Council Update: State of the “.Org” Address

There have been many concerns about UDE’s final set MEV lately.  While the set was probably designed with lots of love from the design team, there is no doubt the set was rushed and had little to no playtesting.  As a result, keywords like Energize and Shift weren’t as well balanced as previous keywords have been.  Cards like Sabretooth, Reformed Killer and Iceman, Jack Frost have effects that would be great if limited to once per turn, but with Energize they simply become amazing.  Shift allows you to generate so many extra resource points that it’s impossible for any other deck to keep up.  It’s almost like Kree, but with a bag of heroin thrown in for good measure.  Bosom Budddies and Runaways have also generated a lot of heat (or is it hate?) for their abusive natures.  Let’s face it, MEV is a set of turn 4 kills and uninteractive combat phases.

There’s also the complaint that shift effects like Caliban and Sunfire that originate in the ‘Remove From Game’ Zone can’t be shut down… ever.  Cards like Caliban have the potential to shut down an entire archetype of decks.  That’s a pretty powerful trade-off for 2 early game resource points.

The Council has been discussing this in a thread almost as long as the community’s discussion thread of the same topic.  We’ve thrown many ideas back and forth, and we came to a few conclusions:

• There’s no easy mechanic fix that leaves Shift functionally the same, but stops its abuses.
• No one wants a ban list of 30 cards just to make the set playable.
• No one wants to ban the whole set.
• No one wants the solution to be a Fantasty card because the decision to use Council Approved sets is still each individual player’s choice.

With all this in mind, only one plausible solution remained: Move MEV exclusively to Golden Age.  Golden Age has a much more diverse metagame, including other decks that kill as quickly as anything MEV dishes out.  The Silver and Modern Age formats simply have nothing that can handle MEV.  Keep in mind this is only a temporary solution to a permanent problem in the Vs. community, and we welcome any suggestions on how to fix the overlying problems of MEV, but for now, the new formats will look like this:

Golden Age:

• Marvel Evolutions
• Marvel Origins (includes X-Men vs. Brotherhood starter set)
• DC Origins (includes Batman vs. The Joker starter set)
• Web of Spider-Man (includes Spider-Man vs. Doc Ock starter set)
• Superman, Man of Steel
• Marvel Knights
• Green Lantern Corps (includes Batman TCG starter set)
• The Avengers (includes Fantastic Four TCG starter set)
• Justice League of America
• The X-Men (includes The X-Men TCG starter set)
• Infinite Crisis
• Heralds of Galactus
• Legion of Super-Heroes
• Marvel Team-up (includes The Hellboy Essential Collection)
• World’s Finest
• Marvel Legends (includes Age of Apocalypse MAA, The Coming of
  Galactus MCG, Marvel Exclusives MEX)
• DC Legends (includes DC Exclusives DCX)
• Marvel Universe (includes Marvel Ultimates MUL, Marvel Equipment MEQ)

Silver Age:

• Infinite Crisis
• Heralds of Galactus
• Legion of Super-Heroes
• Marvel Team-up (includes The Hellboy Essential Collection)
• World’s Finest
• Marvel Legends (includes Age of Apocalypse MAA, The Coming of
  Galactus MCG, Marvel Exclusives MEX)
• DC Legends (includes DC Exclusives DCX)
• Marvel Universe (includes Marvel Ultimates MUL, Marvel Equipment MEQ)

Modern Age:

• World’s Finest
• Marvel Legends (includes Age of Apocalypse MAA, The Coming of
  Galactus MCG, Marvel Exclusives MEX)
• DC Legends (includes DC Exclusives DCX)
• Marvel Universe (includes Marvel Ultimates MUL, Marvel Equipment MEQ)

Notice that Marvel Equipment (MEQ) is now attached to Marvel Universe instead of Marvel Evolutions.  You might also notice that this brings a nice balance between Marvel and DC in Modern and Silver Age (DC fans rejoice!).

And while you’re all processing this new development, I’ll take this moment to toss Aaron his new challenge!  It seems only fitting to use a MEV card for the challenge considering the topic of this article.  Therefore, we’ve decided to force Aaron to make us a deck that creates an infinite loop using Black Box, but not Techno-Organic Virus.  Too easy you say?  Fine, we’ll force him to make the loop go off turn 4 or earlier (consistantly).  Bonus points if he can do it with only the last 8 printed UDE sets (notice I can’t call that Silver Age anymore!).

This time we want the community to play along as well.  When Aaron posts his response next week, I want everyone to be prepared to post any loops they found as a ‘Reply’ to his article.  This puts added pressure on Aaron to come up with the BEST possible loop!  Sorry Aaron, I couldn’t resist.  Good luck!