Something that occured to me recently is just how **** important it is to keep your opponents' assets either committed or off the board in order to win. I've also discovered that some symbols are much better at it than others. After playing a friends Victor deck that uses Defender and Reanimated together to keep eachother from harm, I decided to make a thread about how YOU intend on keeping those assets under control. Offensive assets include:

• Olcadan's Mentoring
• Reanimated
• Defender
• A Cat's Reflexes
• Mysterious Stance
• Assassination Arts
• White Gi
• US Air Base (It's better than everyone thinks it is if you build a deck for it, but thats for another discussion)
• Arrogance
• And more...

So yeah, when you consider that some of those assets don't have any played abilities to trigger something like Charismatic off, there aren't all that many ways to deal with them. The method I've been using to deal with said Victor deck is Experienced Combatant. I cannot stress enough how good this card is. It keeps everything under control as long as you're playing a deck that draws well enough (and obviously, has Order) like Donovan or Sogetsu. Air/Good/Fire has access to Family Heirloom, which, while very good, is also a very difficult card to get. Natures' Force is another card available to Good, with Life and Water having access to it too. But past those, I find it quite difficult to get around a lot of these assets in a reliable way. I've found that attacks like Air Stampede, while good on paper, don't work as effectively as one might like. So yeah, what else can you guys think of to keep those assets under your belt?

There are a few go-to cards for me I like for getting rid of assets. They are in order Ira-Spinta, Gishaki Lunar Rebellion, Air Stampeed, Nature's Force.

Spinta, and Gishaki are obvious choices 2 checks or not. I like Air Stampede a lot more than Nature's Force is even if my opponent or I have no assets out its not a dead card in my hand. And its only a 4 to play which is nice, a 3 check, all and fire have bitter to help push it through, and water has speed boosts and plenty of recursion.

Runners up include Past Shrouded In Mystery and Total Global Domination.

If Air Stampede didn't require an asset I would most definitely be running it over Hayate in my Alex deck. As is, I don't have enough assets in the deck to warrant playing it.

Usually, I use Gaishiki Lunar Rebeliion or, when I get a playset (because I use a lot of those symbols), Family Heirloom.

Just had a look actually, and one question I wanted to ask: What can Chaos do against assets?

Viewtiful_Joe said:

Tsuji Hayate if the asset has an R printed on it, otherwise it's a splash. There's probably something I'm forgetting though.

Or just do what I do in chaos...hope you get enouh cc hax to make them fail everything. I made someone fail 2 0 diff cards last night. Good times! In all seriousness, not much you can do.

you can also add Morgans SR asset Looks That Kill to the list. It lets you destroy any non-character card in your opponents staging area so long as you replace it with another card of the same type with an equal or grater cost. Its tricky to play, since its an enhance that can only be played on your own attack, and requires your opponent to block that attack but it can let you kill an asset, and with the number of split assets we've gotten in the last few sets it may be possible to kill off one problem asset for one that is primarily in your opponents deck for the attack/action side more so than the asset side. Heck a bunch of them are unique to which can be even more fun to keep throwing into your opponents staging area.

Craig

Something that I'm doing for fun, and it's more controlling my assets, then my opponents - for the Air tournament I'm using Wes Victory, and then using his E to pull back USAB, and A Cat's Reflexs as needed.

Then simply billiard playering the USAB back into play at the end of the turn. (That is assuming I haven't looped to kill them)

Natures Force and Family Heirloom really put a lot of these cards down hard, because most require at least a turn in play to do anything, if you can make thoes 2 cards work for you assets are not at all an issue. Were also at the point in the game where if you can run Charismatic you do, end of story. So with these last sets i think enough has hit to put these cards in thier place at least.

Amy's Assistance is possibly one of my favorite answers to Assets because it serves another purpose.

Revenant's Calling. Helps you control everything minus characters. It's as good as money in the bank and gives you the edge in nearly every control match up.

I just recented started maindecking Gaishiki Lunar Rebellion. Seriously, that card is some massive tech. They pretty much HAVE to Seal the free enhance unless they have some other method of negating it. In short, it easily gets rid of a Seal.

PaulBittner said:

Sssssseecret tech! Hissssssss!

Even though I haven't played in a Standard tournament for three months maybe, I painted Revenant's as a huge tipping point in Block 3 control battles. Of course, I still need to get into such a control battle before I can gauge its exact worthiness by my standards.

Also, teh Shanethzore mentioned Gaishiki... most definitely a fine card to run if you want something lean and mean. GLR should be even better than it was during Block 2 because enhance negation is on a down turn. From the little bit of intelligence that I've gathered, Evil seems much less popular, not because of other symbols' strengths but rather because it lost some very important control cards, namely Pieces of Eight , Addes, and Megalomania. That probably wasn't very relevant, but, with only No Memories, SoC, and random damage negation (?) or mitigation to deal with enhances, players should have more incentive to run a card like GLR. I think people play assets more frequently now than when Addes was legal..

PaulBittner said:

Kinda why I stopped playing control altogether. I can never get the good control cards. It's all about All/Fire Alex over here baby.

Lets not 4get that clean freak hits commited assets and sticks them in your opponents momentum its a non-commit enhance that you can use as much as you need as long as you have the foundations 2 feed 2 it

That also answers the question of what chaos does 2 take care of assets as well

Problem with GLR is it gets negated by Red Lotus, but then what doesn't?

Tagrineth said:

Saying something gets stoped by red lotus and its a problem is like saying having to make a control check to play a card is a problem.

BlindProphet said:

having to make a control check to play a card is a problem. thats why people play steel slammer, kenpo, and old cervantes.

Shaneth said:

[/random tie-in with different thread]