Bankai’s all things VS.

Vs and creativity.

Cards. Old Cards. Useless Old Cards. What to do with them? Well many people give them to new players as a way of stirring interest and recruiting new players, and this is probably the best use for them, and something I have done on occasion, but having been collecting for some time, and also purchasing en masse from retailers who stopped stocking Vs, I find myself in the unusual position of having TOO many cards at times.

So the question again, what to do with them? I pondered this very question for weeks, not wanting to put my cards into a dark cupboard where they wouldn’t see the light of day, not having anyone new to give cards too, I was stumped, one hundred percent. Then I moved into my new house, and my new room, my new, bare, dreary, cold room. Suddenly I had two problems, but each with the same answer; Versus Montage.

Not being the most creative type my sudden urge to design, construct and decorate my room was a weird and unfamiliar feel, the strike of lighting that hit me no doubt being similar to the one UDE felt when they first put comics, cards and combat together. I would build two collages, dedicated to the beginning of the game and what it started out to be. One would feature Doom fighting the Fantastic Four; the other would have the heroic X-men battling back against the Brotherhood.

Sketching the idea out in my head I decided that I didn’t simply want to bundle the teams together and throw them up on a wall, what I wanted more was for the piece to tell a story, one that would be fitting within any one of the comic books I was taking inspiration from. The other major factor for me was that I wanted the images to reflect the flavour on the cards, something not hard to do thanks to UDE building them around the themes of the comic books, but nonetheless something I wanted to stay true too.

So far I have only had time to finish one of my planned montages, namely the Fantastic Four Vs Doom, and I must say that on the whole I am quite proud of it, hopefully I will get a photo up here soon so you can judge for yourself but in the absence of a digital camera I will give a brief run down of one of the ‘set pieces’ I decided to construct.

The first scenario I made was simple yet also probably my favourite, in the centre sits Thing – The Ever Lovin’ Blue Eyed Thing surrounded by Doom Guards, Doom Bots, Robot Seekers and Robot Sentries, points for anyone who can see why those four specifically. Whilst a simple circular image I think I find this one so appealing down to the pictures it conjures in my mind, of The Thing stranded and alone in the centre of a million adversaries, yet still he keeps them at bay, throwing them, beating them, clobbering them until they are nothing more than a steaming wreck of bolts. Currently residing in the centre of my ‘Vs Wall’ it also draws attention to itself for its large and energized look.

This stream of creativity has not stopped with just the montage, finding it quite a time consuming activity I thought of other ways I could utilize my spare Vs cards, and ideas so far put into practice include Birthday cards (nothing like a Skrull soldier wishing you all the best!) and, one that might cause outrage, coasters. There’s nothing I enjoy more than setting my drink down in the knowledge that Nightcrawler or Cyclops is there to protect it.

This article has three main goals that I am trying to achieve, first and foremost to highlight how Vs goes beyond a simple (well, quite a complex) card game and can bring happiness to other areas of life, even lending itself to such activities as Arts and Craft. The second, and the hardest, is to try and inspire anyone reading this to look outside the normal use for unwanted items and put them to good use doing something out of the norm – note this isn’t just exclusive to your Vs cards. Thirdly I would like to see your ideas come to life, I’m not offering a prize, sorry but I am currently scrimping all my change together just to eat and postage to America is far out of my reach. Hopefully even without the draw of a prize you will still post your efforts either up here, on realms or on your own blogs. Have fun getting creative and don’t hold back.

Long Live Vs!

Today I casually strode into my place of study, sat in my usual seat and prepared for what would turn out to be just another normal lecture, it was not until after the lecture that my friend turned to me and said “should we pick up our results for last term?” Trying to hide my nervousness I replied with a shrug and a “why not?” Getting to the results room I got that feeling that you get just before you start a tournament, the feeling that a bad game or two at the start and you have no hope for the rest of the day. Luckily for me I did well on most of my papers, but the one that stuck with me all today was my worst paper, the one I got a measly 56% percent on.

Now before you switch off thinking this is just a sob story about a bad essay I’ll tie it back in with Vs. You see I’m the sort of player who after they lose a game tries to analyse exactly why it happened, excluding such excuses as ‘I didn’t draw so and so’ or ‘he had a god hand’ as I find these to be counter beneficial, just as saying ‘the lecturer didn’t like me’ won’t help you net more marks next time around. I decided to compare my piece with my higher results (both A’s I’m happy to say) and I found a definite difference; the good essays were structured and had a clear aim, execution and conclusion, the bad essay did not.

It was this correlation that got me thinking about Vs, a mild skilled deck builder at best I remember back when I was hideous, I would try and make a deck capable of handling any situation, whilst also trying to fulfil a scattered game plan and no real end game, needless to say I lost a lot. As I started to play more I found that the more excuses I made for my losses the more times I lost, and it was only when I started being harsh on myself, telling myself it was my fault that I’d lost that I became a better player. The same can be said of bettering ones own academic work, looking it over with a critical eye rather than a self-important one will always leave you with a more interesting, concise essay.

Thinking more about the correlations between Academic Essays and Vs I found even more relations between the two, this time based around how applying the skills learned from one can directly benefit the latter. For example during a lecture on Scriptwriting we were told when your out of ideas, leave it for a while, don’t try and force your brain to find what’s missing, just relax for a few days or so and come back with what I like to call ‘fresh eyes’.

This same process is ideal for deck construction, sometimes when you’ve over-tested a deck and it’s still not quite hitting how it should be you can get really frustrated, and even be tempted to give up on it, I’ve found whenever this occurs if I leave it for a while, go and play a few fun games with friends then come back, normally the answer is right in front of me. I think this parallel exists due to the creative nature of building your own deck from scratch, and the creative process of writing a script; once again both need structure but also need to be personal to the individual.

Incidentally it is not only the Academic work that benefits Vs but also vice versa, this being a game of strategy, planning and design I think it is a perfect hobby to start ones brain working. The effect can even be bigger than this, for example how many ‘rouge decks’ have performed amazingly at PCs and PCQs, their surprise factor being key to their success. This reward for creativity actively encourages us as gamers to look at ideas from new directions, to search out previously unseen combinations of cards to try and get the edge on an opponent. This drive for success through the betterment of ones self, and more importantly ones mind, is a skill that will always help you, not even just in relation to academic work or Vs but in all areas of life.

To conclude I would just like to draw one final similarity between the two, namely that success is dependent on input, and thus so is the reward. I spent hardly any time preparing for the doomed essay, not researching relevant sources nor collecting information that would be helpful and inspirational, thus it failed. If we as a community do not want Vs to fail then all we need to do is keep putting in all the hard work I see evidence of every day on realms, tcgplayer and, of course, the blogs. If we continue to support the game and put our all into it then we will reap the maximum possible reward, fulfilment.

Long Live Vs!

So I was sitting on MWS in the vain hope that a fellow VS player would connect, see my NO MAGIC OR WOW sign and join me for some friendly testing, and the great conversation and laughs that generally follow another game of what has to be the card game with the best community following going. The reason I am now writing this is because it struck what it is I love about VS, and surprisingly it’s not just game but the people behind it as well.

I have a MWS player with the handle DARK AVATER to thank for this revelation, signing on he proceeded to shuffle his deck, roll and then ask to see my library, obligingly I placed a few cards out and being relatively new to MWS asked if there was any way I could show the whole thing at once, the reply came; F*** YOUR SISTER WITH MAGIC. Now this isn’t the first time this has happened, it had already happened to me five times in the twenty or so minutes I’d been connected, sitting on MWS makes you a prime target for this sort of shenanigans, what I’m surprised about is the sheer lack of imagination or originality these people put into this simple ruse despite constantly playing a game that, like Vs, is supposed to promote creativity.

After kindly informing this rather abusive fellow that despite however funny he found this it was just a prime example that he must be either a)bored b)simplistic or c)conformist/unoriginal or perhaps a mixture or all three, he replied with the cry that was ringing around a while ago on every internet forum, chat room or café, THIS IS SPARTAAA! Is it me, but do Vs players normally have better conversational skills than that of a three year old.

Thinking about it I realised that if I read through a single thread on realms I will defiantly smile, normally laugh and sometimes have a fit. Increase those likelihoods to guaranteed and you have me at a tournament, where all of us gather for the one same thing, not to win, but to have a great day of Vs with like minded people. Okay and maybe to win a little. So why is it our game manages this and yet Magic players seem to primarily consist of what Stu would, semi-affectionally I think, call ‘Haters’.

I believe that the reason our game attracts such a wide range of people who are from various different backgrounds, but all of whom seem to get on despite disagreeing on various points and issues IS that our players are more original and speculative, I mean look at The Set Masters great fantasy set consisting of humour, solid play mechanics and perfect power balancing.

Now I must admit I have not had that much contact with Magic but from what I’ve seen there appears to be a lesser drive towards casual play, and therefore less drive to create the ‘Jank’ decks that many Vs players love (Major props to Poppythecats DCXperiment, itself a showcase of the sort of great ideas that make our game such a joy to play). It is our player bases constant strive for originality in deck ideas, keywords, play mechanics and life as a whole that makes Vs have that fresh feeling whenever you pick up a deck to play.

Now I wanted this not to be an attack on Magic or its player base, as I’m sure the game has its share of great people and great ideas but is just not suited for me, its just when such a large percentage of people insist on making themselves known as a negative, then the one connecting factor becomes associated with the people and itself is seen as negative. In an effort to get away from branding all Magic players as ignorant hate mongers I have decided to use any negativity they send at me, and meld it into creativity, the first example being this post itself.

So on a final positive note I want to say thank you to DARK AVATAR, you have opened my eyes to the way that with a little effort any negativity can be morphed into positive energy to fuel another post, another game, another deck. On that note MWS has just beeped again, maybe there’ll be a few more articles up tonight…   

Long Live Vs!