So I realized today that I haven't post up anything in awhile, and rather than make you guys think I hate you (Hate is a strong word..) I figured I would just post up a random blurb to talk about stuffs going on in the life of Andrew Kardis, Card Game Extraordinaire!... This sounded way more awesome in my head at 2:30 in the morning while taking an online exam for my Biopsychology course, so forgive me if that came off a bit corny.

I recently (about 3 weeks ago) participated in the Magic: the Gathering Grand Prix Torronto event. Being the only one in my group without any byes (Most players walk in to major events with anywhere from 1-3 byes) and the format being Scars of Mirrodin Limited, a limited format I didn't have particularly amazing results with, I wasn't particularly confident in myself. Despite opening a very unusual, bomb-lacking pool, I ended up going 9-1 day one... to then go 1-5 day two in the draft portion of the event. I made some decisions in the drafts on day two that, in retrospect were poor, and as a result, I walked away without any money. I still ended up getting in the top 100 players, out of over 1400, and with any luck next time I'll do even better.

I actually managed to start testing with Path of Pain stuff this past week. I've tested against Water, Earth, and Lightning the most, and I've got to say that Sasuke (State 2) is obnoxious as a card. Chiriku, while good, avoids being over powered by being affected by the number of powerful non-Jutsu effects in the game, only protecting his team, and not being Valid. Sasuke on the other hand is unaffected by everything, Protects every Water Ninja you control, and might as well be valid, since you can just reinforce over an injured Sasuke (State 2). I'm not saying that Sasuke is the end all be all, but he's just too hard to get rid of in my eyes and would be better off banned. I dislike calling for a card to be banned, but I just feel that untouchable Ninjas are just bad for the game.

After talking to Tylar, he confirmed that we will be getting 1-2 Preview(s) for Tournament Pack 2, which is great because I wasn't sure if they were intending on giving out any previews for such a small set (only 30 new cards). Since Pat has his own preview on Bandai for his articles, I will probably be doing a write up for our preview here. Heres to hoping we don't get a completely useless card *Fingers crossed*

I also haven't really had a chance to put out a list of what I feel to be the top cards in the set like I usually do, so here is a quick list of the cards I feel to be Over/Underrated after playing with the set for a bit:

-Overrated-
-Sasuke [Eyes of the Serpeant]: While not a bad card, I would much rather my opponent drop down this guy than his Target exclusive counterpart any day of the week.
-Pledge Under a Setting Sun: Every time this card has been used against me, it's just been a worse version of Water Style: Waterfall Basin Jutsu.
-Pain (Deva Path): Don't get me wrong, he's a good card. He is just nowhere near what the hype made him out to be. I'd probably only play him in a one or two decks as a one of.
-Deidara [Dangerous Artist]: He just doesn't fit in ANYTHING. As expected (By me) his effect is also pretty irrelivant most of the time unless you already happen to be winning.
-Kabuto(Possesed Mode): I really like this card, but I knew he just wasn't good enough to make it into the big leagues (for now). It's just too much effort for a card that actually works against your decks theme (Chakra burn) in a slot with much better ninja.

-Unrrated-
-Kakuzu (Soul form): Testing has shown that he's as powerful as I thought he would be. I lost a few games to him, and brining him out, even in an even board position never caused the one using him to lose, or even be put in a worse position.
-Chiriku: Card is good. I happened to overlook him, but I have to say that I'm fairly impressed by the guy after watching him in action.
-Striking Shadow Snake: With Chakra Generation at an all time high, this card is alot better than most (Including myself) thought it would be.

I still haven't got a chance to play around with the Lee/Guy Platoon, or Third Hokage, but unfortunately, with the way the format is skewed, I don't have high hopes for them. I'm also really looking forward to trying out the new tsunade, who seems to interact fairly well with other new cards like coordination and barrier prep. When I've done a bit more testing I'll put up another one of these. Until next time.

-Andrew

Labels: Blurbs, Broken Cards, Path of Pain, Zero

As most of you know SJC Pennsylvania is this weekend, and Pat and I are doing what we can to set up the best coverage possible at the event (Given that we can't do a live stream without wifi). We hope to get top eight interviews, as well as commentary from some of the players on the current format as well as the upcoming one. SJC Pennsylvania is the first event with the tournament pack legal and is looking to have a pretty big turn out, so be sure to follow us for updates on the event, because you don't want to miss out on any new decks or tech cards before Gencon.

Anyway, I'm currently at Pat's place working on decks and stuff while he is at work. We have Shino's Dad and several of the Connecticut players driving down tonight for the event, so I'm getting ready a bunch of decks for testing, because while we are pretty sure on what we are running, we still need to test out different match ups so we can come up with a balanced and effective sideboard, as well as gain some match up experience so we don't just lose to being ignorant to what our opponent's deck is capable of. For those of you who are also putting together a "Gauntlet" of decks to test against, I would suggest you put together the following:

1. Respective Dreams Mono Earth (Probably the strongest deck in the format, and certainly one of the most popular)
2. Aggressive Lightning builds such as Taijutsu or NVS(Lots of card draw to get around hand discard and quick powerful plays)
3. Generic Monofire with/without Boyhood (Honestly, these are just bound to show up at any event, regardless of the format)
4. Mono Water or Fire/Water abusing Demon of Cloud Village (While I don't think it's on the same level as the other decks in the format, I do believe there will be many players looking to resurrect the Demon in PA)
5. Some kind of Mono Wind or Wind/X A New Squad deck (Mass card draw + Powerful Ninja effects)
6. The anti-meta super hate deck (Iruka [Origin of the Leaf headband, Miroku, Shino [Silence], Ino [Easy going] etc.)

Anyway, before I leave you guys and return to sorting cards and stuff I figured I would just put up some pictures I took, as well as a random preview from Fang's of the Snake that none of us feel like writing an article on. Until next time!

This is what real preparation for an event looks like.

Pat's compensation for being the best writer on Bandai.

I went out and bought this for when the Connecticut crew get here, cause Mac & cheese is the greatest playtesting food ever.

so... Bad...

Why yes, yes that is a preview card in that last one! And yes, yes it is inferior to every other version of that card. ~Tsu

-Andrew

Labels: Blurbs, Fangs of the Snake, Pennsylvania, Playtesting, Shonen Jump Championship, Tournament Pack 1, Zero

So a lot has happened since we last posted here on the blog and many of you might be wondering why we haven't talked about the new Rogue list or the inclusion of banned cards on the list. The reason for this is because all the points are pretty much out there. Pat, Josh, Myself, and many other individuals have talked about the positive impact banning cards can have. Everyone here on the perfect curve supports the ban list, and for those of you who don't or are worried that it might create a slippery slope of bannings, all I can say is that you should just give it time and see.

What I really want to talk about today is bad decisions. What do I mean? The decision I'm referring to is the inclusion of a reprint in the new tournament pack, which happens to be a potentially format warping card.

Bad Decision #1- Reprinting Zabuza [Demon of Cloud Village]

Why was this a bad decision exactly? Because Zabuza is the perfect wrench to **** up the gears of the block rotation system. Prior to the news of Zabuza being reprinted it was very obvious that Bandai was doing their best to cool down the game through rotation. Most of the fan favorite ninja would return as reprints, while over-efficient Jutsu cards such as 8 trigram, Giant Vortex, and Four Pillar Prison would leave the format, forcing players to use the slightly powered down jutsus Bandai has been printing. By reprinting Zabuza, every damage Jutsu in the format becomes removal, every victory becomes like a mini OV, and every OV is a scoop and go to game two.

Im not saying Zabuza is for sure going to ruin the format, because historically water is the weakest element when it comes to performance in major events (most likely due to it's linear play style), I'm just saying that Zabuza has the potential to completely ruin what otherwise appeared to be a cooled down format for next season. I don't really understand the logic behind reprinting him, and I now have to wonder if any thought really did go into the reprint choices, or if it was all just picking card names at random. I have a few other issues with the Tournament pack, but I'll share those another day. Until next time!

-Andrew

Labels: Blurbs, Tournament Pack 1, Zero

So I just got home last night from Grand Prix Washington D.C., and I had a great time. I ended up going 6-3 missing out on making day two by one win, but for my first Grand prix I can't complain, especially since there were over 1900 players in the event. Now that the GP is over, Pat and I plan to start playtesting to prepare for both the Georgia and Pennsylvania Shonen jump events, and just like last set I plan to post up our notes on new cards and how they tested for us, as well as what decks we are playing with.

Despite the beating Bandai gave to water with the most recent rogue list, I'm still interested to try out some of the new cards such as The Second, Kigiri, and Nurari who all seem to be incredibly powerful. I think the decks we will most likely end up with are either Fire/X or Lightning/X builds though, because a guaranteed turn three Will of Fire or Group Lesson off of Naruto [Reliance] is game breaking in theory. With the lack of support given to them in teh core set, I'm pretty confident that both Wind and Earth probably wont make it into our gauntlet, except maybe the medical deck, however with Kabuto being put down to one and more powerful mission hate coming out, I don't think I want to play a deck thats fairly reliant on missions this format.

So we will keep you updated with our results from testing during the week, and I will probably put up a review on the top 5 cards of the set per rarity to replace the missing Element reviews, as most of you pobably don't care too much about the bad cards in each element. Until next time.

-Andrew

Labels: Blurbs, Will of Fire, Zero

So I'm finally out of classes, which (Hopefully) gives me more time to write for the blog. With regionals tomorrow and the GP next week, I will still be a bit busy, but without classes forcing me to get up early, and taking up half my day I should be able to devote some of my time to this blog.

First thing on the Agenda: The Georgia SJC. As most of you know, Pat and I have been planning on going to this for awhile. Unfortunately after taking with the group, I decided to sit this one out. Despite our initial plans of training or driving to GA, the rest of the group deemed that flying was the most cost effective plan for them, as they happen to have Air miles. As I don't happen to be so lucky, flying would not be a cost effective option for me, and I have no intention of going on this trip by myself.

It might be a good thing that I'm not going on this trip, because that would force me to look closely at the new set and see exactly how shafted wind got as a whole. Based on the themes I can easily see how poor the support for them was, in a BASE SET due to the lack of generic Negation, or decent theme support. Not to mention Winds super Tsunade is incredibly lack luster. As someone who enjoys playing, I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed in the designers, because the rest of the colors were supported fairly well, while wind was left alone in the dark for no real reason.

So yeah, I started an article and never finished it, and I know my excuses are no longer valid. I will do my best to both finish the article and get through the other two articles before the set drops next week, though I can't promise the wind review wont just be "Theme sux" written for each day of the week. Yes, I'm that bitter over this.

On a positive note, I really like Naruto Shippuden Live's Preview Sea monster. Not only does it provide a strong side board option against one of the supposed top tier decks for the upcoming format, but it will also hopefully achieve what Both Shino IW and Konohamaru IA tried to achieve, and failed at: Creating a slower format. Naruto seems to just speed up with each release, so much that many players are opting not to play ninjas above entrance cost five, unless they can be tricked into play. Sea monster makes it so attacking profitably is pretty hard until the game gets to be about three to four turns deep. I'm actually excited to see how this card will impact the meta, and if we will actually see a slower paced format!

Until next time guys,

-Andrew

Labels: bandai, Blurbs, Will of Fire, Zero

I know, I haven't posted anything in almost two weeks. For those of you who check back multiple times a day because you love us so much, I'm sorry I didn't put up anything sooner. You may have heard that I've been focusing on magic lately due to an upcoming M:TG Grand prix, which is true, but that isn't the soul reason I haven't been posting. The reality is that the past few weeks have been really hard for me.

Sometimes working on a team can be frustrating, because just like in everything else, people have different opinions. For instance, thus far in my group testing, none of us have found anything that all four of us actually would consider playing. That wouldn't be a big deal, but we tend to tear each others ideas apart in the process leaving bitter feelings for one another. Another thing you will find is that people don't always share the same values, or they may value something lower/higher than you would. As it stands, one of our team mates is taking the event so incredibly seriously that he constantly badgers the others about "Not being dedicated enough".

After arguing about decks, and how much I care about magic for an entire day, you can imagine how much I want to come home and write up about naruto previews I haven't even had a chance look at. On top of all of this I have other things going on in my life, such as trying to pass a class where the average grade is failing, friends who don't seem to have the time to talk or hang out because they would rather do other shit, lack of monnies in the bank, and more! I actually have been spending most of my days playing Pokemon on campus long after my classes are done with my phone turned off, just because I know that if I don't I might end up blowing up on someone.

I probably shouldn't even be posting this up, because it will inevitably attract trolling, but I just needed to get this out. I'll do my best to get up some kind of review this weekend, but no promises.

-Andrew

Labels: Blurbs, depression, Zero

Haven't done a blurb in awhile. I'm currently sitting in school trying to type up an essay for my short stories class, but I figured I would take a break and post up some of my feelings toward some of the things going on in the narutoverse.

Now that Kakuzu (Courtesy of Naruto Shippuden live) and Hidan have been posted up there is a lot of talk on how they will fair in competitive play, and exactly how much they will be going for. I don't actually like Kakuzu, due to how slow he is, how conditional his burn is, and the minor benefit from using his effect on turn 7, though I'm sure he will end up seeing some play, or at worst end up like Obito did in BP.

Hidan I feel has a better chance of seeing play, simply because of his good stats and ability to force an action out of your opponent. Playing around with his curse mode leads me to believe that while it might not be the best deck in the format, it does go off and you do win when it happens, but it's still turn 7 and fragile. I still plan to keep tweaking with cursed mode, but I don't expect it to hit the top tables until post rotation.

Speaking about the current format, how about that Naruto/Hinata squad? There's alot of debate as to if it needs to be banned or not, and while most of you know my opinion, I though I would highlight the opposing arguments, simply to further prove how right I am. Here's a few of the responses as to why Naruto Hinata isn't broken and shouldn't be dealt with:

Naruto Hinata does give the player the upperhand but most players will(should) be smart enough to prepare for the worst and have some early game jutsu in their side decks to get rid of ninja's that can become potential squads.

Yeah, it isn't like NVS where we can side in like six cards and turn off their deck. It's one card, and by siding in card specifically to stop it, you are playing linear answers to one card, so that you can get steam rolled by their deck's actual threats. Not to mention the only answers to it are Shimon, Miroku, and Crying in Vain, one of which is rogued, and another is a turn too late, and the last is only available to water and pretty much just stops one card from happening.

ooooo scary naruto/hinata stops u from deploying for 1 freakin turn if u cant hold off for 1 turn well i guess ur deck needs fixed.

It's a freaking curve based game. Missing drops ALWAYS put's you behind the clock, and this one is done manually, while accelerating into a turn 2 4/3 7/3 ninja with 2 mental power.

Simply create a card that can remove a card in your reinforcement deck of your choosing actually I think there is a counter mission that allows you to draw 2 cards and remove a squad that is put in play from the game and plenty of cards that flat out stop squads from being summoned (shimon). Stop crying that you lose to 1 card and learn from it instead...easy.

Silver bullets are bad, and in every instance of their creation in this game they have either not worked (Control of the Nine-Tailed), or been ridiculous and ruined an aspect of the game (USF Ninjas, Miroku). There is a counter mission that blows up squads, but because it's a counter mission, you can't use it on Naruto/Hinata as it comes in on your opponents turn. Lastly, the only thing I've learned from Naruto/Hinata is that Bandai is even more ignorant when it comes to the impact of missing drops in a curve based game.

So for those of you who are on the fence and haven't really decided where you stand on the issue, all you need to do is look at the different arguments being presented, and it should become obvious to you. Just for the record though, I'm sure all of us would be happy with just an errata on Naruto/Hinata, though that's more retarded and less effective, but as it stands bandai has dug them selves into a hole with this card, and if we want the upcoming SJC season to not completely suck something needs to be done about Naruto/Hinata.

Last thing I wanted to talk about is that I will be transfering schools in the fall and It's quite a trip for me. I'll be going to UB (University at Buffalo) which happens to be 7 hours away from my home town. I haven't had a local store to play at in a long time, so if any one happens to know a store that isn't far I would gladly check it out. I actually don't know anyone going to the school or in the area, so I'm really going to be out on my own, which I think is for the best. I'm looking forward to moving, and hopefully I won't be too busy eating Buffalo wings to update this blog ;)

Until next time,

-Andrew

Labels: bandai, Blurbs, naruto ccg, Will of Fire, Zero

Good morning! I'm just on my way out the door but I wanted to first post up some of the stuff going through my head from this past week. I've been pretty busy lazy lately so I haven't posted up some of the stuff I've been working on, but I plan do get as much of it up as I can this week, including some card analysis/reviews for the upcoming format, as well as a new comic.

A few days ago my team officially started testing for the format, because we actually plan on hitting several chunin events and SJCs (If they happen before set 18, sigh). While we have only played with a few decks and variants, I've made a small list of cards from the new set that have been either spectacular for us, or have been completely underwhelming, and why. I should have that up either tonight or tomorrow, so keep your eyes open for that.

So sunday Andy (Texans), Chris (Scubadude), and I had a meeting skype chat to go over the changes for the next crossover list, because even though it appears as though DB is dead, there will be events for it at Gencon, so we wanted to make sure the format is still as fair as we can make it. The list should be posted up later this week for you guys to see. Anyway, while we were discussing changes, I asked Andy about previews for set 17, and a few other things to help promote The Perfect Curve, and while nothing is set in stone, it's looking good. What are the "Few other things" I was referring too, you ask? well, you will hopefully find out pretty soon.

So yeah, the blog should be far more active this week, as I have a lot of content to post up, not to mention the rogue list goes up tonight, which may or may not will cause a bit of pandemonium regardless of what is/isn't on it. And now I'm late for class, so I will see you guys later, and be sure to comment below!

-Andrew

Labels: bandai, Blurbs, broken promises, previews, Rogue list, Zero

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