MarcoPulleaux said:

King's weaknesses are...

1) messing with his checks, forcing a screw up in commital (try breaker!), having to commit king sucks.

2) Reversaling with Pommel, Hammer Upper, or with Paul and tapping the character

3) Damage reduction, enough to get one or two throws to zero to lock out the 'if this attack deals damage on certain attacks'.

4) running lots of attacks, being able to take advantage of knowing what is in King's hand if you don't die on his x+1 attack. If you can change attack zones this becomes more prevalent, pretty much stopping any ability King has to fully block.

5) being Astrid, which is essentially 4 but with lots of draw and lots of damage in replacement of the zone change.

Without a small amount of recurring life gain, and without a clear answer to throws short of mass damage reduction, King will kill you, it is just a matter of time.

DO limit King's draw if he is running other cards that draw, thus you can minimize the number of a cards he has as a defense.

DO run cards like "Memories that Stain Its Armor" to destroy foundations with reusable damage pump effects.

DO ensure you can at least half block most attacks, especially the one with the Path damage pump

DO run asset hate...

These are pretty much the best ways to deal with King. That said, King is easily top tier aka the King to Astrid's Queen of UFS at the moment, there is very little if any doubt in my mind.

Edit: Discard works surprisingly well against King too... Granted his 1/2 cards left in hand are easy to strip. If you can then hit him with attacks that generate a lot of damage unblocked (see knight breaker combo) then you can probably take him.

- dut

dutpotd said:

guitalex2008 said:

Oh yeah, you are right. My bad. cost vs. ability and all.

Edit: I have updated #2 for another viable tech against King.

- dut

Thanks Jeremy, Grant, Tinman, dutpotd and alex especially, your insights are much appreciated. Jeremy, your detailed breakdown will help me tremendously dude, now I have SOME clue at least lol.

One question to all of you - even the control options that are floating out there (Rashotep, King, Algol) seem to be fairly aggresive. Is there any turtling still possible? What are the best damage reducers?

I;m pretty sure Paul phoenix is at the top of the tier listings I mean come on its "Got to be the hair"!

The best damage reduction symbol in the game is Fire, followed by Earth or Good. Fire has access to Stand Off, The Ultimate Team, Valkyria Shield, Temujin's two assets (Crown and Armor), and Mark of the Beast to hate on Multiples. Good has those last two, plus King's support, a piece or two from Siggy, and if you want to count it Lu Chen's reversals. Earth gets Stand Off, the King and Siggy pieces, and what I'll call proactive reduction stuff a la Ka Technique.

And also the best damage pumping symbol.

Looking into hand control, Algol has some good things going for him. Play him off of Void, using Nina and King support, with his own as part of the kill condition. Cards like War Between Sisters and Wipe the Floor have some great synergy with Algol's build, not to mention the very powerful Keep them Down, mixed with Maliki to bring the hurt. Drop in some Ivy support for easy checks, and Algol is a fun deck to play. He can be a bit slow at times, such as when he has to wait for his assets to get out, but he can go off nicely, and his King support helps with the damage.

My current build is in my Signature. It uses Wipe the Floor, Evil Sparrow, Maliki, Achernar, and Najm as a line up. Throw in Communings and For the Money off Chaos, Researching the Past for recurring checks/kill conditions(gets really stupid here with multiple of these), and Ice Coffin for speed. It is pretty fun to play, dispite its transparency. If you can get the cards down, he can do some really dumb things on both his own and his opponant's turn.

Two quick combos for control:

Ancient Fighting Style + War Between Sisters = Psuedo Draw power during your opponant's turn.

Researching the Past x2-3 + no checks on your opponents turn + Algol's Form = Redo last turn.

-Tinman

VikramS said:

IMO, Rashotep has the most capability of turtling, but it doesn't last very long. By blanking essential pieces to a kill turn, in most cases the character, he can survive decently. By hiding behind cards like Stand Off, Enemies Now Friends, The Man Behind the Mask, Memories of a Nightmare, Torn Hero vs stun, and his own ability, his survivability rating is rather outstanding.

Rashotep was usually played either Earth or Death. Both had really good options, but what really pushed Earth over Death when Tekken dropped is the release of Bloodline Rebellion. The card advantage that card will give when you need another throw for your kill turn will win you lots of games. When Chubbs and I were playing, my Rashotep won half of its games by popping Bloodline Rebellion.

However, if you plan on turtling with Rashotep, beware of Astaroth. I lost to an Astaroth in Maryland because my first Rashotep draft was based off turtling.

Wafflecopter touched on the more used damage reduction pieces. There's plenty more in standard but it's a lot more risky:

- Sa, Symbol of Protection (Death/Earth/Void): Possibly the best damage reduction in the format, and often overlooked because it's an action card, sports a very agreeable 2/5 with a +2M and can give a non-weapon attack -3 damage, or a weapon attack -4 damage, both with no minimum. I honestly wouldn't expect to see this card being played, but it is very nice all around.

- Crown of the Forgotten Secret/Armor of the Forsaken One (Air/Fire/Good): I group these two together because they're Temujin support. Crown is a unique asset, 2/5 +1H and for free gives an opponent's high attack -2 damage (no minimum) OR you can blow it up for -4 damage (although the blowing up ability does have a minimum 1). Armor is a lot worse statistically, sporting a 3/5 with no block (no block is a bad thing for unique assets), but for committing it gives a mid attack -4 damage. Another downside is that if the -4 damage would reduce the attack's damage to 0 or less, you have to destroy the Armor.

- Distracting Taunt (Air/Death/Life): it's a 3/4 foundation with no block, that as soon as an attack is played by your opponent you can commit it to reduce the damage by the block modifier of the attack (minimum 1).

- Iron Body Technique (Earth/Life/Water): Only ever really playable in a face up momentum deck, i.e. Yi Shan, a 2/5 foundation, no block that for committing can reduce the damage of this attack by the number of face up cards in your momentum. Considering the best damage reduction other than this for Yi Shan is Repentant Hero (but requires discarding a face up momentum to reduce the damage by the control of the discarded momentum), Yi Shan doesn't exactly want to get rid of his crap.

- Valkyrja's Shield (All/Fire/Order): A Unique asset with an additional nifty ability to give your blocks Breaker:2 in case you can't use the reduction. Only ever really useful as DR in Astrid, by committing a foundation and discarding a weapon card (Astrid has plenty of weapon non-attacks), you can reduce, with no minimum, the damage of this attack by the control of the discarded weapon card. The catch is that using it again will blow it up and burn you for 2.

- Memories of a Nightmare (Earth/Good/Life): 2/5 no block that can commit to blank a Death, Evil or Void card in your opponent's staging area for the rest of the turn......... or commit for +1 or -1 damage (no minimum).

- Shadowar (Evil/Fire/Good): In addition to the free +1 speed or damage for Shadowar cards, you can commit it for -2 damage and if this attack deals damage your next control check gets +2. Awesome when you need to half block.

- Base Hold (Earth/Good/Life): Action card, 2/5 no block. Sure, it only works against Weapons, but it can give -3 damage (minimum 1).

- Laughable (Earth/Evil/Fire): Awesome in King and anyone running recursion with The Entertainer. 2/5 foundation, no block, that commits for -3 damage (minimum 1) only if you have no cards in hand. A risky concept, I'm sure.

- Immovable Object (Earth/Evil/Fire): Action, 3/5 with a +3M block. Sure it has a response that will only ever affect the card Crane Strike right now (lol), I'm sure it might come in handy at SOME point, but it also has a nice -4 damage E to throws, with no minimum.

- Mexican Sensation (Earth/Good/Void): If you're an Earth character and your opponent has a bigger hand size than you, commit this for -3 (minimum 1). Stupidly situational in the current meta, so it's best to just use it for the damage pump on throws (ditch 1 for +2 on a throw).

- Man Behind the Mask (Earth/Good/Void): YES. A 0/5 Foundation with a +3M block that can in Desperation (mind you, you can put yourself in desperation with Ragnar's support), give +1 or -1 (no minimum) to any attack for no cost other than being half dead.

- Enemies now Friends (Earth/Good/Void): Normally used to great extent on your turn, it's deadly in a Reversal deck. 2/5 with a +3H, it gives THIS attack -2 damage (no minimum), and if it deals damage, the next attack played this turn gets +4 damage. With the heavy throw meta, enhancing a throw with one or two of these then blocking, taking damage and playing a reversal is the best happy ever. But if you don't have a reversal, just use all your copies on one of them, big deal.

- Learned from the Best (Earth/Good/Void): The best anti-multiple in the format (that can't do jack crap against Fury of the Ancients Zi Mei) next to Mark of the Beast, would very nicely punish multiples by giving it -X damage (no minimum), where X is the amount of momentum your opponent has discarded this Combat Phase (the cost for Multiple and Powerful is discarding momentum) all for making a check of... 4. Yes, two of these out essentially shut down Menuett Dance by making tons of 4 checks. Check a 4 for -3, check another for -3, repeat until entire multiple string is comprised of tasty donuts.

- Test of Strength (Earth/Good/Void): I swear I'll put this 3/5 action with a +2M block in Cervantes, because he can abuse it in the worst possible ways. Two E's, basically one is for +X, the other one for -X. It starts by (for no cost) forcing both players to make a control check. If yours is higher (on both counts), this attack gets +X or -X damage (no minimum), where X is the number YOU checked. Acheron and Nirvana, here we go for +8/-8.

- The Ultimate Team (All/Fire/Order): Sure, you have to discard a block. But look how tasty block mods have been recently: almost no foundations with block mods of less than 3. Two E's, one for +X and one for -X (no minimum). The cost is committing one foundation (not necessarily itself) and discarding a block, to make X equal the block modifier of the discarded card.

- Toughest in the Universe (All/Fire/Order): I'd like to get inside Hata's head to figure out why this card has damage reduction, but sure. 3/5 no block, has a Fire Combo (Stun, Stun) E that pumps damage, but if YOU have more foundations committed than the opponent, you can use the other E on it for -4 damage. Note to self: this will always work on your opponent's turn. It's like a reward for overextending your ass.

I honestly dont think strict turtleing is possible....

granted there are some damage reduct/control cards as the previous poster just listed, however they are pretty watered down compared to what we used to have access too. The Ultimate Team and Standoff are prolly the best and most reusable.

If I had to pick a character I would say King, Steve Fox and Lu Chen would be best. King cuz he can play 3-6 Foundations to hide behind Stand Offand still attack, has access to Test of Strength and Man Behind. Steve Fox is silly, take a look at Jeremy's deck in the deck depot. He can utilize lots of damage reduct and utilize stun on the opponents turn which is seriously turn breaking in this format. Lu Chen is awesome but struggles tremendously early game with bad draws, if he can get to lategame he wins most if not all of his game being able to stop the opponents turn after one attack becase of all the added progressive difficulty

IMO Turtleing/wall is underutilized at the moment. I think Lu Chen is the closest to it, but a build in my eyes has yet to be perfected in part due to Life/Good not really having a serviceable kill (Wrath of Heaven is whack).

I think Alex has done a good job of detailing almost every card that helps reduce damage.

I agree with Nintendoman though, you can't 'really' turtle in the standard meta. There really isn't a point (poor mill options), unless you think your opponent will definately make a mistake and overextend.

In 99% of the cases the damage pump available is better than the damage redux available, and with throws that damage will start to get through.

Damage redux is still really useful though, it is all about reducing to survive followed by kill the next turn. Just don't expect to reduce and survive 3+ turns of attacks, it probably won't happen.

- dut