I was talking to Scott Gaines one day and he went on a rampage about how Bitter Rivals has gained so much power and should be banned. It raised hell during it's release about making all your attacks a certain zone, but now he says it's amazing cause it can discard much more cards due to the new keyword abilities. Also, none of the new anti-discard actions have keyword abilities, so they cannot discourage Bitter Rivals.

I was talking to my brother Chubbs the other day and we came to the conclusion that Bitter Rivals actually lost power. Your opponent can now ditch their Plasma Beams to keep ahold of their Spikes. They can discourage it with Big Cyclone because it has the Ranged keyword. They can ditch cards with Unique in their hand because they already have one out. Your opponent just gains more options to dodge discarding their precious keyword abilities.

Hanover's conclusion - Bitter Rivals became more playable, but lost a little power. Making your attacks certain zones to push through damage is still golden just like it used to be, but nowadays you gotta get rid of those Spikes, Menuetts, Reppas, or whatever killswitch that has a keyword ability, which is pretty much most of them. It does screw over the Combo archtype, but you if you are running a Combo Archtype then should be playing stuff to deal with Bitter Rivals.

Depends.

Are you reliant on it changing your zones to push attacks through?

Or are you reliant on it to ditch annoying keywords?

If Option 1-No power was gained or lost. Certainly a lot more useable now.

If Option 2-Power was lost since there are more Keywords now.

I can see what you're saying, but must disagree. Sure, it's easier to protect specific cards from BR now, but on the flip side it is now a lot closer to effectively reading "E: Your opponent discards 1 card." Which is dumb no matter how you look at it.

I think bitter rivals is a auto include regardless you get of a threat weather its plasma beam /spike/ and all the attacks with combo.

There's a ton more foundations that outright destroy it now, including charasmatic from the old set. Additonally Big cyclone and Eltanin Nath both have keywords and both are anti discard. Theres also a fair amount of keyword free attacks in this new set that are very solid if you really are that worried.

I'm not sure i think its all that more powerful than it always has been.

Bitter Rivals is an Enhance, not a response.

I'm with Scott this time, though. How do you encourage a more aggressive game, and the Combo keyword ability, with something in the environment that can discard an incredibly highnumber of attacks from their owner's hand?

I have to agree with proto. If you choose to stand right next to the active hand grenade it is going to hurt. If you choose to hide behind that nifty blast shield, its probably not going to hurt. Theres plenty of ways to make it less effective, flipping it, blanking the text box, commiting it, removing it from the game, blowing it up, anti discard cards...and those are just the things you can do to it in this set. All in all i think it stayed just about where it was, yes it can touch more things but at the same time there are more things that can be done to it.

If you change your deck to play around one certain card, then the card got better. Bitter Rivals and the new Keyword Ability rules do that.

yeah exactly like if you have to change your deck to deal with it, then it pisses me off. i mean if it commited itself, i'd be FINE with it. but since it stays ready. like cetonis said, sometimes it's just E, make them discard a card. which is not cool. esp with all these big new multiple attacks and how popular dual/tri symbol is. and b player can cheat it into play for free etc.

at least it's a 3/4. but i just hate those times when you are stuck with 2 lows and a high in your hand. and it's like change it to high. and as soon as you block with that high. everything else they play is unblockable. bitter rivals being free is so lame. free reusable abilities are so stupid unless it's something weak like +1 speed or some crap like that or if it's limited. i mean it's cost is showin your hand, but when you can guranteed kill them that turn, that is no cost.

at least there are lots of cards that deal with it, but most decks that are on evil or all have alot of ways to protect the bitter riavls and make it go through.

i would really like to see pull of the tides reprinted!!

Pull of the Tides would not completely solve the problem. A smart player will make sure not to make such a stupid mistake as Bitter'ing three times in a turn if they see that action sitting in your hand. In fact, a player using bitter will probably call Mid for the attack zone to bait out your Pull as a block if you're staring down a big attack and don't have many blocks to spare to block it.

i know but it would help, alot

all i'm saying and not just against bitter rivals, but tons of jank.

i'd love to have that card to stop ZI mei, lotm, hanzo, olexa, defender, bitter, and the other sexyness. shooting cap? etc. so many reusable cheese cards

I'd honestly rather So Bitter had a commit cost. No-one would really care then.

That said, though...is it coincidental that with all the new keydwordiness, there are also several "change the zone" cards...? The horizon looks interesting...

lol nice points. and yes bitter rivals as a league foil with E comit:. oh baby, i would has a happy.

If Bitter became an E Commit, I'd actually request for either the difficulty to be lowered by 1, or the Check to be increased by one, or have it so that the Commit was the only cost and the reveal your hand part moved to the effect part of the card. It wouldn't be quite playable on its stats if it were only a one-time use.

if they're making you discard your hand, that means they aren't changing the zone to match their block zones. which you're free to see because they paid the cost to play the enhance. take advantage of that. look, easy solution.

it's silly in multiples, but it would be even if it was a commit.

mountain < molehill.

Bitter Rivals should be errated to have a commit cost or banned, and it would still be very good, even with 3/4 numbers. Come on, there's tons of 3/4 foundations out there much more useless than that and nobody has complained.

All the anti-discard stuff doesn't matter that much because the bitter player sees the hand before choosing discard or changing zones. If there's something like that you only protect the rest of cards in hand, and still he can change zones, it's not like the old "UR dhalsim, discard 1 card, Pure of Heart, OUCH". If there's a Pull of the Tides you just use it only twice per turn or force the mid-block. And all that is lost for the bitter player is to reveal the hand, which is compensated just by seeing the other player's hand, specially on his turn.

Of course there's ways to commit, destroy or neuter BR, but you need to waste resources on that, so it leaves other cards in the opponent's staging are unthreateaned. And staging area control wars. Just negating BR is not that good because it can be reused again and most negating has a commit cost, although then the BR player has revealed his hand and you haven't.

Finally, seeing the opponent's hand and then having the option to change zones or discard for almost free on each and every attack totally breaks the rules of the game, even worse than Promo Tira was.

Amano Jacu said:

You know complaining about "wasting" resources to commit a good card like bitter rivals doesnt make a lot of sense right? thats what you run those resources for right??

My take on bitter rivals is its amazing its not broken its a very useful, and at times a somewhat very necessary card. Now with the new rules its still fair but its just got a broader range of effect. because my opponent can discard whatever keyword they want i think its still perfectly fair.

Link said:

TRUTH.

As for Scotts comments that if you have to change the way you build your deck because of a card its bad. If thats the case we need to get rid of brt, forethought, anti k', owlface, speed pumping foundations, damage pumping foundations, anything that allows people to draw cards, anything that prevents anyone from doing something. Because seriously every card that gets created changes the way you build your deck.

Discard came out. So what did people do? Try to defend against it. Defender came out. What did people do? Try to defend against it. CCHax came back. What did people do? Try to defend against it.

Anything that comes out is likely going to cause you to change the way you build things. Now its my turn to tell you to put on your big boy pants and get back in the dojo and train Scott.

"E: Your opponent discards 1 card." is fair? Because they get to choose the card they discard? Sorry, I just can't buy that at all. And then it gives you the option to Promo Tira instead. Come on now... there's absolutely no arguing that it's overpowered in a vacuum - does anyone honestly think FFG would ever consider reprinting it? No, not a chance, because it's way too powerful. In other words, overpowered. That doesn't always equate to a ban, though.

The tradition has been to be hyper-conservative about the use of the hammer, generally only using it when decks abusing a certain card or cards dominate the top-level metagame for an extended period of time. Which doesn't happen with every broken card due to the presence of answers, or - as has more often been the case, honestly - because there's something else out there even more broken since they couldn't seem to figure out how to not print stupid cards before James arrived. I am of the philosophy that 10 wrongs does not make a right and all those blatantly ridiculous cards should go for the sake of having a genuinely healthy game, but understand that it is never going to happen because liberal banning is just not a good precedent for a company to set. So I'll be patient, find ways to deal with this stuff as best I can, and rejoice when they all rotate in 2010.

BlindProphet said:

PWNED Scott hahaha

It is true. If a card forces you to rebuild your deck, then so be it. Your deck should already have everything it needs to tech out against your weaknesses, and more importantly, the meta.

I mainboard a lot of stuff that you usually don't see being maindecked, like Destiny and Superiority. Having your entire deck teched against everything is what will take you to the top.

First of all lets all stop making the comparison to promo Tira, this card has NOTHING on her. She could do her ability post block and use herself as a makeshift shinobi tradition, NO COMPARISON.

The difference between Bitter Rivals and something like Owlface or Defender is that instead of just needing a pure up answer to the card (of which there are for bitter rivals, probably moreso than thoes other cards), you can actually play around Bitter. I always liked bitter for the same reason I liked Promo Nagase, as they have unique choice based abilities and thoes abilities are best utilized to put someone in a damned if you do / damned if you dont situation. But both of thoes abilities can backfire if you tech for them, and sometimes without even needing to go the extra mile.

Now with bitter theres a few routes one can take to really mess with it. The most obvious of course is to run anti discard effects. The 2 anti discard attacks that are also keywords come to mind, but on the same token so does will for the fight (draw 2 after the effect). These are the most obvious choices of course but effective none the less if you can utilize them. Past that however theres a layer of strategy that a lot of people seem to miss in the revealing of the hand.

Most people dont regard seeing the hand of the player in front of them as a cost, but since it is you get to see thier hand no matter what, even if you cancel the E. Having a full knowledge of a players hand without them knowing yours can be DEVISTAING, and it allows you to counter them on thier next turn. They use bitter, take a good long look at what they can do to you and what you can do to them next turn, cancel the ability, and then block the oncomming attack into committing the bitter (with manfest destiny or the like). Now you know what they are capible of and have a bitter free turn coming at them next turn.

We have had bitter rivals in the play enviroment for over a year now, and this conversation has been revisied a few times. Granted the nature of the game has changed now that ranged and throw are keywords, however the nature of the game changes with every set released dosent it? It is a 3-4 foundation in a game where players are RELYING on rolling high on thier foundations, and its also a 3 difficutly in a game that really is pushing 2 checks latley. As it stands decks I tend to run this card in only get 3 copies, as on my first turn I typically dont want one on the chance I can fail it. Its a great card, but I dont think it merits this attention.

Link said:

At least other cards that I would like to waste resources on commit themselves when used, but BR does not. The fact that there are counters to a card doesn't make it less powerful, as there always are counters to those counters.

BlindProphet said:

Edit: Out of line Scott. Calm yourself.

Bitter Rivals is so crazy good in an evil deck with all it's back up to keep it ready. even all has alot more ways to keep it ready and protected.

You know...we've made a lot of hooplah about this card so many times before...and yet...it amounts to nothing...since it never ends up being as big a problem as people make it out to be.

i would have to say bitter rivals isn't that bad. it has enough counters, and it's a 3-4, it certainly isn't worth banning.