What the heck does Mt_Do mean by this? Well folks, with the Regionals in full swing there is a question that most people may ask and if they haven't answered it themselves than this is the time to do so and make your predictions. Who will be the top 8/ big 8 characters that we will see in the tourney scene?

1) .::::Chun-Li::::.

2)Talbain (PLZ no talk about bannings or how cheap this dude is. WE HAVE HEARD ENOUGH! I want this thread to say on topic. Plz respect that.)

3) .Zi-Mei.

4) ...Promo Alex...

5) :Sogetsu:

6) ...Seong Mina...

7) ...Victor...

8) ...Terry...

This is just a prediction but feel free to weigh as to what you belive will be seen in the top 8.

Do me personally i,m thinking

Chun-Li

R.Mika

Talbain

Zi-Mei

Basara ( sleep on him if you want to)

Ralf

Remy

Seong mina.

But that's just me

Mt_Do said:

TWO 5-HSers! Dangerous!

My predictions... I don't freakin' know. New R Hugo, " " Chun Li, Talbain-3, Sakura, Olexa, and 3 of: Ibuki Akuma Hanzo Kyoshiro Gen Gill Sophitia.

I was just looking at characters and noticed how ridiculous Temujin would be with Criminal Uppercut. Augh I wish they would be legal together in a format without Yoga Mastery. ;-;

Well if its block 3 -

Talbain
Alex (Promo)
Chun Li
Scott Mence
Andrew Olexa
Guy (promo)
Zi Mei
Hanzo
Donovan

Thats my guess

Where's the regular Alex? Suppose no one likes him, even though he's broken beyond repair.

1. JT
2. Ibuki
3. Promo Alex
4. New Chun-Li
5. Zi Mei
6. Promo Guy
7. Olexa
8. Seong Mina

A million Honorable mentions for particular reasons New Hugo(Symbols), Sophitia(Mirror match problems), Donovan(Synergy), Akuma(Symbols/Synergy), Old Morrigan(Symbols/Board Control) are all super competitively viable.

Hmm... I don't think anyone can make a list of what characters will consistently top 8 at every block 3 regional event. Because no characters will consistently top 8 at every regional event, or at least no more than 2~4 characters will.

Rather, let's categorize characters who have a good shot? It makes it a lot easier to get a good list and a good estimation than a thread full of lists, each with its own set of insights and shortcomings.

And before we start pigeonholing characters into groups, we gotta make the groups, right?

7 HS aggro group

Characters around 7HS with abilities that support attacking (ftw) in the relatively early game. Feline Spike will probably be popular within this group. Zi Mei, Chun Li and Olexa represent this group fairly well, I'd think. Leona would be an extreme example, if anyone has a viable build of her ;]

7 HS hybrid group

Characters that wish to play the control game, building board control first and a kill condition second. Most Order decks probably fall into this category, as do a majority of block 3 Evil decks (no more orange card blue card makes Evil a hybrid boy). This is the home fo the Defender loop, as well as Tiger Fury and High Plasma Beam. Feline Spike won't be absent here either. Hanzo, Akuma, Ibuki, Gen, right here. Perhaps we should just divide this into Evil, Order and Other subcategories...

Lower HS control/tank group

Beasts like Talbain, promo Alex, Seong Mina, Yi Shan and at the far end Hugo. The most viable decks here likely make prominent use of the varied card advantage tools at their disposal. Similar overall strategy to the 7HS Hybrids, but a little less emphasis on speed and more on inevitability -- you might have trouble carving through 29 vitality + redux + lifegain, but all you've got is 20 life and a set of Rejections.

1. JT

2. Promo Alex

3. Chun Li new one

4. Zi Mei

5. Sophitia set 10

6. Ibuki

7. Sakura starter

8. donovan

i think this list may be a litle wacked but who cares...

1 JT

2 Chun Li

3 Promo Alex

4 Zi Mei

5 Hanzo

6 Akuma

7 R. Mika

8 Alba

1. Talbain

2. Promo Alex

3. Chun-li

4. Hanzo

5. Hugo

6. Donavan

7. Kyoshiro surprize! surprize!

8. Leona

1. JT

2. Chun Li

3. Promo Alex

4. Akuma

5. Kyoshiro

6. Promo Gen

7. Sogetsu

8. Zi Mei

I have been thinking on this post for the past 2 hours while at work, but since I'm unable to give you a list of characters, I'm just going to give you a list of deck archtypes.

1. Earth/Order/Water tank: You know this deck. It's the deck that soaks up damage and control until it can kill you with High Plasma Beam, Tiger Fury, or Sardine Beach Special. This deck is number one for a few reasons. First, this deck will be in top 8 by sheer numbers. I think in some tournaments it might even become mathematically impossible for some form of this deck NOT to be in top 8. It's easy and cheap to build, and requires little luck to actually play. The other reason? This deck will very rarely care what your opponent is playing. It's main form of control? Vitality control. Laugh, but seriously, it controls how much vitality it has while it's under assault, while using basic algebra to count up how many turns it will take to kill you. Add in a boatload of anti-control and commital effects, and you've got a solid deck. This deck is characterized by low-handsizes and massive vitality, Hugo and Seong-Mina are it's poster-child.

2. Chun-Li: Before I totally ruin my first sentance of this post, here's my theory on Chunners. She makes her own meta. The deck is built to run on your turn and her turn. It's a ridiculously good aggro deck, and probably the best hybrid character to run right now. Every deck in a tournament that isn't her will know she's out there somewhere and will be forced to tech against her in whatever way possible (Character and R negation, anything that keeps her locked down).

3. Chaos/Order Hybrid: This is the number 2 hybrid deck slot, and a solid deck archtype. You take 2 symbols that overlap a ton and make a deck that runs CC-Hax, board commital, anti-control and one of the best attack strings in Block 3. Nagase, Seong-Mina, Victor, Kyoshiro, and pretty much any Chaos/Order character can become good.

4. Order control: The last bastion of hard control. The order symbol has the ability to survive, commit, and CC-hax anything you throw at it. This deck differs from number 1 is that it relies less on tanking and more on keeping your opponent from doing anything. This is best characterized by Forethought and Ira-Spinta. Once again, Seong-Mina, and Alba are popular choices for this deck archtype

5. Evil/(Symbol) hybrid: It's still good, it's just a little more aggressive then it's previous form. Chester's Backing, The Ways of Punishment, Red Lotus of the Sun? This deck takes some of the best foundations in the game and puts em in one pretty package. The reason I have the /(Symbol) is because I think Evil lacks the really solid attack base of Block 2. Some of it's still there, but other symbols are just as nasty now. Basara, Jivatma (how did he not make peoples list?), and Akuma are all ones I can think of.

6. Air Aggro: Air Aggro wins games quick. The only way this deck archtype differs from Chun-Li is that none of the characters are Chun-Li.

7. Good Toolbox: Huh? what's this doing here? Good has long been the younger brother of the UFS, for anything it could do, every other symbol on it's amazing cards could do better. Feline Spike, Spinning Beat, and Ichi no Tachi give the deck a solid attack string, while it has some of the best defensive cards (Mysterious Stance, Assassination Arts, Red Lotus of the Sun) in the game. While it's still a little bit the younger brother, it's nasty to face up against. The reason I say toolbox is because I see a lot of characters running this deck. Morrigan (both), 'Ruru, Felicia, and any other solid character with Good could front the deck.

8. All/Chaos hybrid: Probably my personal favorite type of deck to see, All/Chaos hybrid is just a fun deck. You can run a Punch string to someones death or Reppa into Neo Raging Storm. The foundations are solid and it gives the good All foundations a solid defense against Olcadan's mentoring. It's something that's enjoyable to play and runs enough answers to most decks that it can get into top 8.

Honorable Mentions:
All mono: this is where promo Alex is. It gets an honorable mention because as stated in my last post, the All foundation base has no support against Olcadan's.
All/Death control: read above. I have a Hugo deck that I think will instantly become a top 8 deck as soon as it gets an answer to Olcadan's (there's a reason I left a spot for 4 cards in the deck)
Air control: a specific breed of control, Olexa, Yoshitora, Cammy (what's she doing here) and Remy front this, still solid, just not as good as Air aggro.
the Life symbol

you may notice a distinct lack of werewolves in my post. That's because I honestly think J. Talbain run by a good player will top every event he's in. You know this, I know this, all the posts on this thread will contain J. Talbain on them somewhere, you don't need to hear it again from me.

In order:

1 - J. Talbain
2 - Seong-Mina
3 - Promo Alex
4 - Hanzo
5 - Starter Sakura
6 - Starter Akuma
7 - Zi Mei
8 - Chun-Li

Shaneth said:

fixed to make people remember the piece of history

guitalex2008 said:

wait, what? Which Alex?

1-dot is okay. He can block stuff in funny ways but it's more novelty than anything.

2-dot has a crappy damage boost that taps him.

4-dot is an epic gimmick deck that will need very strong draws to succeed.

not to mention 1- and 2-dot don't exist in block 3.

Thanks Ren. Actually, scratch Chun-Li off that list and put Olexa on there.

I'm going to mention it at a great loss to myself because it just astounds me that no one has said it yet. NAGASE. 7/22 with damage redux and momentum generation. EAT ME SOCIETY.

Protoaddict said:

RE: Chaos/Order hybrid :-)

quarzark said:

Two things.

1. If you combine your number 3 and 4, you'll come up with what I'm shooting for. Absolute and utter control of EVERYTHING. Still deciding on which character, but yeah...Gen and Kyoshiro have that LOCKED DOWN (no pun intended) due to superior symbol spreads. Gen has more defensive options (Good, higher vit., built-in redux) vs. Kyoshiro's better direct control/anti-control options (Chaos, built-in one-shot retarded draw).

Ed: Nagase has the ideal combination of symbols for the two...sort of. She lacks the Earth symbol that the other two have that makes them so formidable. Sorry, Nagase...I do ruv you, tho =(

2. Yoshitora Control...let me say this. I had a dream last night where I won Worlds playing ***Yoshitora*** off Air/Good. It was insanely vivid, right down to Paul making me come up on this stage thing and trying unsuccessfully to write my name down as he announced me as the winner; turns out he didn't know how to spell my name, and I got really embarassed. I also recall Omar and Olexa being there in some capacity, and sitting down at a table trying to work out my character. All I'd come up with was the Order symbol and James not letting me put Revenant's Calling's R on my character because he said it would be "too strong". So I started ttrying to come up with ways for my character to loop iSpin every turn =/

My point being this: Yoshitora is stupidly good. Olexa may well be the BEST Air character in the Block 3 environment, but Yoshitora is NOT too far behind. If only he had a more coherent symbol spread...Chaos or Water instead of Evil would make him SOOOOO much better.

Admiral Ren said:

Accuarte list.

Only gipe is Zi mei.

Replace her with any other fast chaos/order charcter.

Hanzo said:

*Cough* Kyoshiro *Cough*

And on that note i gotta disagree, Zi Mei's retarded. but i got a biased opinion as shes one of my favorites (and who i ran at worlds).

mine...
1/2 Chun - Li/ J Talbain - theyre both realllly tight. when i played against talbain with chunli i won the one game i played but it was CLOSE.
3 - Alex***
4 - Zi Mei
5 - Donovan
6 - Promo Gen (7/24, recursion, AND Order/Water/Chaos? yeah ummm win?)
7 - **Rock Howard** Hes got all and order and his handsize = 5 + the number of cards you played on ur turn
8 - Sogetsu

Gen wishes he had Water =(

Man, I just looked to see if promo Gen had chaos. Would have been awesome if he did.

Tagrineth said:

guitalex2008 said:

I do believe that was the ruling, and otherwise it matters none because you can replicate the effect in a better way with Ready for Anything.