I was never part of the larger Op community during the tournaments so I'm at a loss regarding some of the older tactics.
Could someone explain the 'shift era' to me? I'm assuming this had to do with building decks around characters with 'attack made on teamate...' specials, but could you elaborate?
Just curious. Thanks!
Basically, when Monumental came out, it included a character card for the Marauders, as well as the Four Freedoms Plaza homebase.
FF plaza allowed the player to shift any attack to another character, while the Marauders have a special called 'Vertigo' which allows unlimited shifting for a round.
Eventually they had to impose an erratum on FF plaza, stating that you could only shift if you planned to defend an attack. Still too powerful, they limited it further to state that you could only shift if you planned to defend with a power card related defense. (IE: Power card, power card with universe etc.)
Marauders decks started showing up everywhere paired with the X-babies, so you could shift all power card attacks to the Babies, who of course couldn't be affected by them.
Things got very narrow-minded and frustrating. 'Twas a dark time in OverPower.
They finally brought in two more errata to fix the Marauders/X-Babies combo. Well, one card erratum, and one blanket rule change. The erratum was to Vertigo, changing it so that you couldn't play it defensively. The rule change was called the 'dead is dead' rule, meaning that any character receiving a spectrum AND cumulative KO by any means was gone, regardless of their inherent abilities.
That's the Cole's notes version for you. ;)
-BBH
Ah, that makes sense. I knew about X-Babies prior to the Dead Is Dead rule, and I knew about FF plaza, but I never put the two together. That would be annoying. Thanks BBH.
I actually stopped playing for a bit during the shift era. The era was fun while you were playing Marauders or FF, but if you weren't it was impossible to win any games. A double negate deck would fare alright versus a Marauders deck, but you absolutely could not beat a FF deck, they'd just roll you over completely.
I'm actually glad you asked that question, Kal-el. :) I was wondering the same thing. I also keep running into discussions about Marauders and FF plaza decks. I've also just found out about this Dead Is Dead rule.
Thanks BBH for explaining the shift era to us.