STOG January 2009

2009! Where the hell did the year go? Oh yea that’s where:) Happy New year world warriors, lets get to it.

before I jump into what’s going on and where we are going I want to take a brief (I like looking forward instead of back) look at last year. Viewtiful Joe and others have already posted threads that talked a lot about the last year and I really don’t have much to add to what has already been said but here goes:

2008 started with a bang with the release of set 8. While the set had some great cards and deck themes going for it there was some big problems created by it as well, including Blood Runs True. A box topper, especially a starter box, should never be that powerful and should never happen again. Going forward our goal is for promos, box toppers, etc. to be fun and exciting but the best cards should come out of booster packs and starter decks that give everyone the same chance and access to get them.

Then the big bomb that STG had been sold to Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). It was a very trying time both personally and professionally. Personally I ended up apart from my family a good part of the year and professionally it is well know how close everyone at STG was and it was difficult to see everyone go their separate ways, I am happy to say that they are doing fine and that many of us stay in regular contact.

July saw Paul Bromen join the team and he has been a huge help. Gen Con came around and we had the second biggest UFS ever, only Gen Con 2007 was bigger and that only happened because we were allocated room for only 128 players so many (at least 90+ did not attend because they might not have been able to qualify). It was a great event and in the end James Hata came out on top, which was good for him because he had already accepted the job as lead designer for UFS so it was his last shot at immortality.

James was thrown into the deep end of the pool day one and took set 11 and with some help from a couple of the guys here in R&D redesigned nearly all of the set in a very short time. That work paid off and set 11 has had a very enthusiastic response, more pre-releases for set 11 than for sets 9&10 put together! So the year ended on a much higher note than it began.

OK enough about the past, lets talk about 2009! We are working out the final details of several new OP programs for the year. Paul will have full details of more OP goodness coming up but I want to spoil some a couple cool bits. One of the biggest things I hear is about the let down that happens after Gen Con because there aren’t any other big tournaments to look forward to, well you already have details about regional that will run 10 months of the year so that there are always big events to look forward to, regional will take a break in July and August each year for Con season but start up again in September. The Fight Life Championship Series is another cool series of events that people can look forward to 10 months of the year, again taking a break in July and August. The Fight Life Championship series will be made up of store championships and city championships, giving you more chances to earn UFS glory! We will have more details soon.

Banning and errata. Some of you have already heard me say there are none this month. Just to answer the questions now, yes I know there are a couple highly debated cards out there right including Talbain. We have read the forums and talked to a lot of players and retailers, we are also playing a lot of games in house, as we always do. We are having plenty of discussions about him and some other cards. For the record I want to repeat that multiple threads repeating the same arguments is not going to make difference with what we decide. We are always paying attention to the meta but I have never banned a card because of forum threads. I can promise you are are not helping your cause posting several threads saying basically the same thing.

Next I want to talk About ShadoWar a bit. Some people like it, some don’t, some have not made up there mind yet, and a few have decided to hate it nor matter what we do. We are very excited about it what we have planned. For those interested you will be there at the start of something that will build into a very cool property over the years as it spreads into other game categories and even other media. We are able to do things with this that we could never do with licensed properties like the upcoming behind the scenes art articles where we can show you the process of how card art gets done from concept to final, also look for details of the create a character contest later this month.

I just finished doing a three part interview with the crew over at Commit One Podcast and decided it that it would be a good idea to try and talk to them every month, almost a podcast STOG/Q&A session. I will still do a monthly STOG, yes I’m back to doing them letting Paul get on with doing the real work. We are hosting the pod casts on the community section of the website, make sure to check it out. I answered a lot of player questions and rambled on about some stuff too.

That’s it for this month, I want to thanks Paul & James for all of the work they are putting into the game, while putting up with interfering all the time as well as for all of the excitement and energy they have for what we are doing. As always if you like what is going on let them know if you don’t like it it is my fault. Thanks for the support, until next time.

See you in the arena,

Steve

Fantastic STOG there Steve,

Only two gripes:

It took WAAYYYYYYYY too long to get this up, granted you did spend a while composing it.

You didn't ban Talbain then and there...... in honesty Stevie you do porduce some quality writings; you have Valve syndrome, however as you seem to routinely make epic failz after press release.

Now on a none whining note: Fight life!!!!

Thanks Steve!

Why not ban BRT to make up for past mistakes?

Honestly, I own a set but wouldn't care the least bit.

I understand, though, that there's plenty of other stuff being looked at so I leave it all to ye.

Great Job Steve no gripes to me and I know your fingers was freezing this morning. the non banning of Talbain ok so what I give you credit when you said this in a nutshell a bunch of forum topics bitchin complaining and moaning about the same thing ain't gonna change out minds about jack s**t way to give it to em . Cause I have seen B.S.Ming about the same **** thing and me personally am getting sick of it if one person makes a topic about it than stick to that one topic and not branch off into another topic thats THE SAMN F***ING THING ONLY WORDED DIFFERENTLY LIKE PEOPLE ARE STUPID OR SOMETHING. The City and Store championships sound cool to me cause I can't wait for new blood to get the ideas flowing into my head.

Great job Steve I sent Paul your interview and he should still have Fred's interview I hope you guys can get it up soon since there was some things in there that will add to the STOG.

Only gripe is this : Fight Life?

Seriously, none of you fine folks could come up with a better name?

Better Fight Life than Fight 4 Life, or Fight Fo' Sheezy.

Fight Life...the anticipation of more tournaments intrigues and excites me.

Thanks for the STOG, Steve. Now I can plan out my decks for the GCC =D

guitalex2008 said:

Or Fight Life FOO! WHAT!?

Great STOG steve, look forward to more pink t hawk on the podcasts!! YOU ROCK!

Thank you much Steve. What really impresses me is what you said about BRT. I have a lot of respect for you for getting right to the point and getting it out there.

good job steve. thank you for a STOG.

Honestly, are you guys serious? I thought with James on board at FFG, we would have some higher calibre players calling the shots and making obvious decisions, but I guess I was wrong. I'm really dissappointed in the non-banning of J.Talbain, as he is a really NPE, and I have to deal with two of him as two of him are being runn locally. If two of my freinds weren't running him, I would definetly run him for major tournaments, and get him banned I guess.

The rest of the stuff sounds cool with city-wide championships and regionals etc. It's nice to see some of the fruits and labors of the FFG staff after waiting for a long time for anytihng to be done.

Hopefully this year will be better then the last, I'm really tired for dealing with grossly overpowered characters like both Ibuki's and J.talbain.

FFGSteve said:

(Emphasis mine)

One problem with this is when the cards in one starter far outrip the others in awesomeness. For example the Mai decks and Sagat from the last set. Both sell pretty much instantly, and little of the rest moves at all. This is kind of a bummer for both the retailer and players. The store doesn't want to get more until some (or most) of the old product is gone otherwise they'll be stuck with 6 Rock Howard decks... Players want to get the awesome cards but the only way to do it is to buy 'em online, short circuiting their LGS.

It's a great idea to have awesome cards in starter decks, but every starter deck should have one, rather then having them bunched up all in one or two of the decks. The starter deck only cards should be examined VERY VERY carefully to make sure they're all balanced.

I was wondering, with twoheadeddragon not being updated often(not blaming anyone since its not their job), are you guys going to produce your own search engine that could possibly be attached to the website or even downloaded? I couldn't even begin to explain how important/helpful a search engine is to this game.

That would be a wonderful thing, this game has a LOT more options then most other CCGs in as much as which cards you can use, and also sets are released a lot quicker, generally meaning more cards that are "in rotation".

Thanks for the mention Steve

I'm a little surprised about the lack of banning this month (didn't know that it was previously stated there wouldn't be) but I'm pleased as I know a few people who were worried about some of their cards becoming unusable. Very interested to learn more about the Fight Life tournaments once they come around, it'll be nice to see how people do within their own metas. Perhaps a 'Champion of Champions' tournament is on the cards?

I think 2009 will be a good year for UFS in the UK, in Colchester alone, we've acquired more players than we've had since Set 1, a lot of us are travelling more, and the methods I've been using to get new players are working very well. I will be talking to other players around the country as I travel so that they may do the same with any luck.

Thanks for the (somewhat belated) SOTG though, it was worth it in the end

Joe

I know some of the STG guys (I'm sure Steve included) have had some version of the Fight Life idea in their heads since the early days of the game. The idea (as I understand it) is to get UFS players travelling around in search of a challenge, much like many of the characters in Street Fighter. Except we'd play cards instead of beating folks up.

Actually, the Wandering Masters kinda epitomized that process here in the L.A. area. They got around to a lot of different venues, and they always provided a strong showing... They didn't always get a warm welcome (they essentially ran the local UFS cartel for chase rares; some venues had a different take on what constitutes good sportsmanship; and the biggest venue at the time was mostly casual, when they were running power/NPE cards), but they traveled and battled and made a name for themselves, which you have to respect.

I think it's really good that FFG is finally trying to codify that process: actively working to create city-wide communities. The fractured nature of UFS playgroups (five separate 4-player groups instead of one twenty-player group) is one of the things that contributed to UFS' general slump in SoCal.

Hey Steve,

Or anyone from the FFg please could you post something on the UK forum explaining what you are going to do in the UK because at the moment.

people are not hearing back about getting regionals and we still dont know if we are getting anything for our patches.

i would really like to know what FFG is going to do about the UK.

Thanks

Daniel

So another day and another pointless SotG.

One would have imagined with the second co- er Mr Hata on the team that they'd actually be able to point out what's destroying the game and creating the so called dreaded "NPE." Talbain's still around, and will continue to do nothing but win and it seems quite truthfully that they don't seem to care.

Of course, it did take what? Two or three major championships that Ibuki won before she got the toss? And even then they printed and almost as good one that just went undefeated at World's. Wonder if they'll do the same thing with JT.

Cheers,

Brad

aslum said:

I still find a minor problem in that Worlds aren't played under complete Standard block card pools, but hey as I said that's minor and I'm likely not going to worlds ever so what do I care?

B-Rad said:

"...what's destroying the game..."

What a interesting statement. I personaly wasn't aware that the game was being destroyed currently. Yes there seems to be this looming problem on the horizon here, but I haven't seen it decend down into the game and destroy everything yet. I also fail to see how the message of "we don't ban based off of forum threads" equates to "we don't really care". You're acting just like Ender Dragon doing the whole "FFG isn't doing exactly what I want so I'm going to throw a hissy fit and say how much they suck because they aren't doing exactly what I want."

Thanks for the STOG Steve!

Bannings wise, I'm happy Talbain isn't being banned... yet. I'd much rather see the ban/watchlist be discussed/played and you in the offices try the cards out than see forum-induced populist bannings. If Talbain, or any other card, is or is not eventually banned it'll be appreciated that it's for the right reasons.

Also (and apologies), but to correct one thing, UK Nats 2008 had 127 players. Our tournament was actually larger than GenCon 08, which is very promising and something very important for UK UFS.

B-Rad said:

I never knew a SotG HAD to ban cards to not be pointless.

TBH i think it was great SotG because nothing got banned, a day when a card gets banned is a sad day for me.

Also this SotG was quite informative, no more broken Starter deck box toppers, which is nice to know as the next set is a base set

and the Fight Life Tournament hint sounds kinda kool.

Nice one Steve!

Theo