It's monday morning and I figured that I would just post up some random feelings/thoughts I have about this new blog/the upcoming format/random previews/whatever.

So, today "The Perfect Curve" is officially a week old. Just to give you guys a bit of insight into the conception of this blog, "The Perfect Curve" was originally intended to be a website similar to Yugioh's Metagame.com (Though we hadn't decided on a name for the site at that point). Pat and I wanted some place where we could post up tournament results, deck building tips, comics, and even videos from events, but it seemed like we were in over our heads as neither of us had the resources to set up, host and maintain our own website.

After some time Pat came to me with the idea of doing a blog instead of my original idea, as it would be easier to set up, maintain, and happened to be more cost effective (Free > costing $). At first I was reluctant to agree, but I was soon on board with the idea because after all, we have to start somewhere. It took lees than a week to set up the blog with our custom layout, and while I helped picking out most of the designs we used, Pat pretty much did all the actual work. Once the site was done all we needed to do was find ourselves some cool signatures and a week later here we are.

As it so happens, this weekend was also the release of "Broken Promises" the 16th set of the Naruto CCG. While I was unable to get any shiny new cards, many players spent saturday cracking packs trying to grab hold of powerful super rare cards like "Kakashi Hatake (Boyhood)" and "Fear by Genjutsu". With the new set landing and tournament season coming up Pat, Josh, and I now need to actually get on the ball and start testing out decks. While I can't give out any lists (Trust me, you don't want them anyway) we are strongly considering Fire/Wind, Fire/Earth, and Wind/Earth. Pretty much all we've done is eliminate both Lightning and Water as elements we would want to play.

Lightning itself pretty much fell apart with the introduction of block format, and even though it received some really strong cards in the new set, nothing looks strong enough to push lightning back to the top of the tier list. Water is somewhat a different story, because for starters I think it's safe to assume "Ten Thousand snake waves" is going to get hit by the list, pretty much leaving us with only Jonin Water to work with. As fun as that deck is, it still plays too "fair" in comparison with the other decks we are looking at, and while "fair" is good, "unfair" decks usually leads to the top 8 of major tournaments. Our testing is only just starting, so for all I know we might find a Lightning/X or Water/X deck that beats out the rest of the other decks of the format, but as of now, everything we want to play is in one of the other 3 elements, so I would suggest you guys also start there.

Because we were pressed for time and had a lot of ruling discussions on the final episode of the podcast I really didn't get to talk as much as I wanted to about the three new tin cards. First up, "Rescue the 5th Kazekage" has to be my favorite of the trio, hands down. While it isn't good right now, post Gencon we suddenly lose Temari WS and Kankuro (well, not exactly kankuro, but you get my point) giving decks the chance to run cards that require leaf ninja, without sacrificing powerful cards in the process. What I like about this card does is that it sits on the table and forces your opponent to play the first Jutsu, as it gives you a boost and protects your Ninjas from any Ninja effects that would sway the decision of the battle ("Itachi- Goal" and "Deidara- Plastic Arts" are two that come to mind), limiting your opponents options for winning the battle to just playing a Jutsu, which you (Hopefully) have prepared for.

"Cursed Eyes" seems to either be ridiculous, or awful and without actual testing I really wont know. The ability to get a Jutsu for virtually no cost late game is very strong, but both the timing and the requirement are what make the card iffy in my book, and will probably be what holds this card back if it never makes it to the big time. The last card, "Fierce Ambition" is by far the worst one. While it's draw and Psuedo-Early settlement effect are cool, there just aren't enough Akatsuki Ninjas worth playing in the same deck to make this card good. It was a nice try on Bandai's part, but it just isn't strong enough in constructed play, though I do plan on throwing it in to my EDH decks with Akatsuki Generals and trying it there.

The last thing I want to talk about is the possibility of "The perfect Curve" hosting an EDH tournament at Gencon. I haven't really looked into it, but I was thinking it would be a good idea to both promote the site, and the format. Obviously this is all up in the air, but I would want to do something along the lines of Chunin level prizing, along with some other stuff if I could. I still need to find out what I would need to do to hold an event (Maybe barn Tables off Bandai on thursday or something?) but it's something to think about. Those of you who plan on going to Gencon this year, and would be interested in playing in this type of event let me know in the comments bellow.

-Andrew

Labels: Blurbs, broken promises, EDH, Gencon, Zero