My apologies for posting an imcomplete thought and never following it up.

Foundations are still very very important in UFS. More so than Assets, more so than Actions, on par with attacks.

Now consider, cards like this

Best Friends (permanent with a foundation commital cost)
Christie Mont (also permanent with foundaiton commital cost)
Mitsurugi (permanent with a foundatio destruction cost)
James Hata (permanent with a foundation comital cost)
Stand-Off (permanent with a foundation comital cost)

In none of these cards do i ever want to have fewer foundations. Granted, I need attacks to kill, but if I can find fewer attacks and kill just as well, I will do so. The above cards only encourage me to find ways to do so.

Granted, there are some techniques in the game that suggest I do otherwise. For instance,

Path of the Master (which we circumvent the use of multiple copies of different attacks and instead focus on attacks that are Multiple).
However the rewards that they offer are either ignored (the card is unplayed, Asphixiante)
or whose non-foundation-playing encouragement is tackled in another way (such as the above with Path of the Master).
Combo is a technique that rewards the play of attacks, however even it is either 1.) circumventable (new Xianghua) or 2.) being undermined (Lu Chen and face downing things in card pool).
Nightmare was supposed to encourage the play and/or possesion of fewer foundations or punish the possession of multiple foundations, but has been ignored, mostly unplayed.

And so on.

Until more attacks some how get around these issues, foundations will always be at least tied with value to attacks, if not greater than. And at the very least, always out-number attacks in their appearance in decks.

So what do you suggest? that they reprint clones? without the foundation side..? or that I should pack my decks with 20 foundations 40 attacks? Being able to play an average of 2-3 attacks/turn isn't what I call aggro. and to many assets and actions will also slow the decks down.. alot..

Attacks will always depend on foundations.. either for checknboosting, damage boosting and so on

In block three foundations were the first thing i thought of when i built my deck. I wanna build evil, that would be chester's, brt, bitter rivals, twop, etc. i wanna build order, that would be brt, program malfunction, expierienced combatant, forethought, etc. In many block 3 decks i though about the foundations before the character. a kill condition like kitty spike, defender loop, spiral arrow lock, hanzo kick, was secondary to my decks control foundations.

In block four i first decide what character to use, example hilde, and then i think about what type of attack lineup to use. in my hilde i only use 10 attacks but i still fine tune my attack lineup before adding suport (foundations and assets). the game has evolved a lot since rotation. even though i only use ten attacks my kill turn is usaully turn 3, at the latest t4. My deck does not revolve around it's powerfull foundations. yes standoff, shadowwar, for the money, bloodline rebellion etc. are all good cards but my games are won or lost depending on how fast i can play a hammer uppercut + 1 or 2 dual wielding. in block three my best decks all involved slow mill or heavy lockdown until i finally drew my kill around t11-12. those games were about foundations, newfs really isn't.

But foundations are the most numerous card we have in our decks. Because having foundations in your deck is more important than having attacks. Why else would they be more numerous?

Mordai said:

The fact that attacks, and the entire game, relies on foundations, and even attempts made by the designer to shift it away, have not been enough (on both the fact that the attempt wasn't grand enough, and also the fact that we aren't building the decks really either).

vermillian said:

Bottom-right corner.

Bottom right corner doesn't even need to be mentioned. That's a given. It is the other factors in the game that continue to motivate their inclusion in numbers beyond those of other cards.

I would be interested to see a shift in design that allowed one to run more copies of other things, like actions, assets, characters and attacks...

vermillian said:

The only reason I run more attacks than foundations is because of that bottom-right corner.

vermillian said:

There is still quite a big difference from before. No more "cancel everything with only my foundations" and no more "I play 4 attacks in my deck". Also, quantity doesn't necessarily mean being more important. Can you kill without foundations? Yes. Can you kill without attacks? No, at least not as far as I know.

Saikyun said:

In agreement, I would add:

Can you survive without attacks? For a while. Can you survive without foundations? For a very short while.

So long as foundations are needed to make a deck perform (+checks, abilities, block checks), they will be run in greater numbers than attacks.

Without the +checks, abilites, a deck cannot perform. They need foundations, and not enough has been done to change this.

Granted, in the SCIV recent set, i see few attacks with a foundation comit cost, nor a generic "comit any foundation" cost. Great step. Most of the offenders have been from the last 3 sets and some promos (james hata, stand off, etc).

Homme, you said the same thing twice. it was understood both times you said it...

vermillian said:

Apparently not.

Because so long as any check higher than a 3 is on non-attacks, and so long as you can commit foundations to pass checks, you will have no choice but to pack more gray cards than anything else.

So no, you did not hear me. The reason why there is so much "gray" in the game? It's designed that way.

theres also the fact that if you print characters that dont rely on having foundations out, *cough* Heihachi *cough*, they will have a HUGE speed advantage over any character that has to take turns out to play foundations to setup a kill

Ziephnir said:

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the primary reason of what makes top tier characters top tier.

MarcoPulleaux said:

Not necessarily - James Hata2 has to have foundations out, yet he's considered top tier.

But that's because he pumps attacks as a welcome side effect of turning things sideways. The man must think every day is Christmas with all the free speed and damage he pumps out.

@vermilian: Look, bro, the fact of the matter is that the control check is what drives this game. You can have all the aggro potential in the world, but if you check poorly, you likely won't see it realized. To that end, the cards with the highest control check will be a deck's bread and butter, if only to pass the stuff they actually care about playing. Add in the fact that you can use foundations to pay for control checks that don't go your way or difficulties that were too high to pay anyway, and you have foundations earning their name. There's nothing wrong with having grey in your staging area, as long as the attacks themselves determine who wins and who loses, not the effects printed on the grey cards.

LordAggro said:

He still needs gray cards to fuel his abilities so it's not because a character doesn't need gray that they're top tier.

I agree with you completely; reliance on grey doesn't determine whether you're a strong character or not; it's whether the effects you have make it worthwhile. James Hata** 's effect is worthwhile; there are others that aren't.

LordAggro said:

Which reminds me we have yet to unveil the zombie pirate wrestler deck.

I am intrigued by this; please, tell me more... You can PM me if you don't feel comfortable sharing it with everyone.

LordAggro said:

Making your control checks using things other than foundations needs to be more of a focus. Recenlty, it appears james is trying. Taki turning attacks in to foundations is a start.

Avoiding yet more reliance on grey works by having things with fewer "E Comit 1 foundation:" costs (you'll still pack more foundations in there, but you won't over pack because of the need for them for costs and instead you can just use them for checks and their abilities).

Things are on the right track. However, until we have alternative ways to do the things we do with foundations (pass checks, high control) we will continue to include more of them in our decks.

Horvath last year was heard to mutter "this needs to be more universal FIGHTING system...". Its getting better, but until I have more grey cards than other cards...

Homme Chapeau said:

LOL, if notable characters such as Heihachi, King, and Paul P win with only a few foundations, it's a fluke because their opponent sucks.

LordAggro said:

It's really just a Cervantes deck.

Homme Chapeau said:

Hey, Cervantes was the original Jin Kazama!

He also has 2 character-specific abilities, and 2 vastly different symbols from Jin.

MarcoPulleaux said:

I have dealt 18 damage with my chaos heiachi going second with no foundations out...Drew a kinda janky hand (2 First Rites, A Spinning Demon, 2 characters and a For The Money) and passed both first rites for 18 damage. Then Next turn went for double spinning demon for game. Its not hard to win with few foundations.