"There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace." - Woodrow T. Wilson, 28th President of the United States of America

Now, of course Wilson was not talking about cards, but much larger issues in the post-WW1 era. However, I find this quote rather interesting as it pertains to the idea of finding balance in a realm of politics that doesn't usually lend itself easily to that possibility - foreign affairs. Extrapolating from that idea, I think you can see why it can apply to the current state of the UFS metagame since the notion of balance appears to have been thrown out the nearest window of the former STG offices.    

It is a common belief among the UFS community that the Evil resource is so exceptionally strong right now that the entire meta can be divided into Evil and Anti-Evil. I happen to disagree on this latter point. Evil IS amazing at the moment but that doesn't mean it cannot consistently be defeated. The biggest problem is that Evil has very few weaknesses to exploit, and so many power cards available to it feature amazing general answers so it becomes very difficult to break through the wall of control. It can be done, however, and looking over the results of the first few tournaments in the new Standard gives us a clue as to how to go about going it. Here is a list of champions and runners-up when available for all the Singles events in this format so far:

Gulf Coast Championship - Void/Order Yun-Seong Mill over Void Voldo Mill
Marietta AoP - Evil Akuma over Water Ibuki
LA AoP - Life Nakoruru over Void Voldo Mill
NorCal AoP - Tri-Symbol Athena
Murfreesboro AoP - Evil Ukyo over Water Twelve
IL AoP - Starter Evil Akuma and Evil Ukyo
Harrisonburg AoP - Life Nakoruru over Fire Adon
South Coast Championship - Fire/Evil Cody over Void/Order Yun-Seong Mill
Central Canadian Championship - Evil Ibuki over Tri-Symbol Athena
Swedish Nationals - Tri-Symbol Athena
Madison AoP - Life Nakoruru over Evil Ibuki

Right away you can see that the popular conception of Evil's dominance is well-founded; 7 of the 11 champions were either pure Evil or multi-symbol decks featuring Evil in some fashion (including my own Cody deck which I will discuss in detail a little bit later). However, what strikes me as more fascinating is that the consistency of these characters within the top. There is clearly a distinct and obvious hierarchy at the top of the character food chain which hasn't always been true in the history of UFS. I usually don't like homogeny, as it speaks to the lack of flexibility and willingness to take risks, so this is particularly ominous.

The most significant thing about these results is the renewed and inescapable presence of Promo Nakoruru, and her remarkable resurgence in a new era. She has always been a top tier character, ever since she was released, and was considered so NPE at one point that many called for her to be banned. Anyone who remembers the glory days of the old Death Ruru builds will shudder with memories of fatal Shoulder Rushes and Tiamat's Rampages coming at your head when you were helpless to do anything about it - either because your hand was emptied or because Soul Power mocked your ability to block (as it still often does). She was my personal nemesis for a long time in particular due to her consistently good matchup against my beloved UR Dhalsim. However, her power eroded a bit with the release of Absurd Strength into the card pool and it's ubiquity, since her squishy 19 vitality and 8HS tended to equate to a swift death.

So what happens when smart players and deckbuilders know how strong a character is yet also realize that she cannot win as previously constructed? They innovate. Grant Wheatley (aka NintendoMan), winner of two previous events with his Death builds of Naks and probably the most famous Nakoruru player in the world, was the first to take his initial build of Life Nakoruru for the new environment to the top at the LA AoP. Looking at Grant's decklist, it is remarkable that he did not even run Rejection. It focused on controlling the game as much as possible with Seal of Cessation, Happy Holidays and Nakoruru's natural abilities until he was in a position to one-shot kill with Concealed Shallow Swipe speed-pumped to hell or stripping his opponent's high blocks with Widow Maker and then tossing the lethal CSS. Ian Firth, who was Top 4 at US Nats, ECC, and Worlds last year, won the Harrisonburg AoP with a very similar build.

My writing partner ceejaybee has already enumerated on the virtues of his friend Efrain Costa's brilliant build that was part of the team champions at the SCC, but I would like to comment it a bit further. Having lost to the deck myself in Swiss and then watching my teammate Omar Chavez lose to it in the Finals, I can tell you that the seeming simplicity of the deck is very deceptive. At first glance, it seems foolish to rely on so many speed pumps and Deceptive Look when there is so much cheap and effective negation in the meta, yet that is precisely why the deck is genius. Senkyutai is the ideal finisher for this sort of deck because of it's static text which allows you to cancel any response effect during the attack's various phases. That means no Pieces of Eight, No Memories, SoC, Spiritual Center, Rigorous Training, About Face, Bleeding Internally and on and on. Hence, this one devious little card - with 5 speed base, mind you - has a built-in answer to 95% of the top negators in the format. On top of that, the deck runs 4 copies each of Ninjitsu and Tough Outer Shell, two key cards in Life's arsenal that are often neglected in favor of other superfluous and far less important foundations. The deck was so effective that Derrick Demerath took his modifed version of the to yet another championship, this time at the recent Madison AoP. Derrick's only update was a good one; the addition of the underrated Extreme Rivals in the sideboard as well as shifting some cards around to accomodate further copies of the ever-useful Pull of the Tides.

What is it about Nakoruru that makes her so resilient to the wiles of Evil? It shouldn't be so, at least not logically, especially when you consider the addition of The Red Lotus of the Sun and it's massive impact on the format to the point of being an auto-include in every deck that can run it. The Hammer hasn't gone anywhere either, and CC Hax should in theory mess with Nako's game quite a bit as it provides an answer to both CSS and Senkyutai that is hard to deal with. Then again, when you stop and think about it, Nakoruru's enhance forces out the hax cards like Blood Runs True out early and she can generallly overwhelm Pieces of Eight on her own turn. The same holds true for Higher Calibur, which along with BRT is on the shortlist for best card in the game. The newest Life control elements like the aforementioned TOS give any Life deck that much better mid to late game stability and allow any Life character to absorb a lot of damage. I haven't mentioned that old standby False Pretenses yet, have I? Combined with The Gorgeous Team for recursion of anything from Kung-Fu Trainings to Rejections, there is very little that Life cannot generate an answer for. I would be remiss if I did not mention my own good friend Nick Snider's Promo Xianghua deck that Top 8'd at the SCC as well, his 3rd consecutive Top 8 with the deck. His latest version, as ceejay also discussed, took the basic Life core elements that these Nako decks share and added in a good number of Death chains as well for additional control. Taken together, it points to a lot of evidence that Life is one of the strongest counters to Evil at the moment.

It is not the only counter, though. In my quest for balance, I find that there are some other key cards, characters, and strategies that have quite an effective game against Evil. Ceejay wrote that he and Alex Costa had considered Order as one of the strongest resources against the wall of Evil, and based on the SCC and other events, I would have to agree. Pure Order is a little bit too one-dimensional to frequently win in an Evil matchup, yet when combined with an effective splash, the core Order base has a lot of weapons to match wits against Evil. Ryan Riley's SCC Top 8 Donovan used Good splash as well as the occasional Death splash to great effect, going undefeated in Swiss. Steve Kline's vicious Order/Void Yun-Seong monstrosity, having already won the GCC, gave me quite a run for my money in the SCC Finals even though my sideboard was specifically teched out against it. Then there is the rise of Promo Athena, a character who has amazing synergy with Experienced Combatant as well as access to the very best cards from Evil, Fire, and Order, three very strong resources. As you can see, Order has a lot going for it and has gained even more survivability due to Amy's Assitance, More Machine Than Woman, and Holding Ground - the ultimate answer to Absurd Strength. Anytime a particular resource can demonstrate that much variation, it will always have a place near the top.

There is the old adage about fighting fire with fire and it applies here because Evil can be defeated...by another kind of Evil. I promised that I would talk about my Cody deck a bit, since ceejay purposely left that task to me, and though I already posted the decklist as well as my own specific choices and the reasoning behind them on the old forums, so please check that out while you still can. My main advantage was that I had the best of both worlds in the deck - the raw speed and power of Fire in the form of Clones and Moonbeam Slicer combined with all the control that Evil offers. Yet I did not run a lot of the most common power cards that Evil has, simply because thanks to Cody's innate abusiveness they simply weren't necessary. The key card in my sideboard is one that I expect to see more often - The Illuminati, one of the few legitimate answers to Higher Calibur in the format until the new Greed promo foundation becomes legal. It also shuts down a lot of character abilities and won me two matches by itself all throughout the day in SCC singles along with giving poor Steve headaches during our intense match in the Final. If I had to do it over again, I would have fit in Martial Arts Champion somewhere in the maindeck or side since it is so effective against Blood Runs True, yet another staple with Evil on it that is literally omnipresent at every major event. You need to plan ahead against this card, trust me.

These decks, or even just the philosophy behind them, offer ways to exploit Evil's few weaknesses. They are there if you look closely enough; for one thing, Evil does not feature much pure card draw or anti-discard and therefore is vulnerable to hand destruction. Aside from it's negation and PotT, Evil does not have a way to end loops and a Water based loop deck (especially with Mai5 or James Hata as your starting character) can give it fits. I think that Death and Void both have a lot of game against Evil as well as they can match most of that power pretty equally, in addition to gaining Roam the World who's importance cannot be stressed enough. When combined with TYPFG it can overwhelm the Red Lotus/Oral Dead engine and break through the wall just enough to get critical hits in in. That was the plan behind my Ibuki deck that ceejay mentioned last week and it worked beautifully for most of the weekend. I would wager that people will realize how fast pure Fire is, in conjunction with Elena to help skirt by CC Hax and Vast Resources, which lets any All/Fire/Void character become an Elena/Athena hybrid if need be. That's pretty good. And finally, in testing so far my Earth Yi Shan with The Curse Broken and the crucial Revenant's Calling has held it's own against the dark forces of the UFS universe. So there is hope, and more answers to come from what I have seen of Set 9 and the new promos. Do not fret, my friends! All will be revealed in due time.

Perhaps we can never achieve Woodrow Wilson's dream of a balance of peace but I do think that the metagame will shortly adjust to accomodate a community of power, and hopefully I have given you some ideas on exactly how to go about achieving this. As always, feel free to PM me any questions or comments on the new board (screenname: Vikramas) or email me any thoughts and opinions to vikramas1109@hotmail,com. Until next time...

-Vik