A2 Power Surge is probably the more interesting of the two Hyper Juken sets released so far. Not because it brought interesting and fun new playstyles to the game, but because I largely deem it a failure.
At the 11th hour, just before the print was finalised, someone who has proven indispensable in development picked up the game, tried out A2 and pointed out a fair few of problems with it. Most of the more egregious ones were addressed in the nick of time, but some things just couldn't be fixed before printing.
Starting with Louise, she was much more Special focused initially, removing the opponent's ability to prevent combat damage from your Specials. Once I had this person on board and how she was intended to be played moved to how someone presented with her would play, she became too annoying to deal with. A feels bad experience. This meant that she ended up hyper focusing on her Lightning Blast, a trait shared with D. Stinger, but she was brought down to earth. It also meant that for the time being, she was very Blue and Red focused to keep cycling Lightning Blast, but that won't be the case for too much longer. 😉
Defensive Knowledge also proved itself a problem. Hyper Juken as a whole has too much recovery, something you'll see easing up in future releases, but resulted in an unintended loop where the end of the Arsenal could just be Unphased Catch and you wait for the opponent to die. This had to become a [TRIG] effect to prevent the loop, but as a result, Adaptive Form I couldn't search it out. After A2 printed, I did commission art for Rejuvenation Form I depicting Louise, as you can see up the top. It's likely to end up in Naagpal's Corner for A3, but I think it may end up as an extra in Set 2.5 for A2. I'm sure Louise will find a use for Adaptive Form I eventually, but she desperately needs this.
D. Stinger is the key reason why Louise ended up the way she did as the initial play tester was very good at getting Stinger Shot to hit and poison Louise. She just submitted to poison damage over time. Saying that, D. Stinger and his Arsenal have some rather big issues too.
Salt to the Wound was a card I pushed too hard to exist and didn't even end up a good card. It doesn't work with Poison Damage, only Effect Damage. This is a source of great confusion as it doesn't work with D. Stinger's main feature, Venom Tokens. That's a really confusing include for players, but more than that, it should have been something that worked with both Opportunistic Form I and D. Stinger. A Tactic with a "[TRIG]: When you Discard this card >" clause.
Salt to the Wound was designed to work with Taichi, hence why Ki Swipe Guard does effect damage, all three of the Breakers this set were designed to work with the A1 characters, but Salt isn't worth the discard and the 1 Ki to make it a net 0 and 2 effect damage simply isn't good enough. It was the wrong place for the card and it wasn't good enough. The excuse of "just discard it for Opportunistic Form I bro" was just that, an excuse for poor design.
I think D. Stinger's Burst Fighter form is perfectly fine. It really needs that Tactic I mentioned earlier, but it's a fun card that can turn the game around much like a Breaker card. 😉 Unfortunately, his Hyper Fighter form is rather eh. It's too hard to Stun, Searching the Arsenal for Stinger Shot, something that was meant to play into Stinger Shot's effect shuffling itself back in, is inappropriate for that part of the game and the payoff of turning it into Burst Takedown doesn't quite hit the same note with the amount of hoops you have to go through. 1 Ki just isn't enough to make a dent to the opponent's resources. The reason Burst Takedown hurts to much is that you can do it twice in a row, Hyper D. Stinger can't do that.
I'd also be remiss not to mention that D. Stinger's Arsenal doesn't have enough Hyper to really reach Hyper Form reliably. I guess that's a blessing in disguise of sorts with the Burst Form being so much better than the Hyper Form currently.
Mark easily has the least issues of the three characters, but that isn't to say he's perfect. The [ARSENAL] effect and it's wording will become a problem in time. Not only is it too much on release, 😉, the fact it's a hard 8 instead of -4 will cause him issues in a format I'm looking to introduce with A3. It will sort itself out in time with what we have cooking, but not for Sealed, which for now is going to be how most people play.
This is where I get to the cut attribute of A2, <EMPOWER>. Empower was an attribute similar to <CHIP> and <PRECISION>, to help break through defenses. With Empower, if the attack was blocked, you could pay 1 Ki to force your opponent to pay Ki equal to it's level, otherwise their block is cancelled. This all happened before [BLK] effects. Where Chip was Red/Yellow and Precision was Yellow/Blue, Empower was Red/Blue.
This was a result of really liking Burst Takedown and the idea of pushing through blocks in an anime fashion. Unfortunately, Burst Takedown proved to be the strongest Lv2 in the game and the idea of more Burst Takedown like cards running around was just too much.
Red's Resolute Overhead Hook became a modular 1/4 that could become a 2/6 that in effect strength was weaker than vanilla, while Blue's Resolute Dual Blasts became a 1/3 that could become a 2/6 with exactly vanilla strength. Both were redesigned on a crunch, but I think Resolute Dual Ki Blasts has far more use of the two.
For constructed, none of these characters will be left in the lurch. Louise and D. Stinger benefit greatly from A2.5 in constructed, while A3 has a really nifty couple of tools for D. Stinger and Mark. A2 also included some great cards like Yellow's Skull Crush Stomp, Blue's Quick Ki Blast and the cycle of Breakers. Despite my comments earlier about Yellow's Ki Swipe Guard, it's proved a fairly useful card. It's also not like these characters won't be returned to in the future. A2 isn't an irredeemably bad set, but it has more dud cards than A1 and the Sealed experience isn't up to par.
The final thing worth mentioning about A2 are the Basic Blocks, the Kihon cards. These were meant to be a 7 card cycle per colour of vanilla cards that would become their own playstyles and a way to gain advantage in a controlled manner. This was the plan for a long time, if you bought A1 you'll have an exclusive Kata card that mentions them and is a glimpse into what this would have been, but it's since been abandoned. There has been some discussion as to whether the art should be reused to make new cards or not, but the rest of the Kihon cards aren't going to see the light of day.
Till next time friends, thanks for reading.
-Erik
