|
The Sentry™
Card# MTU-017
While his stats aren’t much bigger than those of the average 7-drop, Sentry’s “Pay ATK” power can drastically hinder an opponent’s attacking options in the late game.
Click here for more
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
| |
This is Part II of a series of articles devoted to the casual player. This article is all about alternate formats. For those who aren’t sure what I mean by that, alternate formats are various types of games off the beaten track—non-traditional playing formats. So, rather than play a straightforward one-on-one Vs. game, you could play, say, a five-player multiplayer game.
Why play alternate formats? There are two reasons. The first is for the challenge. It’s more challenging to build decks geared towards alternate formats, and you can’t simply netdeck the latest Ruler of the Metagame and ride it to victory. With most alternate formats, you really have to be on top of your game and understand the fundamentals and card mechanics in order to persevere.
The second reason to play in an alternate format is simply fun. Alternate formats are great! There’s nothing quite as fun as playing in a seven-player game with decks built solely of commons . . .
There are four sample alternate formats in the back of the rulebook (Multiplayer, Grand Melee, Team Alliance, and Two-Headed Alien) plus the three standard formats (Constructed, Sealed Pack, and Booster Draft). For more information on these types of games, just flip open the rulebook and read up on them.
Here are some other great Constructed formats, with the basic rules and some comments on each. Please take note that there are different ways to play some of these formats, and so you may know them with slightly different rules.
Remember, as well, that these formats are not just for casual players. You can hold tournaments using alternate formats as easily as you can play them in your gaming groups. If the idea of using one of these formats for competition interests you, (like, if you’re tired of playing FF Beats or Big Brotherhood in every tourney . . .), then simply approach your local tournament organizer or local game store owner or manager and ask whether he or she would consider sanctioning alternate format tournaments to make things a little more interesting.
So, without further ado:
VS. CONSTRUCTED VARIANTS
 King of the Hill
I’ll start with King of the Hill because I mentioned it briefly last week. King of the Hill is a form of multiplayer, and is one of the hardest formats to play successfully. If you’re not careful it will simply degenerate into chaos—or worse, into a typical multiplayer free-for-all. The format was loosely modeled on Diplomacy (one of the greatest board games ever made, in my humble opinion), and a good game of KotH involves wheeling, dealing, and a huge amount of backstabbing and deceit. The first player to draw blood becomes the King of the Hill and is immediately everyone’s target. Once a King has been declared, everyone must either attack the King until he or she is defeated (after which, the first player who puts the King to, or below, 0 endurance, becomes the new King) or until someone else becomes King by attacking a target other than the current King.
KotH is tough, because you have to know when to attack and when to break alliances. You can also hold back and let others deal with the King, or even support the King with plot twists while staying away from combat. It’s all about taking sides, making deals, and then breaking them to your own advantage. Of course, you have to remain trustworthy enough to broker deals in the future, and you don’t want to push people into taking you out, King or not, so use caution when brokering and breaking deals. What a headache! But believe me, it’s fun, competitive, and takes a lot of strategy to win . . .
A quick game of King is bloody and can take twenty minutes or less. A game where you build up your forces and bide your time can last hours. It’s best to use a larger deck, as you’re likely to hit high rounds and even run out of cards if you have draw power.
Emperor
Emperor is a team game that is best played three-on-three but can work with higher numbers—though it must be in teams of three to remain balanced. You need at least six people, or it doesn’t work properly.
 Each team of three chooses an "Emperor." The Emperor of the team is the target; everyone else is his/her support. The Emperor sits flanked by his/her two lacke—ahem—teammates. All three members of the first team play in succession, then the next team’s players play in succession—step by step and phase by phase, as normal—and so on, around the table. Teams can confer on moves, but the only player who has an endurance total is the Emperor, and all attacks are directed towards him/her. You can set the Emperor’s endurance level as high/low as you like, depending on how long you want the game to go. An endurance level of 50 to 75 makes for a solid game that doesn’t last too long. Each player builds independently and controls his or her own characters. However, each teammate can play plot twists and use locations on one another’s characters, and, most importantly, on the Emperor. As well, their characters on a side, though they remain under their owners' control, are all in a single front or support row, so you can protect and reinforce your teammates’ characters, though you cannot use them for a team attack unless they are all under your control. And every single character on a team must be stunned before you can attack the Emperor’s life directly.
This can get a little sticky with Vs. in ways that other CCGs don’t deal worry about. It can be easy to exploit your opponents, and one player missing a drop can be devastating. However, this is a very challenging format that can be oodles and oodles of fun—and designing decks geared specifically towards Emperor can also be a fun challenge.
2-3-7 and ABC
The names say it all. These are two related formats that are incredibly fun for obsessive-compulsive people like me who love databasing and working out puzzles and puzzle strategies. Being an Interactive Fiction fanatic may help to explain my fascination with building fun decks like these.
In 2-3-7, simply put, you can only put cards in your deck that have a cost of 2, 3, or 7. This counts for plot twists, locations, and equipment as well. You can also try other variants like 3-5-7, or 2-4-6, and so on, if 2-3-7 loses its luster. This is a challenging style because your favorite decks suddenly lose all of their staple cards. Team-ups, however, remain available, which makes for all sorts of interesting team combos you may not have thought about before.
Teams do become important here—a card like Press the Attack will be brilliant in 2-4-6, as you’ll have lots of 2's and 3's with activated powers just begging to be exploited. Pyro comes to mind. You should easily be able to get four to six characters out by turn 6, and using Pyro to deal fifteen endurance is a drooling prospect.
Here is a sample 2-3-7 X-Hood deck that works quite nicely.
3 Archangel
4 Cyclops, Slim
3 Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner
3 Psylocke
3 Wolverine, Logan
4 Wolverine, Berserker Rage
3 Mystique, Raven Darkholme
4 Pyro
3 Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff
2 Airborne Assault
2 Betrayal
2 Cerebro
3 Crushing Blow
3 Entangle
2 Fastball Special
3 Finishing Move
3 Home Surgery
2 Ka-Boom!
2 Last Stand
3 Mutant Nation
3 The Mutant Menace
2 The Blackbird
 This deck doesn’t rely on the team-ups, but if you do get a team-up on the table, the deck gets a whole lot prettier. Home Surgery is perfect for this deck, as all of your characters will have a cost of 2 or 3 until turn 7, and Betrayal will work well against decks that don’t try for a team focus. Ka-Boom! is nice for when you don’t get a 7-drop, keeping your opponent from his or hers until you can get your own out. Entangle and Crushing Blow make for a nice little combo, and Last Stand will come in quite handy on your opponent’s initiative. This deck also works nicely on team attacks, allowing your late game to flourish. You want to take odd turns, and on turn 7, Fastball Special or team attack your opponent’s 7-drop, using Finishing Move to KO it, and then attack with your Berserker Rage until there’s nothing left. Between Cerebro and the four copies of Berserker Rage, you should have him by turn 7.
One house rule that is an interesting one to consider would be to eliminate the uniqueness rule, essentially making every card an army card. Because of the limited number of cards at these costs, it would be interesting to see what someone could come up with being allowed to play four of the same character simultaneously.
ABC is similar to 2-3-7. In ABC, you have to include at least one card whose name begins with each letter of the alphabet. (Archangel, Boris, Crossbow, Dawn Granger, etc, etc.) If there is a letter that has no representations in the game, simply skip it. This is tougher than 2-3-7, because you lose a lot of the natural team synergy within drops. You should make sure to keep to teams as much as possible and try to choose characters whose powers are in line with one another. And watch that curve! As more sets come out, broadening the "alphabet," this format will become more and more fun to build and play.
If you find it hard to build solid decks due to Loyalty or team restrictions, you can play with house rules eliminating all team restrictions. If you ask me, it’s less fun that way, however—you really shouldn’t have any trouble keeping team restrictions in line.
All Commons and Highlander
Two more formats that have been popular for a long time—and these are two of my all-time favorites. All commons is self-explanatory: every card in your deck must be a common. In Highlander, "There can be only one!!!" That is to say, you can only play a single copy of every card in your deck. In other words, you have a deck of minimum 60 unique cards. This will work better in Vs. than in certain other games that rely on generic resources—you won’t have to dish out $20 to $50 for the special resources that power the highlander decks in those TCGs.
All commons should be easy to put together. There are so many brilliant commons in Vs. that you should be able to build a deck that can even compete with more expensive decks. Highlander’s a bit trickier, as you still have to watch the curve, and all team affiliation and synergy is thrown out of the window. It might be a good idea to play with the crossover rule—that you start the game with an automatic global team-up—to ease the team issues that would otherwise cause problems.
As well, in Highlander, those pesky team restrictions come back into play, because you need at least 30 individual characters and there is no such thing as "Army" in Highlander. You will have a tough time sticking to one team, and team-ups are hard to use—the most you can have is three to try and team-up two factions. So you may want to instill a house rule eliminating the team restrictions, but, again, it’s much less fun that way.
Next week, I’ll look at some Limited variant formats to spice up your drafting.
Note: I’m still looking for questions and concerns from the community—if there’s anything you’d like answered or addressed, please send me an email at kergillian@hotmail.com.
Also known by his screen name, Kergillian, Ben Kalman has been involved in the Vs. community since Day One. He started the first major player in the online community, the Vs. Listserv, through Yahoo! Groups, which now boasts well over 700 members! For more on the Yahoo! group, go to groups.yahoo.com/group/Marvel_DC_TCG. |
| |
| Top of Page |
|
|
|
|
|