Last week when I had the great fortune to talk about the Gallery Packs, I touched on the subject of my favorite super hero, Batman. My interest comes not from the pages of comics, but from the uber-campiness of the Adam West-led series. No matter what the scenario, that guy had an answer for everything thanks to his Utility Belt. He was—and is—the James Bond of Vs. System, and while he can never be quite as cool as 007 (he's not English after all), he comes a pretty close second. Equipment has at times suffered under the harsh critical gaze of many a Vs. player, especially throughout the early expansions. With recent releases, those grey-bordered cards have gained a little more respect and have been featured in a few more decks, so I thought it quite appropriate to take a more detailed look at exactly what equipment can do for you.
In the beginning, equipment was a bit bad. Well, actually, that's not quite fair: the equipment wasn't bad, it's just that absorbing useful equipment into your deck was not that easy. You see, there is a major weakness in equipment-heavy decks—hand advantage. Much like with off-curve decks, recruiting characters and equipment each turn can really eat away at your cards in hand. The first equipment specialist team was the Fantastic Four. Stretch and the gang had quite a bit of success in early tournament play with "F4 Toys," featuring in the Top 8 of four out of the first five $10K events.
The big weapon that made the deck so potent was the use of multiple copies of Fantasticar to boost your entire field of characters. The only problem with that plan was the cost of the equipment; players are reluctant to spend a resource point on equipment if it could be spent on a character instead. Take some time to examine the generic (non-team-stamped) equipment cards out there with a recruit cost of 1. You will notice that those providing a statistical enhancement—be it for ATK or DEF—add an average of +3 to your character. From there, it's simple to work out your position: You have 6 resource points to spend. Do you recruit your average 5-drop with 9 ATK / 9 DEF and spend the remaining point on a +3 ATK equipment? Or do you spend all 6 points on your average 6-drop that weighs in at 12 ATK / 12 DEF? With the 5-drop you have a comparable ATK value to a 6-drop, and should you be stunned, you will take less stun endurance loss. You are more likely to be stunned, however, due to the comparably low DEF value. I would rather maintain board presence at the potential cost of one more endurance point. Additionally, there are many ways for the proverbial rug to be pulled from under your feet with a well-timed tech card, taking that valuable equipment right off your character's back.
Paying for equipment is not fun, but getting stuff for free is. The F4 Toys deck had a very useful way of getting around this obstacle. Mr. Fantastic, Stretch—being something of a gadget-head—manages to reduce the cost of Fantasticar and other nice toys to the very reasonable 0. This gets past the cost problem, but what about the difficulty of maintaining a decent number of cards in hand? The F4 Toys deck didn't really do anything about this, although there were solutions available.
A gentleman by the name of Dean Sohnle came up with a rather good equipment-based deck, again utilizing the Fantastic Four. This time, the deck started recruiting equipment much earlier than F4 Toys, so something needed to be done to alleviate what would become a crippling problem if left unchecked.
Dean Sohnle, winner: $10K London, 2005
Characters
1 Frankie Raye, Herald of Galactus
1 Wyatt Wingfoot
2 Ant Man, Scott Lang
4 Invisible Woman, The Invisible Girl
4 Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards
2 She-Thing, Sharon Ventura
1 Franklin Richards, Child Prodigy
2 Thing, Ben Grimm
1 Invisible Woman, Sue Storm
1 Human Torch, Hotshot
2 Mr. Fantastic, Stretch
Plot Twists
4 Cosmic Radiation
4 A Child Named Valeria
3 Signal Flare
2 Thinking Outside the Box
1 Salvage
1 Foiled
Locations
4 Antarctic Research Base
1 Pier 4
1 Baxter Building
Equipment
4 Advanced Hardware
4 Flamethrower
4 Unstable Molecules
2 Personal Force Field
2 The Pogo Plane
1 War Wagon
1 Fantasticar
Look complicated? That's probably because it is. Fantastic Fun was heralded as the most complicated Vs. System deck to play. If you want some indication of the intricacies of the deck, check out this semi-final match report from $10K Amsterdam—another title Dean won with the deck.
The basic idea was to burn with Flamethrower and Advanced Hardware, using Cosmic Radiation to repeat the process. The deck wasn't limited to this, though, because the equipment gave it a little bit of bite in combat as well. One of the problems faced by Dean in the construction of the deck was how to deal with the problem of hand size. The answer was ready-made in the form of Antarctic Research Base (which has sadly now been banned from tournament play). Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards would help dig for the required equipment, and when Dean combined Antarctic Research Base’s effect with that of Thinking Outside the Box, he generated a marvelous deck-sifting machine; the cards ditched by Richards were no longer written off for the game. This was the game’s first truly dominant equipment-based deck.
Vidi Wijaya is a name you will become familiar with (if you have not already) as you follow competitive Vs. System. He has won more money than any other player on the planet (over $100,000 last time I heard) and at Pro Circuit Atlanta, he took the title with a deck that actually turned one of the biggest drawbacks of equipment to his advantage.
Vidianto Wijaya, Champion: Pro Circuit Atlanta
Characters
2 Albert Gaines ◊ Nuke, Atomic Powerhouse
3 Ape X, Xina
3 Electric Eve, Live Wire
1 Firestar, Hellion
4 Golden Archer, Wyatt McDonald
1 Hawkeye, Clinton Barton
4 Joystick, Janice Yanizesh
4 Lady Lark, Linda Lewis
4 Melissa Gold ◊ Songbird, Sonic Carapace
4 Shape, Malleable Mutant
1 Speed Demon, Second Chance Speedster
Plot Twists
4 Answer the Call
2 Enemy of My Enemy
4 Flying Kick
3 Mob Mentality
2 Other-Earth
4 Panacea Potion
Locations
2 Rocket Central
Equipment
2 Airskimmer
4 Image Inducer
2 Thunder Jet
While not strictly an equipment deck, Vidi's build does not try to avoid the hand advantage problem associated with recruiting multiple equipment cards; instead, it embraces it. With a slew of characters from the Squadron Supreme affiliation, emptying your hand is a positively good thing. Aggressive equipment cards add speed to a combat deck, and this particular deck is fast as heck.
In recent sets, equipment has become more powerful and subsequently more widely used. Cards like the Fate Artifacts and the Infinity Gems are making an impact in all formats in which they are legal. As I'm sure you are all aware, though, with every action comes a reaction. As equipment becomes more widely utilized, so does anti-equipment tech. Meltdown has seen an enormous amount of play in recent months, and many decks are now including characters like Jester and Commissioner Gordon, James Gordon. If you are running an equipment-reliant deck, you must be ready to see your toys get blown up.
Important Equipment Rulings
I would recommend familiarizing yourself with the Comprehensive Rules relating to equipment cards (section 302). There are a few mistakes I have seen new players make that are set straight by those rules. The three most common are:
1) If an equipped character leaves play, the equipment card goes to your KO’d pile. If an equipped character is returned to your hand, the equipment does not also return to your hand—it gets KO’d.
2) If an equipped character moves between the concealed and visible areas, the attached equipment is KO’d unless it has the keyword concealed—optional.
3) Equipment attached to a stunned character has inactive text; just because you don’t turn the equipment face down doesn’t mean its text is still active. That is, the text is inactive except for one word: unique. If an equipment card has the keyword unique, you cannot attach more copies of that equipment to a stunned character. So no using a character’s evasion and then loading it up with four copies of each of the Fate Artifacts!
Since we’re talking about the Fate Artifacts, there has been a recent addition to the Comprehensive Rules specifically relating to the transfer of equipment (a common practice for Artifact players):
512.4g If a player is instructed to transfer more than one equipment to a character, those equipment are transferred one at a time. Before that player transfers each equipment, he or she must check whether it is legal to attach that equipment to that character at that time.
Example: Pier 4 reads, "Each Fantastic Four character you control can be equipped with up to two equipment." A player controls Pier 4; an unequipped Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom; and a She-Thing equipped with Jetpack, Helm of Nabu, and Cloak of Nabu. That player activates Dr. Fate’s Tower to transfer all equipment from She-Thing to Boris. If that player chooses to transfer Jetpack first, the Fate Artifacts do not transfer because Boris is not a Fantastic Four character. If that player chooses to transfer either Fate Artifact first, then the other Fate Artifact can be transferred as well. However, the Jetpack cannot be transferred, as Boris has his maximum allowed number of equipment attached to him.
Equipment cards are rapidly gaining popularity within Vs. competitive play. They are a great way to enhance your deck and cover a wide range of abilities, they are the most searchable card type in Vs. System, and they continue to get better with each set. Just remember to watch out for a sneaky Meltdown that could spoil your fun!
Deckbuilder Challenge Cup
Okay, everyone, it's results time. For a couple of weeks now you've been voting on your favorite decks from the "DBCC#6: Mechanics" Challenge. Votes were (as always) compiled from polls on www.vsrealms.com, www.the-kamiza.com and via email votes. The results are as follows:
Brian Foley, “Full Court Press”: 41%
George Shafer, “I.C.I.N.G. Stall”: 19%
TheLord, “Justice Lantern of America”: 17%
Mike Mullins, “Moonnight Serenade”: 14%
cchug2001, “Justice for All”: 9%
Final points are awarded as follows:
Brian Foley - 5 points
George Shafer - 3 points
TheLord - 1 point
The leaderboard currently looks like this:
1. George Shafer, 7 points
2. Mike Mullins, 6 points
3. Nick Seaman, 6 points
4. Brian Foley, 5 points
5. Brian Herman, 5 points
6. Techno, 5 points
7. Tom Reeve, 5 points
8. Jin Yi Huang, 3 points
9. Ian Vincent, 3 points
10. Onyxweapon, 3 points
11. Tombster212, 3 points
12. Zach Luster, 1 point
13. Sam Roads, 1 point
14. TheLord, 1 point
George steams into the lead as Mike Mullins narrowly misses out on the points this time around. Brian Foley puts himself into the top five with his first point-scoring finish, and newcomer TheLord props up the bottom of the table with a score on the first entry. Congratulations, everyone. Keep it up. You never know—I might actually dig through my collection and see if I can find some nice freebies for you all.
Many thanks,
Steve
Steve “Kamiza” Garrett is an ardent supporter of casual Vs. play and has been an active member of the vast Vs. System online community since day one. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to email him at kamiza989@gmail.com or pester him at his website, www.the-kamiza.com