A thought came to me while I was at work pertaining to characters in UFS. While some characters might be more noticeable than others...<cough> Chun-Li <cough>. There are those few characters that I feel are sleepers. Some of these characters may be looked at once and disregarded as useless. But for some reason a thought persists that makes me wonder if some of these characters are made intentionally to be sleeper characters. Cards created for those people who are not just looking for a game winning deck, but a challenging deck to build. You guys ever wonder when FFG releases a character, if they consider this with some characters? I sure do and was wondering is you guys may feel the same.

Yes.

UFS is much deeper then many people give it credit for.

There are many different ideas that people don't take the time to look for.

Take a look at what Omar did with Voldo last year. Prior to him running it at MWCC, very few people thought that he was tournament viable. When I originally called him a top tier character, people looked at me funny. However as things mesh together, and the game evolves, more powerful ideas come out.

Out of interest, who would you consider these sleeper characters to be? I most certainly agree with you that they exist. t. Hawk is the best example of this in my opinion. Everyone on these forums seemed to look at him and say ugh, but posts have been made about him that seem to show a light at the end of the tunnel. I'd say that R. Mika, Sogetsu, Kazuki (this one comes from personal experience, he's more powerful than he looks), Ralf, and possibly even Billy come under this category. I'm also very interested to see what other people think about this rather than everyone saying Hugo this, Chun-Li that

Sogetsu is about as much a sleeper character as Seong-Mina is. Sure, he's a 5 card handsizer... with a built in "I'm a 7 card handsizer" ability. Sogetsu + Throws are you friend.

Out of the new set? well, I would like to say Kazuki, but like... 4 people are building him in my area. Billy and Nightmare Geese I think are going to be sick. Also, the new Rock Howard is a solid character in an aggro meta (which we don't have right now but hey, the future is now). Balrog, Alex, T-Hawk, and Dhalsim are all very good characters with effects that with a deck built around, would be amazing. Balrog punches things, Alex does cool stuff (although weird cool stuff, cool stuff), T-Hawk will hit you very very hard with that action of his, and Dhalsim... well, discarding your hand with TWoP and then KFT an attack and more speed bumps, then use his first E.

So yes, there are sleeper picks, it's not to hard to pick em out sometimes and others are a little more... awkward.

To name a few, Alex is one of them that i am looking into. Guile is another. Let's face it, having a static text that allows you to discard one momentum to place a foundation/assest block to your staging area during the end phase is sweet. Those are just a couple that come to mind.

Either way, I just feel that there are some characters that have varying degree's of diffuculty when it comes to building around them. This is good b/c the more diffulcult it might be to figure out the character, the more rewarding it is for those people who don't mind unlocking a few things within this game.

Character abilities are remarkably more powerful overall recently than they have been for most of the game. One of the things that makes it hard to identify "sleepers" is that just about everybody put out lately has abilities that are much more comparable to the powerhouses of Block 2 than, say, the rest of Block 2's roster.

Since I haven't contributed anything in a while, I've typed up a short bit on the relativity of sleeper characters to tier levels.

In most cases, I believe that a strong deck makes its character (good) with a few exceptions (e.g., Zi Mei, Tira***). My philosophy is not mutually exclusive to the idea of sleeper characters, but it may detract from their value in some instances. I draw the line between a sleeper character and a top tier character based on the character's (overwhelming) returns with most deck builds: anything close to a sleeper character requires the player to exploit that character's inherent qualities with a strong or tailored deck build, whereas top tier characters have inherent qualities that should always greatly benefit its player regardless of most potential deck builds. Using this logic, we can easily see that characters such as Zi Mei or Tira***, which only require the owner to play attacks for great benefit, qualify as top tier. Any character with natural advantages over the majority of other characters is placed in an elevated tier level.

Succinctly, I define a character's natural tier level by its potential for greatness, or flexibility, with all imaginable deck builds. Similarly, a character's tier level is enhanced by that character's potential for a variety of tournament viable deck builds. Despite those generalities, I must also point out that some top tier decks are born from specific and simple card interactions (e.g., BRT + Yoshimitsu***), but this exception often demonstrates or augments the value of the non-character card(s) involved in the combo or interaction. I find that sleeper characters represent an intermediate power level between high tier and low tier. If we examine any character's range for competitive and viable deck builds, we can identify a sleeper character by its incomplete yet noticeable open-endedness. Furthermore, we must also consider a given character's relative anonymity in the competitive scene when evaluating its quality as a true sleeper by the conventional definition of the word.

I predict that many of the UFS giants will remain asleep, known to only a few, until some groundbreaking development occurs that alerts the competitive UFS scene to these character's potential.

Mt_Do said:

Do you have 4 Boomerang Raids?

Do you have 4 Times Square (YES they're needed even if they're uniques - At 2 you don't get enough, and at 3 you run the risk of not having one when you need it)?

If so, then yes, consider it, build it and return to us triumphant at building the weirdest character ever.

If not, you'll probably run into a lot of frustration.

^ One of our players DOES, and IS. And it's gross. I hate 2H8 attacks without my opponent committing a single card >_<

MegaGeese said:

Only 2H8? Dude I got it up to 3H11 without committing a single card. In fact it can get to 14 if you commit one. And that's Chop. Imagine Boomerang Raid.

That Alex absolutely loves Ready for Anything.

Seriously though more I look at this the more I think ::Alex:: will be the best aggro character in Block 3.

Unless the ruling has been reversed, Alex can just use Raw Talent + his E + his R (discarding none at the start of the turn), so if all his moves hit - only 1 card contributes to progressive difficulty, every attack gets +1dmg from Raw Talent, and every attack gets a cumulative +1 for every attack that hit and was cleared by Raw Talent. So you start the turn, throw Melancholic, multiple:2, it hits so flip it, 1st copy - Raw Talent, clear original, 4L5, 2nd copy, RT, clear 1st copy, play Chop - Alex's R +2, RT +1, Chop E +2, 2H8, play Kuzuryu Reppa [7diff but oh so worth it], Alex R +3, RT +1, 4M10, draw 10 cards... eventually drop Boomerang Raid at 6diff, static +2X dmg when played, Alex R +X dmg when played, game?

Times Square certainly wouldn't hurt either, but IMO Ready for Anything is overkill.

Alex is officially no longer a sleeping giant

quarzark said:

Dhalsim is not a sleeping gaint. he is an amazing charecter. his ability to swap speed and dmg+ his speed/dmg reduction makes him rediculous.

there are some who would beg to differ. ::Alex:: is overlooked when you compare him to his promo that everyone would rather use for obvious reasons. Also, the new Alex requires a little more thought when using him. Not very many people would keep there card pool clogged when they are being rushed by Zi-Mei. You have to admit that to pilot an ::Alex:: deck, it involves pateince and clear headness to keep him flowing.

That is my opinion though. And I look forward to perfecting this character as the regional season begins.

Mt_Do said:

i look forward to crushing (hopefully) your new deck ideas. i think alex is too easy to get locked down or agroed out to be a top tier charecter, but mt_do has proved me wrong countless times in the past.

Wafflecopter said:

It's not overkill. There is no such thing as overkill. There is only "Not enough kill" and "Just enough kill". That and RfA makes you draw. Also, Clouded Mind/Times Square for some sort of absolute -X diff for attacks if you didn't kill them on your last turn, anyone? Seriously tossing a Kuzuryu Reppa at 4 Diff is smexy.

While KR is definately a cool kill condition, imagine if you will throwing a Lunar Slash into the mix and using Boomerang Raid as the tru kill condition. Use Clouded Mind with Fully Recovered and than you let the insanity begin. Really, this is one character that is going to be a major work in progress for me and hopefully i have given you guys some ideas as it pertains to ::Alex:: Personally, I wish I had a full set of BRT's. Sadly, I have one, but it is better than none. It would most definately be in my deck rest assured.

Another character that I have not heard too much talk about is the new Guile Card. I really think that the static text is a well balanced text. Not to mention that his Commital E ain't too shabby itself. Guile is one that I feel is a sleeper for now, but I could be epically wrong. (That and no one has bothered to build him in my group. So that is where I am assesing things from.)

trane, in a bit of time, I will be definately proving you wrong when you get to verse it in it's finished form. lol.

Mt_Do said:

we will see. my newest sophita build is pretty gross. if you can handle minus 5 or 6 control on turn 2 than you will prove me wrong.

Mt_Do said:

Yah, seen him and one of our players is building him. Guh is all I'll say. Guh guh double guh.

Guile is also very much on my radar - Order being my favorite symbol, Air being the next (along with Chaos), and Void beginning to worm its way into my heart.

MegaGeese said:

wow dude, what an original favorite symbol. i am trying to build guile and i while am finished (aside from needing a 3rd white gi and a 4th sonic boom extra). he is going to be beastly.

Guile's Sonic Boom Extra is awesome, but his new Flash Kick reversal is what i would go for.

Mt_Do said:

Both are delicious and I was going to say affordable but seriously with the packs getting that much of an increase (well they did over here).

New Flash Kick? I can only find the SF6 one - although it does have the 4pt shuriken

I think he meant double somersault kick (which is pretty awesome, but Flash Kick is pretty sick too).

I think the guile is delicious because of his built in tech against discard. Pitch his hand, okay, when it goes to blocks he'll pick any card in his staging area (which makes me think, he can take stacked characters off himself) and fully block. He has built in tech against TWoP/Fweem decks, and all those foundations you commited of his via stun/order shenanigans can be put to use

trane said:

I was an Order player long before BRT and all the rest. Resource control is my favorite tactic in CCGs, and that's what Order offers me. Ergo, I play Order. Evil was stronger at the time (by a very great margin - Chain Throw looping, Absurd, and so on), but I didn't care - Order is my symbol. Please keep that in mind before the sarcasm next time, m'kay?

I'm not sold on Double Somersault Kick**...but I AM sold on Chain of Command being stupidly good.