For a little while now, while playing UFS, I have noticed that I have lost my competetive edge while others in my playgroup have far surpassed me, which, to be honest, I'm actually very pleased at, but I am beginning to think that people should bear in mind certain decks when they build decks in order to be able to confront them. I think that because UFS is so diverse in terms of characters and deck playstyles that you cannot cater to everything, but I find that certain decks have clear advantages over others. and I thought I would make a topic to outline the decks that people struggle to beat so that people can give tips on how to confront and surpass them.

Personally, I have great difficulty defeating my partners Chun-Li deck and one of my best friends' Victor decks, and have tried deck after deck after deck to beat them and failed. These two decks have severe edges over a lot of characters in the sense that they disrupt a lot of what you can do.

Chun Li is a balls-out aggro character who will more often than not use Feline Spike with Lord Of The Makai to destroy you quickly and efficiently, and will use her character ability to be able to do so twice as quickly and when you are most vunerable. I personally have tried loading Tag Along, Preventiung The Curse, BRT, playing Silver Spoon to soften the blow from her Multiples, Bitter Rivals and more to stop her, I have tried to just attempt to allow her to attack me in order to have her card pool full, but she just keeps coming. How does one attempt to stop such an unrelenting beast of a deck?

While I have not had much in the way of first-hand experience with him, we all know that J. Talbain is a character who creates a very uneven playing field in his favour, similarly to Chun-Li but, from general consensus, in a more well-rounded way. From the few builds I've seen, he also uses Lord Of The Makai and Feline Spike or somemthing similar in order to kill you without having had to attack you previously. At one point, a whole topic on these very forums was dedicated to finding methods around Talbain, have those methods worked, or were they in vain?

Asset ccontrol seems to be the greatest method of control to tackle Victor, as Reanimated is the greatest asset he has going for him (and for anyone, really) and when he gets his control down quicker than you do, he eliminated the need for amazing checks, if he gets Defender Looping down, he doesn't need to worry about playing any other attacks, so that he can set up extremely quickly without much worry of failing his checks. From personal experience, I've found that Victor seems to be able to set up insanely fast without being able to get the most out of The Bigger They Are.. or 7HS. Is it possible to be able to set up more quickly than he can while Reanimated still exists? Can you get past the slew of Ira-Spinta's and Victor's effect in order to be able to get a half decent staging area down?

Sakura is a character I've seen a lot of people need to prepare for, as she renders a lot of CC hax (that doesn't end turns) useless by being able to immediately being able to bring the card straight back. She also has whatever she wants, whenever she wants it. While I've only had a fair amount of experience with her as opposed to Victor or Chun-Li, I can safely say she is definately a character you need to prepare for. The sheer speed she can get out BRT's, Chesters', LotM's and her kill conditions is horrendous. How do you keep up with her?

I very much dislike to call any game of UFS an NPE, because if I found any game experience to be negative, I wouldn't play, but I think that its worth compiling a small level of tips in order to be able to rise to the challenge. I personally am struggling a great deal to build against any of these characters, and short of attemtping to build Night Terror, who is a character I really don't enjoy the look of very much , I just don't know. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels sometimes that they just can't compete with certain characters, but they can and will be beaten once a way is found, but it's more dfficult than it sounds, even for seasoned players like myself.

In other words, I admit defeat. This time.

inhuman perception will murder chun li

I think you need to add in a typical order deck like Jon Herr's donovan in there as something to test with since order will be a huge part of the format . Speaking of which we will be doing an order discussion next week to give some insight on how to build and beat it . But to sum it up if you can beat order then I think your going in the right direction .

Ironically, the deck I'm most renowned for playing is in fact Order Donovan. Part of me wanted to play something different to that so that I didn't end up becoming a one trick pony, but then again, perhaps I should just give up and build hiim again...

Scubadude said:

Aw, dang! I REALLY need to get in on that

MegaGeese said:

In on what ?

I heard "podcast" and "we're talking about Order".

MegaGeese said:

Oh that lol sorry we actually have our guests already booked for this but if one of them doesn't show I will let you know just send me your contact info in case something happens . But I can for sure have you for next months discussion .

scuba, just LET HIM IN.

christmas sake, how do you talk about order and not have it's greatest fanbo-er- ... most outspoken supporter on your show?

GouHadou said:

Haha alright I will talk to the others about it thursday when we interview Paul Omar. Just getting over 6 people skype usually starts dropping people maybe one of the other guests would like to be on another episode .

GouHadou said:

LOLOLOLOL

right now when preparing to play in a tournement, you have to ask yourselves these questions. can your deck handle, J T, CC hax, twop, feline spike, and heavy lockout order.

GouHadou said:

I'd consider being offended if A) it wasn't true, and B) I were able to pick myself off the ground from laughing xD

No worries. I'll get in some other time, and then shanghai the conversation into ranting about Order =P

MegaGeese said:

Well let me talk to tripps ex I havent heard from him in a while so I will see if he could be in next week I didn't realize you were such an order freak megageese lol . .

trane said:

Very adequately put (IMO).

I'm starting to think that the answer to beating a specific deck is not necessarily to build a deck or choose certain cards over others that seem to give you an edge. Instead, a player must build a deck whose entire strategy can handle, among many other opponents, the opponents that worry this player the most, or, at the very least, this player must design a degree of flexibility into such a deck so that it can handle a wide range of (tough) opponents.

I've been thinking for a while that discarding J.T.s or Chun-Li's hands before they can inflict their "damage" on your turn is the way to go. TWoP can do it, and just because you might use TWoP doesn't mean that you must discard their entire hand since you would end your turn, which is counter-intuitive. Instead, leave them with one card if you don't compromise yourself too much. So, to accomplish this massive hand destruction and still gain the upperhand, you might want to play a character with an ability that can draw/recur cards but certainly a character that has 7 or 8HS. In addition to that, you'll want to incorporate some draw/recursion tech, perhaps something like Kuzuryu Reppa, The Gorgeous Team (you do not have to be female to play this...), or the ever-popular The Bigger They Are(...). I kind of like Kuzuryu Reppa + TWoP: discard your opponent's hand except for one card, and let your opponent choose to either block with their last card (you will want to have some recursion tech in place if this happens), or they won't block KR, (ideally) take 6, and you draw 6. [Game Reference: "Morbid."] You also must plan for the occasion when your TWoP backfires or you've played out your hand by your opponent's next turn--don't give them that opening. I'd suggest playing whatever people play to indirectly counter TWoP (i.e., not negation, commit, or destruction) to remedy your risk of "exposure."

As for Victor... The problem with Victor is that his Staging Area is his hand (by virtue of his innate ability) and his hand is his Staging Area (by virtue of Reanimated). However Victor may be handled, the player doing the handling must target Victor, Reanimated, and any free block generators (learned that one firsthand). If you target the Victor player's hand only, he can use Victor's ability to recur a block; if you target his block generators only (good Victor deck play free block generators IMO), then Reanimated can, in effect, Ready them; and if you target Reanimated, then I don't think the Victor player has any immediate answers but still you haven't created an opening either. The next major issue with Victor is that he can run the Chaos anti-control pack (i.e., Red Lotus & Oral Dead), the Order control pack (i.e., Program Malfunction & Chinese Boxing), and even splash some Death nuisances with relative ease (i.e., No Memories, Revenant's Calling, & Greed's Influence). Most annoyingly of all, Victor can also play Lesser of Many Evils, End it All, and Inhuman Perception to turn off or repel negation and anti-Control. Truly, the advantage to playing Victor is great.

As a Control player, I believe that you'll want to put Victor in the crappiest situations possible, as much as possible, with less concern over the negative consequences for yourself, and you must do this before Victor gets set up. When Victor's building, he's at his weakest (unless you could mill him...). The longer you can keep Victor from asserting a dominant presence, the greater are your chances of victory. If at all possible, destroy his hand on his turn, take his troublesome foundations off the field, and force him to take as much damage as possible before he gets set up. Victor's 6HS is by far his greatest detriment; if Victor attacks you to Reanimate his The Bigger They Are..., then Reversal-TWoP him into the ground. (I wonder if The Gorgeous Team + Reversal + TWoP for your opponent's entire hand is possible, and it should be if you can use and ready your TGTs on Victor's attack with Shooting Capoera or The Angel of Evening, and then use the TGTs again on your own attack... just need You Will Not Escape or perhaps At a Distance) US Air Base should be great tech in drawn out games against Victor, especially if he starts committing foundations to meet Air Bases' restriction.