Palatinus' OverPower Forum

Quote from: Onslaught on January 30, 2011, 06:41:09 AM

Seeing your decklist with 4 multipower x4 reminds me of something. When I played some other CCGs around age 19 or 20, I had reached a point where card ownership was more of an annoyance instead of a hobby. I would often just borrow cards for whatever deck I was using at a tournament, or just buy them from a singles store online at the last minute after testing the deck online in Apprentice or whatever. There was no glory or fun to be had from acquiring cards and putting the deck together and such.

Man, too true.  I got the same way about cards at the same age.  When I first got into Yu-Gi-Oh (2003) I bought a couple boxes, but after that I would only buy singles.  Maybe this happens to everyone?  I think it either starts to become less about the cards but more about the big-gaming, or perhaps in this day and age it's easier to see cards, so there isn't any mythos to the cards themselves.

I also remember as a kid wanting a mythical "Power Leech" when IQ came out, as well as a Superman's "The Man Beyond Tomorrow" 11, and The Ray hero plus his "In A Blaze Of Power" 9.  Good times!

I can totally relate to that. Back in the mid-90s I knew nothing about any cards I didn't have. I remember when I found a checklist for the original set I remember being so excited that I actually knew the names of the cards I was missing.

With the internet that's completely gone, and that's sad.

I've been tinkering with a new deck concept for a few days now, and I think I've finally found the optimal lineup. Playing the Mission Control format these last few days has been fascinating, and really changed the way I think about the game. Is it better than current OP? Absolutely not. Is current OP better than Mission Control? Again, no. They're just different. Both formats contain all the defining gameplay elements that make Overpower what it is: bluffing, prediction, wagering skills, your ability to properly analyze (and attempt to dictate) tempo on the fly, etc. Mission Control makes you do this mostly through powercards, with your "X factor" being a few gaudy specials; while modern OP makes you do it through the way your character's special cards interact with each other, with your "X factor" usually being events/battlesite effects. Mission Control has less options than modern Overpower, so it is more streamlined or "simple." However, please note that simple does NOT mean dumbed down - for an explanation of this, check out the concept of subtractive design.

Anyway, this deck is pretty neat. If you break down decks of this era into specialists (lots of loner characters without stat backups) vs. single skill decks, you get some subdivisions that look something like "teamwork based vs. 8 stat based vs. special card based." The special card based decks tend to be a little higher concept than the 8 stat based decks, though both have somewhat similar goals.

The strength deck wants to KO your characters very quickly, but it wants to do this as a path to winning by venture. It wins by venture far more than by KO, because a) it forces you to have unusuable discards since it kills your characters so fast, b) it can let characters die and continue having low duplicates, c) the combination of a and b allow it to play a list that has no frivolous cards since it has no need for "tricks" or "tech."

The energy deck wants to KO your characters very quickly as well, but it wants to do this as a path to winning by KO. With the right draws, it can and will kill two characters on the first turn of the game. Of course, it can still win by venture if you are conceding to save your characters, but with proper venturing this can be mitigated.

So, what does all this rambling mean? Generally, attack specials are more valuable to a deck trying to win by venture than they are to decks trying to win by KO. There are a few special cards that really break the mold though. I think the best example of this is Telepathic Coordination. You can afford to bet huge with this card because you are guaranteed to crush them that turn. It doesn't matter how many extra cards they gain from your bet if you are getting multiple guaranteed KOs. So instead of KO leading to a venture win, you are getting more bang for your buck from your attacking specials by posing a dual threat. It might just be that this format relies heavily on "good attacks lead to quick KOs which leads to good venture" moreso than other formats since it's so fast. I think I've kind of lost my original point here, so I'll just go ahead and get to the new deck now.

Without further ado, the devourer of worlds himself has shown up in this old (new) metagame:



So, like I mentioned in an earlier post in the thread, multi-skill decks can win venture in the earlier turns because they have more teamworks than the single stat decks. The level 6 attack from a teamwork is a huge amount of points to venture in this format. This deck kind of takes that idea to the extreme, running running sixteen teamworks (E: 887766, F: 87766, S: 87766) and not very many specials. I started off the concept of the deck based on the aforementioned "Telepathic Coordination is an amazing glue card" and went from there. I've been meaning to try out Galactus anyway, and Telepathic Coordination just happens to be on an 11 point character to help balance out his 24 point cost. It's a very vulnerable deck, but it's consistent and plays vastly different from what the other standard decks of this environment can offer.

We'll see how much it wins after some testing.

Galactus has so much potential. Sure, he has no specials, but being able to operate 9 TEAMWORKS(!!!) is pretty hefty.

That seems an interesting team, I'm curious as to how well it fares.

-BBH

The Galactus deck lost its first game, but it was a rudimentary list and I can see how much potential it has now. Since it has such a low special card count, I tried playing it similar to my other deck with low specials (Punisher Deadpool Carnage Daredevil). In that deck, I really don't care if somebody dies since they all can play every card in the deck except for 2 specials per character, so I rarely block and I'm more focused on trading hits. In theory, KOing their characters hurts them more than having my characters KOed, since I should have less unusable discards.

So with this deck, no character has more than two exclusive cards. I figured I could use it the same way, letting people die fairly easily if I didn't have any exclusive cards left in my hand for the battle. The difference is, the Punisher deck will continue having no unusable cards down to the very last character. In the Galactus deck, after the second character dies you are going to have tons of unusable discards. So, I played it a little wrong, but now I see that you need a mix of both strategies. Letting the game go to the powerpack was horrendous, as I had very small hands each turn while shedding unusables. This deck wants to take more of a midrange approach - abuse the early redundancy by trading hits judiciously, and make sure to target their character that has had the least specials shown. I may want to kill Iceman more than Silver Surfer, but if two Iceman specials come up first turn then I have to switch things up. Ideally, you can agressively trade hits in the early game, then overwhelm them in the mid game with your continued stream of teamworks. You should be in a good position to do this since your traded hits in the early game will always be big hits to venture from the teamworks. With some agressive venturing and a "now or never" approach in the mid game, you should be able to prevent a lategame situation - which is where the deck flounders.

Galactus decks are pretty kewl.  It's too bad they never got the 4 stat version out the door.

This actually looks like a proto Beyonder deck of sorts.  I can see the powercards being a bit weird if Galactus gets powered down early.  I'm not sure how good the Black Cat opd's are agains't non strength decks of this format, maybe Captain America would help Galactus survive a bit longer if that's a problem.

Actually that's an amazing suggestion, especially since my Black Cat cards are already tied up in the fighting deck anyway. Nice!

Quote from: Onslaught on February 02, 2011, 11:33:46 PM
Actually that's an amazing suggestion, especially since my Black Cat cards are already tied up in the fighting deck anyway. Nice!

Thanks!

I figure that Black Cat is only there for her strength leech, the 3 is kinda gimicky, it will always hit against the strength deck, but it's only worth 3 venture.  Her only fighting CD isn't bad, but I wouldn't be attacking her over Galactus, followed by Prof.  With metagaming, Capt's 1-9 is pretty solid versus the strength deck setup, you can block all of thier big specials except Clobberin' Time, but Thing is usually in reserve.  Also since you only have a single 1-9er on the team, if you have a 1-9 placed on said character, they will probbaly be taking most of the heat.  Last but not least of course, the deck should run a lot more consistent plus play stronger against the fighting deck.

Just my thoughts on the matter!

So as I get closer and closer to completing this project (just missing some old multipowers, a few higher level powercards, and other easy to acquire things), I've been planning all the little peripheral details. Which kind of sleeves to use, the type of box to store it in, and so on. One thing I wanted to be sure to make was a pamphlet in order to kind of tie the whole box together. In a way, I was very worried that playing with older decks on a frequent basis would hurt the "legendary" feeling of them. For example, I still think of the energy deck's plethora of gigantic attacks with some degree of reverence, and it could become very easy to take that for granted with repeated use. "Oh ho-hum, I drew two level 11 attacks first turn again." So in order to prevent that feeling, I wanted to mythologize the decks by giving little blurbs for context and what it actually felt like to play against them at the time. Hopefully this little pamphlet (which will be laminated and fit into the final boxed set) will help preserve the original feelings towards these "museum display" decks. A lot of the text right now is just a placeholder, so please forgive the grammatical errors and wonky formatting. I'll probably gussy up the final version too, as the visual layout right now is a little bland.

I think that looks great! It really draws a person in!

So, thanks to an e-bay tip from CoS, I was able to track down one of the finishing touches for this project.



It's a little worn down, but not bad considering it's 16 years old. All four of the decks fit in perfectly.



Here's all the hero cards for the four teams



Here are the freshly sleeved decks



Also, as long as I had my deckboxes out I figured I might as well take some shots of what I currently have put together




Bonus picture of my deckbox for normal decks. I will be really sad when this thing finally falls to pieces since it fits two Overpower decks perfectly



Anyway, this project is almost 100% done now. I've finalized the pamphlet from the previous post, so once that is printed and laminated and I acquire just a few remaining cards (some Powersurge 4 multis, various Any Heroes), it's all done!

Man, that's so awesome the 4 decks fit perfectly into one of those old Overpower boxes.  I remember wanting one of those boxes back in the day but I never got around to finding one.  Though, 2 Ultra Pro sleeve boxes duct taped together with 4 beyonders on the outside worked alright!

The choice of Assualt on Onslaught is interesting for that Cable deck.  I really like the Captain America in the Any Hero deck, his personal avoid is rather good in a metagame sense.

I remember seeing one of those Darth Vader boxes way back.  Did they come with cards from that old Dechiper ccg?  Or with movies?

I'm pretty sure it's from a starter deck for the Decipher version of the game. There's a bunch of other ones too, like a green Yoda one or blue Luke.

QuoteI really like the Captain America in the Any Hero deck, his personal avoid is rather good in a metagame sense.

It's funny that you mention that, because it's so true. At first glance the lineup might look a little silly since Captain America is sort of bland, and having teammate avoids is always preferable in pairs instead of just a huge target (such as your only 8 stat character) running them. But, Cap is actually the only 8 fighting character with an avoid that also has enough playable cards to be put on a frontline without struggling to get to 56 cards. Of course, pure avoids are normally pretty mediocre, but they are viable for people like Cap or Prof X if they are your only 8 stat character. When you factor in Cap's teammate avoids, you can really create some difficult guessing games for the opponent if you are good at concealing what you may have in your hand each turn.

Since the aim of the deck was to pair the two best 7F characters with an 8F character (it's too common to see them put with Spawn or H4H), Cap actually fills out the deck perfectly for what it's trying to do. 20 point characters are kind of rare too, so I love it when a 16 pointer can offset a 20 and a 21 when the opportunity comes up.

Haha, yeah, I meant Decipher (dyslexia ftl).

But ya, now that you mention it I remember seeing those yoda boxes too.  There was a slim box people used as well, with MTG stuff on it, I think it was black?

I actually found my uncles old fighting deck completely unchanged from mid 1997.  It was:  Captain America - Nightcrawler - Wonder Woman

                                                                                                                                                      Hawkeye

I swapped Wonder Woman out (she had numericals) for Zealot, plus I took Capt's personal avoids out.. and the deck completely stopped working.  Apparently people knew what they were doing in 1997!

That deck looks a lot like one of my favorite JLA era decks:

Captain America, Nightcrawler, Invisible Woman, 3 Stat Sabretooth

For whatever reason, I was just so enamored with that frontline. Nightcrawler was a mini-Spawn, so he was natural to put in most fighting decks. Then, you have Invisible Woman backing up the Cap 6I and Nightcrawler 6E. At age 14 or whatever I was when I used this team, I just thought it was so cool to be like "heh, yeah that's right I'm putting Invisible Woman in a FIGHTING deck even though she only has a 4 fighting. Deal with it."

Speaking of JLA era decks, ideally the next project will be to put together a 4 deck kit for the JLA environment. Like I said earlier, I could never make one for the X-men era because there would have to be way too many decks to provide an accurate snapshot of how many builds are viable (not to mention needing to acquire an additional 5+ copies of DoW and Beyonder). However, JLA can probably be explored in just four decks, and the only high cost repeating card would be Leech.

The candidates for that one will be:

-Intellect Team
There are lots of permutations of these, all stemming from the skeleton of (choose 2 from): Sinister, Fantastic, Neron, Luthor and (choose 2 from): Robin, Beast, Dark Beast, Red Skull. The most common one to place highly in regionals was the Mr./Mr. combination with Dark Beast and Robin, but they were all good. One of the more clever ones decided to pass on a negate in exchange for a mini combo - Robin's "teammate make an attack at +2" with Red Skull and Neron's "6 if successful discard 2." This wasn't as stable as the others, but an 8 was really hard to block if they didn't have a negate. Luthor was the reserve for this one.

-Energy/Intellect Team
This was the best archetype when IQ came out, and a lot of people felt that it still was even in the JLA format. In IQ you would see Dr. Strange and White Queen used a fair amount in order to keep with a strict stat backup, but by this time you were much more likely to see Scarlet Witch. Magneto (both IQ and original), Onslaught, Brainiac, Professor X, Scarlet Witch (and Holocaust to an extent), Dr. Strange, and White Queen are the characters to consider here.

-Fighting/Intellect Team
Much like the use of White Queen and Dr. Strange, these decks originally had some rigid inclusions of Daredevil and Black Widow to go with Captain America. Since redundancy in grids is such a minor consideration for modern deck building (thanks to anypower power cards and stronger defense), it seems funny to think that you would include weaker characters solely because they were a dual stat character in the color you wanted. That's just how it was though. I'll probably end up going with the Invisible Woman team posted above.

-Energy/Strength Team
This will be be the weakest of the bunch, but it's worth mentioning. Trish Yue somehow won a regional (I think it was in Canada) using an energy/strength deck, and it was somewhat popular just because (once again!) the grids aligned so "perfectly." Holocaust, Superman, Eradicator, Parasite, etc. would be the characters to look at for this deck. If I were to make a strength deck for this environment using modern hindsight, it would probably just be an updated version of the one that's already in the other board game set: Juggernaut, Hulk, Thing, and Doomsday I guess. This deck is probably a little better than the Energy/Strength team, but still inferior to the other three so I might as well stick with the one that was more historically well known.

Potential Wildcards - Since energy and intellect were the strongest icons, there were a few hybrids you could make that didn't focus on having multiple dual stat characters (maybe just one to tie the deck together). Stuff like Mr. Fantastic paired with Professor X, or using someone like Robin in an Onslaught deck. These were all neat, but they aren't historically relevant enough to include in a project that has limited space. Plus, the Cap/Inivsible Woman deck sorta covers the base of "whoa slow down, your stats aren't all backed up multiple times!" I've made a mental note to make reference to decks like these in the eventual pamphlet that I'll make to include in the box with the decks.

This breakdown actually works out nicely. Each icon is the primary stat for one deck, and the only non dual-stat deck (intellect) is represented the minor stat in two of the other decks. Since everybody was so obsessed with dual stat decks when IQ/JLA came out, this is actually a really accurate representation of what you could expect to play against during this time period. I think that is the best part of these board game kits - when you look at them from afar they are little time capsules of what each era was like.