Long overdue: First Original Art Giveaway!

With Worlds closing in quickly and my move becoming a little more stressful, I've been scrambling around trying to handle other business and failed to get this under way. For that, I apologize.

The first piece being given away is the Sinestro Corps image .Admittedly, I'm a little disappointed in the Superman's face, but it is what it is at this point :)

To recap, I am giving away the 10 original art submissions I am using to submit my art to Upperdeck Entertainment in hopes of nabbing some art jobs with them for future Vs needs.

10 original images means 10 weeks of giveaways. Nobody can win 2 weeks in a row. On Monday night, after I return from Worlds, i'll list the next image as well as the winner of the Sinestro Corps art.

To enter, just post a comment to this blog entry! A random winner will be selected and notified of their winning, at which time you should send me your mailing address for me to send you the original art.

Monday night I'll be showing off my custom counters for Vs and other CCGs/TCGs so be sure to check them out if you miss worlds and don't get to see them there for their world debut!

Ah Sa Llama Lake Um

Breaking the Bad Habit that is Stall Decks

Ok, this has been irritating me more and more for a while, the crappy decks that remove your opponent from the game, and many of which aren't even cleverly excuted. Spiderman is great to see getting some game time. Too bad it's just to abuse his broken effects and not to actually play the game.
So my answer for that BS?
Starfire. Yes, Starfire. Sure, she can't do it alone, but that's the beauty of this stunt. Your opponent can't respond to any of it very well at all. So follow along with me and let's see how hard this is to do:
We want to play Starfire on turn 7. Period. She is our recruit. We also want/need Amazon to give you an extra resource on 7, so against a stall deck, you'll get to keep her around most of the time I think. We finish this trick off by using Netherworld Gift to bring back a Magneto on turn 7, chained to the start of the recovery phase triggers. So, you put the resource k.o. on first, then Starfire's stun effect. Starfire resolves, stunning the opposing field. Then, chained to the resource k.o. you Netherworld Gift Magneto in to play then recover him. This effectively locks the game out for your opponent who planned to irritate you with stall BS.
What do you have to do to make all of this happen?
We need Underworld teamed up with Brotherhood. We need Titans Teamed up with Underworld in case Starfire stuns and we need to recover her. Or X-men. Blink for instance would help out a little bit perhaps.
We need Amazon for her resource grabbing effect, which includes Thunderbolts into the mix.
Is this too involved? How can this all be done?

As an incentive, the best designed way yo do this gets 10 free unused UDE points cards. 1000 UDE point store points. I'll make my decision for best answer by Monday next week. I'll post in Monday's blog and if you are that winning deck designer just send me your address and I'll mail out your point cards.

Cracked some packs today...

..well cracked open a lot of packs today. 3.5 boxes worth. First pack was a Black Panther 5 drop, followed by one of my best friends handing me the black Panther he opened in HIS first pack, too. 1 pack in and I already had 2 Black Panthers! I initially bought 2 boxes and 7 packs. The first 7 packs contained Captain America 6 drop, Cap's Shield, Avengers Reassembled and some more neat stuff. After the first 2 boxes had whet my whistle, I went back for another box and 5 more packs. then a pack of sleeves and 3 more packs settled my craving since I can't go broke buying cards any more. My overall haul was impressive and left me able to trade pretty well and pretty quickly with my buds to be able to build an inferior version of the Avengers deck that I'll be running a form of at worlds.

This is officially my favorite set of VS ever released to date! Asgard is GROSS in this deck! Losing the Argument and Avengers Reassembled make Rallying a piece of cake most of the time.

I won't buy more boxes before worlds, though I will play in some drafts and such when possible. Saturday in Stockton ought to be fun, I just can't go over board with my spending.

As for Monday Night's tournament, I went a disappointing 2 wins and 2 loses, losing to a bad decision on turn 5 that led to a worse position on turn 6. Yeah, nothing good at all. Oh well, Saturday ought to be better :)

Sunday night truths

I'll start off by talking about how excited I am about tonight's event. It is a tournament using no rare frequency cards in any player's deck. Rares are frequently higher powered, or at least very specifically powered cards. Usually. On occassions, however, they are open and fair game instead of finely tuned. Tonight there won't be any in any player's deck, so it'll be interesting to see what others come up with.

I am playing a Batman cetric deck using the Gotham Knights team. The event is what they call Silver Age, which means that the cards to choose from are restricted even more than just by rarity, but also by how old the set is that the cards were released in. My deck is focused around removing my opponent's characters from play every turn. No easy task, but I've devised a few neat tricks to help that strategy along. Check back tomorrow to find out how I do tonight.

Tonight I don't have quite so many truths to share.

Making the right decision is nowhere near as entertaining as making the wrong one. But at least the right decision makes you feel good at the end of the day.

Marvel Universe is heartbeats away from being my favorite set of VS ever released in the 4 years it's been around. A 5 drop Black Panther makes my gaming year!

Moving cross country will likely be good for me, as I'll get to open a new store or buy out an existing store. Either way, I'll be self sufficient once again and my son will reap the rewards some day.

My girlfriend doesn't "feel" loved enough, so I'm saying it here, in my blog that yes, I do love her very much!

That's all for now. I'm salivating over my first 2 boxes of MUN to come in!

And the news in in: Black Panther in MUN!!

So here's my take on what a few people have called lackluster: Just like the first Panther, his printed stats are either just below average to right at average. But played to his strengths, he is sufficiently above average to make him quite playable indeed.

As a 5 cost, dual affiliated to Avengers and Fantastic Four, Black Panther is only an 8/8 concealed character. He does allow you to replace 2 reservists when he enters play and distribute two +1/+1 counters amongst any characters you control as you see fit. Well that that's even better than the old Avengers 3 drop, since this can make your 4 drop as big as a 5 drop and leave Panther like a larger 4 drop. Not that you'd WANT to do that, but it IS an option.

I'm a much bigger fan of things like New and Improved, and if I k.o. my Marvel Knights concealed 1 drop Panther, I can recruit the 5 drop and give him the counters making him a 12/12 for 5. THAT is pretty awesome in my book.

And with his Storm to back him up at alternating drops, this takes me back to the Ultimate Alliance inspired Double Date team. LEap-frogging your drops and continuing to make the next drop +2+2 bigger than it's supposed to be seems REALLY good to me.

As a Reservist himself, Panther can protect himself from a multitude of effects by essentially hiding safely in your resource row until you need him.

While I'd love him to be Visible instead, I'd still rate him as a 9 out of 10. The only thing missing from him for my personal wants is to see him with an equipment theme sooner or later in a higher cost character.

Drawings for random winners of Original Art work!

By the end of next week, the weekend of the 13th, I will have finished the last of the images I'm submitting to UDE for artwork. To thank those that follow my blog even semi-regularly, I will be giving away each of the original pieces of artwork for each of my 10 submissions. One piece per week. The same member cannot win two weeks in a row.
How do you enter?

Sunday the 15th I'll list the first image. Simply reply to the blog post featuring the art you wish to win. The following Saturday I will post the previous weeks random winner along with the next piece of original art! After that, you can contact me with your mailing address and I'll ship the artwork to you! It really is that simple.

Have fun opening those MUN packs!

Mastering the Basics

This is the Random Punks deck I'll be playing most likely on June 9th in one of my last VS tournaments on the West Coast.

It is a very basic deck, but strong willed and solid through much testing.

2x Elongated man stretchable sleuth
1x Dinah Laurel Lance <> Black Canary new wings
1x Aztek champion of Quetzalcoatl
2x Kendra Saunders <> Hawkgirl thanagarian heroine
1x Red Tornado elemental android
2x Plastic Man plastic fantastic
1x Zatanna sucoh sucop!
4x Katar Hol <> Hawkman death from above
1x Firestorm Ronnie Raymond
4x Aquaman founding member
3x Batman justice's shadow
1x Wally West <> The Flash keystone cop
3x Martian Manhunter founding member
1x Aquaman Lord of Atlantis
2x Wonder Woman founding member

2x Hall of Justice
2x Birthing Chamber
3x Finishing move
4x Combat Reflexes
4x Magnificent Seven
2x Battle Training
2x Defend Yourself
4x Nasty Surprise
4x Death Trap
4x Home Surgery

Originally the deck was going to use Shape Change and Batcomputer to manipulate the Shape Change outcome, but that was too complicated and too contingent on hitting Batman on 5 and hitting the computer and enough Shape Changes to make it all worth it Instead now, I'm using Batman and Martian Manhunter on 5 and 6 and Home Surgery to hold off the opposing army until Wonder Woman can come out to play.

Thoughts and ideas are always welcome!