I gotta say, Life is getting all sorts of love this time round. And with some of the more powerful Life characters showing up, we will see a definite rise in Life's Tier. Probably up to A or S along side Fire, Death, and Chaos.

I mean, look at the options for Sophitia with this new attack, Waterfall. This IS her kill condition. No ands, ifs, or buts. She bumps speed, it damages off of speed. She does not even want to multiple it, but doing so would not be too bad. This is a partial deck that I will be building once prerelease is done:

Sophitia

4x Waterfall

4x Lowdown Neb

4x [Life Weapon]

3x Ice Coffin of the Sleeping Ancient

3x Eiserne Drossel

4x Genius Alchemist

4x Graceful Style

All the speed in the world. All it really lacks is any type of Paid to Protect hate, which it will really need. Life Weapon->Lowdown Neb->Waterfall for the win. Genius makes the checks easier, Ice Coffin adds +5 with Neb before, Drossel adds, effectively, +4 damage. Graceful Style adds min +4, at only on a 3 if you did it right. For a possible (+5,+2,+4,+X) 15+X Low 23+X damage, where X is the amount Sophitia's E hits for.

Carefree: Meh. Useful, but not game-breaking or an auto include. I figure it will see play in decks that are low on blocks, or high attacks, just to fluff the numbers.

Assassin's Strike: Because there is no way to put foundations into your hand, there is really no chance of recurring this attack by its ability. The attack also suffers from the same type of Spinning Demon If ability. If the first is blocked, the others do not inherit the E. And with the attack being Mid, there will more than likely be a block to stop it.

-Tinman

ZeeroYui said:

****... you are so right and now I want to build AirXianghua.

ROTBI said:

I saw your response. I'm not in the same location as my cards, so I'm not going to respond until I've had a chance to confirm what I do and don't have available.

That aside...

If you're playing legacy you're probably playing Evil, Void, Death, or Order.

So really, why print cards for any symbol other then Evil, Void, Death or Order? Since they won't get played in Legacy?

While the card is not optimal for how you play legacy, there are others who will find it useful, and will play it in legacy.

Hell... my last legacy deck for worlds was a theme deck, and I some how managed to top swiss with it, playing with bad cards. I guess for legacy worlds this year I'll build a deck that features carefree just to prove a point.

Air and Life having multiples other than Menuett dance, Fury of the Ancients, and Law's Somersault Kick. Kinda makes me wonder if we will start to see Solitary Assasin in play now. Paying Fury or Menuett dance first, getting the momentum from it, and then mulitpling the other attack would be awesome. Only thing is the checks would kinda suck though. I'd still like to see a throw or two In air or water as well.

Antigoth said:

Thanks for getting back to me, keep me posted.

As for your response I play legacy for fun, so the OP resources are not automatics for me. I most enjoy chaos, good, and then probably air when considering the entirety of UFS. My point only was that in Legacy play there are better cards for it's 3 resources. Nothing more, nothing less. But as I said the card will never see legacy play, unless someone is trying to make a point, as in your example.

In any case, I'm done with the discussion of Carefree, it has already garnered me enough unwanted attention from those who somehow did not understand my point or are just choosing to be difficult.

ROTBI said:

AKA people who don't agree with me.

Tinman said:

G-Corp Leader off of Chaos. Someone had already mentioned comboing G-Corp with Master of Magic off of Death (and Death throws) but this doesn't need the 3/5 blockless foundation.

And also, block bait is good no matter how you slice it. 6 damage and free foundations is hardly something you let go without trying to block.

Homme Chapeau said:

If it were an ultra-rare that is useless or outclassed by most of Legacy cards (Challenge to Battle comes to mind) maybe it would be worth discussing. As it is, I'm surprised a 1 diff foundation isn't seem as even somewhat useful in Legacy considering all the ridiculous control check hack.

Here's the humongous list of cards in Legacy with the same stats as Carefree. That is, cards off of any resource which are 1/5 and have a +1 or better block of any zone:

Altered Mind and Body
Challenged
Forethought (banned)
Friendship
Grieving for the Master
Mercenary
Origins Unknown
Superlative Gymnast (in all its brokenness)
The Bespectacled Master Sergeant
The Darker Side
Tradition of Battle
Transference
Weapons are Unnecessary
Won't Settle for Second Best

Other than Forethought, MAYBE Mercenary, Transference (on a good day), Origins Unknown and Tradition of Battle, the rest are not played. Carefree joins the elite as a 1/5 foundation with a +1M block. Seeing the company it keeps, doesn't it make sense for Carefree to do nothing? After all Won't Settle for Second Best and Altered Mind and Body are only ever used to fill spaces and add spammage. Isn't that what Carefree does? In that case, Carefree has about a good a space in Legacy as any of these cards, all of whom no one conveniently complained about even though most of them might as well be blank.

the only real thing is, while it's nice that there aren't many 1/5 +1-MIDs in Legacy, um, it's Legacy; you have **** with effects. In this block, you run Carefree because of what it does in the format.

Of course, why are we discussing Legacy? It doesn't exist.

I love Carefree, and I'm positive it will see play.

MarcoPulleaux said:

There's already a spot reserved for it in my Air Hata deck.

Carefree = Just another foundation for Billy Kane to reverse with and recur with Wandering Monk in Legacy. And with no effect on it, it will probably be a first choice you make on what foundation to lose for the R. In standard, it's just a card with a block, in my view.

Assassin's Strike is a nice little card, and not TOO difficult to pull off, with all the CC hax in Chaos. Not a big stretch there.

Waterfall. Not impressed. It's an ok card and has uses, but, personally, not impressed.

Waterfall is stupid in Weapon Hilde.... just saying.

Waterfall doesn't share any symbols with Hilde.. just saying.

I'm suspecting amazing potential from it on Air. Life has some nifty things, no doubt, but Air's really where it's at.

ZeeroYui said:

Most definitely... Air also has easy momentum shenanigans.

does waterfall mean that nina might have a kill condition now? and it seems really powerful in cassie too since she can give even more speed im kinda bummed its a rare because everyone will want it and itll become something not everyone has

as for assasin strike i want to put it into a tira deck she can give it an extra multiple and get an extra foundation from it as well which is nice....and you dont have to worry about overextending and not killing your opponent if your getting foundations back from it

Air is definitely getting better, but clearly Life is getting betterER, seeing as how of the 2 Air chars (Xiang, Taki), both have Life. Waterfall is fun, 's too bad Life simply has more speed pumps than Air does.

MarcoPulleaux said:

Air has some sick chops dude. Granted I've only been able to do something with it in James Hata but still.

Homme Chapeau said:

...

...

...UR Twelve.

@guita: You missed Selfless Giving, and that card is extreme hotness. It always gives me just what I need

Well, except when it doesn't, but who remembers when an unassuming 1/5 +1M foundation sits around and doesn't singlehandedly win the game? Not I, unless it's violently broken like Forethought was.

I don't really expect Waterfall to be too heavily played, tbh. It's fair tech against Spinning Demon or Menuett Dance (if you somehow play it against Menuett Dance), but offensively you really can't expect to pass 2 attacks AND an 8 check AND still have a pile of (inefficient) speed pump cards lying around to make it lethal. 9 damage at high speed in the psuedothrow zone is strong, of course, but it's far from game-breaking. There's simply too many hoops to jump through just to get that Deceptive Look, and Deceptive Look isn't even that powerful right now. (seriously objectively consider our speed pumps. +2spd from a 3/5 asset. From the Horse = +4 spd for committing, on a 3/5 no block. There's a 2/4 no block foundation that gives +4 damage for destroying a foundation, and you can even do it more than once. Which is going to make your opponent reach 0 vitality sooner?)

Wafflecopter said:

I disagree. Waterfall may have limited capabilities as multiple hate, but its ability to kill is nothing to scoff at. Off of Life, there are some very serious speed bumps and progressive tech to make the card very playable. For example: Ice Coffin of the Sleeping Ancient. Commit 1 for +X speed, and in this case, damage, where X is the printed speed of the attack before it. Play the Combo right, and you can be looking at as much as +5 speed, +5 damage, for a cost of Commit 1 foundation. Another foundation to take into account is Graceful Style. Assuming you have 1-2 Alchemists on the field, Graceful Style is only a 3-4 difficulty action, for at least +4 speed, +4 damage. Over all, Life definitely has enough support currently to make very good use of this attack, and the support out of the new set will only help in that department. Unless we get some serious speed hate from symbols that are not Void, Death, or Evil.

-Tinman

Wafflecopter said:

How about two four checks and a 6 check? Or even the possibility that all of said checks are getting plus a few automatically. Such is the power of Air.

Not to mention fairly strong recursion, momentum shenanigans as it was called, and more than enough speed pump to make it do what it needs. Oh, and a selection of viable characters helps too.

As for mono Water, looks like Amy's going to be the posterchild for that symbol. Which means I'll be having an Amy deck built and trying to work for it's money for as long as it takes to get some good WaterNotLife support. Though in all likelihood she'll simply be better off of Order. :<

ZeeroYui said:

Or just build it with mostly her cards + CharacterThatIsn'tAmy? If you think Amy herself will be better off something else, use a different character. Problem solved? :|

Too bad waterfall doesn't share symbols with kazuya, could you imagine playing waterfall, Kazuya enhance with 4 kazuya's in play and then waterfall combo enhance. Enjoy that 8 speed 18 damage attack, and didn't even use any foundations.

Tagrineth said:

Er, that was more or less what I was getting at. Amy will be supplying the first real source of cards to have Water without Life, so her cards are basically what a Water deck will be looking at. I just suspect what she's going for will still be better off of another symbol. Especially considering Order will at least provide blocks for her to reversal off of, many of which weapon ones to boot. Of course, this is all mass speculation based off of one card and could turn out to be entirely wrong!

And as for why I'd want to build Amy off of Water? Because I liked playing Amy in SC and I've been a Water junkie for quite some time. Who says you can't build decks, even if they are doomed to fail, for the sheer love of it?

But just because Amy's cards are the only Water cards that don't have Life, doesn't mean you have to use only those cards. You still have Lu Chen, Yi Shan, and Christie to draw from.

Based on what we've seen, Lu Chen and Amy's cards should combine pretty well.