Well, first off I would like to apologize for my abscence, I have been quite busy. And sadly, I have been busy with non-vs related things, which is really hurting me. But when I have had free time, I have been reading Contest submissions, reading blogs/realms and playing the occasional game. I was able to play in my local city champ last sunday, and I am in the process of typing it. However, I happen to have a horrible memory, so it is kinda a long process, but it will get here, and hopefully by today!

I am here to announce the first ever Emo Blog contest! The contest is to write a article on one of your favorite teams in versus. Some rules are as follows:

1.  Entry must include a decklist!
2. Please do not use Morlocks or Outsiders
3. Keep it relatively clean!
4. Deadline for submissions is March 14, 2008 at 6:00 p.m. Central Standard Time
5. Multiple submissions is fine. Just make sure they are Quality articles.

Now for some things that I am ok with, since this is called the “emo” blog, and nothing I have written is very emo, you are welcome to write somethign emo, or from any other personality you wish! The winning submission will be posted on the blog, and the winner will win a prize, I am still working on this, but it will probably be a grab bag of sorts. Anything ranging from vs shirts to ea mobilize!  So, please either pm me your submissions on realms, or e-mail them to Brokenbyme@yahoo.com. There can be multiple winners! So please send in some articles so that we can get some other people’s loves out there!

Last time on “The Team(s) That I fell in Love with” I looked at the Morlocks and why they are simply irresistible. In this instalment I will be taking a look at my favorite team that hails from the DC Universe. For me, there is no contest on who is my favorite DC team, and lucky for me they are still legal in Modern Age! Ok, so if you are wondering who I fell in love with from the DC Universe, I will give you some hints.

1.   They Made their debut in the set DC World’s Finest! 
2. They typically are played “outside” the curve! 
3. They put Dr. Light abuse back in style!

Have you guessed it? Well, if not that’s ok, I won’t hold it against you.  Ok, so the DC team that I fell in love with is THE OUTSIDERS! Yes, the fun loving, up the curve swinging Outsiders. As I mentioned, the Outsiders got their debut in DC’s World’s Finest. For those of you who don’t know, and please correct me if I am wrong, the Outsiders got their comic start in the 200th issue of  ”The Brave and The Bold”(which happened to be the last issue). After that they got their own series entitled “Batman and The Outsiders.” Since then they have been bouncing back in forth between obscurity and glory. Currently the Outsiders are fighting crime in the new “Batman and the Outsiders” which is a so far excellent series, though it is only up to issue #4.  As for versus, the outsiders are a up the curve, underdropping beat stick of a team. Just as the Morlocks, and most teams, the Outsiders have two basic ways to build them, the first being that you use the characters that get +2 attack while swinging up the curve, and either underdrop, or try you can attempt to curve out, but as we all know, curving out isn’t an fun, well at-least now when you have ridiculous characters to swarm the board. The other basic way to build the outsiders is to underdrop and abuse amazing cards like Kimiyo Hoshi<> Dr. Light, Wylde, and Batman and The Outsiders these cards mixed with a dew other’s make for some quite frankly killer combo’s!   The Outsiders got their first strong showing on the big stage at PC: Indy 2007. The deck, piloted by Phou Phommavang, was able to underdrop its way to a 8-2 finish on day one. Unfortunately, Phou was not able to draft his way to Day 3. Phou’s deck, teamed up the Outsiders with the Kree, and amazingly, his deck didn’t play any Press character! So without further ado: 

Outsiders/Kree Soldiers  Characters 14 Kree Soldiers 3 Owen Mercer ◊ Captain Boomerang Jr., Prodigal Son 2 Faust 3 Technocrat 1 Thunder, Anissa Pierce 1 Halo 1 Wylde 4 Kimiyo Hoshi ◊ Dr. Light, Sunburst  Locations 3 Hala 1 New Baxter Building  Equipment 3 Ego Gem 1 Reality Gem  Plot Twists 4 Booze Elementals 4 Forged in Crisis 4 Batman and the Outsiders 4 Truth and Justice 4 Recruiting Drive 3 Poker Night

  The deck used Kree Soldiers to swarm the board, and then used cards like Dr. Light, Batman and the Outsiders, and Forged In Crisis to clear the board very easily. This deck was the first Outsiders deck that I saw that was actually good, I had been playing around with a Kree/Outsiders deck that team attacked with everyone, except one person and then Dick Grayson readied a person, and then used Optitron Corporation to ready one more. Then I would use Colonel Yon-Rogg to stun whoever I attacked into,m so that all my character, except one would ready, this way I got to use Dr.Light and Wylde twice a turn. When the deck went off it was ridiculous, but getting 3 3 drops out and getting optitron and other stuff proved to inconsistent for me. After my near success with my version of Kree/Outsiders I decided to give Phou’s a try, so I put his version together, I liked the deck, but it just couldn’t seem to do much for me. So I was kinda discouraged after this, but then I got whife on the realms of a deck teaming up two of my favorite teams, X-Men and Outsiders, the deck made by Squire or known on the realms as Homer J, was very new at this time, so I looked over the decklist, and decided to put it together. The deck was pretty ridiculous, because Fastball Special = awesome. So I played around with X-Men/Outsiders, which is now known as the infamous “Supertroopers.” And before I forget here is the decklist:

Super Troopers
Characters
2 Archangel, Angel
1 Faust
1 Halo
1 Jubilee, Mallrat
4 Multiple Man, Army/Madro
3 Owen Mercer, Prodigal Son
1 Shadowcat, Phase Shifter
1 Technocrat
1 Thunder, Anissa Pierce
1 Cannonball
1 Dazzler, Rock Star
1 Forge, Inventor Extraordinare
1 Gambit, Swamp Rat
1 Grace, Grace Choi
4 Jean Grey, Teen Telepath
1 Katana, Tatsu Yamashiro
3 Sunfire, Rising Sun
1 Wylde
2 Kimiyo Hoshi, Sunburst
1 Cable, Askani’Son
Equipment 
1 Blackbird Blue
Locations 
1 X-Corp: Hong-Kong
1X-Corp: Amsterdam
Plot twists 
2 Battle Tactics
4 Booze Elementals
3 Recruiting Drive
3 Time Breach
3 X-Men United
3 Batman and the Outsiders
4 Fastball Special
3 A Proud Zinco Product 
So, I stuck with “Supertroopers” for a while, but it still didn’t feel quite right. But then came the answer to my deckbuilding prayers. They came in the form of a set called DC Legends! Of course I am talking about the epic return of the Teen Titans! With the return of the titans, came Teen Titans Go! With Teen Titans Go, my whole thought process on how to build the Outsiders changed. Now that I didn’t need to stun whoever I team attacked into to re-ready all my people, the combo’s came alot easier. So just like tons of other people, I started to build a Titan/Outsiders deck, I started by putting together my motley crew of characters. The basic way I approached this is to play the good 3-2 drops, Dr. Light, Wylde, TIm Drake<> Robin, and Roy Harper<> Arsenal. From there I went on to disect the one drops, and since you never want to get stuck with a extra copy of a one drop in hand, I decided to play one of every one drop, and then gave the important ones 1 more slot. So at this point, my characters are set and all i have to do is put together the plot twists/locations. For Plot twists I started with the obvious ones, like, TTG and Bato, from there i obviously needed a little bit of search, that came in the form of Recruiting Drive. Next, I felt that I needed to be a little stronger on the defensive, so I put in Poker Night, then I felt that i alos needed to be able to not stun while attacking, and that came in the form of the Tim Drake plot twist Follow The Leader. Lastly, I needed Team-ups, the best choice here is Truth and Justice. So without further ado, here is my list for Teen Titans/Outsiders, apply named by a versus cohort “Tots.”

Characters
1 Dawn Granger
1 Ray Palmer<> The atom
1 Pantha
1 Thunder
1 Roy Harper<> Speedy
1 Bette Kane<> Flamebird
1 Bumblebee
1 Faust
2 Owen Mercer<> Captain Boomerang Jr.
2 Technocrat
2 Mia Dearden<> Speedy
4 Tim Drake<> Robin
4 Wylde
2 Roy Harper<> Arsenal
4 Kimiyo Hoshi<> Dr.Light
Plot Twists 
4 Truth and Justice, Team-up
2 The Multiverse, team-up
4 Follow The Leader
4 Poker Night
4 Recruiting Drive
4 Teen Titans Go!
4 Batman and The Outsiders
3 Reset
Locations
3 Birthing Chamber
I know that the deck isn’t perfect, however it is very consistent and has some ridiculous combo’s. I love swinging a bunch of character then, burning for a bunch, stunning with Dr.Light, Bouncing with Batman and The Outsiders, Drawing a card with Technocrat, and netting a plot twist with Tim Drake. Then doing it all over again, with either a Reset, or a follow the leader, and a Teen Titans Go! Well, I suppose that end this issue of “The Team’s that I fell in Love With” any question or comments feel free to post and ask. I am known as Brokenbyme on the realms and Nostalgiatopia on AIM, feel free to contact anywhere.  

Please excuse the bland-ness of the site, I am working on it. also I am trying to fix the editing software so that my posts look better. 

I am very new at this, so please give me a little grace for the first few weeks!

In the game of Vs certain people are drawn to certain archetypes and teams, and to start my blog, I thought that I should share some of my favorite teams. Hopefully this will help you to get to know me a little better, and hopefully you won’t think that I am an idiot after this. So here we go, into my favorite teams, actually, first a little history. Well, I started playing this wonderful game of ours when the most current sets were DC’s Justice League of America and Marvel’s X-Men. This was a great jumping on point for me, because I was already a huge X-men fan, and who can’t like all of DC’s most powerful characters being put into one team. Anyway, so I started buying some cards, and got really anxious to actually play. My first opportunity to play came at a PCQ at a local store called Gathering Ground, this was back when they were still having both constructed and sealed events at PCQ’s. Seeing as I didn’t have enough cards to make anything semi-viable, I opted to play in the sealed format. I received bad beatings in the first and second rounds, because I had no idea what I was doing, but here comes the third round, and as my opponent sits down across from me, he says that he had seen me get beat in the previous rounds and asked me if I was interested in actually learning how to play the game, needless to say, I jumped on that opportunity. So with the help of a very nice player, I learned how to play vs, and there has been no turning back ever since. Anyway, after the PCQ, I looked for cheap decks that I could build from either the X-Men or Justice League set, and what did I find? None other than my first “Team that I fell in love with” THE MORLOCKS!  

The Morlocks were the first team that I ever built a deck around, and to this day I love them to death. For those of you who don’t know, the Morlocks are a team that have two basic ways to build a deck. The first being using characters that have large amounts of attack and low defenses to try and beat as much face as possible. The second and much more popular way to build a Morlocks deck is to use the characters with the very powerful keyword “Evasion.” As most people, I opted for using evasion. For those who don’t know, evasion allows you to stun your own characters, and then recover them at the start of the recover phase for free. When I first looked at the Morlocks, I thought that evasion was kinda stupid, I mean why in the world would I want to stun my own characters? I found the answer to that question in the powers and plot twists that come along with the Morlocks. Once I realized that, I knew that I had to build them, so what did I do? The obvious thing, I made a deck, I used only cards from the X-Men set, seeing as I then thought that they where the only ones with evasion, or anything use-full that could be done with it. So with my mono-Morlocks deck in hand, I went to Hobby League. I had high hopes for this deck, and what happened, I got beat every game that night. As you can imagine, this was very disappointing, but I was not willing to give up on the Morlocks quite yet. That night after Hobby League, I did some research, and what did I find? None other than one of my favorite Vs cards of all time, Last Stand! As soon as found Last Stand I was like,”Well, ,I might as well throw it in there, the deck can’t be any worse.” So, I put four copies of Last Stand in my deck. For some reason I  thought that Last Stand would be enough to take my deck from last to first. So I once again take the deck to Hobby League, and if I remember correctly, I manage to win one game! Surprisingly, most of my loses weren’t coming from playing errors, but rather from a lack of card draw, so once again I go home and research. That night I happened to stumble upon The Creeper, Jack Ryder. I happen to have a couple of copies of him, seeing as I had bought some Justice League, and while he may not be a Morlocks character, he does have the team affiliations of each character I have, so his not being Morlocks did not really matter. You might be asking, even if he has a way to get the morlocks affiliation, why are you throwing in just another 3 drop character. the reason being that his text reads, “Whenever The Creeper recovers, draw a card.” This power mixed with his ability to evade, was the answer to my draw card problem. So, with Creeper thrust into the Morlocks, I once again went to Hobby League, while I did not go undefeated, I did manage to only lose one game that night. While I think that a couple people might have let me win, I didn’t care, I had done well with a deck of my own design. Pumped up and excited that the Morlocks were viable, I slowly but surely made the deck better and better, and while I am sure that somebody had done this way before me, I was not smart enough to check. So, with the Morlocks having been my first real “winning” deck, I fell in love with them! The ability to have your opponent think they have you on the ropes, but then being able to give +10 defense to your last unstunned character is simply amazing. That card interaction, with Last Stand is one of my favorites ever in the game of Vs. I never get tired of stone-walling an attack with my Morlocks.  Ever since that time, I always pack Morlocks just in case someone is wanting to play some Golden-Age. Also since then I have played the Morlocks in a couple actual tourny’s. The most notable tournament being the “Mega PCQ” in Collinsville, Illinois. The Morlocks were able to perform fairly well that weekend, however I am not crazy enough to think that they are tier 1 golden age. They are just one of the most fun decks to play. So I bid you all adieu. This has been the first installment of The Teams that I fell In love with, next time on The Emo Side of Vs…..The Outsiders!  So, I figured I should probably leave you with my decklist for mono-Morlocks, or as I like to call the deck…Morvasion! 

Characters
4x Tommy, Runaway
3x Artie, Arthur Maddicks
3x Electric Eve, Live Wire
4x Tar Baby, Adhesive Ally
4x Leech, Inhibitor 
4x Creeper, Jack Ryder
3x Caliban, Mutant Bloodhound
3x Storm, Leader of the Morlocks
2x Marrow, Gene Nation
1x Callisto, Morlock Queen
1x Ape, Metamorph
Plot Twists
4x Last Stand
4x Bloodhound
3x Mobilize
2x Backs Against The Wall
4x Bum’s Rush
4x Retribution
4x Shrapnel Blast
Locations
4x The Alley