Venture or Team KO

[Shoe]

in all the times I played overpower with my family who i forced to play, we never ventured missions and just went for the KO.  IT seemd like there were just plain better ways to win in the following order

Venture Strategies always beat KO strategies
Spectrum KO was WAAAY easier than Cumulative KO

was this just beacuse I was a NOOB?  Is any of this fixed if you have non-marvel cards?  I never bought any DC/Image because I'm not a fan

[gameplan.exe]

in general, I'd say you're right. The Venture system works in such a way that you're able to capitalize on a good hand or two. This is why most games are over, well before that Power Pack gets reshuffled. On the flip-side, it's pretty tough to KO multiple opponents within just a few hands. One of the things I've always found so genius about Overpower, though, is how the Venturing works in tandem with the KO strategy. Things like, how KO'ing characters creates unusables, and how you can then Venture higher based on that.

Having said that, there are certainly some great cards that can really help get one of the other strategies to work much mroe effectively. I think it was breadmaster on here, that had a deck whose strategy was based on draining his opponent of power cards in the Power Pack (with the HB Specials) - so he used Captain Mar-Vell's venture-resetting card, as well as the New Universe Any Hero, to help prolong the game to that "Power pack phase" - where his opponent would likely be missing, say, any 6's or 7's ... not that it happened to me, or anything... 

[Shoe]

I had a deck that all it did was manipulate venture total, it was Longshot, Invisible Woman ...i forget the other two but it won a TON of games by just raising my venture total and avoiding attacks.

is that a common tourney strategy at all?

[BasiliskFang]

Characters with ao specials tend to be used more.

[gameplan.exe]

I had a deck that all it did was manipulate venture total, it was Longshot, Invisible Woman ...i forget the other two but it won a TON of games by just raising my venture total and avoiding attacks.

is that a common tourney strategy at all?

I've seen some pretty tough decks with Longshot, Invisible Woman, Comm.James Gordon, and Blue Beetle (although, not necessarily all 4 together), but I wouldn't say they are common, exactly. There are also Special cards that add to the Venture, but I'd say those are rarely used (AFs are pretty much never used, AWs used on occasion)

[BasiliskFang]

OI?

[gameplan.exe]

OI?

lol, first you have to use Thunderbolts! haha! but yeah, that'd probably get used too 

[Jack]

There's no advantage to using a +venture character in the back, the reserve IA doesn't contribute to ventures. Normally, since Longshot is around, Deathbird is also there to provide a 7F defense for the front line.

[gameplan.exe]

There's no advantage to using a +venture character in the back, the reserve IA doesn't contribute to ventures. Normally, since Longshot is around, Deathbird is also there to provide a 7F defense for the front line.

sho'nuff! or else some other defender in Reserve, like Black Widow, Spider-Woman, etc.