Palatinus' OverPower Forum

What about White Dragon Shield? I've also seen some Japanese branded sleeves at a comic shop here, haven't tested for transparency yet. I like my reds, they were cheap

Oh, and my OverPowerOnline YouTube account is now allowed to put up 15 minute+ videos, so I'll be uploading all future videos onto that account. Don't forget to subscribe!

Woot! Go Jack!

Ah, it's too bad that the newer Ultra-Pro products aren't as good as they used to be. They seem to have a bunch of inconsistencies in length too, so mixing and matching two different packs of same colored sleeves can still leave you with a marked deck. Those KMC/Japanese white sleeves are also transparent, unfortunately. Dragonshields are notoriously durable, so I bet you're right about their white being opaque. Player's Choice white is also completely opaque, but they are extremely low quality (they don't split after shuffling that much, but the clear window becomes foggy really quick).

Anyway, I've seen about half the match videos and so far the most salient observation is the amount of games that go to time. Thirty minute rounds is a bit extreme, but it should be doable if play proceeds at a reasonable pace. I can sympathize with needing to take some time to calculate before venturing and deciding when to concede...but taking three minutes to place or spending a minute deciding whether or not to defend is the kind of stuff that leads to every game running out of time. I haven't seen the top cut matches yet, but I'm guessing those are timed too.

Best match so far has to be Orange King losing to a first turn DOW/Viking Pyre, though he didn't seem too happy about it.

Quote from: Onslaught on September 01, 2011, 07:06:39 PM
Ah, it's too bad that the newer Ultra-Pro products aren't as good as they used to be. They seem to have a bunch of inconsistencies in length too, so mixing and matching two different packs of same colored sleeves can still leave you with a marked deck. Those KMC/Japanese white sleeves are also transparent, unfortunately. Dragonshields are notoriously durable, so I bet you're right about their white being opaque. Player's Choice white is also completely opaque, but they are extremely low quality (they don't split after shuffling that much, but the clear window becomes foggy really quick).

Anyway, I've seen about half the match videos and so far the most salient observation is the amount of games that go to time. Thirty minute rounds is a bit extreme, but it should be doable if play proceeds at a reasonable pace. I can sympathize with needing to take some time to calculate before venturing and deciding when to concede...but taking three minutes to place or spending a minute deciding whether or not to defend is the kind of stuff that leads to every game running out of time. I haven't seen the top cut matches yet, but I'm guessing those are timed too.

Best match so far has to be Orange King losing to a first turn DOW/Viking Pyre, though he didn't seem too happy about it.

My ultra-pro black shields from 12 years ago are STILL in solid shape. They certainly don't make them like that any more.

Yeah, Larry was not pleased at the match against my team. He already feels DoW is broken, add to that my ability to craft the perfect winning hand, set him right off. He had a bit of a rant after we were done.

I have some choice words in the semi-finals when Breadman takes out my DoW with a lil Iceman... Ha! Such is the way of the cards.

As powerful as DoW is, I think one has to look at the overall results to judge balance. Only 5 of 14 players this time around were using Battlesites. But the finals came down to two battlesite decks.

The obvious problem with DoW is that while it can be game changing, it's not reliable. It's wonderful to get it in the first hand, but how many times have you played a match where it gets buried right at the bottom?

I posit that with DoW, there is a nice balance between any heroes and sites. It may not seem that way when your site is locked down and you're sitting there with a handful of activators  and losing your team, but without DoW, any hero teams are much more vulnerable. Perhaps irritating in the moment, but certainly not broken.

Next tourney, I'll use a battlesite team to back up my words.

-BBH

Quote from: BigBadHarve on September 01, 2011, 08:00:15 PM
As powerful as DoW is, I think one has to look at the overall results to judge balance. Only 5 of 14 players this time around were using Battlesites. But the finals came down to two battlesite decks.

I was hoping someone would point that out. Even given the extreme variance of DoW, Battlesites are still the more powerful mechanic. The role of DoW is to keep Battlesite decks in check (15 or 16 card sites was the norm when you knew you would only be facing other Battlesite decks), and then the marginal utility of Any Heroes is still valuable in a deck that is naturally high to venture, or has an extremely low duplicate count, or wants to win in the powerpack, etc. Also, Fortress of Solitude is still arguably the best card in the game, so what Any Heroes lack in versatility they make up for in raw power.

It's a perfect balance really, though Any Heroes could use one more tiny boost for true parity (something like an AI). It's strange to think about what would have happened to Any Heroes if the game had continued on. At a certain point, you have to stop printing really good Any Heroes that can go into any deck, or you can run a deck with 15+ Any Heroes and pad your deck so much that you never have any dupes. The best direction to go would have been to make more bizarre or specific Any Heroes. That way they would still be usable, but not able to go into any deck by default. I think the best homemade example of that is JohnL's card that allows you to search for three level 1 powercards. It's good, but you can't just toss it into any deck like you can with Guardian, Leech, etc.

Quote from: BigBadHarve on August 28, 2011, 12:41:50 AM
Okay, the day is done and here are the preliminary results:

Breadmaster took top prize for the day with a deck design borrowed from Matt G - Beyonder, X-babies, X-men: OT and Prof X (3 stat) using Stark Enterprises as a battlesite.

Bread is on a roll! Congrats.