if he's off Death, Stuns him to oblivion, and Throws him down. He then sides into King for the lawls, controls his draw, and puts him to shame.

Steve Fox: Ragnar find his redux annoying, but EXISTS to get out of it. Steve can throw his puny punches Ragnar's way, but he'll regret it when Rag's at Desperation. Rag can also side into Astaroth for more consistant damage out of Kulutues*. Nina mills through his punches, either by discarding them, or attacking, and he blocks right into a checked attack and cries. Siding into Tira can overwhelm Steve faster than his E can overhwelm her. Rashotep is ultimate against Steve. Blank his punch speed on his turn, blank his defense on yours. Depending on how the match goes, King can clean up the match if Rasho didn't meet expectations.

King: Ragnar is annoyed by King, but King's prominent damage helps Ragnar emo himself to Desperation. Ragnar just has to play his aggro game better than King ftw. Nina has an easy job: F to discard Twists, Sniper to declare Twist/King of the Ring, Army Suit Twists/Half-Nelsons, there you go. Rashotep stomps King into utter oblivion. King has no defense against Rashotep whatsoever, and Ancient Burial Ground blanks the unique Jaguar Mask, effectively making King's whole decktype die.

Generic Earth Aggroheads (Ragnar, Astaroth, Siegfried, Bryan Fury, etc): Earth isn't too fun for Ragnar since Fire is more of a RAA RAA ATTACK symbol whereas Earth actually has some tech (Hero, Regretful, Ka, etc). Still, aggro versus aggro is a matter of building, draw, and die roll. Not much to say there. Nina has an easy time tagging cards and using her discard since Earth's only anti-discard sucks against Nina. Rasho steamrolls all of the chars I mentioned, Kas any repeating damage pumps (Plunder, Brooding, Stand Off), and then blanks their Torn Hero and Stuns them down.

Lu Chen: Check if he has momentum. If he doesn't, you're likely good to swing. If he does, lead with Pommel, but what for impending Hero-Balance. Chen is definitely going to give fits to the lumbering giant, but outside of Wrath of Heaven, he doesn't have a truly defined kill, meaning you can play relatively recklessly without too much fear of retaliation by means of death. Nina Purple Army's reversals and War Between Sisters+Wipe the Floors blocks. As he relies purely on blocks, and doesn't have particularly good anti-discard, he dies to a smart Nina. Rasho does what he does best: kills archetypes. As Chen does nothing on his turn, Rasho can FINALLY do something he never does: blank something OTHER than a character during their attack.

That concludes! Hope you guys have enjoyed.

I'll bite but I don't think I'm going to type nearly what you did.

Earth Rashotep/Omar/King(Control/Damage Pump/Anti-commital, very dominant in some matchups)

Fire Astrid(No brainer, Outright dominance)

All Paul/Steve(Offers you a winnable matchup with any other deck in the format including Astrid and Rashotep)

I thought a lot about Death Jin but decided against it, Death decks in general are weak against plain old bad luck, and often take a long time to setup.

You could go rogue with neary any Fire Aggro deck in the place of Astrid(Ragnar and Cassy would be my alt picks) but Astrid is the best there is really, so going rogue really offers you very little Astrid doesn't do better.

I still can't see why Astrid is on everyone's lists, but that's a topic for another thread altogether.

Fire Hilde
Earth Rashotep
All Steve Fox

Fire Hilde, well she's 7 HS and through Fire has access to, ironically, damage reduction as well as speed and damage pump. Balls to the wall aggro.

Earth Rashotep is the complete utter opposite. Yes, he has a 6HS but he can shut down decks that rely on their character too much, meaning mostly everyone except Paul.

Steve Fox is there because he's awesome. No-limit damage reduction for discarding a punch from momentum is nice, plus things like Financial Troubles, For the Money, Paul's Gi, 4 and 5 difficulty punches in the format make Steve a pretty easy but effective build. You can almost do no wrong with him as long as he has 16 or more attacks.

<opinion> The best team combination is always what players play best themselves, you can always then try to mix and match against their strengths and weakness and this is mainly determined by dice roll, so yeah, players comfort always comes first for me.

That said, here is some support. You could run a team of 7hs agro characters - Zi Mei, Hilde, Tira (Padme/Cassandra). In this case the opposing team (assuming the opposing team is running a balanced 1 7hs agro, 1 control/defense/tech, 1 high vit agro) will definately have 1 bad matchup, 1 even matchup, and 1 bad matchup. The same applies to whatever 3 of a type you run. The only time you get hosed is when you face another 3 of type that purely counters your type, in the above example running up against 3 high vit agro may be the worst team pairings your 3 agro players could get.

I suppose the counter argument would be that if you had a balanced team of different types you could then have a better chance at picking matchups, but even in that case, as long as your opposing team makes a good choice of matchups after losing a dice roll, you are probably still looking even up. Ultimately, teams are decided by players that can thrive in any matchup, which usually boils down to players that are comfortable with their decks.

In any case, if we were in teams right now (just picking 3 top players from Calgary meta) you'd probably see any 3 of the following:

--

Zi Mei - Fire

Astrid - Fire

Rashotep - Off any symbol

King - Earth (slash void)

Hilde - Fire (splash order/good)

Paul/Steve - All (splash fire)

Ragnar/Fury - Fire (splash earth)

Hata/Nina/JJ - Death (splash air/void for JJ)

Omar - Off of any symbol

ZD/Kaz - Death

Jin - Off any symbol

Algol - All (splash void)

Temujin - Off fire or good or w/splash

--

I guess that gives you a bit of an idea about what our top decks are looking like at the moment.

- dut

I realize you guys (Jeremy, Dut) understand that Paul and Steve DO play similarly...

...but I wouldn't list "Paul/Steve" as you guys did. They really do play a bit o different game.

The reason why I didn't list Paul as a good choice in teams is because Torn Hero and Perfect Sense WILL be ran in EVERY team, I assure you. As such, you're running a character who has no natural defense against either, and chances are, two, if not all 3 decks, will be running one or two of the aforementioned counters.

Paul's obviously an amazing character, but Knows When to Talk disrupts Phoenix Smasher, any of Nina's snipe cards claims Phoenix Smasher, etc etc. Although Phoenix can wade his way through some Heros/Balances, if he doesn't get the job done, he's going to really regret filling the deck with Stun.

From every All/Fire Steve Fox build I've seen, yeah, he does run pretty much Paul's attacks with Gut Drill being the exception (yet another Stun card), but Steve doesn't HAVE to Stun; his speed pump can somewhat fulfill a similar function as Stun. That, and Steve has lame-ass damage redux that Paul dreams of at night time.

Not saying you guys are wrong at all, but their game is simply different, enough so to not place them in the same bracket.

Alex, why are you surprised Astrid is on every team? (hey it wasn't on mine! =p) Teams is unaffected by diversity, meaning you can run probably the most over-hyped chars (Fire Astrid Fire Hilde any-symbol Rashotep) and get away with it. Astrid is argued to be the best character in the block (at this point I'm thinking Rasho is), so can you really blame anyone?

That, and once promo Astrid is released, expect to see EVEN MORE of her.

I think if they are off of All they play a fairly similar game, with Steve being more defensive and Paul being more agressive.

There are ways around Torn Hero... Not great, efficient, effective ways around it, but there are ways.

'the best' is seriously relative to matchups and meta, and Rasho could be 'the best' becuase he manages the most matchups best and can compete in any meta.

The reason I don't think Rasho is 'the best' is becuase I struggle to find a consistent early kill with him. And as much as blanking 1 major card, and probably 3/4 others mid game is strong, it isn't a gauranteed way to reduce damage, i.e. he still gets killed quite handily by characters like Ragnar/Fury/etc. that can destroy blanked objects with themselves and/or their support. Do that on throws and it is an uphill battle for Mr. tep.

In any case, Astrid is top tier for a zillion and one reasons. The biggest thing that will slow Astrid down is the release of more early speed pump (the mass stun strat works ok too), thereby allowing characters to attack her without fearing reversal, and therefore breaking away from 'Astrid's game pace'. Astrid not having torn hero, not 'easily' being able to kill turn 2/3 unless the opponent attacks her and get's reversaled, are some of her few weaknesses.

- dut

Earth Rasho can play the same aggro game any other Earth char can, but he has no innate aggro abilities, and his only character-specific aggro card is his Gauntlets, which are kinda cute at best. Still, he can Throw with the best of 'em. Also, as I mentioned repeatedly, Rasho doubles stupid well as King, whom I haven't seen in action, but I hurr he's pretty tight =).

MarcoPulleaux said:

I actually meant a Paul that can side into Steve. You would generally speaking side into steve for matchups featuring anti-commital(not always tho) or people who cannot consistant deal with Steve's ability. But starting as Paul gives you a better chance in some of the tougher matchups.

If you think the Anti-Commital is going to totally shut the deck down you are sorely mistaken, it just requires a different approach, and I wouldnt even use Phoenix smasher in the deck, there is better ways to kill people.

And I also don't think a lot of teams will actually have two anti commital people, Air/Life/Good are all underplayed/slightly weakish symbols, and Earth/Death I don't think will be featured on the same team very often.

I wouldn't call Life a weaker symbol at all, ESPECIALLY since it's the only one that can run both Hero and Balance in the same deck.

Yes, Air and Good are definitely pretty weak, but Earth, Death, and Life are not, and I could easily see Earth and Death on the same team as Fire, or maybe Death and Life.

It's not that Hero/Balance KILLS Paul (because as I've said, once Paul has used his R, he's likely fulfilled his purpose), it's that it's a big deturrent he has no real defense against.

But yeah, smart move on Paul siding into Steve.

MarcoPulleaux said:

This - definately - Rasho is a sideboard character card for any earth/void deck (esp King), goes without saying.

But yeah, the lack of innate agro abilities means he has to dedicate a lot of resources to damage pump or play a very calculated control game up until he draws into 3-4 attacks, can play them, and can pump them 'enough'.

Dedicating resources to damage pump is great and all, but at the end of the day this makes his ability to play and surive long enough that much harder, i.e. he is a balanced character, and usually the best character is tipping the scale or at least on a far side of it asking for attention. Luckily, there aren't many like that in block 4, the ones that do tip the scale are equally killable quickly becuase of proper vitality and texts that aren't uber defense.

It's a fun meta with more than a few 'betters', not many unusables, a couple bads, and many goods. Once the symbols round out it will be a 'very' acceptable meta. If they round out without tipping the scale, then we will have a REALLY great year of cards.

- dut

Well, I'd still say Earth Rasho should run Siegfried's Earth Divide BECAUSE of what you said, that he basically needs to spend his time investing in damage pumps on his Throws. However, Death Rasho has Breaker, and instead of using Launcher, you could use Croc Grasp if you felt necessary. Void Rasho is also pretty **** sweet, still being able to side into King, but also having access to some badass attacks like Shadow Flare and Dark Geo.

But yeah, your analysis of the game is pretty spot-on. Even though we have some tip of the iceberg characters, they can be killed, and it's looking like it's going to stay that way.

The reason why Paul/Steve are bunched up into the same deck is because there aren't many punches that Steve can use outside of Paul's support, unless you want to run off of Chaos with Merciless Fighter, but even then it requires a lor more cards in hand and more card draw and setup, whereas a Paul themed deck with Steve on front will play just fine.

Even if Steve and Paul's abilities are different, their decks run exactly the same. Steve can't do giant overkill with Phoenix Smasher (and perhaps could side into something else such as Gut Drill), but then again Steve doesn't care about killing in one turn because he has a no-negative damage reduction ability in addition to enough draw to rule the world thanks to Paul.

Steve can OHK pretty easilly with Blazing Fist which matches 2 of his symbols....just saying.