As promised in my little spiel in GD, this is my test version of Talbain currently. There are a couple of different ways that I have seen to build him, from serious control builds that stall out or mill (it's possible, but SLOW) to retarded-fast aggro decks that can kill turn one quite easily with Spikes and Lunar Slashes. My version is in-between, playing mostly for a midgame victory with Spike/High Plasma Beam but with a turn 1-3 kill definitely possible and not all that hard to pull off:

Characters - 1x ***J. Talbain***, 6HS 28V, All/Good/Water

Actions (9):

4x 5/4 Tag Along (All/Good/Water)

3x 4/2 Yoga Adept +2M (All)

2x 2/5 Kung-Fu Training +1M (All/Water)

Assets (19):

4x 3/3 Seal Of Cessation +2L (INF)

4x 0/6 Olcadan's Mentoring +0L (INF)

3x 3/4 Mysterious Stance +1M (Good)

3x 3/6 Lynette's Shop +1M (INF)

2x 2/4 White Gi +2M (All/Good)

1x 2/4 Yellow Gi +0H (All)

1x 3/4 King's Games (All/Good)

1x 3/5 Assasination Arts +2M (Good)

Attacks (6):

3x 7/1 Feline Spike +1L (Good/Water)

3x 4/3 High Plasma Beam +1H (Water)

Foundations (36):

4x 4/6 Chester's Backing +1M (All)

4x 2/6 Lord Of The Makai +1M (All)

4x 2/5 Blood Runs True +1H (All)

4x 2/5 The Red Lotus Of The Sun +3L (Good)

3x 3/4 Amy's Assistance +1L (Good)

3x 2/4 Fight Or Flight +2M (All/Good)

3x 2/4 Illegal Maneuvers +3L (All)

3x 1/4 Battle Prowess (Water)

3x 0/4 Saikyo-Ryu +3H (All)

2x 3/4 Bitter Rivals +2M (All)

2x 2/5 Destiny (Good)

1x 6/3 Giradot's Leadership +0L (INF)

Total: 70 + 1 cards

Sideboard:

3x 5/4 or 3/4 Family Heirloom (Good)

3x 3/5 Rejection +1L (Water)

2x 8/3 Begin Anew +2M (All)

This is the 3rd version of the deck so far. The first version was cobbled together in 10 minutes after Tagrineth wanted to see a really insane version of him, and I was running Rejection maindeck for a while. I actually ended up shifting it to the sideboard after figuring out that Amy's + Battle Prowess + Mysterious Stance was way more than enough to deal with anything my opponent could toss at me. A lot of aggro-optimized Talbain decks also run Antisocial and Lone Wolf - both of which I cut as well. I just didn't need either for anything; Antisocial's action side is great but in Talbain it's redundant and unnecessary and with Talbain's draw ability + White Gi and LOTM recursion I don't need Lone Wolf to replenish my hand. I don't run Defender because A) it's harder to chain a string of assets of Water, B) I hate Defender with a passion and don't want it and C) with all the redux/Lifegain in the main and side I don't need it at all to recur either attacks or Rejections/blocks.

So let's breakdown what is in there, and why. Starting with the 4-offs. Red Lotus, LOTM, BRT and Chester's need no explanation, as they are the most powerful foundations in the game and so ubiquitous. Ditto for Seal and Olcadan's. The biggest innovation that I can offer is Mysterious Stance, probably my favorite card in the deck in terms of utility and a seriously overlooked gem. With any of the momentum outlets active, it's insane - the Good-character only response is so beautiful. Full blocks often equal zero damage with so few quality throws out there seeing play, and most aggro cannot deal with it at all. It's more efficient than Rejection because it stays on the board and doesn't trigger Talbain, and the sickest part is that it's NOT UNIQUE. What??? Yeah, I love it. I also love Tag Along, which I feel is the best common in the block 3. There is never a bad time to draw it, especially early it will stop those Elena/Felicia shenanigans cold. It fetches anything I want that I've already used or rolled, and lets me get away with such a low attack count with no issues.

Yoga Adept is really dumb with Talbain. It can be devastating pyschologically for obvious reasons - static goes first before responses so you'll get a free foundation drop and then cancel their crap, after they finally decide to play your game. Ouch. Since Talbain has All, it knocks out actions too. Lynette's is awesome, I can't tell you how many games it wins. IF your opponent tries to play around your character and toss assets out, it can copy those too in addition to your asset suite. Or of course, having 5 or more Chester's in play is fun! Amy's kills a lot of 5 or under attacks outright and stops Defender + opposing problem assets. Battle Prowess is wrong, I usually can gain 5-7 life off it. Fight or Flight is obvious, offensively or defensively. Illegal Maneuvers, the only new addition, is completely broken in Wolfman. It's the one reason that trying to force a draw by doing nothing against me is a non-option. Destiny and Saikyo-Ryu are self-explanatory staples in their resources, and Bitter Rivals is additional control and more ways to push through Spikes/Beams if I don't have BRT or KFT handy.

Finally, I have a lot of single copies that are personal choices that have worked well for me. King's Games kills poke decks and eliminates the option to hit me effecrively over multiple attacks, and interacts really well with Amy's against Defender decks. Yellow Gi supplements the hand refilling. Ass. Arts (couldn't resist, sorry) is just more damage redux, and the lovely Giradot's is always welcome when you get it but due to its Unique status is dangerous with more than one copy versus Olcadan's. And that's that.

As for playing with the deck, mostly I'll go second if I can and see what my opponent does, and react to that. If they say "done go", I already know I'm ahead and just play out assets, actions, and attacks and draw back up on their turn. Not only did I build but I still have a full grip so they are even worse off than before. I do the same thing if I go first. If they drop foundations, then I'll Adept away the key stuff if I can while building my control base or just drop LOTM and 3 other things and win if I have a Spike/Beam. Basically, either way they are in a losing proposition - part of the reason Wolfie is so over-the-top wrong - so I don't really care.

Well, there you go, hope that helps you guys who don't understand what all the bitching is about. Any questions, comments, and criticisms are appreciated. the hardcore aggro version that Fred has is much the same with different kills like Lunar Slash, from what I'm told, and just as resilient, I just prefer control (duh, I suck without it, heh).

I have to say, I can't understand what the bitching is about with Talbain. Pre-Worlds and pre-UK Teams, we constructed a list similar to this over here, to playtest against. The first few times it was absolutely brutal, but the more Talbain was played, the easier to handle he appeared to be.

• Talbain's CC's are horrible. Spike is a 1cc, Adept a 2cc, SoC/Beam 3cc's. Bearing in mind a standard tier one deck runs less than 12x 3cc's and Talbain's potential for topdecking looks very weak. If you factor in both Anti'K and BRT (haven't tested Forethought vs Talbain yet), wolfman does terribly against large hand cc hack decks. Akuma eats him (one of the main reasons I'm maining Akuma atm )
• Control decks as standard tend to run playsets of Owlface-SoC. Either Lynette's or a specialised asset can up this total to ~12 assets. For Hanzo at worlds, I was running 16x assets (Owlface, SoC, Addes, Fan Blade). For Hanzo, the ability to play 16x assets through an 8hs character and therefore cycle three to four cards from my hand per turn actually succeeded in making my non-foundation spam/cycle faster than Talbain's. This exact strategy also applies to Tag Along.
• Failing to play foundations cycles your hand. Playing a Chesters as the fourth card is a guaranteed fail. Often players can predict their CC's based on their deck and knowledge. Interestingly, Akuma can also hack his own checks. Playing and failing this extra foundation per turn allos one extra card to be cycled.
• All of this cycling leads to Talbain either playing the cycling game or choking on a hand full of foundations. In this way you can turn his deck against him.
• Notwithstanding, you will NEED foundations to win. Playing against Talbain, it is necessary to prioritise which of your foundations are the most important to your strategy. For example, in Geri Hanzo, I needed Ibis-Shinobi on the table to win. Against Talbain, the only foundations I ever played were Ibis-Shinobi-BRT.
• Pay attention to moon tokens. On turns where Talbain has a moon token, his Athena-draw provides him with tempo. If you are intending to drop foundations against Talbain, doing so on non-moon token turns prevents Talbain this tempo. A good general rule of thumb is to alternate foundation spam turns (if you have to) with moon token turns. On moon token turns, instead play attacks/assets/tag along.

Although a few have been mentioned previously, the below are a list of characters that tend to give Wolfman a hard time.

• Akuma - Provided you are playing relatively foundationless, the free Akuma cc hack (which should target Talbain's assets), is even better than usual against Talbain. It also allows you to fail foundations in your turn (therefore cycling your hand faster).
• Yi Shan - Something Baz (Madeofwin) discovered during UK Teams... An attack topdecking Yi Shan DESTROYS Talbain. It's not even funny. If Yi Shan is packing asset destruction (as he should be), this matchup is even worse.
• 8hs characters playing 12+ assets - This isn't so hard as it seems, due to the fact Owlface-SoC-Lynettes (infinity) can be played by anyone. 12+ assets, plus tag along, plus attack topdecking, plus a failed foundation at the end of a chain, plus a discard pre-draw, allows these characters to cycle ~4 cards per turn. The same is more than likely true of 7hs characters, although less clear cut.
• Promo Dhalsim - Unless the rule has changed regarding Dhalsim's F Commit "adding" as opposed to "playing", Dhalsim can build without fear of Talbain.

Vik, I'd be very interested to see playtests of this Talbain agaisnt these tactics and/or combination of these characters. We haven't tested Talbain this set to see the differences.

You make some interesting points Matt. I have to say, I disagree with you strongly on Akuma and Yi Shan. Destiny is the one card that really hurts Akuma bad. I built Akuma for B3 and while he's great, he has severe problems if Destiny hits the board and sticks - which is why I maindeck 2. And Mysterious Stance + White Gi or LOTM kills all the topdecking attack decks cold. Add in Battle Prowess/Amy's and Rejection in the sideboard...meh. I don't take a lot of damage with this deck at all in the current configuration.

I can see where your points are valid, though. Heavy asset decks with an 8HS character MIGHT give him trouble...but in B3 they don't really exist anymore. And the lone card added from the new set, Illegal Maneuvers, makes playing foundations irrelevant. All I need is ONE foundation in play to win the game.

So far in testing for block 3, we've tossed everything we could think of against it, and I think you're right that Dhalsim (OH THE IRONY) is the best against Talbain. I'll have to explore that more. But everything else fails to it bad. Try testing this build and see what you think. Again, my only claim about Talbain is that he's overpowered no matter what you do with him. For example, Fred's deck is way different in philosophy and build but due to Talbain's brokenness it can FTK an opponent 80% of the time. So...there ya go.

Apparently James got turn one'd repeatedly by Fred over the break and wasn't too happy about it, lol, so we'll see what happens to Woflie in the future.

VikramS said:

Theorycrafting is fun!

In terms of Akuma, unless Talbain himself is playing Destiny as a foundation, chances are it (or Red Lotus) won't hit the table before Akuma plays one of his 4x Owlface copies. The moment Destiny or Red Lotus are played by Talbain, Akuma should (in a theorycrafting world) be dropping Chesters, Refusal of Power, Charismatic or another of the Destiny-Lotus combo counter cards.

On a slightly different note, in your above deck list, how about Ayame's Scarf for cc protection and extra momentum-gen for Spike?

Relating to Yi Shan, he is specifically a nightmare for Talbain because of his ability to win any topdecking aggro war (character enhance). Yi Shan + Family Heirloom(s) once again force Talbain into dropping foundations which in turn provdes Yi Shan with foundation drop for tempo. If Fred (I'm guessing) is playing the 6cc Talbain aggro deck, Yi Shan specifically was the nightmare matchup we found for that version.

Asset wise... almost any deck can benefit from Owlface-SoC in playset, which is an easy 8x Asset's. Lynettes is a card I really started using in September when I switched to mono-block 3. Since then it's been indespensible, which is partly because it is another asset Talbain can't profit from. With a base of Owlface-SoC-Lynette, most decks should have access to twelve very good, spammable, hand clearing cards to use against Talbain. If you add cards such as Reanimated, Kings Games, Pigeon Games, character specific weapons and others, it becomes very easy to have legitimate asset counts of 14+ for some very competent decks. As a side benefit, these help in Talbain matchups.

Keep it coming Vik! Although I'm still very much on the side of Talbain not being banworthy (I'm more thinking he requires a different play style to play against), discussion is progress!

I'll try to build your Talbain to test out, but it probably won't be until the weekend.

this is an extremely nasty deck! other than dhalsim, there is only one charecter i can see realy giving talbain a run for his money. promo blanka. also final confrantation is brutal against him.

Hewittzil said:

Theorycrafting is fun!

In terms of Akuma, unless Talbain himself is playing Destiny as a foundation, chances are it (or Red Lotus) won't hit the table before Akuma plays one of his 4x Owlface copies. The moment Destiny or Red Lotus are played by Talbain, Akuma should (in a theorycrafting world) be dropping Chesters, Refusal of Power, Charismatic or another of the Destiny-Lotus combo counter cards.

On a slightly different note, in your above deck list, how about Ayame's Scarf for cc protection and extra momentum-gen for Spike?

Relating to Yi Shan, he is specifically a nightmare for Talbain because of his ability to win any topdecking aggro war (character enhance). Yi Shan + Family Heirloom(s) once again force Talbain into dropping foundations which in turn provdes Yi Shan with foundation drop for tempo. If Fred (I'm guessing) is playing the 6cc Talbain aggro deck, Yi Shan specifically was the nightmare matchup we found for that version.

Asset wise... almost any deck can benefit from Owlface-SoC in playset, which is an easy 8x Asset's. Lynettes is a card I really started using in September when I switched to mono-block 3. Since then it's been indespensible, which is partly because it is another asset Talbain can't profit from. With a base of Owlface-SoC-Lynette, most decks should have access to twelve very good, spammable, hand clearing cards to use against Talbain. If you add cards such as Reanimated, Kings Games, Pigeon Games, character specific weapons and others, it becomes very easy to have legitimate asset counts of 14+ for some very competent decks. As a side benefit, these help in Talbain matchups.

Keep it coming Vik! Although I'm still very much on the side of Talbain not being banworthy (I'm more thinking he requires a different play style to play against), discussion is progress!

I'll try to build your Talbain to test out, but it probably won't be until the weekend.

You're right about one thing with Akuma; it really boils down to the battle over Destiny. If I am able to play one and keep it one the board, Akuma will lose. If not, his chances to win increase dramatically but I still argue it's not great. In order to answer Destiny he will have to play foundations, which is a winning scenario for me. I get to drop my own counter-control pieces for free then, directly into play.

Scarf is great, except it affects both players which means my own BRTs become useless. D'oh.

Family Heirloom is a problem but that's why Yoga Adept's All response is so good; it cancels that bullcrap. I do need to test more against Yi Shan though. I would love to see your build for it to throw against Wolfie; email it to me or post it here if you wish. And we've found that asset-heavy decks handle Talbain slightly better but they still lose to the stupidity that is Illegal Maneuvers. That card is so broken in Talbain that it's not even funny.

I'm not sure, honestly even now, whether Talbain should be banned. I do know that my build, that I made independent of the other versions, has so far handled decks of all stripes with relative ease including Legacy-powered aggro. That's a little scary. I also know that playing with or against him is nearly as boring as old school Cassie, and that's not good for the game either way. Ah well....we shall see.

Trane, thanks for the compliment. Dhalsim to the rescue!

I can see myself tearing out what little hair I have playing against this.

Begin Anew (specifically its Death ability) would be great against this, except for...you need foundations to pass the check, and (surprise!) Talbain discourages this. The extremely underplayed Final Confrontation seems like a potential issue, as it would kill your entire staging area in one fell swoop. But again - Yoga Adept =/

With that said, the only wholesale asset hate on the block is Air Stampede, which might be an issue en masse. But that's more theorycrafting.

My question would be this: it does well against Legacy aggro madness, right? From there, it would be logical to assume that we're talking "hey, let's drop three foundations turn one and then Challenge the Master into Chain Throw Madness turn two", right? How does it fare against something like the new Alex's style of aggression (well, I suppose it's rather like Promo Talim and Rolling Storm BS) - slow, high -damage attacks into a decent-speed high damage attack? Several low-cost attacks at more than 6 damage each into a pair of Boomerang Raids seems like it could be a problem, particularly when a player really only needs one or two assets and one or two foundations to get the ball rolling.

I only bring it up because it's what I have to look forward to in our playgroup (Chop, flip it, another Chop, Ready for Anything E, Raw Talent E, and so on), and it seems like a semi-valid question. Not to mention that if Talbain is still legal in February, I may well play him for the GCC =P

Still don't see how you get around Defender loops, Vik. Just about every loss with this exact build of yours comes to Defender infinites. My teammates are still testing right in front of me as I type this and he still struggles against Order tapout. The combination of Chinese Boxing, Program Malfunction, Experienced Combatant and Olcadan's just proves to be too much too often.

What do you do about that?

Yo vik, I have a PrDhalsim build that I've been testing out for some time now. It works great against JT, but I've never had any issues with JT...

I think all this uproar about him are too hyped up... he is easy. He plays MY game and thats why I still haven't lost to Talbain yet. Dunno if you remember but I went up against Goo and another Talbain at Worlds with Donovan in swiss and my only loss the whole tourney was against Hata.

BTW I have yet to win or lose a game against Goo. Not in the two years that I have known the guy...

pr dhalsim does nuke talbain. r. mika might also give talbain fits.