well my question is this if my LGS owner cant get these cards why are they legal at tournaments?

Luthon said:

Your local game shop owner can get them from the champions.

Nothing is stopping him reaching out and buying them from them, just like he would from FFG.

Antigoth said:

why does he need to deal with people who to the best of my knowledge dont work for FFG to play a FFG game? Anything I say wont change the policy but why do the champion cards have to be so **** powerful cant they just be something fun and not abusive.

Luthon said:

Now this i agree with.....

None have actually been banned but some of them have been very good. Pre errata Matt Kohls, Wess Victory with the injury assets, the new james hata and omar now are pretty OP in the current format

Luthon said:

You don't need any of the championship cards to be competitive. Look at the deck lists from worlds last year, this year, none of the champions used a championship card to get to the winners circle.

You don't need to carry, or play with the champion cards.

Many of the champions have been disappointed because their cards have been neutered to the point where are simply just something fun, not abusive.

Since you're asking to do away with the current prizes for nationals and worlds. What is your suggestion to replace them by the way?

Antigoth said:

My personal biggest problem with this situation isn't the availability of the card itself - it's more from a design standpoint. If you need a certain effect for your deck and the only version of that effect is on a champion card... you're boned unless you can afford to travel. There's a good chance that said effect or even a more generic version won't be on any card that's available in packs. It's good for the champions - it gives them some exclusivity over certain effects, but it does hamper deckbuilding somewhat.

Take for example this topic : "Why isn't anyone playing this card?" The answer should be "Because it doesn't fit my deck.", not "Because there is no chance in hell I will EVER have my playset."

You might say it's because players give up too fast. I'll agree on that one for players in the States (because I know there's some if you check eBay and the shipping won't gut you too much, unlike here!), but for other people? You must travel in order to get them, and that's IF the champions brought the cards with them, IF they are willing to trade (due to them having a lot of the stuff already) and the biggest if of all, IF they are attending an event you go to.

Antigoth said:

now there might be some confusion mainly on my part but you have to be blind to not see they are ran in 60% of decks, heck just go up a forum to see. The last tourney i was in all but two decks ran Path it was either in it because of its amazing qualities or they actually ran their deck around it. I dont have a suggestion and I doubt any of the heads of FFG would read this post and take my suggestion anyways. All I'm asking is for something to be done to improve the situation cause its really not worth my time or money to drive 2 hours to the nearest tournament and not be able to compete at all. Then again I'm hoping the next set will improve my situation I highly doubt it but one can hope anyways.

darklogos said:

Send me a friend request if you want Wonderworld Assets or path of the master I actually handle all the online trading amongst my group so Jeremy would have just pointed you in my direction anyway.

Luthon said:

I'm not blind. However the deck building forms are not the best representation of what is and what is not winning. Most of the top players don't post their decks in there until it's too late.

Path of the Master is also not a nationals or world championship card. It was an invitational card that was given to everyone who attended one of the two invitational events. Everyone had significant notice (the most notice of any single event in UFS History - over a year). In addition we organized swaps here on the forums so that players who could not attend were still able to get paths even if they didn't attend. Many players who attended walked away with 12-13 copies of the card. The cards that you are complaining about, are the ones given to the Singles and Teams Champions, where they get all copies of the card. Please note - Apples and Oranges.

For what it's worth, the Store Championship that we had last week was won by a King deck that the only promo it ran was stand-off if I remember correctly. He purposely didn't run Path of the Master. I'm trying to remember whether or not he ran Paid to Protect... I think he did.

And if you think that all you need to be able to compete in a tournament is Path of the Master, you're sadly mistaken. They might help, but just ask my opponents who kept having me blank it as Rashotep just how helpful the card was.

Antigoth said:

Good players win despite not having certain cards.

Also, can we please not bring up Path of the Master's availability here? I'd like to keep my belief that the forum community is actually worth standing for.

Antigoth said:

Antigoth said:

see there was my confusion I really dont know the difference between a champ, nationals,whatever glad thats cleared up.....

I apologize for my earlier comment. These forums and the play groups around my LGS are the only representations of what I know of the game so my view is unclear. When I see most decks online with path, then attend a group in my surrounding areas and they all use the same exact thing so what am I suppose to think? Your probably right I should have tried to attend this event when it happend but then again when I started (about a year ago) I really didnt know what most of this stuff was.

I've clearly lost this debate I'll just have to suck it up and get Controller of souls (to my knowledge only card that can cancel assets for all... i think) and run it in my Paul deck. Kudos to the King player not using path. And your right again Rashotep does **** stuff like that.

Luthon said:

You can also get something to blow it up like Ymirfang or Shield Breaker.

Luthon said:

If you're playing Paul you can also block the first attack, then gut drill reversal, and since it's got stun as a reversal, and you're Paul, use Paul's R to commit path of the master.

Just to give you another option.

Granted as Paul, you're probably killing 2nd / 3rd turn anyway. So really, are they setting up and killing you that much faster?

my deck is pretty fast and i can play like 4 attacks off of 1 foundation so i always go for a turn 2 or 3 kill. But this is probably what killed me I was playing against king and he ran all throws I believe, the only one i know of is close throw and he would blank my foundations with no forgiveness and then play some random throw to get it out of his hand play some foundations then form commit king and retrieve a throw from his discard pile play it for free then path, which generally got him like a 20-23 damage throw. The closest i ever got in that match was 6 hit points the first round i didnt even hurt him.

My paul deck is generally pretty fast I can turn 2 ok and the longest ive ever gone was 4 or 5 turns. Ironically I do run gut drill but it never came to me when I need it. I dont think it would have helped that much since he ran torn hero as well and I dont think I would have been able to commit path with paul because of that. The guys deck had everything checked it was just that path was his kill card.

What's the point of saying Rashotep can blank it if the opponent will only play 1 throw with a form and immediately tack on the Path E?

Controller of Souls is the Raging Gnome of the foundation world. It didn't need to be an ultra-rare so it's barely available, it's extremely overpriced and it's not that good except in certain circumstances (at the moment, Path is the only reason to care to run it... sure, try to convince me that it's worth negating Eisserne Drossel or Robes for one use by losing a resource for the turn), and what's worse, a lot of people believe it's the best thing since sliced bread.

What the world needs is asset destruction... oh how I long for that. When asset destruction is more available, Controller of Souls will be less useful every day.

And Killer Android doesn't count lol

guitalex2008 said:

ymirfang and shield breaker

Doesn't Scroll of the Abyss and Scroll of the Celestial Dawn destroy assets?

Also, I totally play BOTH Wonderworld assets. I usually have them in for sideboard tech.

Luthon said:

I don't mean to be sarcastic... but I hear blocking is amazing. Great, he whips a 23 damage throw at you. You're Paul,. you've got 26 vitality. The half block means that you're only eating 12 damage, leaving you with 14 damage.

If you're telling me 1st turn he gets torn hero + path of the master, and then kills you 2nd turn, I'm questioning what you're doing. Because my Rashotep (that runs Path, and can side into King) even with a perfect draw can't go off that fast against Paul because he has blocks, and saves them for the path'd attack.

I'm thinking the situation is simply learning how to play against that style of deck, because it sounds like a matchup that can easily go either way, as long as the player plays it properly. (Also assuming that since all the cards are available from booster packs, you're running with all the various R's and UR's that make the deck fly. If we're in a situation where you have a couple of rares, and a couple of UR's, but really need more cards to flush out the deck, the we're at a completely different place, with a completely different problem.)

Drewkasa said:

Friend invite sent.

I said "when asset destruction becomes MORE available", smart asses... of course Ymirfang does it. Of course Shield Breaker does it (has Shield Breaker ever been considered by anyone to be run in a deck? Don't think so, unless you want a Ragnar themed deck). Of course, the big problem is that 1) these both have Death/Earth/Fire so it's not exactly AVAILABLE and 2) in both cases the attack has to deal a certain amount of damage (in Shield Breaker's case, any damage), and Stand Off/PtP/Shadowar say hi... and so do blocks.

The Scrolls... only Scroll of the Abyss can really be considered because it has better secondary abilities. If you're not Lu Chen (maybe to an extent, White Crane) Scroll of the Celestial Dawn might as well have no secondary abilities (it does have a spiffy one that clears your card pool of foundations). I still think the Death E on Abyss stops a lot of shenanigans.

So let's recap which symbols have actually useful asset destruction.

Death
Earth
Fire
Evil
Death

And the rest of them can go to hell, it seems. Sure you can argue until the ends of the world that Chaos has usable asset destruction because of Kazuya but 1) if you're talking about the character, its ability isn't readily available to other characters in Chaos and 2) Destruction in His Wake will only ever be useful when more 7HS characters come out.

OK, now, on the topic of champion cards, there are a few points that I can't exactly agree to or disagree to and I'd like to go over them as quickly and concisely as possible.

- Championship cards should not be as good

On this point, I have to disagree, although this is sort of a gray area. Championship cards should be powerful . Giving a player (what is it) 800 copies or his or her card (we need a female champion) is the one and only bonus of having spent over $300 (I'm being generous not counting hotel) just to go to an event, not counting the money spent in building the deck. It's already a financial risk to go to these events, so the payoff has to be worth it. Getting 800 cards you can sell, even for $1, will help you make your money back and even be able to make a profit.

Should they be broken? Of course not. These cards most likely go through the same playtesting process as the sets do. I've never been a champion so I'm not sure how much of the champion's input is generally considered.

James Hata.. is not broken; he is just very powerful. Can he be stopped? Sure. There aren't that many cards that do it, but as the card pool grows we'll see. Wonderworld Comics and Wonderworld Warriors are good cards. As assets, they will not always go in any deck, but their abilities are strong enough to warrant them being team champion assets. Can they be stopped? Sadly both can be stopped with MAC (except the second ability on Warriors I think) and Algol can stop them with whatever Pseudo.

- Championship cards should be made more available

On this one I don't totally agree, but also don't disagree. Same logic as above, receiving 800 or so copies of the card is the only bonus you get for spending almost half a grand to go to a card tournament. I DON'T agree that they should be made available to everyone in a set. That's shortchanging the champion. I believe the availability of the card is solely the champion's responsibility .

It doesn't matter how it's handled, but a good rule of thumb is that you should not JUST trade for them, or not JUST sell the card. Not everyone has the cards to trade that anyone else would want, and not everyone has the kind of money to buy the card. Making it more available by doing this is the most logical step. Most of the champions I know of have done both, and some have even given copies of their card away for playing with them or simply e-mailing them. No matter what method the champions choose, it is literally their responsibility to at least make an effort to make this card available. If they don't, then all his money spent goes down the hole and the whole process of design and testing is for nothing. If a champion card isn't available, then it is worthless. I applaud Drewkasa and the rest of his team for making it as available as possible.

James, well, it's complicated there and I understand. Big huge gray area.

- The fact that you can block the Path attack makes it bearable

Well... as much as I want to say yes to make me feel better, I also run it in Ivy. With 28 attacks (only 4 of which only share 1 resource with her, the rest share all three). It's been known to toss out 16 attacks in a turn at any point between turn 2 and 3, few of those being Cross Style Madnesses that will probably deal damage. Does that Ivy NEED Path? Not always, but when it does (when it only gets to draw 8 or less attacks), so you REALLY think blocking the Path attack is an option? Consider that no Paid to Protect can save you when one or more of those pokes is a Pommel Smash and it quickly becomes a question of "Are you dead yet?"

Then there's the King dilemma. It's a throw after King played about 4 cards. Assuming a completely themed deck and tossing Flinging Half Nelson, a Path can give it up to +15 damage. Add Brooding, Plunder, Unstoppable, Jaguar Mask and even if blocked, half your life is gone, King still has cards to block with in his hand and maybe even some damage reduction ready. Without Path, the only suitable damage pump for this strategy would be Loves to Talk off of Good which, even though it is not unique, is also a 2/4 with no block so stats alone may limit its usefulness. It's not like it's a 2/5 Unique with a +1M block.