If you’ve noticed that I haven’t written much about VS recently, that’s because I haven’t been playing the game for the past few weeks. Why? There are a couple of reasons. Primarily it’s about my new work, but not entirely because of the nature of the job. See, the main VS Hobby League occurs during Friday nights, and I’ve been a loyal player for who knows how long already. But since I’m new to the company I work for, I have to acquiant myself with my new teammates and batchmates, and part of that process is going out during Friday nights to relax and unwind. Not that I am forced to join in these gimiks, ‘coz I’m actually trying not to be anti-social this time around, hehehe.

The number 2 reason is, honestly, because of the existing player base. There are people I enjoy playing against, and then there are those who almost everyone agrees that aren’t really fun to play or hang out with. The latter usually use the same crutch engines for their decks (*cough* Checkmate *cough*) and pass them off as “new” decks since they involve a different secondary team to team-up with. These people also whine a lot when they actually lose, hehehe. We’ll label these players as The Pros. They think themselves as pros in this game ‘coz they can netdeck the latest toys from the actual pros on VSRealms.

Now I personally don’t mind playing against powerful decks, as long as they bring something fresh to the table. But it’s the new or recurring players that I am worried about, or those regulars who can’t afford to buy some of the power staples of the game. They either lose a lot to the The Pros and stop attending the HLs, or lose a lot to The Pros and stop having fun while still hanging on to the game. The community tries hard to change formats regularly so that players are forced to use new decks once in a while, but the moment the tourneys revert back to the familiar Ages, the meta simply goes back to being boring.

So if we combine reason 1 with reason 2, we get a graymalkin who hasn’t been attending some of the last few HLs, hehehe. Why should I attend an uninteresting tournament when I can have fun socializing with new friends (particularly girls, but that’s not for this blog, hehehe) ? Of course, I don’t mean to stop playing VS on Friday nights altogether, as it is still fun smashing with superheroes. But now I don’t have to be guilty when I miss an HL or two.

There is also a 3rd reason, and something that I think is in common with most everyone who plays locally. It’s the lack of new products! We’ve had shortages of MVL and DCL, and now it looks like MUN will even be worse. It was sold out within a week of release in the US (a week!), so our hobby store owner’s distributors are having problems getting the cases we pre-ordered and paid for a few weeks ago. We’re not even sure at this point if there are still enough products that will reach our shores.

This is a huge concern not only for me, but also for the community. Obviously, the game cannot evolve without new cards, especially if said cards are some of the most powerful and flavorful cardboards the game has ever seen. I mean, I haven’t read every card from MUN yet, but I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen so far. I want to get my hands on the Avengers! And Captain America’s legendness, hehehe. Without MUN stocks, we’ll be stuck with our same old cards and same old meta.

I’ll try to end this rant or whatever with something positive though… Bleach rocks! ^_^

OK, I’m kidding, hehehe! No, really, Bleach rocks, but VS is still better. So here’s hoping that our distributors won’t fail us and deliver MUN to our doorsteps within the next few weeks. ^_^