VS Player

The recent announcement regarding the restructuring of Organized Play for VS. System has left me doing a little soul searching. Earlier this week, I was strongly considering making Marvel Team-Up my last set. I was upset about the announcement but not because I only play VS. for money. While I do consider myself a competitive player more than a casual one, I would continue to play the game without significant prize support. The thing that really bothered me was the way the situation seemed to be handled by Upper Deck. We had been promised exciting new $50K's, increased PC payouts and more for several months. Then, with relatively no warning (unless you consider Internet grumblings warning), all that was snatched away. I felt a little bit cheated, kinda like UDE had pulled the old bait-and-switch on us. At first the new system felt like an exit plan designed to keep people around long enough to sell off the remaining sets before they quit production. But one post this morning from Jeff Donais over on VSRealms brought me back.

He talked about how they are reacting to the players' reaction to the new OP. It looks like they will hopefully be implementing a new sort of event similar to PCQ's. Players will be able to run their own Hobby Leagues. That one post kept me around to try to help bring the game back in my area.

Now, I want to talk about some of the reasons I was torn in the first place and didn't just immediately pack up and quit.

Marvel Team-Up is a great set. I want to play all the teams in this set. The design team has really done a great job with the last 2 Marvel sets. I'm not really big on Legion, but Heralds of Galactus was a great set as well. If World's Finest can do for Batman and Superman what Marvel Team-up will likely do for Spider-Man it will be a great boost to the game.

VS. is a fun game. I think too many people think this game is more complicated than it really is. For evidence, last year I taught someone who had never played card games before how to play both Magic and VS. System and he is far better at VS. than Magic. There are just so many more minute card interactions in Magic. I think a lot of people, especially the pros at this game, like to make the game seem overly complicated because it plays to their ego. Especially at the kitchen table level, this game is very simple. At the highly competitive level, I still don't think it's as complicated as Magic, but that can be debated.

There are a lot of other reasons why I'm going to stay with this game, but the most important one is because I have a ton of fun playing it. I'll get back to my Marvel Team-Up team reviews next week.