failed2k said:

Allow me to reiterate

Throughout block 2, negation existed in plentiful enough form. Addes Syndicate, Pieces of Eight, Inhuman Perception, and No Memories instantly come to mind vis-a-vis E and R negation. Although we've certainly established that Addes was teh bustedz, Pieces and Memories are certainly not broken and are balanced in their current state. As I said, the most frequent situation I encountered, as well as many others who faced my decks with TCB, was that it was often more beneficial to just not negate the E or R than it would be to negate it, and get something committed.

There are plenty of factors that give a card or facet NPE status (negative play experience). In this case, it's the NPE that so much as one copy of TCB hits the table, and all of a sudden, you now have to re-think your negation even more than you used to.

While some may call Pieces/Inhuman/Memories "brainless" negation, being R COMMIT means that you have to think about whether or not you want to negate their ability, or save your foundation for a different ability they will, assumedly, use. As such, there already was SOME degree of skill involved. With TCB on the table, now you're not only pondering what card's effect on their board and you trying to anticipate and negate, but now you're wondering if using your own card's effect skillfully will result badly.

Now, sure, TCB wasn't quite the be all is all to games like Feline is now or Addes was then. However, GLOBAL control is unacceptable in UFS (unless it destroys itself, and the control its warranting isn't too overboard), especially UNNEGATABLE control. Cards like TCB, Mortal Strike, Destiny, Armored Defense, these are all examples of what I deem "global" and "unacceptable" cards in UFS.

My idea for balanced control? A good version of Martial Arts Champion (I'm sorry, but MAC sucks balls, big time). If you took MAC, gave it a 5 and a block, and changed its R Commit cost to something not so brutal, then there you would have a perfect "anti" card that isn't complete overkill like AD/TOS have been.

As for Pull of the Tides, you have Undercover Agent and US Air Base. For the remaining 9 symbols...well, I'm not too sure. As Steve Horvath has been informing us, the FFG crew has been painstakingly looking-over several "problem" cards, and have probably been thinking of solutions before the banhammer. Either way, I think we can all assume that Defender will be gettin a lookin' into.

failed2k said:

No I know me and Ryan ran it in our decks for worlds this year JR and I think if you had those resources you should be running in my opinion.

Edit: Oh! lol... Warning: TCB tangent post. Woops... I never liked Pull of the Tides; it was only ever successfully used against me once, which didn't effect that game because I planned for that. PotT just seems too underwhelming for me, but then again, the other reprints seem underwhelming too, so...

I've played The Curse Broken on many occasions and liked it a lot. I played it in my Worlds Yun-Seong.

I don't think TCB is actually "broken" (or busted if you prefer that word). People who play negation don't seem to realize that TCB doesn't actually stop them from negating anything, but TCB will punish them for negating something. From my experience with Yun-Seong (and probably Secret Project CSS Athena before that), I have come to appreciate two major circumstances where deterring negation doesn't help:

1. In the case of TCB, sometimes your opponent doesn't have anything worth committing or TCB doesn't take out the other 2 SoCs, 3 Red Lotus, 2 Chester's, etc. that keep you from pulling ahead. Sometimes (more often than a little bit) TCB's commit Response doesn't actually commit anything that matters.

2. In Block 2, say you were running a mono-Earth deck with TCBs. Your kill (hypothetically) revolves around Absurd Strength, but when you want to go for your kill, your opponent has a single Pieces of Eight/No Memories. The Earth player can go for the kill with an Absurd Strength, assuming that's what it would take to win, but their opponent will negate AS with their single Po8 or NM. TCB alone does nothing when you want to push through your kill condition (so play Psycho Style too XD). Similarly, TCB alone doesn't necessarily help when you play any important countermeasure Enhance/Response (e.g., like return to printed damage effects, Cutting Edge, Psycho Style for committing 4, etc.) because your opponent knows that they can negate this ability and suffer the lesser of two evils with TCB.

Players who use negation shouldn't take up this "innocent" act either because that negation inherently disqualifies several other deck archetypes from being truly viable. Sure, we can argue that only some symbols have negation and that perhaps other symbols without negation have an advantage over certain negation symbols, painting a picture something like an advantage-disadvantage triangle, thereby creating a more dynamic and "balanced" competitive atmosphere. Nevertheless, most negation effects are very unspecific and can therefore provide a relatively equal defense against all decks, which detracts from the notion of a more balanced UFS environment. Back to my point--negation isn't any less guilty of "NPE" or NPE's next step down than TCB is; in fact, negation has and probably will always be guiltier of NPE than a card like TCB ever could be.

But this discussion has at least one more level of depth, which (I believe) Scuba sort of touched upon: (cards like) TCB run in a deck also running negation is next to godliness. When Addes was still legal, I knew definitively that any deck that ran TCB but couldn't necessarily run Addes should also run Lynettes (to copy potential Addes among other cards). Addes + Lynettes was the trump card for handling negation around 80% of the time, and this trump card idea of TCB + negation tech is almost absolutely iron-clad. For similar reasons, I'm an advocate of running Revenant's Calling in a deck that also runs negation: RC is exactly what you need to win lots of control battles, which is not to mention that TCB + RC is a fantastic defense. Nonetheless, consummate deckbuilders and players easily take cards like TCB in stride, and TCB becomes a non-issue in their cases.

So what's my position? Well, I've wanted TCB to get the four-pointed shuriken way before Worlds. I am steadfastly against watering down UFS just because some players have had issues, which, by the way, is exactly what I feel happened to the last set--way too much "effect censorship." I don't like the company protecting its players from potential NPE because that makes the game so bland (of course, IMO), and I don't like the "safest" gaming environment created by that initiative because there's no real challenges to overcome. Some things really are NPE, which the game doesn't need at all, while others are just a lighter shade of NPE, and I maintain that distinction. At the worst, TCB is a lighter shade of NPE with a minor detriment to the design of future cards, which no longer matters because it’s rotating...

Meh. I advocate TCB and its ilk, and myself being a gamer, fandom and nostalgia are not enough to keep UFS a worthwhile venture. I am, nonetheless, interested in whether or not James' base set returns UFS to its roots as I see them.

Shiros said:

Ugh, Cursed Blood is one ot the most annnoying, undercosted, unbalanced, strong and (yes, I'm going to say it) broken cads of block2. Getting a free foundation or a one-by-one trade for a 1 difficulty foundation gave order too much of an edge. I'm really glad to see it go.

Could somebody please give me a full list of the recently banned cards? I know TCB and J.T. are but is that it? how do I find the new errata and bans?

jasco games said:

The Curse broken isn't banned its just going to rotate next month the bans this year have been .

Defender of the empire

Ruler of southtown

kubi ori

kazumi gaki

promo Hugo

rare ibuki

quick to anger

higher caliber

happy holidays

concealed swallow swipe

military rank

addes syndicate

revitalize

all the injury assets