A look at the Intellect 8s

[The Dude]

So back in the Warlock thread below I mentioned how the 8s in Intellect are by and large a useless bunch. And there was some small debate. So after a week of typing here and there between my free time I present my argument against 8 Intellect in the form of a comparisson of all 8s. Enjoy: (and it looks I have to break this into two posts because it is too long for one.

When it comes to 8 Intellect obviously they have a certain benefit just because of their power grid just any 8 skill has especially in the Power Pack. But if you do comparison of other 8s they fall far far short. Let's take them set by set (for simplicity retroactively applying the 8s in Intellect to where they came out).

Original Starter Decks
Energy = Professor X – borderline elite character with a fantastic dual skilled 8-7 powergrid that comes in cheap (and has plenty of worthy teammates with those same dual skills to choose from). Strong OPDs (made even better if you use his Marvels card) and decent defense by the standards of original OP (both a pure avoid and special avoid). Plus he's listed on Muir Island, which if you're not using house rules is arguably one of the three best homebases (after FF Plaza and equal to Dept H) as that Aspect is a killer in the Power Pack and you can build a base Intellect team around it with Captain Britain and Banshee (both of whom have excellent specials), and Shadowcat in reserve (with her Draw 3 and electronic scramble).

Fighting = Sabretooth. Dual Skilled for a decent price in skills that go well together (see HforH, Serpent Society), who I believe is the only character with those two skills who can do anything in reserve (government agent). Plus he has the Department H homebase.

Strength – Thing – 17 points with an 8 grid and a 10 opd makes a nice reserve for either Strength or Strength-Fighting Decks. And of course he has FF Plaza.

Intellect – Dr Doom. Single skill, expensive, without a single great special and very few good ones. His AA may actually be his best card.
Sets where Intellect is the worst 8 = 1/1

Original Boosters

Energy = Magneto. Dual skilled Energy/Intellect (soon to be a running theme in the early sets). Had no good specials until IQ but then got an 11 and those Multi-4s. If using 3 stat heroes he can work with Beyonder making those multi-4's run attack stings. Has a nice homebase in Asteroid M.

Fighting = Wolverine – Not a very good character, he's at least only 19 points and has like 70 homebases to choose from. He does have another 8 his in OPDs and the best of the basic set defense cards (before shared defense came into vogue)

Strength = Hulk, cheap, dual skilled with two other nice big opd attacks.

Intellect = Mr. Fantastic – cheap at 17 points, Draws 3 cards making him the cornerstone of Intellect Draw Decks. FF Plaza Homebase. Probably the only time Intellect has the best character in a set.
Sets where intellect is the worst 1/2


Powersurge / IQ redos (since I don't use 3 stats any more)

Energy = Doctor Strange – not so great in the Specials department but he's still cheap and dual skilled (and in the same skills as the prior to 8s). Perhaps his biggest flaw is he generally doesn't do anything Pro X can't (well he can attack string with two different Specials that allow for two follow-ups) while being more expensive by 1 point with a grid that's 1 level weaker in Intellect. Still had Marvels come out he'd of jumped to borderline Elite status.

Fighting = Captain America – dual skilled but slightly expensive (a fate shared unfortunately by almost all decent F/I heroes making it very hard to build a good team around those two stats). Cap has respectable Specials with the old school split of personal and teammate defense (that became obsolete once Invisible Woman and Spawn showed up with their universal avoids) and a couple nice (if not exactly world-beating) specials. Again Marvels would have helped him quite a bit with what ends up being his best one-per-deck and by making Silver Sable a cheap and worthy teammate. His homebases aren't much help either (God knows I've tried, especially with Landau). Ultimately I've played Cap a lot because he's my favorite A-list (comic-book wise) character, even took him to tournament once (in a Streets of Poison theme deck) but I find more he's someone you play because you want to and not because of any inherent strategy advantage.

Strength – Juggernaut – As is a theme here he does not have the elite specials of future heroes (including an appalling lack of useable defense for a character whose comic gimmick is being indestructible), but you can stock up on Head butt and easily fit him into an old school Strength deck or on the low-end of Fighting/Strength (where he can with HforH and maybe Thing). He definitely saw more tournament play back in the day then the prior two heroes.

Intellect – Mr. Sinister can be a fun character to play because he has a couple specials unique to him in the entire game (Cloning Process and Hidden Agenda). But if we're doing a competitive comparison (even without the Marvels cards to help Cap and Strange) he's going to come up short. He's single skilled at 21 points making him more expensive than all three of his contemporaries (two of whom are dual skilled). Because Intellect in general is weaker than the other stats he has less worthy teammate choices than they do as well. Still I'm not going to trash Sinister the way I do Doom, he has three nice one-per-decks and then a mix of the decent older stuff like AG and AR possibly an attack string although since the follow-ups are limited to an off-skill that usually worthless.

Overall – This is a hard set to rank. None of these guys are world beaters but none are worthless. Doc Strange is probably the weakest special-wise but he has the best grid and the most compatible teammates. I think Juggernaut has to go #1 because I saw him semi-often back in tournament play. The other three are debatable (although if Marvels had come out Sinister would clearly be last) basically with grid value vs. useful specials running inversely. I would put the guy in the middle of both lists (Cap) then at #2 which means even if we put Sinister above Strange he's in the bottom two.
Sets where Intellect is the worst skill 1/3, bottom-half 2/3.

DC - we all know off the bat that DC was by far the weakest set ever created, but compared to each other?

Energy –Braniac has a real nice grid: only slightly expensive with an 8 and a 7; and in the same two skills as the last three 8Es thus giving him plenty of teammate options. By DC standards that AG avoid is a real rarity, as is any kind of an AI even a limited Universe one. His OPDs are okay (an AV—like all 8Es so far, and an 8 in a skill has a 7 in already) but not world beaters.

Fighting Azrael – Single skill at 19 and Fighting is not offering great teammates either. His DC specials are all terrible but JLA gave him a nice big 10.

Strength – Doomsday – dual skilled in F/S for 19 points where he again he has plenty of teammates including the omni-present HforH. Again most of his DC stuff was worthless but the JLA one-per-deck is one of the best cards in the game.

Lex Luthor – single skilled though at least only 18 points. Probably got the best cards on release of these four with attack specials in his two weakest skills. But then in JLA he fell behind. His JLA special Art of the Deal is useful if you're losing heroes (and I know back in the day people tried to build lock decks around these cards although my tournament circuit never saw them) but its not an Oh Wow card like the last two got.

Overall – Again the dual skilled heroes have to be ranked in the top two, especially since they both have plenty of teammate choices. I would put Luthor above Azrael however since he's cheaper and Azraels only good card is main skill.
Sets where Intellect is worst 1/4, in bottom half 3/4.


JLA

Energy – The Ray is an excellent character as he's inexpensive and has three very, very useful one per decks (out of only 5 specials total) plus a personal avoid to keep him around longer.

Fighting – Wonder Woman – dual skilled (plus a 5 in a 3rd skill) at 20 points is pretty good for that cost even it is slightly higher. She has the same older (and this slightly obsolete) defense mix as Cap, and the ability to fish cards out of the Dead Pile. I kind of hate her other two one-per-decks, especially Amazon Might but overall she is a perfectly respectable character.

Strength – Darkseid – At a whopping 23 points he's hard to build around even with Strength heroes being relatively cheap. And his Specials don't give me any particular reason to want to try to build around him.

Neron – Another expensive hero at 21 points. He has some good specials. HY is one of the best non-one per decks in the game (although his is main skill), and CT can be an interesting strategy option (I've even used CT decks in tournaments although I preferred Onslaught and Mandarin to Neron). Again there's nothing bad here Special wise but there's also nothing elite and it's hard to find him teammates (As the other Strength-Intellect heroes such as Beast are also expensive).

Overall – Ray and Wonder Woman clearly tower at the top of this set. Neron is better than Darkseid, but then again who isn't?
Sets where Intellect is worst 1/5, in the bottom half 4/5.

Monumental

Energy – Ah good old broken Monumental: It's the Anti-DC where every hero in the set except for like three are between excellent and elite. Speaking of which we have the Inhumans, with four one-per-decks, two of whom which are big strong useful numerical attacks. Oh and they can teleport specials into their hand to get those good cards faster. Sure that grid is a bit expensive for a single skill but those specials can make it worth it. (And for crying out loud had Marvels come out with that universal Special avoid and healing in one they would have elevated to nightmare level).

Fighting – Speaking of Elite, here come the Hand who are clearly the best F/I hero in the game and probably the best fighting 8 as well (its certainly between them and Zealot). What's not to like about an 8 that's dual skilled for 19 points and can then throw additional non-one-per deck 8s at you from their Specials? How about making them hard to kill with a massive one-per-deck healing card and the ability to fight on after KO. They also have another offensive Special in their weakest and all three of their homebases are usable (primarily because they are on it) where you can find three other teammates with fighting (and at Princess Bar two of them have 8s while the other can play cards in Reserve).

Strength – Morlocks – Another dual skilled 8 at 19 points they had a mix of respectable but not overwhelming specials and then X-men came out and gave them universal healing that can affect current battle and suddenly they became an ideal teammate for the already elite level Sentinels (with their CC). I saw someone win a tournament once using those two Holocaust and Spiderwoman in the nightmarish you will never hit us and even if you do all three of our front-liners can remove it later (even in the current battle) if we so choose deck.

Intellect – Shiar, hey remember how Monumental had only 3 characters who are not at least Excellent? Well, here comes one of those three (Enforcers and Acolytes are the other two—New Warriors sucked at the time of release too but then they got JW so voila, but I digress).  Anyway single skill for 20 points is always a hard sell in my book. Their best one-per-deck is on off-skill 8, which is nice but in the grand scheme of one-per-decks there are much better cards dating back to the first set and this one is only single skill with no secondary effect. Then they have three low-level attacks two off-skill and one any-power. Everything else is worthless and they have no defense to speak of. They're not Doom bad but there's nothing that jumps out and says play me either.

Overall – This speaks for itself: you have two elite heroes, one excellent hero (who would have been elite had marvels come out) and then a borderline useless hero in Intellect.
Sets where Intellect is worst 2/6, in the bottom half 5/6.

[The Dude]

Classic

Energy – There was no Energy in Monumental so they get credit for Onslaught who came out as a promo a few sets back and was reprinted one set prior. Anyway Onslaught is an excellent character. I used him in the first tournament I ever attended. Yea at 23 points he's super-expensive but at least he has the best grid possible for that cost. It a triple-skilled monster with both an 8 and a 7 on it (and in the ever popular E/I combo). And just in case that triple skill grid wasn't good enough for you, here's a non-opd 7 in their weakest skill to make him a potential spectrum KO machine. Baptism by Fire and Cannon Fodder are both spectacular one-per-decks with a little applied strategy (hint use pre-errata X-Babies and watch your opponent weep when they work in conjunction), and even without X-Babies, Cannon Fodder is a strong card because it prevents Onslaught from being attacked for several battles while he unloads those 8s, 7s and TWs on you. You can also use Merciless Conqueror on your Cannon Fodder'd hero if you need some Venture manipulation. Speaking of which his third one-per-deck is pretty damn good too working as both another big attack and in moving mission cards. There's just nothing but goodness here.

Fighting – Bullseye's biggest advantage is that he's only18 points making him the only fighting 8 under 19 points and thus an easy choice to offset Cap, WW or Zealot. His offensive specials (like many Classic heroes) aren't world beaters but they are off-skill or multi-powered for the most part which is nice. He also has two unique cards: Everything's a Weapon which I saw entire decks built around in the tournament days, and Assassin For Hire which if you don't mind a little short term sacrifice now will make him unstoppable in the Power Pack.

Strength – Heroes For Hire are one of the top 5 heroes in the game, and the absolute best on offense. We all know this. Dual skilled with 7/8 makes in skills they have plenty of decent teammate options for building around those 21 points. Specials include JW, which is easily the best offensive special in the game and then the very strong White Tiger on top of that plus an 11. Nuff Said.

Intellect – And bringing up the rear is Dracula. Who at 22 points is going to be hard to build around and his specials give you just about no reason to try (and God knows I've tried as Dracula is perhaps my favorite character in the history of all of fiction).

Overall – This isn't even close. HforH are Elite and Onslaught is borderline elite. Bullseye is imperfect but he's cheap with some unique options, while Dracula is expensive with useless specials.
Sets where Intellect is worst 3/7, in bottom half 6/7.

Image

Energy – Spawn – arguably the best hero in the game (certainly as it stands now, although back in the day I probably hated pre-errata X-Babies even more than him). Like HforH he has an 8-7 at 21 points only he has in the two best skills game for potential teammates and a universal avoid. Then he has good non one-per-deck specials in both off skills as well as a multi-powered one.

Fighting – Zealot – and then we have the second best hero in the Image set, who became an instant tournament staples as soon as the set was released. 20 points is still a little pricey but that 5 in intellect can help find a few extra teammates. She brings both a teammate avoid and the ability to shut down negates for defense while she has the massive multi-11 for offense.

Strength – Savage Dragon's problem is he's single skill and he doesn't fit the massive offense theme of most 8S's as his one-per-deck is a measly 6 and his non-one per deck is a 5 in a skill he already has a 5 in. On top of that he has no defense to speak of. Also 19 points is expensive for Strength heroes who have Hulk and Thing cheaper than that. I suppose someone could try to use his Dragon Brawl to cut through team defense and Freak Force to attack string and build a strategy from there but I've never been inspired to make the effort.

Maleboglia – So let's get this straight he's the ridiculously expensive 23 points and on top of that we can't even use his best skill for defense? To quote Blue Beetle "Bwhahahaha". Oh well then let's look at his Specials. I'm sorry, is that a 4 that does nothing? And you're getting Artifact cards out of the Dead Pile? Really? Bwhahaha. Yea, move along. Nothing to see here.

Overall – you're kidding right?
Sets where Intellect is worst 4/8, where it's in the bottom two 7/8.

X-men 35

Energy – there are two heroes but since one is original and the other is a variant from the first set, we go with the Original. So X-Man is a yet another Elite character. He's 17 points which makes the perfect counter-balance to Spawn. He had a different shared defense than Spawn in the exceptionally useful cc (or Powercard negates as I think of them). He also has a frickin Multi-11 plus yet another mutli-powered non-one per deck that won't fuse with the 11 for spectrum. Throw in the ability to prevent being attacked for an entire battle and he's a frightening nightmare to behold.

Fighting – Maverick is a yet another single skill fighting for 19 points. He has two nice cards for personal defense but outside that 8 on his grid there is very little motivation to actually attack him. He can also be immune to events if you can find a strategy for that and all his other cards are acceptable but none of them are world-beaters. Still he did see occasional tournament play around here, and Department H is a hell of a homebase.

Strength – Namor – An old Powersurge hero re-gridded to where he belongs. Namor like many older characters does not have a whole lot going on. The multi-7 is okay although I prefer my numerical one-per-decks to be stronger than that. He has a 4 with 2 follow-ups for attack strings. Extra-placing is an effect I find underrated by most. In many ways he's like Savage Dragon only a little better. He does stuff that's not on its own horrible but he doesn't fit the usual theme of a Strength deck and at 20 points there are plenty of cheaper and better options. On the other hand he does have FF Plaza so that alone plus his grid can make him playable. Like many older heroes Marvels would have done him a bit of good.

Intellect – Cerebro is dual skilled with Energy-Intellect only reversed how most heroes do it with Intellect as the primary skill, so he's not going to have easy teammates to find. He's also another expensive Intellect hero at 20 points, which marks five sets in a row where the Intellect hero is expensive, which means even if most of them didn't have completely worthless specials you can't really team many of them together; and the specials make it so you have no reason to want to. Case in point, X-men 35 was by and large an exceptionally well-designed set with most everyone being usable in some way but few of them being borderline broken overwhelming powerhouses ala Monumental (indeed the set design is so good in this last set it makes me want to weep for the sets we didn't get by this same design team); but Cerebro is the exception to the rule for this set. He does not have a single special card I want to play (I mean you'd throw his 5Fin a deck if I was using him, but that alone is hardly a reason to go out and play someone.) He's not just the worst 8 in the X-men set; he's the worst hero in the entire set period.

Overview – The above speaks for itself.

Final Tally - Sets were Intellect has the worst 5/9 and in the bottom two 8/9.

Ladies and Gentlemen: the prosecution rests its case. Intellect Heroes are the worst of their four companions over 50% of the time, and in all sets but one are in the bottom two. Mr. Fantastic stands alone as the one great Intellect 8 character (unless you count Reyes, she is also Elite in my opinion). Meanwhile at least three such heroes are completely worthless (Doom, Maleboglia and Cerebro) and another two are borderline worthless (Dracula and Shiar). In all five cases I think putting those heroes on a team will probably hurt you more than help you, especially when you factor in the cost to build around them. And then you factor in the comparative dynamics and see if you want an 8 on your team what the choices are. In Energy you have numerous Elite characters to choose from and they can be teamed in almost in any combo legally, plus Energy has the best non-8 grid characters as well so teammates are varied and abundant. Strength 8s have a theme of powerful offense binding them together and are mostly low cost for maximum deck-building flexibility. Fighting is not in the same league in the last two skills but its still way ahead of Intellect. For one no 8 hero in Fighting is more expensive than 20 points, with 19 as the average. (Conversely, Intellect has 7 out of 9 heroes at 20 or more points.) And most of those Fighting heroes have better (even if not great) Specials than Intellect.  In the direct comparison above I rank the Fighting hero over the Intellect hero 7 out of 9 times with only Mr. F and Luthor winning out in their individual sets.

Questions, Comments, Death threats ?

[Onslaught]

I think this is a misguided way of evaluating the worth of a character based on the game mechanics that Overpower uses.

1)"Unplayable character X is slightly better than unplayable character Y, therefore..."

When constructing a deck, why should you ever care about the relative value of a given 8 intellect character vs. other 8 stat characters in a specific set? The much more important question is: "do any of the 8 stat intellect characters fit in one of my four hero slots better than anyone else?" According to your rating system, if Spawn were left alone but all the other 8 energy characters had no specials and cost 30 points each, energy would be weak because it has "the worst 8 stat in a set eight out of nine sets" - yet energy decks would still be the most played archetype by far. Since you only get four characters, relative usability means absolutely nothing, especially when restrained by comparison within a set.

2)"The worst team in the NBA never gets the first lottery pick in the draft!"

Even if using the "8 stat character for a given stat is the worst 8 stat in X out of 9 sets" was useful for competitive deck building purposes (it's not), then you still might contend that it is a worthwhile metric for overall strength of a skill type. However, comparing a single entity vs. the rest of the field will always skew something to look statistically negative.

For example, if I say that the first pick in the NBA draft lottery has only gone to the team with the worst record three times in the last twenty years, you might draw the conclusion that having the worst record is not the best chance of winning the first pick. This is dead wrong though, because you are comparing one team to twenty nine other teams. Similarly, rating intellect versus three other stats is a bad comparative test - and as previously mentioned has no bearing on actual gameplay.

3)Not all attack icons are created equal

Overpower is a game of subtlety. Of course there is a large amount of the game that can be measured objectively: a level 8 anypower attack is just plain better than a level 7 anypower attack, a card that lets the user or teammate avoid an attack of 9 or less is better than a card that lets only a teammate avoid an attack of 9 or less, and so on. However, there is a great deal of subjectivity in the game as well. And subjectively speaking from a position of pretty good authority: intellect attacks are more valuable than the other icons. For starters, they are never going to be affected by the commonly played tech events (i.e. Shockwave Rocks the World, Silver Tongued Devil, etc), meaning their average points to venture are actually higher than equal value non-intellect cards. Much more importantly, they are extremely scarce and make spectrum KO infinitely more achievable.

A cursory glance reveals:
H4H - all attack specials have a fighting icon
Spawn - biggest attacking non-OPD 7s
Jammers - all anypower
Reavers - biggest attacking non-OPD 7e
Witch - biggest attacking non-OPD 6s
most common redundant stat for teamworks: 7f teamwork
most likely 8 to launch teamworks off: 8e, followed by 8s

Cummulative KO is way more common for higher tier decks (especially featuring H4H and/or Jammers). Intellect teamworks are pure gold, as well as intellect powercards that can get above a 9 or less off a teamwork.

4)Practical applications/examples:

Cerebro is far from worthless, in fact I would say it's one of the top 10 reserve characters in the game, and one of the best 8 stat reserve characters in general. Computer Origin is a near automatic win in the powerpack...I don't understand how anyone could possibly say that Cerebro has no usable specials. In general, the intellect stat is dominant when it comes to having backup 8's in reserve: Cerebro, Luthor, and Malebolgia all excel in this role with their late game oriented OPDs. Art of the Deal is another automatic lategame win like Computer Origin, while Master of the Darklands is simply "very good in the powerpack." What Malebolgia lacks in OPD strength, he makes up for in grid backup:

Mr. Fantastic, The Serpent Society, X-Men: Original Team, Malebolgia, Separation Anxiety, Any Heroes - This deck placed top 8 at one of the last big competitive Overpower events with tons of top players, and Malebolgia is a vital component of it. Much like Cerebro, I can't conceive someone thinking that Malebolgia is unplayable.

Also, Neron worse than Wonder Woman? When comparing someone like The Ray to Neron, The Ray would probably have the edge in a vacuum. However, when factoring in the weighted value of intellect attacks, Neron is better overall than The Ray. When it comes to Wonder Woman, Neron needs no such bonus: his special cards are just plain better than hers. In fact, Neron compares favorably even to Heroes for Hire.

-Cost: same, both dual stats though H4H off stat is 7 instead of 6 (extremely significant)
-specials: HY in main stat, 2 becomes 8 vs. JW (massive advantage to H4H), Iron Fist vs. Your Heart's Desire (slight advantage Neron)
-scarcity of attacking icons: advantage Neron

H4H is obviously better, but not by much, so all you would need to competitively justify Neron over H4H would be another 8 intellect for stat backup (perhaps Luthor in reserve) or a character that makes H4H's stats redundant. Or, you could simply decide that your playstyle is more suited to efficient spectrum KO as opposed to cummulative, in which case it would also be acceptable to pair Neron with a defensive team featuring at least one level 7 or higher non-intellect stat:

Neron/The Reavers/Spider-Girl/3-stat Spider Woman, Concrete Jungle

5)Misc tidbits

The Hand in contention for best 8f? Zealot and Sabretooth are far superior. Muir Island in top 3 homebases? Off the top of my head I don't even consider it top 5, and I notcied Asteroid M wasn't in your top 3 (arguably stronger than Four Freedoms). Morlocks elite? I don't think they are even in the top 25 characters.

[BigBadHarve]

Damn, Onslaught beat me to it, but I have to second everything he's said, and add my two cents. (No death threats, but I'd love to share my reasons for loving intellect teams...  )

Here's the thing - You said in your previous post that 8 Intellect is "Useless."  Does intellect get the short end of the stick overall? Possibly, if you look at it on paper. But as Onslaught said, relative usability means nothing.

A well crafted deck will exceed the sum of its parts. Your characters and their specials aren't the only things you put into a deck.

Dr. Doom unplayable? HA! His specials may not represent the relative threat he poses to heroes in the comic book world, but he's far from unplayable. His two key OPD cards, for example - Villainous plot and Doombots. You take your wonderful team of Energy powerhouses - Spawn, Invisible Woman and X-man. You're sitting there all happy and cozy, because after a round of battling, I haven't been able to touch you. Well, Villainous plot takes 6 from your venture and you can't avoid it. Doombots, another underrated engine of attack. With it I can set off a series of attacks that you may simply not have enough defense to protect against. An ally plus Doombots means a potential 5 (even 6) hit string.

As Onslaught pointed out - Cerebro is a good reserve, as are any 8 characters you mentioned. Especially Shi'ar or Doom.

Another thing I'd like to bring up is that decks are rarely made up of all 8s. I wouldn't be likely to make an all 8 Intellect team, but neither would I be likely to make up an all 8 energy, fighting or strength team. Overall, I submit to you that some of the best cards belong to characters who are max 6 characters. Going by your logic, then, you shouldn't use 8 characters at all, because in a relative view of special cards, they don't stack up. Look at the X-babies - Probably the most stacked character in the game. Starjammers, equally stacked. Marauders? The Kree (unfairly underused INTELLECT character with good cards and a game winner Col. Yon Rogg!).

Following your logic now, there are so many 7 stat characters that have much better specials than 8 stat characters, you don't even need to consider them.

8 Intellect characters are, on average, more expensive. Yes. Agreed. That's a fact that cannot be disputed. But in case you hadn't noticed, many 7 and 6 level intellect characters are extraordinarily inexpensive, especially for the cards you get. Mojo, Mole Man, Leader, Bastion, and Shadow King are all very good and only 16 points each. You could use any three of those in a Beyonder deck (And Two are negaters, a huge factor in deck survival) That's just off the top of my head. I could sit down and go through the cards, but I think you get the point. Those expensive 8 level Intellect characters are easily balanced by inexpensive counterparts.

And regarding Neron, I'm curious how you can praise Onslaught (the OP character, not our friend here on the boards )  for having a game winning OPD (Cannon Fodder) then completely overlook the fact that Neron has the SAME CARD and then write him off as passable but not elite.

Something else to consider - that while Spawn may be an overly stacked character, that also makes him a target. The same applies to any other overloaded character. You may never get the chance to play those game breaking cards because a canny player will wipe out those characters before you see any of them.

So I'll end my Saturday morning ramblings, by re-affirming that Intellect is far from useless. A crafty player can easily come up with a strong deck with the options available. You don't like intellect? That's fine. Everyone has their preferences, I get that. It's all good. But don't write it off in a blanket statement.

All this being said, keep your opinions coming. I don't agree with your point of view on my beloved Intellect characters, but I still want to hear your opinions on them.  After all, that's what these boards are for.

Cheerio!

-BBH

[drdeath25]

I tend to agree strongly with Onslaught/BBH on this one. The original post, while interesting, seems is very uneducated, and the type of thinking that can cripple an overpower players ability to build creative new decks.

Anyone who wants to play me (with or without one my 8 intellect based decks), i have my Hamachi and OPOnline working again. AIM me at drdeath25. Willing to take on any challengers, if i have the time to play.

[Nostalgic]

The original post, while interesting, seems is very uneducated, and the type of thinking that can cripple an overpower players ability to build creative new decks.

The above response, while grammatically interesting, seems very unnecessary, and its tone could be considered insulting to someone simply trying to contribute to the discussion... 

Let's keep it civil.  Oh and I'll ride in the cab of Onslaught's bandwagon on this one too. 

[BigBadHarve]

I tend to agree strongly with Onslaught/BBH on this one. The original post, while interesting, seems is very uneducated, and the type of thinking that can cripple an overpower players ability to build creative new decks.

Anyone who wants to play me (with or without one my 8 intellect based decks), i have my Hamachi and OPOnline working again. AIM me at drdeath25. Willing to take on any challengers, if i have the time to play.

Hey Dr. Death - are you on MSN at all? I usually connect with Rucker73 and Bios that way. I don't use Hamachi myself.

-BBH

[drdeath25]

No BBH, i do not use MSN...

[BigBadHarve]

No BBH, i do not use MSN...

Boo-urns! 

[rucker73]

maybe you should get MSN...  you could find alot of games there

[drdeath25]

Ok, i will get MSN. Is it free? Is it just the MSN messager that i need to communicate with you guys?

How do you guys normally connect to eachother without using Hamachi? We can try it without Hamachi but in the past I have had problems connecting to people's IP address without using Hamachi.

But then again, Its been over a year since i have used OPonline to play, so maybee things have changed or it's just my firewall that messes things up.

[BigBadHarve]

Ok, i will get MSN. Is it free? Is it just the MSN messager that i need to communicate with you guys?

Yeah, it's free. You just need a hotmail or other MSN domain account.

-BBH

[drdeath25]

OK BBH, I will download it. I have a hotmail account so once i get it working I will post my screen name.

Right now I need to take a nap, its been a long day and my head is spinning i'm so tired.
Post Merge: July 10, 2011, 09:30:56 PM
BBH, I tried to install MSN, but it would not let me log-in using my windows live ID for some reason. I used meebo.com instead and i can log-in. I sent you my screen name in a private message. Hope to hear from you soon.

[drdeath25]

Good Games, BBH. That was fun.

I will need to make some new decks for next time, the one i was using was no fun ;-)

Looking forward to more games with you, and whoever else would like to play.

[BigBadHarve]

Good Games, BBH. That was fun.

I will need to make some new decks for next time, the one i was using was no fun ;-)

Looking forward to more games with you, and whoever else would like to play.

Yes, it was a blast. Always interesting to take on new players.

-BBH