Hello everyone. This is my first post, and hopefully not repeating something found elsewhere (I looked), but I was wondering how much (if any) of a power treadmill there is for old vs. new cards. (I know theres a better term for it, but I can't think at the moment).

I was wondering because there seems to be a noticeable divergence in strength between the first two decks I picked up (Darth Path Ryu and Cutting Edge Mai). Perhaps I just haven't gotten the style down for the Ryu deck yet, but my friend using the Mai deck (who hasn't even bothered using any strategy besides foundation laying, attacking, and blocking without any effect/respond/other form usage) seems to have much better luck with control checks and damage than I do with the Ryu deck.

I think the term you are searching for is power creep. As with any card game power level on different aspects will rise and fall. Attacks up till recently had been mostly lackluster but with set 12 have been brought back up. Hope that helps at all.

Starter decks by themselves have been a growing experience for UFS, and it's makers.

Mai came from Cutting Edge, 2008's base set. To that point she is argueably the strongest starter deck ever. She was an anamoly from the rest.

Additionally all of the starters prior to the ones that are just seeing release this weekend (The 2009 base set) were 1/2 fixed, 1/2 randomized cards, which could lead to some problematic interations.

Is there a power creep across the entire game? In some cases it would seem like it. In some instances there was. Set 11 (the expansion released at the end of last year) and the new base set have gone a long way to leveling the playing field without "ramping up" the power.

To this day, some of the most powerful cards in the game that are available come from the very first set.

UFS is quite a bit different from MTG and its clones, so aside from random less-than-successful games past (not the best role models) there was no easy thing to look at for an idea of what power level each sort of mechanic, card type, ability type, etc. should be for good balance. As such, the first couple years were sort of a trial and error period, pushing the enevlope more and more on mechanics that didn't see much play, then scaling them back when they stepped over the line, up and down until a decent balance was found. (For instance, look at the evolution of lifegain from Persistence, to that starter Mai, to Battle Prowess, to Tira's Jolly Side today)

So in some areas there has been power creep, while others have been scaled down, with which and how much depending on the two points of time you're looking at. A case where power was scaled down from Dark Path to Cutting Edge, for example, was with split cards - in set 4 there were numerous split cards that had attack sides yet checked a 4 or even 5, something that was quickly done away with save for High Tide as an exception in set 11. With every set released things have gotten closer and closer to full balance, and I'd like to say we're just about there with the latest release - if nothing else, James knows well enough to recognize when something is decidedly underpowered or clearly going too far, so any experimentation from here on out should be within fair bounds.

I just thought I'd tell you: while Dark Path Ryu may not be legal any more, he was and is a beast. His style is to pump stuff to the high heavens, and he has seen a ton of play, both inside and outside of Defender of the Empire.

that's a good concept there.... UFS IS unlike any other game, and so for balancing of cards and such, there's no decent other TCG one can compare one's designs to to determine what is probably going to work or not...

and here i thought UFS designers just sucked at keeping things consistent (not really... i kid). contrary i spose. thanks for that insight!

Thank you all very much. I was very surprised at how quick I got 5 replies. I like the community here very much. =)

Yes, I'm still getting used to Ryu's style, but I like the pumping up aspect, as that's usually my style. It also seems to be based more around weaker multiple attacks than power hits.

Thanks all. Glad to be in the community.

MardukZero said:

We're awesome. Weird, but awesome.

MardukZero said:

I do suggest looking into the new starters personally; they seem to have really settled down balance a lot at this point. The new starters come from the two sets Soul Calibur 4, and ShadoWar, the starter characters being Nightmare, Siegfried, Ivy, Cervantes, and for ShadoWar, Zi Mei, Astrid, Yi Shan, and Ragnar.

I do have to say though, the best thing about UFS honestly is the community; often times i've found in other card games the competitive community can be pretty horrible, but for UFS i go to the tournaments to meet people more than anything else.

I love you guys <3

Yeah, that's part of the reason I've had some hesitency with playing Magic, from what I've heard/noticed regarding people who forget that its just a game