Paul Edward Nowak
United States
Greenville
Michigan
You have paid retail for the last time.
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. - GKC
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I really didn't want to get into another CCG, but my FLGS gave me a free Batman vs Joker Starter and my boys (10 & 8) loved it. Plus they're really getting good at doing the necessary math, even with numbers upside down from across the table.
My goals for expanding are:
1) Do it cheap
2) Cover favorite characters (X-men, Spiderman, Batman, Hulk, maybe Avengers)
3) Not get too tied down with new mechanics (thus early sets are better)
4) Keep flexibility high but collection small - thus as few teams as necessary
So, here's my plan for review:
Booster box of Spiderman or Starter Spiderman vs Doc Ock
Boster is cheap, cheaper than starter in fact, but only 2 teams in the set - don't want to get too overburdened with stuff only used by 2 teams. Plus starter guarantees main characters.
X-Men vs Brotherhood Starter
Cover the bases there. Ironically a box of 6 starters is cheaper than a single starter, but no sense in keeping more than 1.
And for the stuff I'm not sure about:
Batman Vs Asassins?
Is this worth it if we have the other Batman starter? Is the "Trial by Sword" card mentioned in wikipedia going to be a problem to our little closed system by being too powerful?
Marvel Origins & DC Origins boosters
Eventually will probably get these, $20 a pop shipped or thereabouts though.
Avengers booster box
$30 a pop, this is the most expensive and adds several new teams. Alternatively, I could find somewhere to pick up a bunch of Avenger team commons - so other than VsSystem.org, are there active trading sites where I might be able to pick up bulk singles?
Any input or answers to my questions would be appreciated!
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Michael Denman
United States
Katy
Texas
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overtheboard wrote: 4) Keep flexibility high but collection small - thus as few teams as necessary
I'm not sure I take your meaning here. By flexibility, do you mean if, for example, you have a Spider-Friends deck that you can change that deck up a lot between plays?
overtheboard wrote: Booster box of Spiderman or Starter Spiderman vs Doc Ock
Boster is cheap, cheaper than starter in fact, but only 2 teams in the set - don't want to get too overburdened with stuff only used by 2 teams. Plus starter guarantees main characters.
This is one of the cheaper sets because of it having so few teams in it. I don't think that's going to matter to you though. It's also cheaper because it's older and those teams appeared later, but again that probably won't matter to you.
overtheboard wrote:
X-Men vs Brotherhood Starter
Cover the bases there. Ironically a box of 6 starters is cheaper than a single starter, but no sense in keeping more than 1.
Multiple starters is probably a waste of time. This is the cheapest way for you to be able to represent them. The X-teams are just too popular so the sets they're in will cost more. The exception would be Marvel Origins, the first set.
overtheboard wrote:
Batman Vs Asassins?
Is this worth it if we have the other Batman starter? Is the "Trial by Sword" card mentioned in wikipedia going to be a problem to our little closed system by being too powerful?
I don't recall the deck composition well enough to know if the Gotham Knights from that starter is very different than the one from the Arkham starter. I wouldn't worry about ANYTHING that has an effect on the tournament scene. That shouldn't bother you at all because you're not going to have the zillions of other cards from other sets to exploit it a unfair way. You'll find some cards that were banned over time. Don't worry about that. In most cases, you're talking about them being banned because LATER sets allowed them to be exploited in unforeseen ways. If you don't go hunting for HOW via the internet then you're not likely to do the same thing anyway.
overtheboard wrote:
Marvel Origins & DC Origins boosters
Eventually will probably get these, $20 a pop shipped or thereabouts though.
These are the largest sets, I think, but you're talking about 5 teams in each and a lot of generically useful cards. If you're sticking to your own closed universe of cards, you'll probably not have to stress over better cards in later sets that replaced them. It just shouldn't matter for you.
overtheboard wrote:
Avengers booster box
$30 a pop, this is the most expensive and adds several new teams. Alternatively, I could find somewhere to pick up a bunch of Avenger team commons - so other than VsSystem.org, are there active trading sites where I might be able to pick up bulk singles?
This is my favorite set. Five teams I'm interested in from a comic reader standpoint and a VS player standpoint. I'm not sure where you go to find active trading nowadays. I know there's at least one big group on Facebook so maybe you could find some trades there.
Be wary of just buying a pile of commons. You can get away with that in some CCGs, but that's not always the case in VS. You'll want to have a character to play at every drop. If there's a team where the only 5-cost characters aren't common, for example, then you won't have any 5's in that deck. You might find that annoying over time. By the same token, if you buy a single booster box in a set, you might be missing some of the drops too. I think I have the complete card lists in the Files section here so you could take a set, sort for commons only, and then see if you could possible make anything playable out of it.
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Paul Edward Nowak
United States
Greenville
Michigan
You have paid retail for the last time.
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. - GKC
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Flexibility is vague, sorry. I mean replayability with some variety, such as good generic cards to use in different decks and some options with teams.
I found the Batman vs Assassins list here, though without quantity. Looks different enough from what we have to be worth getting for $5.
http://allccg.crystalcommerce.com/catalog/dc_batman_starter_...
(I guess Trial by Sword comboed with something, as it doesn't look broken by itself).
Downside to booster boxes is the fact that you might not get useful rares in your 24. Limit to starter decks is that other than the Spiderman and Batman vs Joker (which have 40 card decks), they are only 25 card decks.
We're probably going to have to mix teams in decks. e.g. Spider friends & xmen, in order to build truly playable decks.
Another option I saw on vssystem.org forums was the buying of constructed decks, and I saw one or two Avenger decks. So we could buy or request a deck from someone if we really, really want a particular team represented.
Thanks for pointing out here and elsewhere about the curve. I played MTG a little bit, but got big into the mechanics, and I remember the curve as a critical consideration for deckbuilding. Glad VS has a similar, but different, implementation of it.
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Matthew Vanek
United States
Twinsburg
Ohio
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overtheboard wrote:
Thanks for pointing out here and elsewhere about the curve. I played MTG a little bit, but got big into the mechanics, and I remember the curve as a critical consideration for deckbuilding. Glad VS has a similar, but different, implementation of it.
I'd say curve is more important in VS since the sheer number of available tutors when deckbuilding added to the fact that you are gaining resource each turn means you are going to hit the drop you want with much more consistency than in M:TG.
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