You know, it's funny - my partner-in-writing ceejaybee lives not more than a few hours from me, has covered his locally meta and mine in pretty thorough detail, and yet I've never met him. Silly, eh? He missed the AoP in my wheelhouse and twice I've missed AoPs in his neck of the woods. I find it rather amazing that someone with whom I share a common hobby and who is so close remains an elusive mystery. I think he feels the same way too. Taking this feeling and extrapolating it over great distances, I started to wonder...and that's usually dangerous but thankfully no one was harmed this time.

Our region of Florida is strong, very strong, as we've demonstrated fairly consistently. With numerous AoP wins and Top 8s between both our crews and our showing in the NYC Team AoP and theirs in the Team and Singles Gulf Coast Championships being equivalent (second overall in both events), I would feel confident against any state in the nation. Indeed, having played with and against some of the best, and seeing Kristian Streeter, Chris Barber, Chris Kovaz, Tristen del Valle and Alex Costa among others playing at that same level, it's hard not to be excited about the possibilities for Nationals and beyond. Great competition brings out the best of me and I'm glad to have found it.

Of course, if you know my writing style by now, you'll forgive me if I've skirted my point. For you see, for all the power assembled in New York and New Jersey, or Ohio and Michigan, or South Florida - we rarely stop and consider those neglected folks from the other side of the tracks. No, not Canada - they are close enough to have made their voices heard, and have done so in the recent past both through Team Pacific and Team Foxhound. No, I refer to the quietly powerful men - and women? - from across the Atlantic Ocean, in the United Kingdom.

We Americans rarely stop and consider the state of the game in the UK. Why is that, I wonder? One of the top players in that region, JJ (also known as Zzasiker), responded with my request for information with an interesting view of things: "I don't really think anyone cares that much about coverage here. It's like we're playing a totally different game from the guys in America. Whenever any of us have tried to offer any sort of insight on how the game works to more than a select few, we've been blown off because we're not American. If you want to cover it, by all means go ahead. Don't get me wrong - it's appreciated that you're showing an interest - but I don't think anyone cares that much either way."

Is that true, America? After all, the UK metagame has been one of the strongest and most interesting since the very start and many great ideas have sprung from the minds of the English. Scott Mence's UK Nats-winning Emptiness Tycho last year was a brilliant example of control in it's purest form, and the 6CC Start Over ***Rose*** had an enormous impact on metagames everywhere and enjoyed a fair amount of success until it was abandoned during the first big aggro wave around Soul Arena/Dark Path (where her usefulness was greatly diminished by more and more hardcheck decks and splits like Clones). Daniel Eggle's various builds of Hugo, which I've written about before, not only directly influenced my own versions of him but numerous others as well and earned him his own team asset, Pigeon Games. And some of the top scouts and players in the UK are well known and recognized for their skills even here.

So what is it about the UK metagame that seems so unappealing to us? Perhaps it is the myth that it's dominated by control. I assumed this at first, but apparently until recently this has not been the case. Happy Holidays is likely to change all that, but that's true for everyone, isn't it? Well, with the first big Nationals event of the year scheduled to go down in Nottingham on the 16th and 17th of this month, I set out to discover as much as I could about the current state of the game over there and glean information for my upcoming coverage of UK Nats if possible. Here's some of what I unraveled  - in the worlds of their own players, when applicable:

 Mark Donnelly, 2007 Street Fighter property-specific Champion and frequent Top 8'er, had this to say as far as the background of the UK metagame within the last year - "Going into the 2007 Nationals, if Cassandra hadn't been banned 2 weeks before the event I think we would have had very different UK champion. But Tycho Void control was definitely the dominant deck; the surprise of the event was Dave Hancock with Rose coming into second place - until that event no one considered her viable.

With subsequent releases we saw a gradual shift away from Void control and a move towards aggro decks becoming the dominant force with Adons, Tiras, Yun Seongs, Ibukis and Sagats. Especially with the FoP events, no one could tell who was going to make the Top 4/8 cuts. The World Property Championships came and went in July 2007, with myself taking the Street Fighter event with Ibuki Evil aggro and Eggle taking the Soul Calibur event with Tira. The usual suspects were present in the Top 8's for those events. Zzasiker, Speedsta (Ross Graham), Eggle, myself.

Going in to the autumn season, UFS stared to get a bit quieter over here. We lost Kev Beadle as Organized Play coordinator and everyone was starting to ask questions as to the future of UFS in this country. Gencon 2007 (the UK version) was the location of the UK Team National Championships. This event heralded the appearance of the now infamous F&G Hugo. Again Zzasiker, Eggle & young Jason Handy managed to scrape a win (which included one of the longest tournament games of UFS, over 3 hours) making Eggle part of the first World and National Team Champion in the UK.

With the banning of Hugo and the enforcement of the post rotation ban list for UK Nationals (which was a great idea) it looked like it was going to be a very open event, until a certain Happy Holidays appeared. I have never seen the meta change so quickly and drastically because of one card. Control came back with a bang. Now the meta is split into either running the bloody thing if you have it or teching against it. Staples are now YWNE, Seals of Cessation, Grim Strides, and all the usual Void/Evil control/cc hax cards."

Mark's account is admirable for how succinct yet complete it is, and two things strike me as particularly interesting - 1) UK Nats will be the last major Legacy event for a while except that the Standard banned list is going to be enforced, making it a completely unique tournament setting altogether that will not be seen before or after; and 2) every UK player to a man has stated that the introduction of Happy Holidays into the card pool has completely warped the meta. If there is any single indicator of the current skyrocketing power level of one card, this would be it. To make matters worse, since the popularity of the ubiquitous You Will Not Escape has never waned unlike in the USA, HH becomes even more devastating since it effectively ends your opponent's turn after a lone card (shades of ROS Guile). Thankfully answers are on the way, but they will arrive a bit too late for the English to put them to good use.

JJ elaborated on the looming threat of HH: "Up until around the time that Happy Holidays came out, control actually wasn't particularly dominant. I think I've been the only player that's played control solidly from the release of the game up until now. Dan (Eggle) has been pretty close to doing the same thing. Apart from the two of us taking Void around the country, aggro has been dominant for a long time. Ever since promo Zangief came out, the scene has been plagued with him. Tira has been played ever since she was released off of all of her symbols. Nakoruru had been messed around with by some players but never really taken off. Death Rose was a very big deal for a very long time. Since Ibuki's release (and all of the good Evil cards), she's seen quite a bit of action along with similar decks. Both of the good versions of Yun Seong have been all over the place but up until recently they've all been aggro.

However, since Happy Holidays came out, there's a lot more control/combo around. Evil, Order, Death and Void are the big symbols here right now probably in descending order of popularity among the top tables of tournaments. Seal of Cessation is everywhere. I rarely see a deck without them."

The diversity of the meta in general definitely caught me by surprise. According to Eggle, the last AoP had 28 players sporting 23 different characters. Not versions, but characters! That is a great number as far as diversity goes and really speaks well to the amount of creativity that the UK has demonstrated in the past. Some of the decks and descriptions that JJ furnished were particularly interesting, while many have echoes in traditional power decks here but perhaps with a different twist. Evil Ibuki/Bison, Evil Ukyo, CTTE Order Haohmaru, Death Nakoruru, Air Yun Seong, Death/Order F&G Gill, Void Mystic Dragon Chester, Void Ryu, Tri-symbol Lillith, All and/or Fire Alex, Earth Zangief /other Earth characters, Order and/or Void and/or Air Yun Seong, Chaos K', and of course the signature Order/Void Tycho were all mentioned as possible contenders. Some of those are to be expected, while some intrigue me to no end (Ross' Lillith in particular sounds gross). Promo Zangief is also heavily played in the UK, ar more than his infrequent showings in the US, probably because his burn ability is such an obvious path around control since it causes direct vitality loss. Naturally, I am shocked and appalled that *Dhalsim* wasn't mentioned and I hope that someone will remedy that situation effective immediately! ;-)

For the record, the showings in events leading up to UK Nationals have been as follows (courtesy of Mr. Eggle's UK State of the Game post) -

HEART OF ENGLAND - Jan 19th 2008, Top 4:

1st - Life Ibuki - Mark Donnelly
2nd - Death Nakoruru - Mike Griffiths
3rd - Order Haohmaru - Neil
4th - Air Yun-Seong - Jason Handy

Pre-Nationals Mash-A-Thon - Jan 26th 2008, Top 4:

1st - Evil M.Bison - Eggle
2nd - Void Ryu - Ross (Sagatman)
3rd - Void Chester - Dave Hancock
4th - Order/Death Gill - Jason Handy

HEART OF ENGLAND - February 2nd 2008, Top 8:

1st - Evil Iubki - Dave Hancock
2nd - Death Nakoruru - Mike Griffiths
3rd - Chaos K' - Matt Hewitt
4th - Void/Order Tycho - JJ
5th - Fire Elena - Lee Saunders
6th - Evil Ibuki - Mark Donnelly
7th - Order/Death Gill - Jason Handy
8th - Earth Sagat - Rachel Flowers

So there you have it, a preliminary glimpse into a side of UFS that we Yanks rarely get to see. These players are likely just as good as the best we have to offer and they certainly believe they all have what it takes to win. UK Nationals is a little more than a week away and I suspect it should be very entertaining based on the results above. There is clearly a wealth of deckbuilding talent and the overall play skill seems to be higher than you might think. As with nay group, there are clearly defined players and characters at the top, but what actually will happen - nobody knows. If you're like me and try to absorb everything UFS, all I can say is that hopefully this little article has peaked your curiousity and you will follow along with me in a few weeks when I give the post-mortem of the Nottingham brawl. Thanks to all who participated (especially JJ and Mark) and I want to hear from everyone who attends Nats; as usual feel free to PM me on the forums or email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Till next time my peeps...

-Vik

P.S. You want to know the one thing that the British have always had over us, though? MUSIC. Good lord - The Beatles, Stones, Zep, The Who, Cream, and on and on up to the Arctic Monkeys. I love it all.

Except Oasis. They owe us for that one.