Team Canada Online > Your Home for Raw Deal, UFS and More > UFS Articles > Loop Mechanics, Counters, and YOU!

22 Mar 2009 - Loop Mechanics, Counters, and YOU!

Written by Nubian_God March 22, 2009, 11:03:00 AM 696 Views Rating: 0 (0 Rates) You have rated this file. Print

Loop Mechanics, Counters, and YOU!

By Nubian_God

Here we are again; daylight's staying around longer, weather's getting warmer, birds are coming back to ruin your car's paint job, and travel plans are being made. That's right, kids, UFS season is upon us yet again. Like the two previous seasons before it, season 3 is unearthing all kinds of deck strategies and combos that may or may not have been obvious to the causal or semi-hardcore players. Without fail, one of these strategies is the loop mechanic.

Season 1 saw the likes of *Hanzo*/To the Bone/Material Advantage along with Promo Tira and Reverse Waterfall.
Season 2 briefly hosted UR Adon and To the Bone with momentum draw before being replaced with Chain Throw/Kunai (thanks to an errata and banning later).
For season 3, the main offenders so far are Defender/Lord of the Makai and Hanzo/Fei Long's Forward Kick. As the more things change, the more they stay the same, so with that in mind I'm going to review the mechanics involved in a loop combo and some of the prime cards that will disrupt such mechanics.

Mechanics

In order to make things easier to relate to, I'll be analyzing the guts of the Defender and Hanzo*** loops:

Defender

· An attack is required to deal damage.

· Involves adding a card into the player's hand.

· Involves removing a card from the player's card pool.

· Requires momentum to be played.

Hanzo***

· An attack is required to deal damage.

· Involves removing a card from the player's card pool.

Fei Long's Forward Kick

· Involves adding a card into the player's hand.

In addition to these traits, loop combos require you to play at least one card or ability more than once. Notice that, aside from Defender's momentum cost, both loops operate on the same principles: Card draw, card pool clearing, playing cards or abilities more than once, and the attacks dealing damage. For the most part, these are the base mechanics that are found in any loop combo, Legacy or Standard format. So with that in mind, let's roll to...

Anti-Loop

Now that we've exposed the inside of the machine that is looping, let's go over some of the hammers we can use to smash its cogs. Be mindful when going through this list because while general enhance and response negators (i.e. No Memories, Chester's Backing, Inhuman Perception, etc) are legitimate and effective, I will only cover cards that deal with a specific loop mechanic.

Playing cards/abilities multiple times

· Inhuman Senses (Air/Death/Good) R - With this card you only need to look at the action side, which prevents any other attack from being played for Undercover Agent

the rest of the turn. Just make sure you don't have any other cards in hand, as that's the only pre-requisite to playing it.

· Feline Grace (Air/Good) R -Targeted towards Defender. All you do is block and trigger Feline Grace during the first attack to stop the loop before it starts.

· Make a Difference (Air/All/Life) E - Tosses the problem attack(s) into your opponent's discard pile, making it that much harder for them to get it back. Since Make a Differenceis an enhance, it can work around Lesser of Many Evils and protects it from negation if Lesser was popped.

· Undercover Agent (Air/Good/Void) R - It's the budget Air Force Base, but so much better in two ways. 1) It doesn't hamper you if you want to play multiple copies of an ability and 2) it allows you to commit any 2 problem cards.

· Past Shrouded in Mystery/Total Global Domination/Charismatic (Death/Evil/Order) R - Bison's trio of foundation support allows you to destroy a card with an enhance, form, or response ability (respectively) after your opponent plays it. In the case of Charismatic, the deal is even sweeter because it cancels the response as well.

· US Air Base (Air/Good/Void) - It acts as a double-edged sword as it applies to both your opponent and yourself. However, when a deck is crafted around this concept, AFB becomes the player's best friend. To make it more effective against the army of 6 checks many Air decks are packing, AFB should be teamed up with Destiny to burn through their checks faster.

· Amy's Assistance (Earth/Fire/Good/Order) E - Nice little foundation that not only reduces damage (another loop mechanic) but it's capable of committing assets as well. That means you, Defender!

· Revenant's Calling (Death/Earth/Evil/Life) R - Very useful against cards that have costs other than committing (Bitter Rivals, Defender, etc).

· New Information (All/Order/Void) R - Like Arrogance in nature, New Information is devastating to loop decks that don't operate on momentum. The main target for this would be the Hanzo loop.

Attack is required to deal damage

· Siberian Training (All/Earth/Void) R – Here’s a card that capitalizes on the surprise aspect of action cards by nuking the attack’s damage off the bat. For the most part loop decks are pretty lean on the damage pump section, focusing on multiple hits with the same attacks in order to KO players, so running Siberian Training would help against loops more often than not.

· Criminal Past (All/Death/Earth) E - Without losing a card from your hand, you completely block an attack. Sure you still lose vitality equal to half of the attack's damage, but when your opponent changes the zone to where you can only partially block, it's better that it only happens once.

Fast Food Lover (All/Chaos/Earth) E - Basically the enhance version of Tira's Contract, Fast Food Lover makes you indifferent to Bitter Rivals, Light on One's Feet, or any other ability that changes the attack zone. Just be sure you're able to block or you'll be hurting a lot more...

Kazuki's Pyrotechnics (Fire/Good/Order) E - Have an attack? Without a block? As long as its control matches your opponent's attack's control and you have a ready foundation, it's fully blocked!

Prince of Darkness (Chaos/Earth/Life) E -The cost is big, sure, but for an ability that can make the difference between life and death, you could pay a lot more. Yet another enhance ability to boot!

· About Face (Evil/Good/Life) R - Similar to Prince of Darkness but a response card instead, giving it the unpredictability PoD lacks as a foundation. About Face doesn't remove itself from the game either, improving its replay value. Try not to let the 2 check deter you; it's a great defensive piece.

· Mysterious Stance (Earth/Fire/Good) E - Yet another card that blocks without actually playing a block from hand, Mysterious Stance really shines when used with a Good character.

· Tira's Contract (Air/All/Chaos/Death) R - Is a defensive juggernaut, so taking no damage from a blocked attack and auto-blocking from your momentum is icing on the cake.

Card drawing or adding

· Tough Outer Shell (All/Life/Void) F - With Martial Arts Champion being watermarked for Block 3 a sweet prospect for now, Tough Outer Shell reigns supreme amongst anti-card draw, if not by default then with its awesome synergy with Void's army of discard. Its ability to prevent the addition of cards qualifies it as a card pool clearing preventer as well.

Card pool clearing

· Ruler of the Shadows (Air/Earth/Evil) F - Focused on keeping the card pool cluttered, Ruler of the Shadows accomplishes what Tough Outer Shell does but without the drawing restrictions.

Momentum generating

· Dark Messiah (Air/Fire/Order) R - While its cost may seem hefty (3 difficulty foundation to start off with, then commit and discard 1 momentum), Dark Messiah cancels any size of momentum gain, which is a very forward thinking ability for any possibly heavy-generating momentum pieces that may be released in the future.

· Ikari Warrior (Air/Chaos/Good) R - When you must devastate your opponent's momentum pile turned tower...

· Ken's Shotokan (All/Order/Void) R - The simple fact that the action side can trigger off of your opponent drawing cards is enough to find an excuse to play it more often.

Looking at the list, it appears that Air and Good are the biggest winners when it comes to anti-looping tools (9 answers each) with Order (8), Death (7), and Hanzo***

Earth (7) following up behind. Chaos (4) and Fire (4) are bringing up the rear, trying to catch up with Void (5) and Life (5). But we must remember this list doesn't take into account of cards such as No Memories (its Void only ability kills loops real quick), which give Fire and Void a nice shot in the arm. None of the symbols have it as bad as Water, which has a big goose egg (0) of support cards listed above. However, Water does specialize in Reversals, Tag Along, and Chester's Backing, so don't feel too bad for it.

Remember that this list more or less listed some of the less obvious (or forgotten) answers to loops. Many cards like Chinese Boxing, Tag Along, No Memories, Evil-Doer Destroyer, etc are already very well known to the general public, so by no means should you take this as a definitive list. In addition, only cards that work well by themselves (or, with a block) were included; there's a whole mess of abilities that you can combo to work around loops as well.

Of course, left to themselves, these cards would get rolled by any well laid-out defenses. Keep in mind that anti-looping isn't a deck in itself but parts of a deck. There's many viable ways to protect your answers, and more often than not, you only need to disrupt their loops for two or three turns before their deck starts shooting blanks or you have your kill condition set up yourself. As long as you realize that these cards have more purpose than breaking loops, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to incorporate more than one loop answer in your future decks. Think smart, and don't be caught off guard with the next loop combo that crops up in the future.

Comments

1 Re: Loop Mechanics, Counters, and YOU! Written by 0 March 30, 2009, 09:54:48 PM

good article, as a loop player myself i find that this article will not only help defend against those types of shenanigans, but will help loop players like myself protect the loop better

Commenting option has been turned off for this article.