Oh my, I suppose it's no surprise that it was an Episode 3 discussion that finally got me to dust off my account here. However, that it was a topic created by Deadbeard, that comes as a surprise. ;]
I was the type of player who was happy to team up against coms. I never got the knack for 1vs1, and I rarely did those. (All in all I would have to say that, especially in 1vs1, winning tended to make me feel bad for the opponent, and losing... heh, I probably wasn't the most elegant loser in the game. At least I knew myself well enough to avoid getting in those situations, then.)
But on (maybe too) rare occasion, I would find myself in 2vs2 battles, and those were generally a lot of fun. Regardless of whether the match was won or lost.
Though I was usually around a small group of players, I never had a real team battle partner, and as such, my team decks were just (hopefully) balanced decks, always with protection and defender cards, and a varied selection of other defence cards. Although, sometimes I would try goofy team decks for fun, like when Nadia told me to make a Guil Shark deck for a certain match. Usually, I would just use decks that did not rely on anything from my partner's deck (except defence cards, naturally).
Either it's the years between my last matches, or the fact that I played too few, but there's no many names that jump out as 'trouble', to play against. I don't recall, though, ever winning a match from Joana.
I do remember it was always fun to play against Star, because she was always just as upbeat, and cheerful, both after a win or a loss. (Yes, there were plenty of players who were no sore losers like I could be. Don't be offended for not getting a mentioning. But I clearly remember Star's cheery disposition even now).
Bad luck was still a factor in 2vs2, but I agree with all of you that it was a much smaller factor than with 1vs1. In fact, I probably lost games against the com too, after a badly timed 1-1 roll, go figure. (But at least, some human players were courteous enough to give an opponent another chance, if they rolled 1-1. I think I even saw you, Deadbeard, give that courtesy to Angel(? I forgot her charcater's name), an EU God. After she rolled 1-1, you said you wouldn't do anything in your turn, and not take advantage of her bad roll.)
Bad shuffles could hurt as well, especially early on, on small maps, when you really ought to set some cards, instead of just running from the opponent a few turns. But lost battles that were really due to catastrophic shuffles, must have been rare for everyone.
The biggest luck factor would have to have been me, in a way. Depending on how much attention I focused on the battle, I could be my own worst enemy. I'm unlikely to ever forget the time a 'carefully planned' deck was about to pay off, and I used legacy to be able to set a Crimson Assassin near the Hero opponent. But what I ended up doing, was using legacy, and chatting with my partner while wondering in which square to set the Crimson, until my time expired and nothing was set at all. (Fortunately, Jo was able to use a rampaging attack on the spamming Hero opponent, which prevented me from losing in the dumbest way possible). Ah, I just grab every opportunity I can, to tell that anecdote
I didn't have a favourite Hero or Arkz, but I think I felt most secure with pretty basic Kranz, and Creinu decks. Sometimes it was fun to make decks to try to get the most out of some character's peculiarities. Like having suicidal creatures with Rio, or boosting Exp for Viviana. In my case, those were rarely good team decks, though. Too quirky, too dependant of certain assist cards or chains of events. It was also fun to have Stella deck and shout 'Nyah', a lot.
I think it was Nadia who coined the phrase "synchronized decks", and getting pitted against that, with a random partner, certainly put you at a disadvantage. It's hard to tell how much of that disadvantage came from the decks, or from the fact the opponents knew each other much better than you and a random other person did. Knowing your partner well enough that you don't have to debate each move (as in asking what def cards they had in hand, what they planned to set, or where, to focus attacks on what, etc.), certainly helped. But you hardly could demand that players who enjoyed working together, never play together.
I've been talking about Episode 3 a few times, in PSU, recently. And it's nice to be able to spew some thoughts about it among people who do remember the game.
Speaking of PSU, and Nadia, and I apologise for going off topic here.. A few times I asked some unknown people, with slightly familiar names in PSU, (I think I asked a certain Alouette a few times now), if they ever played PSO Episode 3, and if so, if they had a char named Nadia. So far I've had no luck. So, Deadbeard, do you know how she is and if she played PSU at some point?
Hah, but that may be too personal, coming from someone you probably don't remember from Ep3 `-`
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Originally Posted by Deadbeard
Might be handy for another offline playthrough. So I'm interested to hear if you have more evidence for it. `-`
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