they could make an infinity aset that killed static abilietys.

They could.

I certainly wouldn't consider it a good idea, considering how much retroactive errata would be required to prevent said asset from, for example, stopping the static ability of Chinese Sword Style [ or any of the other anti-discard abilities which are meant to be uncounterable ]. Static game text has been untouchable until now and should remain as such. Were Addes Syndicate still legal, that'd be the perfect posterboy -- its static was the only thing that kept it from running completely berzerk all over the place.

It'd be like tearing down a wall to get the dog out of the house, instead of building him a doggie door.

I did not want to reply to this post b/c I felt it was off course. However, reading the new replies, I can say that of the most part, it seems to be back on track.

Anyways, when you look at JT, you have to realize that the problem comes from no drawbacks for the ability. This has been stated to death i know, but lets face the facts, it is the truth. A static text negation would be redundant and is not an answer worth looking into.

trane said:

Aside from the fact that this is a horrible idea, Infinity is dead and is hopefully not coming back for a looooong time.

If they wanted to "balance" Tbain, they would have to make a card that was so devastating to him and basically no one else that it would be a crap shoot to play him. lets say the following card existed:

------

Action

0diff 5 control maybe a block

Symbols that arent on talbain so he himself couldn't use it

R: After your opponent puts a card into their staging area during the combat phase, destroy any 2 non character cards in their staging area, discard this card from your card pool and then draw a card.

------

So now we have a card that screws talbain and that talbain cant himself use to devastate the earth, but without a secondary effect it's completely a silver bullet that will be a sideboard only card. Additionally it will also hose otherwise balanced cards like Buddhist devotion or that new Billy foundation. It also doesn't make talbain any less powerful in and of himself and over most all othre characters, it just means it makes him top tier that can be sided againt by certian symbols.

It's been said before but you cannot attack the fact that his abilities are static text. Static text is not inherently evil and has its place in this game and to blunt force attack it is going to lead to issues, much like how higher caliber and addies were problematic because they attacked responses too openly. Additionally you cant really make a card that discards "tokens" of any sort. They tried that with inspired and aside from the fact that the card dosent work as printed (it offers your opponent the ability to discard nothing if they want) as an E: ability its probably too weak and as a F too strong, plus since all tokens are not created equal it throws play testing and power level for a loop.

Make it so it's on YOUR combat phase and you have a deal.

Otherwise I see THAT being banned way before Talbain is.

i dont see why that would be banned. seems kinda cool.

But talbain would laugh at that and use red lotus

Link said:

Or Yoga Adept / Seal of Cessation / Kung-Fu Training

There will always be an answer to the answer.

they could make it unstopable but then it would be broken. i have revieiwed my ideas and decided a static killer is too harsh. i apoligize for an ill thought out idea.

No, it's not.

A *BALANCED* way to kill, stop, cease, halt, or just negatively affect static text is a very good idea.

I cannot stress, how insane JT is now with Illegal Manuevers, and I assure you, he is only going to continue to get better then everyone else, not worse.

Alright, so we did some testing with Illegal Manuevers. Here was the list we tested:

4 Feline Spike

4 Ichi No Tachi

4 Chester's Backing

4 Amy's Assistance

4 Illegal Maneuvers

4 Battle Prowess

4 The Red Lotus of the Sun

4 Lord of the Makai

4 Bitter Rivals

4 Olcadan's Mentoring

4 Lynette's Shop

4 Seal of Cessation

4 Mysterious Stance

4 White Gi

4 Rejection

4 Tag Along

So....

We don't see what the fuss is about. Yes, Talbain smashes aggro in all its forms. You cannot kill him by conventional methods, yet the same can be said about other characters. As far as his label as a "control beast,' well.... that's debatable. Against aggro, this deck has not been defeated, yet, if can do very little against Order/Defender decks, particularly of the Victor/Reanimated variety, as that deck is also asset-heavy. Death control decks completely knock it around, as Chester's/Red Lotus is the decks only defense against all of that archetype's foundation/asset destruction. None of the decks pieces work when committed.

The deck's record is 12-12

9 wins against aggro decks, 3 against control decks, 10 losses to control decks, 2 losses to a combo deck.

Where does this place it?

As one of the best decks in the foremat, undisputedly, in the position to do some serious damage, but vulnerable from the "heavier" control of other symbols of the Evil and Death variety. If Amy's is committed, which is easy with Order/Defender decks, then Defender rolls right over it. Red Lotus has its hands full against destruction and the decks has no answer to enhance/response negation but the easily overwhelmed Chester's. Easily overwhelmed by spamming forms and enhances, the ideal setting for this deck would be a team event where you can dance around bad matchups. In an Order-dominated format, the deck is doomed to lose in round 1 of a top 8.

So, yes, one of the best decks in the format. The end all be all? Not quite. Solve the Order problem, and it can sky rocket to THE best deck.

Ban worthy?

Well, not yet.

ceejaybee said:

A couple things here...

1. I cant agree that order is by far NOT the end all be all. Order has great control yes...but most of it comes with 3 difficulty foundations and turn 2 how many do you really have out? Besides playing Talbain and with only truly needing 1 foundation how much control do you really have? Forthought is great yes but hardly a problem with illegal manuevers and 0 dif olcadans...

2. Defender loops really isnt the answer...there are way too many answers to defender, especially with what talbain has acess to. Just a few off the top of my head...family heirloom, pull of the tides, seal of cessation, chesters backing (because you need momentum), blood runs true, natures choice and if you're really dieing for something different try lumber axe (look at it's static text)...Defender loops aren't as untouchable as you think.

3. Honestly take a look at what Vik posted in the deck building forums. While I realize thats not the only way to build him, because Proto has built him very differently it is still devestating and he has so many options to build him so many ways. One of his greatest advantages is that there isn't just one way to build him and you cant build a defense to play talbain and still match up against other T1 decks.

By no means am I declaring Talbain unbeatable. I do agree with the fact that he doesn't make the game fun, and can be heavily abused by the higher caliber players. While I agree he needs to be done away with, I wouldn't back down from a match because I like challanges (no matter how frustrating it might get). End of the day I would still like to see him gone.

We started playtesting before Vik posted his build, please keep that in mind. Also, yes, there are plenty of answers to Defender in the deck, but none that work while committed, and none that can stop Victor from dropping in his staging area when he's ready to win.

ceejaybee said:

I don't like that JT build even a little bit really, I mean it's got most of the key cards, but there is more then a few cards that I think are missing, and a few other cards I feel shouldn't be there, if your JT deck can get caught by defender then there is something wrong with it, being the most obvious way to kill JT means it should be the most heavily teched against thing in your deck. I think Vik's build has a much better spread and is a much better basis of what to expect from competitve JT decks.

This deck seems to be 2 places as once, its aggro but at the same time you have a bunch of redundant control pieces. If i may ill post my current build here and you can try it:

1 x J. Talbain ***

1 x Giradot's Leadership
4 x Buddhist Devotion
4 x Lord of the Makai
4 x Natural Leader
4 x Bitter Rivals
4 x Chesters Backing
4 x Soul of Ling Sheng Su
4 x Shooting Capoera
1 x Blind Loyalty

4 x Ocladan's Mentoring
4 x Seal of Cessation
4 x Lynette's Shop
4 x Hidden Beastly Power
1 x Side Harpe

4 x Feline Spike
4 x Lunar Slash

4 x Tag Along

SB:
4 x Rejection
4 x Mysterious Stance

Now even this may not be the ideal build, im not even using Illegal maneuvers in it, but it often wins on turn one. The key to the deck is budhist devotion. It should always be the first foundation you try to get out. If you can get one into play it can pop to provide you with natural leader and a soul of ling sheng su which can often lead to a turn one spike which will win games against some players and force blocking with foundations on others (which means more free foundations for you). Hell if you go first you can even just play the one budhist and after they play thier own fondation lynettes it as many times as you can. The deck may have 1 too many one checks in it but dropping a lunar slash for another 6 check is totally doable if thats how you wanna play it. With his hand redraw talbain is pretty well suited to miss a check.

Protoaddict said:

This is about the most similar Talbain list posted to the UK Teams Talbain that Baz (Madeofwin) played in August. Basically, Talbain + topdecking + high cc's either forces the opponent into a topdecking war (which Talbain is built to handle) or acelerates tempo from opponents dropping defensive cards (foundations). The UK Nats version was block 2, didn't play Buddhist Devotion, played ~40 6cc's with an attack lineup of:

Feline Spike, Shadow Blade, Nova's Combo (pre-Lunar Slash) + miscellaneous/tag along/Giradot.

In any build like this, cc hack hurts, heavy control owns you. Yi Shan is a matchup from hell. The stall Talbain is a different beast, but for the aggro Talbain that's what we generally found as the major holes.

LOL, my current build of Talbain differed for at least 30 cards from Vik's, CJB's, Protoaddict's, and probably Maz's. That's probably the results of me being a player with extreme control mind-set and I played in a very different meta. On the one hand, it did show how flexible a Talbain deck is. With three excellent symbol included and can drop foundation without concern about symbol chaining, it can relatively easy to maximize the strength of cards included that spread all three symbols. On the other hand, the variety of Talbin decks exists in different metas might mean it also make sense to give the various builds a chance to clash with each other in the coming early regional season. It will be interesting to see whether different version of Talbain will consistently top 4ed in the next 2/3 months as some expect or when Talbain decks brought to a different/bigger meta will fall flat and did not win any regionals as others might expect.

No BRT in any of those lists...?

Seems odd dosent it. I though so too. But in practice its not needed in aggro builds. If your getting a free foundation you probably want something more potent than preventative. BRT will allow you to get one attack through or play defence, but a single natural leader for instance gives you the fuel to kill someone with.

Turth be told when you are playing a deck that dosent want to play its own foundations and looking to allow your oppoent to play thiers, BRT isnt all that amazing. Talbain just throws most of the game for a loop and stands alot of old precidents on thier heads. Good cards become meh and ok cards become godly. And normally i wouldnt mind that in a character but talbain does so in an unbalance way. I stand by my thoughts that if he had 5hs and lower life (which is merited by his ability set) he would be tolerable with his abilities as is.

AwesomeDhalsim said:

I agree with you here, there are far too many staples missing from some of the talbain decks, but remember everyone plays differently aswell. Do you remember the contrast between your Ibuki deck and my Ibuki deck?. Your talbain deck is extremely control oriented, and you tend to win the long drawn out games which your deck is built for, where-as some of the other talbain decks have to possibly squeeze through their victories or don't have to wait as long to just finish thier opponents.

So far from my understanding the staples of the talbain decks are this:
Feline Spike
Lord of the Makai
Red Lotus of the Sun
Chester's Backling
Olcadan's Mentoring
Lynnette's shop.

that leaves with alot of choices left. in terms of attacks foundations and actions.

sir_shajir said:

Hmm, everything bolded is either a now out of circulation promo, 15-20 dollar promo, or a 25+ dollar UR. Man, that's rough.

Protoaddict said:

BRT discourages Talbain's opponent from playing something other than foundations.

BRT is a total staple card in a JT deck, as it will prevent the other player from playing what JT doesn't like: attacks and asets, and also helps JT deal the finishing blow. Well, I'd say BRT is a total staple on any deck that can run it, that's the power of that card, that is worth looking at by itself.

I'm also surprised I can't see Saikyo-Ryu in some of those lists, as he can pay the cost without problems many times. And to a lesser extent, Fight or Flight. Then there's other stuff like Yoga Adept that also prevents from playing assets (or take away a foundation after JT gets his free one w00t) and negates actions, if you can bear the 2CC by not being an aggro/top-deck build.

B-Rad said:

And your point is? I don't see what's wrong with having a deck choke full of ultra rares and promos?