All Axxcess Bannings?

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• (August 06, 2008, 10:47:20 PM)

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[BigJohnStudd]

I might as well get this started....

First of all THIS IS NOT A RANT!!!! This is a discussion about, IMO and in the opinion of nearly everyone at the con, including Mike Foley, the people who played it, and alot of other people came to a conclusion or atleast agreed about! If you agree with me post why, if you dont please post why, if you dont care or want to flame dont post at all.

If you weren't at Gen Con you might not know of this but I think there might actually be a banned card or two in Raw Deal pretty soon, or atleast a major change in the errata of Full Nelson Slam (R).

The cards that are more than likely being looked at are (Revo) Full Nelson Slam & maybe Technical Drop Kick.

3+ decks at Gen Con ran this little combo that I think is put best from the mouth of Travis Towns "We broke All Axxess, this combo's is going to be banned"

If you don't know why these cards are not broken I will explain.

The deck tries in every case to either remove the opponents backlash, via IAATG, or Michelle McCool, in the rey version (which i am not as well informed about) they just use the ability to continue the turn of doom. The versions I saw, kennedy uses why the hell are we here to discard the hand, and the bobby version uses test enforcer to reduce the hand.

The decks get (Revo) Full Nelson Slam in the yard, overturn 4 and get it back and then use some sort of discard mechanic (chain, Michelle McCool, Shoot headlock, or Superstar ability in Rey Mysterio case) to get it back into the yard, wash, rinse, repeat until they are nearly out of cards in arsenal. They then use Thrust Knee Lift to remove cards from the opponents ringside, if any. The deck then uses back body drop to pick up tech drop kicks, (The tech drop kicks will pick up tech crabs in the yard) then they use pulp mania to remove divine intervention and then for the most part put tech crab on the bottom nearly infinite times to make you overturn your deck.

The decks use many ways to get fort. TIJTB, Face Strech Chain moves, and Up and at em for fortitude for cards as well. and some use not in front of the kids to make tech drop kicks to get insane fort and then win with slingshot, tech crab or a plunged TOS for the win.

The decks are not unbeatable but they are only stopped by a few if any decks and/or cards those matchups rarely if any can get themselves into a situation where they can beat the rest of the field and beat those decks too. (running Rattlesnake, or running 2-3 copies of LWA etc etc) like maybe a deck could beat the rey version of this deck but they couldnt beat the bobby version or the Kennedy version. I heard this combo works in evo and benoit, maybe even dreamer?!?

I am sorry guys for letting this cat out of the bag. I love the deck that you guys made, but you guys all know that this combo is truly broken, even teammates of RDE that piloted these decks agree that this combo is broke, and when even Foley thinks something needs to be fixed/banned you know something is wrong. I did lose to the Kennedy version of this at the con, but come on it was Jake Negley.... I knew I was going to lose anyway LOL!!!! I am not angry at this but I do think something should be done and I dont think we can wait for a revo 4 silver bullet for this combo. 

The decks have bullets but they are few and far between, and these decks are going to create an NPE the likes of which we have not seen since Divas era, IMO.

If anyone is angry at me please remember that these decks were going to be posted online anyway and nearly everyone that was at gencon knew how they worked or knew someone that knew so it was only a matter of time before the secret is out. Plus many people thinks this needed to be addressed.

[Antigoth]

John,

    I wouldn't sweat you being in trouble for posting this or people being angry. Everyone knew the cat would be out of the bag after Gencon, and that it would raise a tremendous amount of discussion.

    While your points are vaild, there are MANY, MANY options that will deal with "Balls"
Personally I've been running a number of them for quite some time, and when I ran into Pat running Balls Benoit during the AB tournament, I had no problems beating the deck hands down.

    The first thing that's needed is education. Now that people know about the combo, lets see them figure out the options to beat it. Lets see the discussion, and wait a month to see how Revo 3, and the Canadian Qualifier environments react to balls, and whether or not it remains a problem.

    Balls can be run in a countless number of decks, ranging from 3 minute warning to dreamer, to umaga, to Revolution Undertaker, and the list goes on.

     Hell in a cell goes a long way to dealing with balls. Yes, there are pyro technic volleys and a bunch of other things to deal with a cell. There is a level of strategy, you must anticipate the problem, and counter it.

     Rob Drexler and I had an animated discussion about this earlier today. I listed off all the different ways to deal with it. He then proclaimed, "but who runs that stuff, who can play with that." I informed him that I have for the last 4 qualifiers I've played in.

     The challenge is do people want to deal with this?

     It's late and I'm tired, and I'm going to leave a number of things to be said to others, to see where this goes.

     Personally, if we're going to have balls banned, lets whip out the ban stick, a fix a bunch of problems in AA and AB, and make Raw Deal fun to play for everyone.

[FuryOfTheStormKW]

As a member of RDE, and one of the founders of the combo (gotta give the credit for the wheels being set in motion for this to Darren Patching), this combo is ridiculous. Now I played the Heenan deck, and Dom played the Rey deck. My deck was simply modified Trebing Broken Heenan to have to combo as backup. The Rey deck had that as the primary win condition (with Test of Strength backup) and Kennedy could do either of those as well.

The combo is very ridiculous. We talked to Creed about it all day. The problem is you dont really wanna ban TDK because it discourages and really owns all different technical builds and makes technical relatively poop-a-rific.

Full Nelson Slam (R) being nerfed to be worded like Blindsided moves makes it worse in Revo, especially for somebody like Randy Orton who can't mill 4 to pick up an antic (essentially).

Creed suggested maybe nerfing BBD and Thrust Knee Lift to remove themselves from the game rather than go on the bottom. That will neuter the deck entirely. Maybe this is the right course of action.

The combo is unreal stupid though. Maybe somebody should fix it...

[BigJohnStudd]

Creed suggested maybe nerfing BBD and Thrust Knee Lift to remove themselves from the game rather than go on the bottom. That will neuter the deck entirely. Maybe this is the right course of action.

I think so too, banning tech drop kick is not really the course of action, but i have had only 6 hours of sleep in the past 2 days and i know its very imprortant part of the deck.... Nuking BBD would kill the deck very much, something to consider

The combo is unreal stupid though. Maybe somebody should fix it...

Oh god I have no idea of who you are talking to on his quote... LOL

Kinda makes you wonder why some people don't show up to things... wink wink

[prsequalsgg]

lol, the sad thing is the combo was around at origins, did no1 read the report or something?

[KevinPeters]

lol, the sad thing is the combo was around at origins, did no1 read the report or something?

No sir. I assume people were scratching head at how Heyman won, lol.

[prsequalsgg]

lol, the sad thing is the combo was around at origins, did no1 read the report or something?

No sir. I assume people were scratching head at how Heyman won, lol.

well you cheated obviously haha, nah, i wish i couldve gone i built teddy specifically to tech around "balls" decks lol

[BigJohnStudd]

lol, the sad thing is the combo was around at origins, did no1 read the report or something?

No sir. I assume people were scratching head at how Heyman won, lol.

well you cheated obviously haha, nah, i wish i couldve gone i built teddy specifically to tech around "balls" decks lol

Yeah whats up with that you turd!! I was expecting you to own me at Gen Con! LOL

In my area I looked over the rey deck and did not see the threat. I did not look at full nelson slam, I honestly just thought that the deck threw tech drop kick as a move, just me being dumb I guess. I should have built it and looked it over. I did it with some of the other decks so I could get a better idea how I would do against the "top" decks. I did pack Ap Chaki for Rey but then again I didnt know the combo.

Minor changes to ppv will yield defeat for ppv... whatever. I told my crew if they built one of those decks I was building Heyman lol, that deck breaks "balls" lol Great name for that deck... fitting

p.s. I knew that Heyman was good, I just thought I could beat it, and I did in playtesting, even with brass knucks in the hand. I just did not see the balls combo.... it happens I was tweaking 5 other players decks and this slipped by.....
Slippery Balls.... lol.... wont happen again

[domalama728]

we changed the decks after origins by putting duchess to deal with heyman because we thought a lot of people would play him since he won origins...there were none  but anyway i was telling anyone who would listen to ban tdk that card has been broken a different way every set and is the cause of most npe's first it was the heenan deck then kids rey now balls rey and kennedy (heenan isnt really a balls deck it is the back up plan) i think that would be the easiest and least detrimental to the rest of the format

[FuryOfTheStormKW]

Since its out there now as Balls might as well explain why we called it such.

Dom always said he was just "playing with his balls" milling and putting cards on bottom since all of it was not reversible.

I justified this "balls" thing by saying that Female superstars can not "play with their balls" because they cannot pack Thrust Knee Lift (and the lack of male genitalia).

It all just kinda worked out that way.

You can call the combo broken but I went 11-0 and only killed with the combo once.

[Doctor Barone]

Simply errataing Technical Dropkick so that only one copy may be played per turn would solve this whole problem.

[Antigoth]

Please don't errata the cards. If necessary, ban Full Nelson Slam in AA, and leave it be for Revo.

I've got some polls to do up regarding this over the next few days.
God damn not having net access while driving on the road!

[Mitch!]

Or making Full Nelson Slam(R), useable only once per turn would also take most of the decks power away, it wouldn't be able to cycle forever to get something.  It would still be good in Revo and not so busted in AA.

[BigJohnStudd]

Please don't errata the cards. If necessary, ban Full Nelson Slam in AA, and leave it be for Revo.

I've got some polls to do up regarding this over the next few days.
God damn not having net access while driving on the road!

Then the deck goes to dreamer or maybe rhyno someone that can overturn alot. I agreed with you about banning full nelson slam but honestly I have discussed this a little more and Think either having thrust knee lift removed from game, bbd remove itself from the game, would actually kick the idea across the entire field.

[Negleyjj]

I was the Kennedy 

And again, Darren Patchings (R3d3ption on here) first realized the synergy of Full Nelson Slam + BBD/TKL, and I believe Dom figured out the math stuff of how to draw any card and that Tech Crab could easily be the main kill mechanism.

No problem talking about the deck, it was obviously going to happen after Gen Con... especially with the deck taking first and second place. Oh, and at the start of round 6 me and Walsh were the only undefeateds (and Dom's only loss was to Jesse who was playing a Steph that Pesci designed specifically to beat balls).

Oh, and I'm sure everyone saw the lists on the Origins report, but the deck is VERY hard to figure out just looking at it. I'm really surprised there wasn't a single post about "What did this Rey/Kennedy do?"

Something NEEDS to be done to fix it. I didn't hear about Creed's idea to errata Thrust Knee Lift or Back Body Drop, but that is by far the best idea I've heard (since we know CI doesn't want to start a ban list, if they did Full Nelson Slam in AA would be the easiest, though Tech Drop Kick would fix other broken stuff too, but could indeed hurt all Tech decks).

Goth, with all due respect, in addition to knowing the deck, it was also in AB in which the deck loses a LOT of power. Rey, Kennedy, and Heenan are far better than Beniot (probably Evolution and some others as well). Honestly, without doing something like packing Hardcore Style + 3 Can U Believe The Witte Retort, I can't see the deck losing except to it's bad match-ups (Piper and Rattlesnake for Rey; Piper, Heyman, and Teddy for Kennedy; and I'm not sure which are Heenan's other than Piper). Especially with Rey where it doesn't matter if your opponent top decks 2 or 3 action reversals. The amount of meta-gaming it takes to defeat the deck is beyond ridiculous - the deck is worse than Goldberg, Evolution, or Flair in DO! and RTC in Mania-Velocity.

By the way, 2 of my opponents ran LWA, and another YFLAW. It doesn't matter unless they also pack 2-3 Always Have a Plan B... and even then we've got tech (at least in Rey and Heenan) so that it's really not a problem at all. In Kennedy it makes the game very difficult, but still nowhere near unwinnable. I didn't really bother tech'ing for it since no one is packing 2 LWA + 2 Plan Bs at the moment, but if I were to run the deck again I'm sure I could.

Oh, and it's called balls because A) only males can pack Thurst Knee Lift, and B) once you get going, it becomes solitaire and very much like playing with your balls.

6 new posts were made while I was typing this but I'm WAY too lazy to change it, and I start my new classes in 8 hours so I'm going to bed now.

[Antigoth]

Then the deck goes to dreamer or maybe rhyno someone that can overturn alot. I agreed with you about banning full nelson slam but honestly I have discussed this a little more and Think either having thrust knee lift removed from game, bbd remove itself from the game, would actually kick the idea across the entire field.

Go to the CI site, and look up my Hurrifriends, and Taker decks that are listed in the articles, in many ways the foundations of balls are in those two decks that in the case of Hurrifriends I was running well over a year ago.

While you feel you may have discussed this a little more then you think I have, please understand I've played with the combos that these cards generate far more then you could ever imagine. Ask poor half badger who suffered through my 3MW non-technical balls.

I am loathe to loose those cards. Back Body Drop TB is an essential card that allows  set-up decks to be viable. If you take that away, then you kill more then just balls. You kill a large portion of set-up decks.

I honestly feel that if we're going to make wholesale changes to these cards, we need to look at the entire all axxess environment, and not just make one or two changes.

No one complained when Byson Yusik and I took turns running an Xtreme Diva deck that ran 30 Tech Drop Kicks, and simply played all 30 TDK's every turn to replenish the arsenal back to full, and simply ate everything our opponents had to throw at us.

Maybe if more people played with Slingshot into the Ringpost, balls wouldn't be such an issue.

:edit: it's late... I'm going to bed... will discuss this more later.

[domalama728]

lol at slingshot its a good idea but only one opponent all day got 28 fort with out killing me(good job adam pesci giving jesse tech)

the balls tech is dumb because there is nothing in the game to reverse it, like witte retort can slow it down but in testing i could deal with 2x 75% of the time and still have only lost to one witte retort once(evil dave at origins) and that was because of a severe misplay on my part and the fact the deck was much worse at that time(no up and at em)

back to my point though we have no way to abuse this in all axcess with out tech drop kick... but i could agree banning fns in aa would be just as fine

[BigJohnStudd]

Then the deck goes to dreamer or maybe rhyno someone that can overturn alot. I agreed with you about banning full nelson slam but honestly I have discussed this a little more and Think either having thrust knee lift removed from game, bbd remove itself from the game, would actually kick the idea across the entire field.

Go to the CI site, and look up my Hurrifriends, and Taker decks that are listed in the articles, in many ways the foundations of balls are in those two decks that in the case of Hurrifriends I was running well over a year ago.

While you feel you may have discussed this a little more then you think I have, please understand I've played with the combos that these cards generate far more then you could ever imagine. Ask poor half badger who suffered through my 3MW non-technical balls.

I am loathe to loose those cards. Back Body Drop TB is an essential card that allows  set-up decks to be viable. If you take that away, then you kill more then just balls. You kill a large portion of set-up decks.

I honestly feel that if we're going to make wholesale changes to these cards, we need to look at the entire all axxess environment, and not just make one or two changes.

No one complained when Byson Yusik and I took turns running an Xtreme Diva deck that ran 30 Tech Drop Kicks, and simply played all 30 TDK's every turn to replenish the arsenal back to full, and simply ate everything our opponents had to throw at us.

Maybe if more people played with Slingshot into the Ringpost, balls wouldn't be such an issue.

:edit: it's late... I'm going to bed... will discuss this more later.

Goth, Comparing Yuszck's deck with Balls, is like comparing Randy orton Over the ropes, and Home team over the ropes, Decks are similar, pack similar cards but they are entirely different beasts.

When I mean I talked about this more than you, it wasnt about the part about you didnt know what the cards did, or didnt know what they could do, please understand that. You just didnt either see this deck coming (I doubt this), or didnt  think it was too much of a threat. I mean you were playing UFS when the AA tourney was going on, (Sometimes I feel that I would have too, but to each their own) I was meaning about how to STOP the combo, since I have been talking to the guys that designed this deck and been talking about how we would stop this, I think I have learned alot about what to do with balls (insert random sexual innuendo here)

AA needs to be looked at, I dont think too much stuff needs to be changed. IMO Kennedy ssa may need to be looked at, Full nelson slam needs to say once per turn, IAATG may need to be looked at, maybe andre and piper but that is a pipe dream... *lol that was a pun* Maybe, maybe not. My name means little in this game, I know. Foley did say when I talked to him and I said "are we going to ban some cards?" and he said "we are going to be looking, seirously looking." That means something. I actually am glad RDE has brought this deck to light..... sometime things slip between the cracks, and I think that things that can be done in this game multiple times a turn with little no reversal (FNS, TKL)needs to be looked at.

I know how to stop enough aspects of the deck I am actually fine with the cards staying the way they are. I do think, however, this needs to addressed and NOT IGNORED!!!! otherwise this NPE plus crappy prize support = bad days for this game.

I dont care what is killed through a banning, just as long as its not the game entirely!

[FuryOfTheStormKW]

Personally, I don't think they will do jack sh*t until after Canada, and if it happens again, then MAYBE they will consider it. Like you all said, Plan Bs + LWAs, I mean, deal with it. I don't blame you fo protesting but I just don't think anything will happen before another Q. It needs another strong showing and maybe somebody watching...

[AfroThunder]

Call me out on this if I'm wrong:

Could I just drop Hell in a Cell/Managed by Vince and block the deck?

And, in the case of Kennedy, what if I just used IWTPTG on Wrestlemania and clung to the bottom rope, if possible.

[FuryOfTheStormKW]

The Heenan deck had Managed by Vince and beat you to it if need be (it was also so I could blank it against Teddy, Steph, and Eric, which I needed to do twice). The Rey deck had Vince GRA in it, but the Rey deck was more susceptible to any HiaC shenanigans. But Its always like I am the only one in this play area that plays HiaC, and it never happened. Also both of our decks had Waist Lock OG in it, to get out if need be. The Kennedy deck could win without WM, and I know that because I played that deck at Origins. The Kennedy is (surprisingly) the weakest of the three decks.

But, what can ya do. Build a deck thats beats ours AND beats the rest of the field. I challenge you to do so.

[MuhdRumi]

John,

    I wouldn't sweat you being in trouble for posting this or people being angry. Everyone knew the cat would be out of the bag after Gencon, and that it would raise a tremendous amount of discussion.

    While your points are vaild, there are MANY, MANY options that will deal with "Balls"
Personally I've been running a number of them for quite some time, and when I ran into Pat running Balls Benoit during the AB tournament, I had no problems beating the deck hands down.

    The first thing that's needed is education. Now that people know about the combo, lets see them figure out the options to beat it. Lets see the discussion, and wait a month to see how Revo 3, and the Canadian Qualifier environments react to balls, and whether or not it remains a problem.

    Balls can be run in a countless number of decks, ranging from 3 minute warning to dreamer, to umaga, to Revolution Undertaker, and the list goes on.

     Hell in a cell goes a long way to dealing with balls. Yes, there are pyro technic volleys and a bunch of other things to deal with a cell. There is a level of strategy, you must anticipate the problem, and counter it.

     Rob Drexler and I had an animated discussion about this earlier today. I listed off all the different ways to deal with it. He then proclaimed, "but who runs that stuff, who can play with that." I informed him that I have for the last 4 qualifiers I've played in.

     The challenge is do people want to deal with this?

     It's late and I'm tired, and I'm going to leave a number of things to be said to others, to see where this goes.

     Personally, if we're going to have balls banned, lets whip out the ban stick, a fix a bunch of problems in AA and AB, and make Raw Deal fun to play for everyone.

drexler was there i thought he had quit? anyway i belive that the is sure a way to counter this deck such as maybe using RATTLE snake?

[domalama728]

good luck getting past top 32 with rattlesnake lololol he does auto beat the but we knew this and didnt care cuz most respectable players dont play rattlesnake in q's anymore

[JCsBck]

Oh, I saw this coming like a month and a half ago. I tried to help, but it was against Antigoth's rules ( which i completely, understand, so I'm not ranting against those). I could have posted about this after origins but since Jeff Scott was considering playing the Kennedy at GC if he went, I decided against it.

I have a bunch of ways to beat it, but I'm not going to share it here cause then they will just put counters to that in their decks.
If you guys are complaining about the Heenan version, how in the hell did you beat my Broken Heenan? It's beaten the exact same way.
Theres a deck that I know that beats all 3 easily, but I'm not going to share it cause someone I'm cool with plays it. I'd rather see something get banned so they can pay for shitty playtesting.

I had a rhyno that abused overturning the whole deck ( although it was NOTHING like these decks). If I was a playtester I would have seen this. But I don't think proper playtesting is done for AA, just like it wasn't done during the AB era.

[Big Bear]

Oh, I saw this coming like a month and a half ago. I tried to help, but it was against Antigoth's rules ( which i completely, understand, so I'm not ranting against those). I could have posted about this after origins but since Jeff Scott was considering playing the Kennedy at GC if he went, I decided against it.

Hold on, I must have missed this.  Do i understand it correctly that this insanely abusive combo was well known after Origins but you let someone who was going to be competing in the next major event convince you NOT to explain it so that more people could have their convention play experience ruined because there isn't a reasonable way to prepare for the broken combo?

Antigoth - you made it against the rules for a concerned player to help the community at large.  Why? Why are you, the person running the largest and most important community site telling people that they have to protect the interests of a few people over the entire player base? If you didn't want people to get (NPI) blindsided by this set's game flaw, were you just trying to protect people you know so they could use the tech? Was it so that you personally could metagame against the tech and have a chance at winning?  Was it that you knew if AA got fully broken it would hurt the game?

What part of competitive gaming considers that the playing field should not be balanced and open?

Theres a deck that I know that beats all 3 easily, but I'm not going to share it cause someone I'm cool with plays it. I'd rather see something get banned so they can pay for shitty playtesting.

See, this is the big problem. Raw Deal is a pasttime, not a competitive sport. Try pulling this bullshit in Magic and see what happens when the game is balanced and there are more than 100 people in contention for the top slots in the game.  I know that there is a problem, but I don't want to bring it to anyone's attention because I want my friends to have an unfair advantage at other people's expense. 
Just an FYI ..... that is EVIL.  It's one thing to do something which harmfully impacts other people through ignorance, but there is a whole lot of doing something to harm other people, knowing full well the impact of their actions, expressly for personal gain and glory. 

There is no glory in greed.

"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." - Thomas Jefferson