Overpower History, and some personal memories...

[Onslaught]

I found this message board through the wikipedia page, good idea to get more traffic. Too bad it seems the board is mostly dead...not many visitors I suppose. I'm sure there are a fair amount of people out there still playing OP, but even if they exist it's probably hard for them to even find this board in the first place. I think I read every thread on here, and a few posts were asking about the different top decks from certain eras, famous cards, and so on. I am completely nuts about keeping track of things like that, so I'll type out a broad but accurate view of how the metagame shifted from each environment, even up to present day. Since I actually still play frequently and talk to a few "top players" from back in the day, I can give a detailed view of the "current competitive metagame". You'd be surprised how many new things we STILL come up with to this day that are completely viable from a competitive standpoint.

Overpower (original set) - I think everyone could see at a casual glance that Strength decks just dominated everything. Decks were extremely rudimentary back then, usually running about 2-3 specials per character and tons of duplicate power cards since the card pool was not big enough to reach the deck size minimum. Hulk and Thing were the dominant personalities, by far.

Powersurge - Powersurge for the most part just made strength decks even better. At least now the difference was you could choose between Namor or Juggernaut instead of having the exact same lineup as everyone else. The power cards looked a lot more vibrant than the original ones, and a lot of the desirable cards were extremely rare (which became a bit of the pain for players needing Scarlet Witch negates a few years down the line!). Energy decks were very popular amongst "Timmy" style players since you could run lots of level 10 and 11 OPD energy attacks. This sounds stupid now, but you have to remember that back then nobody played a single negate (I wonder what a Beast deck with Sentinel or some other defensive character to protect him could have done back in that era...). Also, there were no battlesites or defensive characters in general, so 10's and 11's were almost always a guaranteed hit. In fact, one of the hugest bluffs/turning points in the original game revolved around whether or not your opponent had used his Guardian Angel yet. Playing around Angel or maximizing its use at the most beneficial moment was a huge indicator of skill level, which brings up what made Overpower such a unique game.

At the very base level of CCGs (Pokemon, Yugioh) you have games that revolve almost entirely around skillful deck construction and then luck. When you have no defensive options on your opponent's turn, it simply comes down to a matter of having a better prepared deck and drawing into your cards at the better moment. In the mid tier of games (for example...VS. system) you have defensive options, but your opponent still gets to decide how attacks will play out. At the very highest level of competitive games (Magic and countless other unknown but cult-popular games), there is usually one very important aspect that they all have in common: the ability to declare blocks. When a game has this, you immediately have more strategy than almost any other game combined. You have to decide whether to sacrifice a resource (using a card for a block) vs. letting an attack go through, you have to decide when to do this, and you have to weigh it against many other options. Overpower had this two times over, since some cards could even be used as attacks. Then add in the fact that due to Venture you could have diminished value of a card (aka it becomes useless to save a 9 or less for a bigger attack if someone concedes to end venture), and you have tons of decisions to make! When this many decisions factor in, it is possible for you to develop a personalized playstyle. Rather than have one optimal play that you either make or don't make, Overpower allows for tons of different strategies. Do you want to try to score hits at the cost of card disadvantage, then give up valuable venture by conceding but gaining the damage advantage? Do you want to play defensively and try to steal venture at the end of a round? You can never put a strict quantified value on an Overpower card either, which also helps it stand out from other games. In most games a card value is its value, simple as that. In Overpower, you can place that card to gain +1 in future card advantage but also at the cost of revealing it to your opponent, allowing him to plan for it in advance. How do you quantify this? The game is very organic and almost artistic in this way. Simply put, there is no best way to play, there is no one true strategy, and for the most part (excluding the obviously terrible cards) there is no concrete value of any given card. On top of all this, bluffing plays into Overpower more than any other CCG I've ever seen (and I've seen tons of them), again due to the fact that the Venture system means any player can force the other player to discard his hand at any time. Bluffing, reading your opponent, mind games, and general "man to man" interaction is an actual skill in this game, and some would say necessary for high level play!

Anyway, outside of Strength decks and fan favorite Energy decks (think Banshee, Human Torch, Iceman, and so on), the inklings of a "rock paper scissor" style counter deck began creeping up with Fighting. Black Cat had a level 3 energy attack that was completely unblockable by the Strength deck, as well as her "opponent must discard all cards with a strength icon" OPD. It wouldn't be until later on that the "discard all cards with a Strength icon" event came along that this deck really took hold though.

Here is a 99% copy of the deck that Cherie Briggs used to win the first Overpower Nationals ($5000 to first place):

Hulk- Power Leap, Enraged
Juggernaught- Head Butt, Battering Ram
Namor- Land Sea and Air, Imperious Rex
Thing- Rock Skin, Clobberin' Time.

Power Cards
Strength- 8888 7777 6666 5555
Fighting- 2 33 44
Energy- 111
Multipower- 222 33 44

Universe Items: 6+3, 7+3
6s to use teamwork
7s to use teamwork (x2)
8s to use teamwork

Any Heroes: Web Headed Wizard, Guardian Angel, Death From Above, Gamma Terror, Savage Land, Confusion

Look at how basic this is! The game certainly came a long way from the days of strength deck dominance.

Mission Control - This set changed everything by introducing "Event" cards. If a single deck became 90% of the field like strength decks did, everyone could simply run events that countered the top deck. Of course strength was so much better than everything else at the time that even the anti-strength events didn't slow it down, but the pieces were set for the environment to be blown wide open. Nightcrawler was a fairly popular card to try, as Bamf was quite unique at the time. Little did we all know that later on "teammate may avoid X or less" style cards could get much better, and come to rule the metagame with an iron fist. Another notable introduction to the game was Hawkeye.

Hawkeye introduced the concept of having a reserve character that could contribute before one of your other characters was KO'ed. This theme would be augmented many times over by a few other characters, and eventually led to some very tough deckmaking decisions. For a certain period of the game, everyone ran a character that could do something from the reserve (Flash, Hawkeye, Spider-Woman, and to a lesser extent Velocity, Callisto, and a few others). However, in the modern day Overpower, you have to decide between the early game card advantage provided by never drawing dead specials, versus the late game disadvantage of having an understatted character when they are potentially going into the powerpack with an extra 8 stat character that came up from the reserve. Again, much like playstyles, Overpower allowed (or should I say allows) for a great deal of variance in deck construction. You want synergy with the way you play, so a more by the numbers "every card needs to count for venture" player might want to use one of the aforementioned reserve staples; while someone with a more balanced approach may want to have some stat backup. Another strategy altogether would be to specifically try to force games to the powerpack and build a deck with three level 8 stat characters, allowing you to venture agressively in the power pack as every traded hit works in your advantage.

D.C. - DC was a fairly horrible set that is noteworthy for nothing more than introducing the Intellect stat and having amazing artwork. Other than that, all it did was hammer in the fact that the most popular and well known comic book characters would always be terrible in Overpower. Around this time was also the Onslaught promo expansion, which is big enough to be thought of as a sort of subset I suppose. It served to help usher in the intellect stat as well as set the precedent for variant characters that could use other characters special cards due to an inherent ability.

IQ - Widely regarded as the best set, and the current e-bay prices for a sealed box back up that claim. Every previously printed Marvel character got a new stat card with intellect, most got new special cards, Power Leech was introduced (the first card to need nerfing), Draw 3's were introduced (immediately errataed to limit one per deck), and the game just seemed fresh and new again. Not having out of touch "baby's first Photoshop" style CGI effects that the old Marvel hero cards had was nice as well. Strength's dominance finally came toppling down, with Energy becoming the new darling and staying that way basically for the rest of the game's existence (though as seen later, every icon had at least one era of dominance). With four stats, spectrum KO became much easier than before, and was preferred over the traditional cumulative KO strategy favored by strength decks. Professor X and Mr. Fantastic were two stand outs at the time, boasting level 8 stats for low point totals. Since IQ was such a big set, it revitalized nearly every archetype all at once. When I think back to this environment, it featured tons of playable decks, and any given week you would see something new winning a tournament.

One cool thing about Overpower was that it came out at an interesting point in time. The internet existed and was widespread enough to let you know about set release dates and tournament locations, but it wasn't as pervasive as it was today. You didn't have card previews outside of maybe a few mentions in some official AOL chat. You didn't know the entire checklist before the set came out like you did these days, so opening packs was unbelievably exciting as you discovered each new card that you had never seen before. I remember opening Power Leech and being blown away. I also remember entering a tournament the week IQ was released and losing to Magneto's 11, which I had no idea even existed!

JLA - JLA is my personal favorite set, mainly for the artwork but also for the time period that it came out in. Overpower in my area was reaching a fevered pitch, riding the high of 60 person WEEKLY local tournaments from IQ into another well made set was just a great experience and probably the most fun I had ever playing the game. Energy was tops in IQ, with Intellect only a short distance behind (with Energy/Intellect hybrid decks also being popular). With the release of JLA, Intellect decks momentarily overtook Energy as the most powerful/most heavily played archetype. The standard layout was two level eight characters (with one in reserve) chosen from: Mr. Sinister, Mr. Fantastic, Neron, and Lex Luthor, paired with two of the following: Robin, Red Skull, Beast/Dark Beast. A few crafty players got use out of the Holo Hero Batman, which allowed access to the Commissioner Gordon OPD to make your opponent discard all cards in hand with an intellect icon. I remember attending a regional shortly before Monumental came out and used Mr. Fantastic, Professor X, Beast, and Dark Beast with the Crossing KO event to kill my Dark Beast and lose nothing while forcing them to lose someone that actually mattered. The finals of that particular regional was an Intellect mirror match, with both decks opting to use Mr. Sinister, Robin, Dark Beast, and Mr. Fantastic in reserve. The second Nationals also occurred during this era, featuring Cherie Briggs winning yet again with a Scarlet Witch deck (I believe alongside Professor X, Onslaught in reserve, and one other character that I can't currently remember).

Monumental - Monumental introduced the any hero negate Bastion, but ironically also made it pointless with the release of Battlesites. For the most part nobody touched Any Heroes outside of New Lease on Life (shuffle back dead pile) gimmick decks or things that focused on KOing the battlesite and then resetting venture. Besides battlesites, Monumental also brought Four Freedoms Plaza and the Marauders, two examples in poor card design. Shifting attacks in Overpower was completely brutal, as it allowed for insane amounts of virtual card advantage. Marauders vs. Marauders matches still requried skill, but you were basically forced to use some variant of a Marauders deck or Four Freedoms Plaza to be able to compete. Luckily, there was still room for personal expression, as I fondly remember using the KO Event with Marauders, The Ray, Black King, and the Hellfire Club. Since it was extremely unlikely that any of your characters would ever die due to Vertigo, most decks loaded up on the amount of specials per character and were completely devastated by the KO event. Due to "Malice," the Marauders also allowed for "mega-draw" decks with the incredibly strong Starjammers (also released in Monumental). The Marauders, Starjammers, and Reavers all being in the same set really kicked the power level of hte game up a notch. The other megaton character card from this set was the X-Babies, which in concert with Vertigo made games extremely weird. Onslaught's Citadel became the powerhouse battlesite, due to it's ability to suck up all the hits you moved to the X-Babies or do the opposite and move all the permanent record hits on your opponent's X-Babies into the current battle. The game at this point had shifted from Energy/Intellect being on top to Energy/Fighting.

Classic - Classic introduced Artifact cards, which mostly sucked (outside of using The Infinity Gauntlet with The New Warriors and constantly shifting attacks onto them). In fact, most of Classic is pretty unremarkable outside of a few notable cards, the main one being Heroes for Hire. H4H brought some much needed offense to the game, and their dual stats for only 21 points cemented Fighting as the premiere icon in the game. Even though everyone was a little bit bitter about the Marauders/Four Freedoms environment, Nationals still had a wealth of creative decks on display (some decks that come to mind from top 16: Marauders, Onslaught, X-Babies, Professor X...Marauders, Thor, X-Babies, and the Flash with 11 copies of Gift from the Gods to search itself out to stall turns and then grab Viking Pyre to set up a one turn win...Marauders, Starjammers, Heroes for Hire pure offense frontline...and the two most shocking of all, Neron, Dark Beast, Black King, Mr Fantastic and Nightcrawler, Invisible Woman, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Woman both making it to the top 16 without any attack shifting!). The finals of Nationals featured Marauders, X-Babies, Scarlet Witch, and the Flash vs. Marauders, Heroes for Hire, X-Babies, and Hawkeye. The Scarlet Witch deck used Any Heroes, but the real genius in it was running two negate characters. Most hands you could offensively negate their floating Vertigo, forcing out use of their one negate. Then next phase you could use your second negate to kill their Vertigo for good and force them to concede in order to not lose any characters. In the end though, Black Knight sliced through Vertigo and the followup 8 KO'ed the Marauders, giving the H4H deck the victory.

Image - Outside of the release of Spawn (and a few other notables such as Zealot), the Image metagame was defined by the fact that the all of the stupid stuff from the previous environment had been errataed. Vertigo could only be used offensively (for a while it was simply limit one per deck), Four Freedoms Plaza could only shift an attack if it was going to be defended by a power card (for a wihle it was simply "One shift per turn), any character (namely the X-Babies) that met the requirements for both spectrum and cumulative KO was KO'ed regardless of anything else, and a few other minor tweaks were made to address Image Inducer and bet 7 decks that abused "target hero may not attack or be attack" specials. Spawn was an absolute monster, and he ushered in the sort of deck you are most likely to see in modern Overpower. That is to say, a very simple skeleton for making decks now is to have an 8 stat character, criss cross his 8/7 stats with other level 7's for some teamwork strength, have a negate character for disruption, and someone who can play specials from reserve. Of course this is a rudimentary take, but this outline led to probably the best deck of the time: Spawn, Scarlet Witch, Starjammers, Spider-Woman with Onslaught's Citadel.

X-Men - The final set was actually a really good one. Outside of X-Man bringing an 8 stat with great specials for only 17 points, X-men also featured Donald Pierce, Devourer of Worlds, and the Megapower set. Decks here evolved from the template set out in Image, but now you had to make a decision between Any-Heroes and Battlesites due to DoW.

[Onslaught]

-Part II (it wouldn't fit into the post limit)-

Now with that history out of the way, what about the current state of the game? I know a lot of you who still play like to use modified rules, home made cards, and so on. I would like to contend that the farthest you can go while keeping the spirit of the game intact would be to use the Marvels cards, but this should be a last resort to spice things up. Believe me, there are tons of competitive decks in the X-Men environment out there, and even only going by the established powerhouse archetypes you have a very diverse and compelling hierarchy of decks.

If I started listing every side deck I use here, the post would never end, so I'll save a few of my pet decks and their summaries for the end. Instead, I'd like to show how the X-Men top tier decks shape the current metagame - hopefully in as concise a manner as possible.

The Mainstream characters that start the skeleton for most decks: Heroes for Hire, Spawn, X-Man, The Reavers/Donald Pierce, Scarlet Witch, Starjammers

Mainstream Reserve: Spider-Woman, Hawkeye, the Flash

To start off, we can anchor the format with a very plain and boring deck. Perhaps it's unfair to call it boring, a better term might be "extremely efficient." This deck wants to block everything, never have duplicates, and chip away little by little until it's lack of duplicates let's it win by venture or until it drags you into the powerpack and (ideally) has more 8 stat characters than you do.

Spawn, X-Man, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Woman, Any Heroes, Shattered Image

Since this deck is all about efficiency and never discarding, it wouldn't dare run a Battlesite and risk being hit by an early DoW. So now that we have a baseline for what a plain energy deck might look like, what about something a little more spicy? Spawn is a nice mix of offense and defense, so putting him with a balanced lineup gives you the aforementioned:

Spawn, Scarlet Witch, Starjammers, Spider-Woman, Various Battlegrounds/Mission Sets

It's easy to see that both of these decks would not like to encounter Heroes for Hire, which can penetrate their defenses. Furthermore, Fatal Attractions can completely cripple energy decks while allowing for some fancy combo setups too. Serpent Society generally makes a good partner with H4H as your negate character. Other negates that pair well with H4H are The Reavers (but this puts you at two characters costing 21 points) or Beast: The Brute (coming in at a very effective 16 points). For the most part you want to use "teammate may avoid 1 attack" characters in pairs, otherwise strong players will simply target Serpent Society making your teammate avoids into dead cards. When you have criss cross teammate avoids you guarantee the survival of the third character (in this case, Heroes for Hire) and allow for some maximized use of at least one of the avoids. So combining all those elements:

Heroes for Hire, Zealot, Serpent Society, 3-Stat Spider-Woman, Fatal Attractions, Onslaught's Citadel

Now, that oughta wake us up. Not only have we broken away from the Spawn defensive mold, but there is an "underused" character in the form of Serpent Society. You have to maximize efficiency in order to use the non-mainstream characters, but when you do the results are explosive as seen here. What about taking the anti-energy concept a little further, this time with even more non-mainstream characters?

Maverick, Team-X, X-Babies, Sabretooth, Fatal Attractions, Onslaught's Citadel

You probably don't want to play your power cards against X-Babies even with the Dead is Dead errata. Play them vs. Maverick or Team X and you walk into Maverick's "avoid a powercard, draw one card" special. You also get the anti-energy power of Fatal Attractions, along with Maverick's "not affected by events" used on Team X (along with Post's version from the battlesite if needed) with the "No Special Cards may be played" event, which can also be set up by the event that places any four cards on top of your deck. The X-Babies can stop DoW with Lil' Iceman, and a lot of players these days prefer a slimmer battlesite with a OPD such as Lady Deathstrike (or Post's equivalent) to get rid of DoW. Things are getting a little more interesting now, aren't they? Another huge benefactor of Fatal Attractions is an old deck but still massively powerful in the right hands:

Mr. Fantastic, Thing, Invisible Woman, Namor: Sub-Mariner, Fatal Attractions, Battlesite or Any Heroes

Sure you can only shift if you are going to block with a powercard, but this still lets you place out powercards with no fear that you are losing defense for another character, letting you generate massive hand advantage as you should outplace your opponent by a fairly wide margin. Invisible Woman is rock solid and generally underplayed (trying to 1 for 1 trade with everything your opponent has and relying on her power to win venture is nearly a top tier archetype on it's own). Now let's get back to some of the mainstream characters, but used in a fairly novel way:

X-Man, Reavers, Starjammers, Spider-Woman, Battlesite, Infinity Gauntlet

This deck won the last large Overpower event (held at the site where Nationals would have been, were it not cancelled). The stats aren't matched up that well, but in this day and age most sophisticated decks run only 16-18 power cards. When you factor in Any-Powers, duplicates, cards in hand lost to conceding before the battle begins, and so on, having mismatched stats often is not a problem assuming you plan to win before the powerpack comes up. Speaking of bringing a quick end to the game:

Beyonder, White Queen, X-Babies, 3-stat Magneto, Age of Apocalypse Battlesite, The Crossing Events

Beyonder's ability to chain multiple attacks in a row before your opponent gets a turn is great against defensive based decks. When you play such a large string of attacks, they are less likely towards the tail end to still have anything left but have not yet had the opportunity to concede. At the same time, you can play off most of your hand, take one hit, then run by conceding - gaining yourself a huge advantage. Beyonder decks can also always run the KO event due to character redundancy. Much like the old Marauders decks, defensive based Spawn decks do not like having a character KO'ed for free since they have loaded up on specials with the idea of creating a snowball effect defensive net. There are lots of directions to go with Beyonder, and not all of them have to be based on chaining out attacks. For example, Beyonder, Shadow King, Mr. Fantastic, X-Babies is a very solid and "non-gimmicky" Beyonder build. Beyonder, Blob, 3-stat Mobius, and Thing comes to mind too.

Since I've been typing for two hours at this point, I'm gonna conclude with a bunch of decks that either I or someone in my playgroup has used within the last two years and been able to win consistently with. As an off topic side note, at some point I'd like to make a followup point listing underused characters. There are a lot of people that fit in very strongly with certain decks (such as the Serpent Society above) that generally get overlooked. Also, I feel that Wundagore Mountain, Krakoa, and especially Concrete Jungle are massively powerful battlesites that are very rarely utilized.

Asteroid M Homebase deck (Scarlet Witch, 3 stat Magneto, 3 stat Blob, Rogue) - extremely annoying to play against
Zealot/Wonder Woman/Serpent Society (or Captain America)/3 Stat Spider-Woman - power pack based deck
Starjammers/The Hand/Gambit (or the Reavers)/Hawkeye - 8 anypower deck
The Marauders/Zealot/Serpent Society/Sabretooth - Variation of H4H anti energy
Neron/Donald Pierce/Ghost Rider/3 Stat Spider-Woman - "Strength" deck
Stark Industries Homebase deck (various lineups, all using Scarlet Witch and 3-stat Iron Man) - underrated
Spawn/Spider-Girl/Reavers/3-Stat Spider Woman -gritty but defensive
AoA Homebase deck: Dark Beast/X-Man/Holocaust/Shadowcat - dual negates with X-Man and super good homebase inhernet
Donald Pierce/The Reavers/Dark Beast/Beast: The Brute - KO Event/able to take lots of hits
The Reavers/Post/The Penguin/Poison Ivy - use seven Thor Activators to Viking Pyre, remove everything "Rebel Forces Regroup" and your can't be attacked OPDs to bet 7
Cable/Spawn/X-Babies/Hawkeye - Cable is expensive but can be good
Cape Citadel Homebase - Xaos/Landslide/Grey King/Mercury - really unique specials, amazing homebase inherent, good aspect
Colossus: AOA, Symbiote Spider-Man, H4H, Thing: Try to use Spidey's Taunt the turn you Leech or Siberian Strength, break through 9 or less defense nets (if they are any heroes and used a negate that turn) with Over the Edge
Adam Warlock/Invisible Woman/Scarlet Witch/Spider-Woman - use Big Apple to Taunt them and chain off huge attacks with Invisible Woman and Adam Warlocks level 3 specials, use Soul Gem with Taunt to KO a support character
Deathlok/Professor X/White Queen/Dr. Strange - Dual JWs
Professor X/Bastion/Donald Pierce/Onslaught - rock solid
Galactus/3-Stat Doc Samson/Scarlet Witch/Deathbird - teamworks ahoy
Beast: the Brute, Sentinels, H4H, Thing - new school traditional Strength
H4H, Stajammers, Marauders, Hawkeye - big offense
X-Men Original Team, Serpent Society, Mr. Fantastic, Malebolgia - Malebolgia backs up all stats and can't be cumulative KOed in the powerpack, 3 frontline teammate avoids, devastating teamworks, can utilize "No Attacks Made with Fighting Icon" event
Hulk, Professor X, Mojo, Darkseid - More rainbow teamworks
Spawn, X-Man, Holocaust, Jean Grey: Dark Phoenix - don't underestimate 8 stats in reserve just for the ability to win in the powerpack
Starjammers, Captain America, Reavers, 3-Stat Spider-Woman - use personal avoids and feel like you're back in 1997?

Well, hopefully this was interesting to someone, Overpower is still cool ya'll

[Jack]

That was a very insightful post about the history, and I guess current picture, of OP.

After reading it twice, I can no longer assert myself as a knowledgeable OP fan. The decks you've listed above inspired me to look into using characters I would have never thought about as most of my decks stems from a cookie-cutting design with Spider-Woman 3-stat in the back no matter what.

For me, I'm a late bloomer when it comes to OP. My brother and I received our first packs in 96/97 and they were 2 IQ packs. After purchasing a few starter decks to actually play the game, we didn't really do much about OP and put it away. Somewhere along the line, we met up with our cousin that also happened to have OP. So we played and we played, but then it abruptly stopped. I forgot when this was, but it was probably before 1999 and put our OP away and picked up Pokemon. Though, we (collectively, with our cousin) still had interest in OP.

Pokemon died out for us in 2004 and my cousin had just purchased a lot of OP. Saying how he wants to revive the game between us, he generously donated a lot of cards and we have now overfilled our first 550 count card box. From that point, we looked into OPO and played against each other with decks that we couldn't obtain. I really don't know how it happened, or when, but our collection grew. And it grew to be very big, spanning 4, 1600 count card boxes.

We never had the opportunity to play outside our family because we finally had the knowledge and the cards to back up that knowledge in 2008. Our cousin had a very long winning streak with a FFPlaza deck and it had only recently been toppled and ripped apart.

All 3 of us consider ourselves to be very good players and have built every possible competitive deck. But after looking at your deck ideas, I would probably want to look into our collection again and maybe drum up a few new decks.

And the obligatory posting of my current decks:

Human Torch: Invaders, Invisible Woman: Malice, Thing (IQ), Namor (X-Men), Any Heroes, Brave and the Bold mission
I came up with this deck to finally take down my cousin, with a hint of irony. I wanted to avoid Mr. Fantastic like every other F4Plaza homebase and decided to pair up stats of the characters. With that in mind, I was able to put a lot of teamworks in the deck. The Any Heroes weren't part of the actual plan, but after a few games with them, they stuck. I used the shifting IA to my advantage and always tried to shift cards to someone who could use the +1 defense bonus. And with that idea, I was peering into the list of events and picked out Darkseid's Elite, which granted +1 to defense for any IA that has it. With my interpolation of the rules, this also applies to homebases.

The Hand, Nick Fury, H4H, Spider-Woman (3 stat), The Outbacks, unsure of mission if any
I must admit that this deck started off as a cookie-cutter with H4h swapped for Starjammers. My winning percentage was very low with this deck, even though theoretically it should come out on top. After obtaining my first H4H, I decided to try him instead of Starjammers and the connection was made.

I have also experimented with a Wundagore Mountain deck but haven't won a game with it yet. The potential is there, with the aspect card being one of the most useful ones that exist.

I'll be giving your posts another read because there is just so much information to absorb.

[CoS]

I just want to say THANK YOU!

The history of OP nearly brought tears to my eyes.  In 1996 I entered college and was introduced to ccgs for the first time.  Overpower was a hugely popular as many of the guys in the dorm were massive comic fans.  I started playing and collecting for about 6-9 months before the game was banned by the faculty after one dorm supervisor saw the artwork of unlucky at love being played in the common room. So...  I started playing Decipher "Star Wars", then WotC's "Battletech" and when I went to law school I started playing competitively (plenty of road trips to worlds  etc.) the Decipher produced "Lord of the Rings" ccg.  When LotR started losing support in 2004 I picked up UD's "Vs" system and started playing Versus traveling to Origins for the first 10k.  However, it could not captivate me and I sold player sets when the cards were actually worth something.

Recently, I stated to miss ccgs again, and I brought out my OP cards. I don't think there is a single ccg that gives me as much pleasure or causes me to analyze the multiple level of card play interaction as OP.

I love this game and hope sincerely that either

1. People will start playing again on OPonline (via Norman Barth's Deckbuilder)

OR

2. People will start playing online with the advent of the online based server game-play at http://phillipgs.virtuaserver.com.br/overpower/

regardless,

I hope that you are willing to play online and tell your friends about online. I would consider it a privileged to venture against one who was so connected to the background and story of this game!


cheers,
CoS

[Onslaught]

@Jack

That's an interesting take on Four Freedoms that I don't think I've ever seen, nice. Also I love FFP with Any Heroes, it just makes the deck feel so old school since most of your specials are from the original set and Powersurge.

@CoS

Wow this program is so amazing, I'm gonna try to show this to everyone I know. Normally I would try to play matches using OPOnline (a bit different from the Norm Barth deckbuilding program you're thinking of), but that requires knowing someone that wants to play in advance and then going through the trouble of directly connecting to their IP and all the hassle that goes along with that. It looks like this program is server based so if anyone is hanging around looking for a game, you can join and play a random person? Maybe I'm wrong there though, but hopefully this can spread and it reaches a point where you can log on at any time and find an opponent.

The only downside I see so far is that it doesn't let you use 3-stat characters when building a deck, which is understandable since that would be a lot more pictures to put up and most of them aren't usable. You can always just add the IQ version and tell your opponent that you're using the 3-stat though.

Edit: one other minor nitpick, the program thinks the minimum deck size is 51 even if you add events. No big deal, since you can still go up to the proper 56 on your own.

[Jack]

There's a simpler way to play via OPO through Hamachi. Hamachi creates a virtual network tunnel between a group of computers and doesn't need to involve opening ports and knowing a constantly changing IP in some cases. My cousin and I used this method to play and I'm sure the infrastructure is no different today as it was a few years ago.

[Bios]

@CoS

Wow this program is so amazing, I'm gonna try to show this to everyone I know. Normally I would try to play matches using OPOnline (a bit different from the Norm Barth deckbuilding program you're thinking of), but that requires knowing someone that wants to play in advance and then going through the trouble of directly connecting to their IP and all the hassle that goes along with that. It looks like this program is server based so if anyone is hanging around looking for a game, you can join and play a random person? Maybe I'm wrong there though, but hopefully this can spread and it reaches a point where you can log on at any time and find an opponent.

The only downside I see so far is that it doesn't let you use 3-stat characters when building a deck, which is understandable since that would be a lot more pictures to put up and most of them aren't usable. You can always just add the IQ version and tell your opponent that you're using the 3-stat though.

Edit: one other minor nitpick, the program thinks the minimum deck size is 51 even if you add events. No big deal, since you can still go up to the proper 56 on your own.

I am developing this program for at least 8 months and I think we need 6 months to finish it. Onslaught is right, the program is server based and you will be able to play anyone who is online. There is no need to download a program or knowing the IP address from other players.

Actually some 3 stat heroes are available in the deckbuilding program (Jubilee, Magneto, Professor X, Morbius, Blob, Domino, Black Cat and Brood). Some were left out because they are near useless and it saves time every time you need to load the program.

The deck size count has a slight difference from the official rule: It only counts non-Event cards, it means your deck needs at least 51 cards, plus events.
I made it that way because the official deck size rule doesn't make much sense if you want to use a single event. It acts like a penalty for using events if you like to play a minimum deck strategy. But like Onslaught said, you can still building your deck with at least 56 cards, if you are loyal to that rule.

The new program also have the option for homemade cards. There are 4 homemade sets available and there will be more soon. Characters like Wolverine, Batman and Spider-Man are finally playable!

The deckbuilding program is totally functional, but I still want to improve it with some ideas I got from people who tested it.

It's not possible to play yet, but if you access the "play game" option you will be able to invite other players for a game. Then the program allows you to choose the deck you want to use, sorts who goes first and open the game screen. There you are able to draw 8 cards and see your opponent's team. Of course its only possible if you find another player online in the chat room.

[Onslaught]

Actually some 3 stat heroes are available in the deckbuilding program (Jubilee, Magneto, Professor X, Morbius, Blob, Domino, Black Cat and Brood). Some were left out because they are near useless and it saves time every time you need to load the program.

Three stat Spider-Woman is another commonly used character.

The deck size count has a slight difference from the official rule: It only counts non-Event cards, it means your deck needs at least 51 cards, plus events.
I made it that way because the official deck size rule doesn't make much sense if you want to use a single event. It acts like a penalty for using events if you like to play a minimum deck strategy.

This was an intentional design decision to keep decks from drawing "combo" events too quickly. Plus it lets you run a thinner deck in general since Events replace themselves, so you would get to draw your One Per Deck cards much more quickly this way. The increased deck size penalty for using events was definitely an intentional drawback.

Nice work on the program so far, it's almost as good as OPOnline yet doesn't any downloads while having server based gameplay. Great stuff.

[Bios]

Three stat Spider-Woman is another commonly used character.

Ok, I will add that one too.

This was an intentional design decision to keep decks from drawing "combo" events too quickly. Plus it lets you run a thinner deck in general since Events replace themselves, so you would get to draw your One Per Deck cards much more quickly this way. The increased deck size penalty for using events was definitely an intentional drawback.

Seems that I finally understood the concept. Even that I don't agree with that idea. I don't think 5 cards is a great delay for drawing a combo, but it makes a lot of difference if you are trying to avoid duplicates. 

Nice work on the program so far, it's almost as good as OPOnline yet doesn't any downloads while having server based gameplay. Great stuff.

It's pretty much based in the old program. We are planning some improvements for the deckbuilding that will turn it even more close to the original program. For example, the filters in the character card selection and the power card tool. And we will add a overview screen of the deck. Thanks for the support, I hope we can play in a few months.

[Onslaught]

Spawn/Spider-Girl/Reavers/3-Stat Spider Woman -gritty but defensive

I played a game with this today...I have to say if I had to win one single game against a random opponent with my life on the line, I might choose this deck. For an overall tournament environment I don't think I'd run it, as it is very hard to win multiple single elimination matches in top cut with a "defensive net" deck. There are too many things that can go wrong, and when one piece goes down in a deck like this the whole thing comes toppling down. This is the reason you usually saw H4H decks winning big events more often than not, even though the number of H4H decks were far outnumbered by Spawn based defensive decks.

Or you could just run them both together (at the cost of not having a negate character), which I used at a regional for an undefeated swiss record. I'm actually still a little salty about that event, seeing as the top 4 was comprised of 3 people that I had beaten in swiss and the guy I lost to in top 8.

My deck for that event was Spawn, Heroes for Hire, Spider Girl, 3-stat Spider-Woman. Now normally I ran Onslaught's Citadel with this deck, but I almost always tried to use the Shattered Image missions at big events when I could since the events were good for one or two free wins. Also the "no negate" event would actually be useful when normally you don't run it. However, going with Any Heroes proved to be my downfall at this event.

I can't remember every round, but I know in round one I played someone named Daniel and drew DoW first turn, so I placed it to Team Overpower and bet 3. He conceded before battle began. The second turn I got the "no activator" event which made him discard four unusable activators, plus a duplicate. I bet four for the win and it was over quickly. This is the guy that ended up getting third, and for some reason I can't remember his deck...damn. Rounds 2 and 3 I'm drawing a blank. Round 4 I played Tim Jang, who was using a really quirky defensive deck of Sentinels, Reavers, Invisible Woman, and Deathbird in reserve. Not a bad lineup and definitely an interesting concept, but H4H can carve up defensive decks with 8 stats - so a defensive deck with all 7s was a breeze. Round 5 I played Chris B. also using Any Heroes, but I can't recall his deck at all. Wow this is troubling because only a year or so ago I remember recounting this story and I knew all of my opponents decks. Anyway our game went to time, where I barely won.

In top cut I played Tim Jang's cousin who had some shady plays and was referred to as "sucky bald guy." Now when you have a 9 or less net up, you obviously are only vulnerable to attacks of 10 or higher. Most 9 or less decks have a negate and all attacks of 10 or higher are OPD anyway, so big specials aren't a reliable way to break through. However, the hallmark of a good deck is its ability to make teamwork followups that can reach 10. Now in the case of an X-man assisted defensive deck, you have the EE so you are immune even from these huge followups. But without the EE, you better have a battlesite for the extra defense or your only out against a 10+ teamwork followup is Guardian Angel. Needless to say, my Spawn died to a 10 off a teamwork and things mostly fell apart from there. I had a chance at the end with Heroes for Hire and Spider-Woman clinging to life, and though I was down on characters I was still in a strong position due to my early game dominance. I bet for the win, only to be hit with Spider-Woman's "Target hero can't attack" OPD on H4H, which was completely stunning since nobody played that card at all.

I guess as long as I'm recounting regionals, I'll try to remember a few more highlights...oddly enough sometimes my local weekly tournaments were bigger/more competitive than some of the regionals I went to, so maybe I should make a post about that some day. I should also talk about side events...Homebase only tournaments were so fun (Landu, Luckman, and Lake!) and even sealed deck was cool (if you won you got your opponent's starter deck and could continue to upgrade/update your deck each round).

Hemet regionals (JLA era) - Mr. Fantastic, Professor X, Dark Beast, Beast, The Crossing
Telepathic Coordination has always been my favorite card, and of course it's always most effective when paired with high powered teamworks. I always liked using Professor X as an "intellect character" because of this, using his energy stat as a teamwork enabler. If Mr. Sinister fit point-wise it would certainly have been him over Mr. Fantastic, but I didn't mind Fantastic so much since "Target Hero can't attack' specials always work better in multiples. Using the KO event to kill Beast was always great fun and something I would use in the future to even more devastating effect. I can't remember a lot of specific matchups from this event, other than in round two I got a stack of DC promos for being the first person to finish a match (I got the KO event first turn and killed all of my opponent's characters in two turns thanks to a Draw 3 and Savage Land). Speaking of Savage Land it usually only makes the cut in my decks if I'm at 55 and need a 56th card, but back then it was pretty much a staple. I believe Cherrie Briggs and her husband John were both running Professor X, Holocaust, Scarlet Witch, Onslaught (reserve). I listed the intellect deck mirror match finals from this regional in the original post.

Mountain View Regionals (Classic era) - Marauders, The Ray, Hellfire Club, The Black King, Outback, Brave and the Bold

Mega-draw decks were very good against Four Freedoms since they didn't have a negate character, and could generally be very good against other Marauders decks (unless they were of the Scarlet Witch/X-Babies mega-negate variety). Most mega-drew Marauders decks featured the Starjammers though (in fact the deck that won this regional featured a frontline of Marauders, Starjammers, and The Ray), so my innovation was using the Hellfire Club/Black King tandem. The loss of power in specials/reserve specials was a more than worthy tradeoff to gain access to the KO event. The buzz of this tournament was the public unveiling of Matt Fell's "bet 7" creation, used by his friend Richie Green. It used Onslaught, Nightcrawler, Scarlet Witch, and Puppet Master in reserve with the Danger Room battlesite. It ran 9 or 10 copies of Merciless Conqueror, 9 or 10 copies of Trick Transport, Scarlet Witch negates, max allowed Beast activators, and max allowed Gambit activators. So after betting 7 the first turn you need basically two negates to stop it - first it KO's Scarlet Witch to put you at -5 venture, then it would Trick Transport your first attack to make either Onslaught or Nightcrawler untouchable, then finally Charm (or Acrobatics in a worst case scenario) to stop you from attacking completely. I was the one to knock this deck out in top 8, which was really a lucky fluke miracle considering I didn't have a negate character. I had a Reavers activator for Merciless Conqueror to negate it, and I had a teamwork to attack through the Acrobatics to win me the game. I lost in top 4 to my then best friend who went on to win the whole thing. Our game was a massacre since I drew 5 vertigo over the first two turns. One memorable match from swiss was when I beat John Lotto (Cherie's husband) against his Four Freedoms deck in a situation where only the winner between us would make top cut. John and Cherie are Berkley professors, and believe it or not I used John as an extra letter of recommendation to one of the grad schools I got into. Overpower connections are still paying dividends to this day lol.

I guess I better shut up since these posts could go on forever if I just keep talking about whatever Overpower memory comes to mind, but I'll end with a question - what is your most vivid memory of acquiring a card? I have a few of my own that might jog your memory:

1- My number one moment by far, buying yet another copy of some X-Factor comic for the sixth time to finally get an Onslaught hero card. I and my aforementioned friend who won the regional were actually jumping up and down in the parking lot in jubilation, I don't think I could get that excited about ANYTHING these days and just thinking back to the sheer joy of that moment is a really fond memory. I cherished that card like you couldn't even believe, and still have it in pristine condition to this day. For whatever reason, I was completely enamored with the Onslaught comic arc at the time so seeing him getting a card in the game that my life basically revolved around was a big deal to a sixth grader. Best art in the game too.

2- Trading seems like it's dying these days since you can just go on e-bay or buy a single card you need from a store. Back then trading was much more common, and for whatever reason I remember thinking doing a three way trade was so cool (I got two Juggernaut 7 fighting specials, I gave up a Parallax two multi OPD, and someone else gave up some DC level 8 power cards).

3- Buying packs is also futile today for most games (Magic drafting being the exception), but back then it was basically you only option for acquiring cards. Being a young kid I was able to get about a pack per week, so it was always a special treat when my Dad would offer to take me to get one on the way home from school out of the blue. I had seen Superman's 11 anypower the week before, so when the comic book store owner asked me if there was any card in particular that I was hoping to get I named that one ("Man Beyond Tomorrow.") Of course the point of this story was that I did in fact get it, which was pretty awesome. Now that I think about it I was lucky as hell with my boosters, my very first pack of Monumental had Bastion in it. Speaking of lucky packs, did anyone ever see a juiced box? I don't know if they were intentional or if it was just a quirk of the printing press or something, but there were some booster boxes where every pack had only rares/VRs in them. I saw someone selling packs from a juiced box for only 15 bucks from Monumental, and it was just jawdropping to watch someone open a pack with a Dark Phoenix 8 energy powercard, Raza, Malice, Onslaught's Citadel, etc. all in the same pack.

[Jack]

I guess I better shut up since these posts could go on forever if I just keep talking about whatever Overpower memory comes to mind, but I'll end with a question - what is your most vivid memory of acquiring a card? I have a few of my own that might jog your memory:

Please continue with the stories, being a huge fan of the game and having never experienced a tournament, it's very exciting to read up on stories.

As for me and memorable packs, I had recently purchased a 17-card pack of Original OP and 12 of the 17 cards were OPDs or 8's, and maybe a teamwork or two.

After buying about 40 packs of the Batman Holo series, I finally got my hands on a Batman: Avenger hero card. That card went directly from the pack and into a soft sleeve + top-loader.

[drdeath25]

Hello Overpower People,

I am a original overpower player since the powersurge area and attended many of the Bay Area tournaments with the top players in the game like Cherrie Briggs (National Champion), John Latto and others. I also met Onslaught at the Mountain View regional but did not get a chance to play him though. (I finished in the top 8, and have a funny story about how i was eliminated by the eventual regional winner Tim Jang). I'm going to post some of my favorite decks to play with and some of my fond overpower memories a little bit later on. If anyone wants to play using the server based program i would love to play some overpower with the people here.

Also, Anyone planning to attend the San Diego Comic Con 2010 in July, we already have 4 people showing up and bringing (including Onslaught, the guy who started this post), and will have a mini-tournment if anyone wants to bring a deck and join us, Let me know. The more the better.

When i have more time i will post some of my decks. My favorite deck of all time that i played was an unorthodox intellect based "card advantage" deck that had worked real well for me.

Anyone interest in joining us for some overpower at San Diego Comic Con in July let us know. In the meantime I will probably post OP memories and some of my decks tomorrow.

Glad to of found this forum! Keep overpower alive!


Post Merge: July 11, 2011, 02:00:40 PM
I just tried to play a game with an old friend on the server based game. When i get into the game neither one of us could draw a hand? How does this thing work? Can someone help me? I want to play overpower again so bad, but cant get the OPOnline program working on windows vista. What am i doing wrong?

[Jack]

For Windows Vista, try running the application in Compatibility Mode for Windows XP SP 3.

If that doesn't work, try installing the "System32 Package.exe" to install necessary system libraries and try again.

[Bios]

I just tried to play a game with an old friend on the server based game. When i get into the game neither one of us could draw a hand? How does this thing work? Can someone help me? I want to play overpower again so bad, but cant get the OPOnline program working on windows vista. What am i doing wrong?

The server based game is not ready (http://phillipgs.virtuaserver.com.br/overpower/). The deck building engine is working well, but we still developing the game. Until we get it done, the best option to play is using the old program that Jack have been hosting at his website (http://oneperdeck.com/).

[CoS]

1. greatest pack pull - when i was a freshman in college and I got 3 stat Spider Man.  I WAS SO EXCITED! Of course he in no way had power house cards (his best attack was found in a sandwich meat container).

2. I started playing Overpower in 1996 at undergrad.  When college started up I found another player, I was using a certain strength deck that if I had opportunity to play in any competitive tournaments would have been VERY interesting (Beast, Blob, Thing,  alternate heroes *Namor, Hulk, or Juggie depending on my mood). Anyway, I beat him about 4 or 5 times in a row then got called out of the room. When I came back for the next match I couldn't believe how crappy my draws were coming out. It wasn't that I was getting duplicates it was just that I wasn't getting good power cards or OPDs.  I still won based on some unlucky dup draws on my opponent. I looked through my deck... ALL my 8 strengths and OPDs had been removed in my absence.  I would probably have started throwing punches if it wasn't so funny.... we both had a good laugh.