So, my area is JUST now getting into UFS... we have around 20 people who know how to play, and around 15 that own cards, of those 10 probably have more than half a box of cards and a starter... I have like 6 boxes worth of cards, and I reguarly give out cards to my friends to get them going... and fix the horribleness of the starters they bought. I have 4 decks that are pretty much undefeated versus anything but themselves. HOWEVER I realize that its because we have no serious players yet. most of us play legacy, until we get enough poeple that just want to play standard.

I want to discuss both my decks, and in general decks that work well or are semi competitive (not top tournament decks) that are easy to get cards for (i.e. no cards over $2) . No one has any BrTs, owl Faces, or anything of the sort of top tier rares. Its interesting to see what can work when no one is playing those sort of cards.

To start with my decks- based on just a general description, give me some ideas to make them run better....

My best deck is my control deck- I run Remy with death, and pretty much as much foundation/asset control as I can. Its slow, takes forever to win, but it works really well. Stuff like total global domination, no memories, a beautiful nightmare, refusal of power, stun attacks... stuff like that. I have also tried using it with Basara.

Secondly, my favorite deck to play is my Hugo Deck- It runs mountain: a handful of good throws and pretty much everything I can to pump damage. I try to get an attack over 50 damage... and that ussually kills you even if you block... Its simple... I know. Street Life is really a rock star in this deck. I also run will for the fight, weapons are unneccesary, etc...

The Third deck is a Kyo chaosdeck- I've run the kyo that rechecks and adds to mo, and the one that gets mo for you messing with his cards... they are acctually both in the deck. The point of this one is combo stupidness... get mo as fast as possible, with LK arts, that other foundation that adds on when it goes to staging, and quick elbows, cheap other attacks, etc. Then throw down a void nova with 8 copies, using cold and haughty + mysterious past to make each one 4 dmg. If they block it with something that blocks all copies I get hurt, but I try to drop it at the right time. I also use the card that gives your powerful attack multiple 1, and then +x dmg based on the powerful rating, and the attack that has an E that makes its powerful rating equal to mo.

Lastly, I have a haromaru deck, that is just an aggro style deck. Its an order deck with kinda a splash of fire, but runs no control... i never thought of order as control, until reading stuff on here... it runs things like balanced stance, and ready for anything to wtf pwn people and make its attacks better. I run a mix of speed and dmg boosting foundations and run all CC of 3+, so its a very consistent deck. It only needs to get off a few attacks to take people down.

I KNOW these decks wouldn't be tournament winning decks in your meta, but since everyone is a n00b in our area they run well... I have $60 credit with a certain website that sells 'cool stuff' for selling some old D&D minis... and i plan on using it to get a variety of singles (mostly commons and uncommons) that will let me build some new decks or improve on others.

If you have suggestions on easy to build (ie not full of $20 rares) decks, let me know... or talk to me here about these decks I have... I will post a full list of whats in them later, I leave them at the game store, and I'm at work right now... but I don't think the full decklist is neccesary to talk about the subject of n00b decks.

tsunami saber and n-type human are both cheap cards for chaos. tsunami saber is one of my alltime favourite kill cards.

Now, I am only listing Block 3 legal cards, as it is the next format for Standard, and my group moved to Block 3 only tournaments after the December release.

Deck 3 Fire/Order Haohmaru

Soul Burner is one of those cards that feels like it should be in any deck that can run its 3 symbols. It allows ou to ready your character when you block with it, great ability.

Cobra Blow is 4 diff and for the low cost of 1 foundation committed, it is a 5H 5DMG attack.

Crack Counter -> Vaulting is a good attack with reversal, and a great block.

Prova-Dei-Cervo a good high damage attack that is not Rare or higher, great to set up a kill turn.

Weak Slash, good card to spam after Prova, low Diff decent stats, good vanilla attack. (We need more of these James, vanilla is a good flavor)

A Samurai's Life, great combo with Crack Counter, Block with CC->V, all blocks get +2 check, return with Samurai's Life, Rinse Repeat.

Aim High is also a good way to clear your card pool after blocking. Won't let you loop CC->V as well as Sam Life, but good for the defensive turn.

Aquakinesis, great...card...draw...

Chain of Command gives Order the discard power it didn't really need anyway... again for the defensive turn, if you don't draw attacks.

Dancing Battle Kabuki has breakers for defense, split side is 2 a power up if you a 0 momentum

Forethough OMG CCHax... end of reason to play this card

Total Global Domination good defense vs. ORLY Mentoring

Ultimate and Immortal the 4 diff can be tricky if trying to get it out early, but the damage pump is usually +5-6 whenver I use it.

Will of the Fight good anti-discard, only once per turn... but playable while committed.

More later gotta run to a tourney.

any deck with water, order, and earth is easy to build. All three have the relatively simple win condition of High Plasma Beam and their symbols can be built with all commons/uncommons. Symbols you should probably steer people away from playing are:

Good
Evil
All
Air

At least in block 3, a lot of the solid decks for those symbols require LOTS of money and investment. One way to get more people interested in block 3 is that in March, a core set (like cutting edge) is coming out, which will have starter decks that make getting into the game far easier, and is also the first cards that will be legal in standard through all of 2010.

i would also add death to the list. in block 3 atleast death is mediocre and almost always needs spinning beat to work.

@trane: Death Zi Mei is fully playable with all uncommons, in Legacy/Block 2 at least -- run 7+ sets of attacks, at least 20 of them at 3 or lower difficulty, piles of cheap foundations, and most importantly Ibis Minuet. Block 3, though, yeah -- unless you want to use Chaos Flare, you're stuck with UR moves (don't forget Tsurane Kiri)

@q-man: Good is a money symbol? It's got a pile of expensive moves, but I don't see anything wrong with Big Cyclone+Fight or Flight as a win condition, and its supplementary attack base is one of the best around {Shadow Blade, Charlie's Fierce Punch, Ichi no Tachi}. Mysterious Stance and Infinity assets are good, but for this level of competition they are far from necessary.

All is playable on mostly commons, but IMO requires splashing a win condition. This could be done with Tiger Fury and Fweem, or the money route. Alex-4 would work and only require some Boomerang Raids, but would require some tough rules explanations. And Air Fio splashing Fire Kick could easily work.

@OP: You can add Chinese Boxing to the Haohmaru deck to make it a bit more 2-dimensional, and with all 3+ccs you can guarantee passing it as your first form of a turn. Or not . For Remy, definitely add Shadow Blade s -- I don't know what your win condition is right now, but SB is the second most ridiculous attack in the game for control {after Ira-Spinta , a $20 rare}, and it has great stats aside from its 2 check. For Hugo, Altered Mind and Body makes killing him an excersize in futility, especially if you have Holding Ground and Battle Prowess . Lastly, Kyo sounds like he would benefit tremendously from Whereabouts Unknown , if he doesn't already have them. Red Lotus of the Sun is insane with him, as well.

trane said:

A Death deck can't run Spinning Beat, it doesn't have Death... just a Death enhance.

Wafflecopter said:

Amy's Assistance, One Armed Manuevers, Ayame's Scarf, About Face, White Gi, Family Heirloom, Hwang's Protection, Temporal Ascension, HPDS, M.I.A., Assassination Arts you get where I'm going with this. Then again, the only good deck in our area that plays is a 20 SR and Promo assets and 4x Feline Spike, 4x Spinning Beat deck.

You are also right too, Big Cyclone + Fight or Flight in rare Raphael is a fine win condition, and is a fine deck for a new player. Play big move, make big move bigger and faster, hit with big move, rinse repeat.

All is... well... I would say yes with Alex-4, or even a Balrog punch deck, but both require rares of some kind or as you stated might be complicated for a newbie, and I just don't like the air symbol.

thanks a lot of those suggestions are good. Some of those cards are good buy unavailable to buy online.

I'll post a deck list soon.

quarzark said:

ender dragon: i am a spining beatless idiot. i should have said murder brick.

q-man: how can you not like air?

trane said:

because the average air deck is annoying. "I'm going to play Feline Spike for 7 *check a 6 cause my deck is chock full of them* yay feline spike! I'm going to play it again at 10 *check another 6* yay!"

or the deck is an I-Spin lockdown, which while more amusing from my standpoint, is still very annoying. I also don't really like water hybrid decks because they aren't fun to play against, but meh.

you sound like you don't play air quarzark. you can run air around adon and chun li easy without runing spike or i-spin. thats like saying i don't like fire,all, or evil becuase the deks all run bitter rivals.

trane said:

Yeah there are a crap load of air decks that are running around that arent ispin of spike filled....my adon deck in this here deck forums for example and im currently working on a fei long deck that plays its entire deck full of attacks in one turn with ancient battle grounds and other cards that draw me cards the only rares in the deck so far are the battle grounds and its a really good deck i tested it some 2day even though its nowhere near fininshed and i played 22 attacks in a row....of course my opponent was already dead but that was just 2 see how long i could go

Da_ghetto_gamer said:

22 atacks! the record at our store is 16 (with fight for the future chun li.)

thats what i said it was pretty intense ill try and get around 2 posting a deck list of it when i can

It wouldnt be possible without shooting cap though i had 3 in play with a bunch of discard from the card pool stuff and soul of ling sheng su's + fei longs discard from the card pool and that chun li attack that gives your CC +1 if they deal damage i hit with 4 of those so i had +4 2 my control checks.

Explain to me how you are getting all these attacks off? Is this normal, or silly combo that never happens, except when it happens?

Lord Aries said:

even though i have played a 30 atack deck for fun, it is mind bogling how you pulled that off (good work gheto gamer).

well its all about having alot of 6CC and discarding cards from the card pool its hard 2 pull off but it can be done with certain cards like make a difference, action hero, th4at chun li attack which i now realize isnt block 3 legal(gives +1 to control checks) when you have +4 to control checks and then have alot of cheap cheap attacks like 2 and 3 difficulty

I did something like 70 damage on turn 4, with 1 attack eariler today....

NIce thats the kind of decks that i like 2 see.......

what atack was it? fire kick, ryu's shin shuruken, feline spike, spinning beat, sardine's special, high plasma beam, gravity storm or tsurane kiri? if you used an atack other than the ones stated you are truly creative.

quarzark said:

Amy's Assistance, One Armed Manuevers, Ayame's Scarf, About Face, White Gi, Family Heirloom, Hwang's Protection, Temporal Ascension, HPDS, M.I.A., Assassination Arts you get where I'm going with this. Then again, the only good deck in our area that plays is a 20 SR and Promo assets and 4x Feline Spike, 4x Spinning Beat deck.

Amy's, yeah, I can give that to you {I tried to find a replacement for its DR, but I'm hugely disturbed by the almost complete absence of redux in Block 3... Cute and Innocent is one of the next-best things... o_o}, but OAM is far, far away from being a staple - especially with White Magic around; Ayame's is worse than Destiny in most cases; About Face is a 2cc that IMO wouldn't be worthwhile with a 3cc, White Gi is IMO a fine UR -- it's not staple, but it's strong; Nature's Force fills (mostly) the same holes as Heirloom; Hwang's is only ANY help against a small number of decks, and against those decks it can usually be played around or ignored outright; Ascension is combo-tastic and really, really strong but relys on emptying your hand (and hitting the progressive difficulty wall) for offensive use, and on defense you can rely on your foundations; HPDS is a high-difficulty attack that relys on synergy with other high kicks to be at all effective, so only a very select few decks will find any use for it; MIA is awesome tech against recursion, but again with White Magic its use as a momentum source is lessened and it will be extremely rare to find a good deck with no use for momentum in today's meta of Spinta and Clean Freak; Assassination Arts I can't argue with. Also, OAM, Temporal and MIA are probably less than $2 a piece with rotation coming up...

But more importantly, it's not hard to fill 60 cards with solid Good (un)commons, although with stuff like Fight or Flight they are pretty expensive uncommons . FoF, White Magic, Red Lotus, Detached, Shadow Blade, Reunited, Alluring Beauty, Destiny, Savage Fighter, Empire's Ruin, Ichi no Tachi, Big Cyclone...

Wafflecopter said:

but it is hard to make a good (the symbol) deck on the cheap.

trane said:

Wafflecopter said:

But more importantly, it's not hard to fill 60 cards with solid Good (un)commons, although with stuff like Fight or Flight they are pretty expensive uncommons . FoF, White Magic, Red Lotus, Detached, Shadow Blade, Reunited, Alluring Beauty, Destiny, Savage Fighter, Empire's Ruin, Ichi no Tachi, Big Cyclone...

but it is hard to make a good (the symbol) deck on the cheap.

1x promo Lilith

4x Shadow Blade

4x Charlie's Fierce Punch

4x Soul-Piette

4x Ichi no Tachi

<16 attacks>

3x Mentally Unstable

4x Fight or Flight

4x Buddhist Devotion

4x Red Lotus of the Sun

4x Detached

4x Reunited

4x Alluring Beauty

4x Savage Fighter

4x Empire's Ruin

4x Irresistable

4x Infected

Obviously, it won't win every tournament it ever enters, but it's playable.

Wafflecopter said:

trane said:

Wafflecopter said:

But more importantly, it's not hard to fill 60 cards with solid Good (un)commons, although with stuff like Fight or Flight they are pretty expensive uncommons . FoF, White Magic, Red Lotus, Detached, Shadow Blade, Reunited, Alluring Beauty, Destiny, Savage Fighter, Empire's Ruin, Ichi no Tachi, Big Cyclone...

but it is hard to make a good (the symbol) deck on the cheap.

:S

1x promo Lilith

4x Shadow Blade

4x Charlie's Fierce Punch

4x Soul-Piette

4x Ichi no Tachi

<16 attacks>

3x Mentally Unstable

4x Fight or Flight

4x Buddhist Devotion

4x Red Lotus of the Sun

4x Detached

4x Reunited

4x Alluring Beauty

4x Savage Fighter

4x Empire's Ruin

4x Irresistable

4x Infected

Obviously, it won't win every tournament it ever enters, but it's playable.

needs big cyclone for todays meta and for FoF because everyone knows thats amazing