Hi guys --

I'm new to this forum, but definitely not this game. I've seen many of the custom decks and tweaks by many of you and I'm always impressed with the creativity and inventiveness in many of the decks.

I've played literally hundreds and hundreds of this game in person --- 1v1 and a lot of team games, which is where I think this game really shines. It is much more tactical and strategic than most people give it credit for.

So, why does Vader's deck "suck"? Well, a few years back I had this discussion with others in the yahoo epic duels group forum. Me and a few other guys tossed around some ideas about its design, or lack of design. Haggerty was dead on in his assessment of the weaknesses of Vader's deck. And as far as I'm concerned, there is nothing to debate here. His deck was poorly designed and is clearly one of the weakest non-shooter decks in the game.

Back in 2002 I think, I posted the following about his deck:

Vader has a somewhat counterproductive deck. Unlike other decks with great card
combinations, Vader's cards don't compliment each other very well. For instance, the very existence of the All Too Easy card almost forces an opponent to block any attack thrown by Vader. Consequently, this weakens Vader's life drain cards. How much life are you going to get if you attack the main character? Not much --- you'll probably never get 3 because he's going to throw up some kind of block. So why don't you just attack the trooper or droid with the Dark Side Drains? You could, and maybe kill it, but then your chokes become useless.

You could get lucky and get 2 wraths at the beginning of the game and kill a couple of guards and do 4 damage to the main guy. Good move, but now your chokes are again worthless. What if you choke off 2 troopers and then draw another choke? Useless. And how about your wraths? They're not quite as strong as before because you choked off the 2 guards. You could only do 2 damage to the main guy. Granted, it's direct damage that can't be stopped, but it is nonetheless weakened by the fact that the troopers are dead.

See what I'm saying here? Anakin has Wrath and Calm and Anger. Other decks have nice card combinations --- cards that work well together. Vader's deck doesn't have this. His cards don't work well off each other --- they effectively weaken each other. Throw in Vader's weak blocking ability and lack of mobility, and you have a weak singles deck. As we've all noted before, team play is a little different. Vader has more targets, and his cards gain a little bit more power.

End of post.

We always kept records of our matches and Vader always posted very low winning percentages, much like the online records you guys have. In fact, I sincerely believe Vader has a 0% chance of achieving a win against a competent Obi player.

Like many of you, we tweaked him with better defense and also gave him a few ways to immobilize his opponents. This allowed him to live longer and prolong the game somewhat so he would have time to cycle through his direct damage cards.

I know that the decks aren't completely balanced --- and I'm a fan of that --- but this is Darth Vader --- he should have been designed a little stronger.

Lee