So this past Sunday, since I was home for break, I got to play UFS at the local shop as opposed to facing a 1-hour+ trek to Waverly. Now, the Poughkeepsie crowd is decidedly dwindling, (though it was never really all that big to begin with) currently comprised of Steve, Jack, myself, my sister Colleen & her fiancee Rich. When I'm at school it's pretty much just Steve and Jack, as the latter 2 lack transportation. (though I do hear rumors of Josh still being about) Coll was sick, so it was just me and Rich making the drive from my house.

Now, due to work and Thanksgiving activities, Rich hadn't really had much time to put a new deck together, (he was tired of promo Bishamon and his 5HS) so we wound up scrambling a bit to build something that morning - somehow it wound up being the new Mitsurugi. ~16 attacks with 3 damage, some additional boosting, and whatever random support-ish stuff we could dig out of his mostly-commons collection. By any high-level tournament standards, a total pile. Worse yet, as Steve hasn't had much reason to experiment lately and Jack just doesn't work on more than one deck at a time, Rich was left running said 'Rugi against a pretty hardcore Order control deck and Hata-style Ibuki -.-'

But you know what? He had a good time . Even against those kinds of decks, despite getting generally thrashed, he just enjoyed playing this new deck. And he hasn't exactly been our most enthusiastic player either. Now he and I are hoping/plotting to start getting some of his friends that have been kinda fringe players to come over and play casual multiplayer (we'll figure something out) on some kind of regular basis over Christmas break, and he actually seems to be behind the idea.

My point, in short, is that although this may be incomprehensible to some people, not every game of UFS has to be treated like preparation for some major . If the tournament level of decks are feeling stale or old, just don't play a tournament level deck. Build decks around those characters you like but aren't top-tier, or the ones you find interesting but couldn't really make competetive. And if it can't stand up to four Rejections a turn, or stop a Defender loop, so what? You may lose to the hardcores running that stuff at the local tourney, but you're apt to have more fun overall. (and it's not like weekly local tourneys are a huge deal anyway) Chances are any other discouraged players at your shop want to have fun too, and may very well follow your lead. Any stalwarts still playing the jerkface decks would just be missing out.

It is true that the game *should* be enjoyable at the highest level, but right now FFG's hands are effectively tied in terms of block 3 until they see what kind of an impact James' cards have, (supposedly every card in set 11 is playable?) and there's not a whole lot of reason to do anything for the remainder of block 2 when nobody seems to care about it. But no one's forcing people to try and be ultra-competitive in this flawed format, and certainly nobody promised it would be a fun experience. So if you're in a rut about being bored of top-level block 2 but not enjoying competitve half-block 3, stop fretting so much about the competitive part and just play a deck you do enjoy. Nobody's stopping you.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go work on that new promo Felicia

The highest of high fives for you my good Cetonis.

90% of the time, when I'm feeling down on this game it's because I have nothing but tournament caliber decks that are no fun to play and no fun to play against.

Then I toss together something stupid/fun, like a Raphael LOLBIGBEATS deck or the new Mitsurugi (yes I built it as well!) and I just enjoy the game for what it can be, not what it NEEDS to be at a high level.

I find building the occaisional weird deck to be a great way to get out of a rut. every once and a while one might stumble onto something quite retarded if not refreshing. such was the case awhile back when I built my Ryu chicken kick deck. it was built only for the lulz but ended up being able to off folks with multiple 20+ damage chicken kicks. It got a grin from everyone who saw it.

Cetonis said:

wow... Glad to read something positive on these boards.

It change from the habitual whinning/ban/errata this tread.

Glad to hear this, wish this is gonna be a new era of positiveness on those new forums...

lol... i know...

One of our players built a Ryu-only theme deck. It was off All and Void, and he played the Legacy Ryu cards. He even played some of the bad ones like that Super Rare that everyone knows is probably the worst SR, at least for its time. I've posted elsewhere in this forum that I've played some decks just for the heck of it, but I refuse to play something that has no potential for victory.

Indeed, the balance between "fun" and "competitive" in this game is not the same as it is for others. I think that the best way for a competitive deck to give its owner "fun" is to win a game against a comparable opponent, especially in a well-metered and dragged out game. Although, seeing the grand plan that you've been orchestrating throughout the game come to fruition has major boons, more so when you've done it multiple times. Then you know that you've achieved an elusive consistancy and harmony among cards. But I digress... That's like the anti-OP lol

even though competitive decks are fun, playing a pile of junk can be enjoyable. especialy when your pile of junk wins.

Piles of junk are the most enjoyable.

Last night I ran my Felicia (control sequence original) against a friend's symbol-based damage-pump Yuri throws.

He got me down to 11 early on, but once he got his fan asset out, I started copying its ability, ditching three momentum to grab Hellcats back from my discard. I usually had the control values to throw either Feline Ferocity or Hellcat for free. (Feline Ferocity kept me in a heap of momentum to fuel the fan E, the Hellcat multiple, etc.) Towards the end, once Whereabouts was on the table, I had enough momentum to keep using Yuri's own 3-symbol damage boost on my Hellcats as well.

To be fair, I was _really_ lucky. A few more throws would have finished me off, and my opponent didn't draw into them. The occasional reversal stunning him didn't hurt either.

But yeah, jank theme decks and combo decks are mad fun. (:

Awesome, I love to hear the good stories for a change.

I have one of my own too, let me explain...

Just a couple of weeks ago, while preparing for the SF Nats, I invited my friend from work along to our local gaming club. He bought himself an Akuma starter on his way there, so we tested it out while he learned the rules as he goes along. Fortunately I'm pretty good at teaching new players, so we were good there. However, the starter deck wasn't so helpful, feeding my friend with little to no foundations, and bad checks. After figuring out the basics, we took a look at the starter deck and how bad it was.

We demolished the starter and added some older Block 2 commons, namely cheaper attacks like Jumping Shotei, and better foundations with better checks, like Merciless and Heart of Gold. The end result was not exactly a tournament winning beast, but at least something to stand up to others, and didn't fall flat on it's face like it was in the box. We enjoyed the second game against my Dan2 deck, in fact he got me down to 5 life before I managed to push through a Fight or Flighted Dan's Dragon Punch.

my favorite pile of junk so far is an air Taki7. i no taki is a realy broken charecter i certain instances but my 30+ atack "beast" is far from cookie cutter. i basicaly have a turn of foundations and than atack every turn after that. think five straght tiny atacks clear the card pool, five straight tiny atacks, clear the card pool etc. my only none 3 dificulty atack is knee gatling. it is a very good pile of junk, and one of my favorite decks. it makes people say, " was agro ever dead?"

ooo, that Taki... I always wondered whether or not she was feasible... if your checks pass without needing foundations then she would indeed work, wouldn't she? I'll have to keep that in mind for something to consider whenever I decide I'm ready to move on from this **Felicia** business

I reciently built a deck with the promo cammy (errata) with all cards in the deck haveing her picture on them and it sucks but its good to play new people with it because they can see how fun it is if you play with your favorite characters.

our scout built an air taki7 that is probably the fastest deck you will ever see. in 6 games (that i've seen) it's turn 2 or 1 everyone. the reason my taki is fun to play is i felt like building a deck with 30 atacks and it actualy works ok.