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OverPower Articles Archive

3 May 1999

OK, this one will be short. First off a shameless plug. Be sure to check out my X-Men OverPower icons and the recently posted Leech OverPower desktop picture over on my OverPower Graphics page.

That being said I'll tie up a couple of loose ends from my last article. Here are the answers to my two questions I had in my last article about the new rule changes. These answers are straight from the rules folks at Marvel Interactive (I'd write the email address but I can't remember it so go over to OverPower.com to find it). I've haven't changed anything, just cut-n-paste from email to here.

In a message dated 4/7/99 4:19:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time, freemanjb@macconnect.com writes:
"If I use a card to change a Hero's Hits To KO, either mine or opponent's (ie. Deadpool's Hits to KO increase to 30), then with the new ruling, is that Hero also KO'd when he/she has Spectrum and 20 Cumulative, or Spectrum and the Increased (or even sometimes decreased) Cumulative number?"
Yes. Any character which has 20 points and spectrum KO is KO'd - no matter what is in play on him/her/it. Hope this helps - The OP Staff

In a message dated 4/7/99 4:04:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, freemanjb@macconnect.com writes:
"With the new rule about how long the effect of an Artifact card lasts, how long does The Siege Perilous Artifact last. The text does not specifically state it's duration, although it strongly implies a game lasting affect. The card reads "Teammate may discard 3 cards from top of Draw Pile to Dead Pile after Draw Phase, before Events are played, each battle to remove any Hit from Permanent Record." I would assume that the effects are game lasting."
By stating that the card can be used "each battle" Siege Perilous indicates that it has a game length duration. Hope this helps - The OP Staff

So there's the answers. Looking back at it now, the new KO rules really shuts down a lot of heroes (not just X-Babies). There are already some outcries against the new KO rule. The points of most of these arguments tend to be that the change intending to affect the gross abusiveness of shifting attacks via the X-Babies inherent has now damaged a lot of other seldom used, non-abused heroes, now relegating these heroes from the seldom used category to the never see the light of day in a tournament category. Deadpool being one example, although I think I'd still used him is a tournament deck anyway.

Me, I haven't come up with a firm opinion on the new issues that are being brought up right now. I've always preferred to sit back and wait a few months after new rules or new tactics (tactics as in game strategies not artifacts or doubleshots) come about and see how the playing community as a whole is affected.

And that is the small point I'd like to make with this article. There are a ton a very crafty (that's good crafty), imaginative, smart, intelligent, and creative OverPower players out there. When things come up, either new, seemingly too powerful cards or combos, or new rule changes, the first response is generally a public outcry for something to be done by those that make the game after only a couple of days (OK, some people wait almost a week). I say we as players should take responsibility. Too often I feel we as players are more reactive than proactive (and no, I consider complaining for errata or about errata to be reactive, not proactive). Someone come up with a new killer deck that everyone else will use at Nationals? Well, instead of saying "This works, I'll use it too" we should be figuring out what works even better. After all, I'm still reeling over the Power Leech errata, but hey, I've lived with it for a couple of years now.

Let's give those creative geniuses out there a chance to come up with something better. Because as we can all see from the recent ruling, a change that my be intended to affect one card can often lead to negative effects on other cards as well.

7 April 1999

With the beginning of April comes the "new, improved" OverPower. If you're not familiar with the new rules that came into effect on 1 April, then head on over to OverPower.com, OverPower's Official place on the web, and read about the new rules. There were some great changes, but I'll start out with my favorite change, the new deckbuilding rule.

Basically, with the new deckbuilding rule, you can now use EITHER Any-Hero (no, I will never call them Any-Character, too many syllables) cards OR Battlesites when you build a deck using a Homebase. This new rule has fixed something that was not real terrible in the OverPower world, but nonetheless, something that has totally bugged me since the errata that came out almost immediately following the release of the Monumental expansion stating that you could use Any-Hero cards or Location cards but not both. Well, what is Sanctum Sanctorum's inherent? "Sanctum Sanctorum Team may not have a Battlesite." Well how useless is that (according to the old way). Well, if you wanted to just about insure yourself a last place finish in an upcoming tournament, using Sanctum Sanctorum as a homebase would be a good place to start. Think about all the fun you could have while your Any-Hero friends pummelled you with Power Leach & Co. while your Battlesite friends waited to rain down Activators from their favorite Battlesites on your hapless group of heroes with their measly little hero specific specials and maybe a couple of Basic Universe cards (OK, so the Basic Universe card reference was a little of an exaggeration). So to sum it all up, this really bugged me, more so than the gratuitous shifting of Vertigo and the X-Babies. But it's fixed now and I'm happy about that.

Now to the next rule change, as the folks at OverPower like to call it, dead is dead...again. The way this one goes is something like this: no matter what specials have been played on a Hero, or that Hero's inherent ability, one is KO'd automatically when they have been nailed with three different power types (Energy, Fighting, Strength, Intellect) AND they have enough hits on them to cause a cumulative KO. So this rule takes mainly the X-Babies down a couple of notches, but also affects other situations as well (like if you use the Asteroid "M"-Original Magneto trick to render Magneto un-spectrum KO-able). This is an excellent change as well. It will make that not-so-crafty player who has been passing all the Power card attacks on to X-Babies without even thinking start to be a little more thoughtful about what to to shift and what not to shift. The only question I have (which may have already been answered somewhere) is if someone has raised their Hits To KO, are they KO'd at Spectrum and 20, or at Spectrum and 25 or 30, or whatever it may be? I'll have to look into that.

Now to the last and most intriguing rule change, that of the Artifact card. Briefly, if an Artifact does not state it's duration in the text, then it's affects are game lasting if the Artifact is One Per Deck, and only battle lasting if the Artifact is not One Per Deck. This is the Anti-Inducer rule. There's been an outcry following the X-Men release about how "Image Inducer is too powerful," "Image Inducer is a broken card," and other similar arguments. At first I didn't understand the complaint. After all, I've been playing with the Image Inducer since the Classic expansion and no one that I've played against ever complained. Maybe it's because I don't FREAKIN' ABUSE a card every chance I get (you know who you are, all you Four Freedoms Plaza, X-Babies Marauder, X-Babies Inducer EVERY FREAKIN' TOURNAMENT USERS!). OK, 1...2...3...breath... Sorry, I'm fine now, anyway, I like my decks small (60 cards is pushing it for me), so whenever I would have the Image Inducer in my deck, I'd only use it maybe once or twice at the most during a game since I can't afford to discard any cards into the dead pile, especially if it's my Power Leech (so what if it gets avoided or negated, it's still pretty to watch). I'm also lucky that the guys of Michigan OverPower have always been less of the "Everyone else wins with it, so will I" type and more of the creative, interesting, and fun type when it comes to deckbuilding for tournaments. So even though I've had the Image Inducer for a while now, I haven't had the chance to play against an Inducerholic, or a Shifterholic very often.

So if the change was needed, then at least it's a good change. It's also interesting how OverPower changed it. They could have just slapped a "From now on Image Inducer is One Per Deck" decree on the card and been done with it (remember the HQ mess?). But, they were ingenuitive, if I may say. They laid down a ruling where no text was changed, and we don't have to pretend that there is a One Per Deck in white capital letters at the bottom of a card. One question about The Siege Perilous though, the card does not come right out and state it's duration, it does imply it pretty good though. So this is another thing I'll have to find out about. But overall, I applaud the powers that be at OverPower. They made some rulings that take out a lot of the abuse that was going on in the game with some of the cards without really distracting from what I believe were the cards' good intentions to start out with. Image Inducer can still help out once or twice a game, X-Babies are still pesky, just not as much, and now we all have even greater possibilities in deckbuilding. Great Job! on the new rulings to all the OverPower employees over at Marvel Interactive, and of course, thank you.

2 February 1999

OK, so I finally got a box of the much maligned X-Men OverPower set. There's been a lot said both good and bad about this set. There are even those who have promised not to buy any of it. I'll try to cover both the good and bad and tell you how I feel.

First the good (I don't want to start off on a bad leg). Card stock. Some don't like it. If you haven't seen it, it is more shinier or glossier, and it feels a little thinner than what is considered the "PowerSurge" card stock of all the expansions save the Original Marvel set. Both these things are true, however, I've also noticed that the X-Men card stock seems more plastic than paper. This, in my opinion, makes the cards a bit more tough. They seem to me like they can stand up to a little more wear and tear than the other cards. Considerably more. But this is just my opinion and of course, I haven't had the opportunities to play and the time to be able to actually test this out. Besides, I already use card sleaves whenever I play so my cards don't receive too much abuse anyway.

The next good thing about the X-Men set is new cards. This was especially good for me since I only collect Marvel cards and I haven't seen a new Marvel card since the Classic expansion way back when (not counting the Marvel vs. Wildstorm cards). I can't believe how fun I find it to open up packs and sift through the more common cards to see what new rare one I got.

Okay, now on to the bad. And I must admit, the bad is kind of very bad. Release date. If I'm not mistaken (which is altogether likely), this set was supposed to be out last October, or August, or September. You get the point. We didn't see the expansion until the first and second weeks in January. Wasn't this set supposed to celebrate 35 years of the X-Men?! By the time we saw it, we were all celebrating their 36th year. We were constantly sent emails, seemingly hours before the supposed released about how some other problem had arisen and the cards weren't ready to be shipped. So the release was pushed back to the week before Christmas, then to the week before New Year's (so much for Christmas presents), then to the first week in January (so much for 35 years of X-Men) before people finally saw any boxes of X-Men. The pre-release tournaments were even pushed back, then cancelled altogether. Oh, some say the tournaments were still held, but in my opinion it's not a X-Men pre-release if there isn't any X-Men cards to pre-release to the tourney players.

Next bad. Who cut the cards?! The cards are slightly bigger than all the other OverPower cards. Approximately 1/16th of an inch. Different card stock aside, the size of the cards is imperative to keeping any cheating, intentional or otherwise, to a minimum. Now we all have to use card sleeves if our deck contains any X-Men cards if you're competing in a sanctioned tournament. As I mentioned earlier, this is really not a problem for me, but there are those out there that it could be bad for and the bottom line is, we shouldn't have to use anything other than cards with our decks if we don't want to.

There are a couple of things that I didn't figure was good or bad. The new specials and heroes (I will not submit to this "character" nonsense that arose with DC's ludicrous Hero Villain codes). There are some interesting specials out in X-Men sure, but not much in the way of powerful. I know there are a few really good ones out there, especially X-Man's Ultimate Potential, but I'm talking about cards over all. When compared to the Image release, X-Men generally aren't as powerful. I know there are those that will disagree, but you can read about that on their web pages. Then there's the Devourer. Good card, should bring back the use of Any Hero cards some, but don't jump all over it like it's the next best thing to happen to OverPower. First off, like it's predecessors Power Leech (still my favorite card next to my accidental insert Image Inducer), Bastion, and New Universe, everyone wants it and very few have it. But, I don't really have an answer for this but to suck it up. Buy a lot of boxes or pay a lot for it if you want it. Also, this card isn't that hard to defend against if you do have a locations based deck. If you haven't figured it out yet, there are already plenty of cards that cancel out "remainder of battle/game" affects of specials or aspects.

After all this though, what can I say, I'm a sheep. I already pre-ordered a box of X-Men long before it was released. And I like the set if for no other reason than it's something new in OverPower. And that X-Men box wasn't too bad for me either. Even though it ruined my lucky streak of getting the cool new Any Hero in every box I bought (Devourer of Worlds wasn't in there) I was only short 14 cards from the 200 card set plus the Namor hero.

Oh, and one more thing. I'm still waiting on Ron's "decisions" that he said were going to be made at the beginning of the year. I held off opening my X-Men box for a little over a week waiting for some kind of announcement. Imagine the torture, a new box of unopened OverPower cards staring at me every day taunting me to open them. I guess I finally broke down, and here we are in February and still no news from Ron and the crew at Marvel Interactive. Oh, well, maybe I'll have a box of Marvels by Christmas this year. Then again, maybe that's asking too much...