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The Chyna Effect At the time Mania was released, the tournament scene was dominated largely by two control powerhouses, The Rock and Chyna. Mania featured an answer that severely crippled Chyna, but which only fit naturally into Chris Jericho decks - Happy You're Here, Happier You're Gone:
81/150 Chris Jericho at the time was sorely underpowered, with his big boost a set or two away, which meant that he rarely showed up in tournaments. However, any Chyna player heading into a tournament knew that every Jericho deck would pack this midmatch card, and that there would be almost no way to beat a Jericho deck once he got it in play, had to weigh the chance that they would face a Jericho deck in an elimination round against building and playing something entirely different. The result was, visibly, a lot fewer players entering tournaments with Chyna. Since this was the first noticeable instance of this phenomenon I'll call it the 'Chyna Effect'. That being defined as the release of a card that is, by itself, enough to cause a major shift in the way people play or build their decks even if the card itself sees little to no play. What I'd like to do is take a look at the Chyna effect in Great American Bash.
63/170 I think A No Show is going to have the single most noticeable Chyna Effect of all cards in this set. Old School Wrestling Match has been a staple ever since Backlash decks were introduced, and this card makes Old School Wrestling Match essentially unplayable. For Heels it's even better; lots of cards that give you +2 hand size have major drawbacks - Let's Get It On, Givin 'Em High Fives TB, It's Hard Being This Original. No Show is a no-brainer for Heels and certainly playable in Face if you're worried about Old School Wrestling Match, so the prospect of running into this card several times in a tournament should be enough to drive Old School Wrestling Match out of almost every deck that packed it previously.
65/170 Another prematch card that will make people think twice before packing certain cards is For the Love of the Game. As a midmatch action it's a handy Dirty Low Blow + Turn the Tide combo for everybody, which means it's sure to turn up in the majority of Raw Deal decks for the foreseeable future. This creates a big deck building crisis for a different reason, however, because of the card's secondary effect - the ability to play it in the prematch if your opponent plays two cards that are Title Belts or have Title Belt in the text. Starting the game with fortitude is a huge advantage, and one that most players don't want to see their opponent have access to. The Champ is Here, a recent tournament kit card, has been cropping in lots of decks to expand people's prematch options and give them some extra midmatch utility at the same time. Now, however, you can expect to get hit with For the Love of the Game quite often if you go dropping The Champ is Here in the prematch. I don't think this will scare people off of packing that card (and other title-belt related prematch cards like I've Had More Championships Than You've Had Women) quite as strongly as A No Show will scare people off Old School Wrestling Match, but it's something they will have to plan for and deal with on a regular basis.
72/170
74/170
36/170 Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Legends have been a huge tournament threat ever since Unforgiven and Managed by Mouth of the South Jimmy Hart were released. Managed by Jimmy, reversing two or potentially three maneuvers (with I'm Gonna Break You), has given these superstars a powerful early-game advantage that a lot of players have found extremely frustrating to cope with. Now the answers come in a set of three - two midmatch actions and a powerful multi submission. Of the two midmatch cards, players will find it easier to attack their opponent's Jimmy Hart with Phoenix Rising than This Is Between You and Me on account of the ubiquitous Road to Victory - whose blanking effect can't wipe out its text. Of course, it gives your opponent an option, but if you're really worried about Jimmy then packing a pair of these will either remove the offending manager or obliterate your opponent's hand quickly. Shoot Lock-up is a good complement to the Shoot archetype, which has received a powerful shot in the arm (pardon the pun) with Great American Bash. It doesn't directly nullify the effect of your opponent's Managed by Jimmy Hart unless they're 5 fortitude higher than you, but it's still a quality multi submission maneuver that is hard to deal with on its own and gives you another 0F maneuver to throw at legends and GMs. General Managers have also been strong performers in tournaments this year, especially Stephanie McMahon and Teddy Long. Each of these cards also specifically hurts GMs, who are not as likely to have a powerful pre-match manger but who are susceptible to Phoenix Rising's 30F plunge and who can find their plan to switch to Shane McMahon enforcer for a quick finish stymied completely by This Is Between You and Me. I don't think any of these last three cards will see play in a significant number of decks, but the fact that they're out there is going to make some people think twice before putting together a Doink or a Jake the Snake or Teddy Long deck. Andre the Giant, who can't pack Jimmy Hart and therefore doesn't play quite like the other legends, should still be pretty well represented, but I think the Chyna Effect will assert itself when a number of cards like these are released all at once.
40/170
42/170 Here’s a pair of cards that directly and powerfully counter a strategy that has been powerful in Raw Deal almost since it was introduced – ring removal. Specifically, cards that let you put cards from your opponent’s ring area into his ringside pile (or other locations). The permanent trait has given a lot of cards immunity, but the strategy has continued to be powerful and ever sine Royal Rumble has been embodied by the potent midmatch action, Break it Out Break You Down Breakin’ Rules Breakin’ Ground. With the ability to put two targeted cards from your opponent’s ring area into his ringside pile, and the fact that it is non-unique and always accessible in the midmatch, this card has given Smackdown decks a powerful midgame advantage. While players very often had to deal with an opponent’s Road to Victory, packing three Break it Out Break You Downs meant they could generally overpower their opponent’s ability to stop it. While they have other effects, BASH Evader and Get Back in the Ring combine to make this environment more unfriendly to ring removal as embodied by Break it Out Break You Down than ever. For BASH decks, BASH Evader has an excellent secondary effect of putting virtually any card from your ringside pile into your hand, and with its ability to reverse maneuvers will show up in a large percentage of BASH decks. Get Back in the Ring is will be the more broadly played answer to ring-removal effects, as it also deals with cards that let your opponent look at your hand, Backlash deck, arsenal, or remove cards from your ringside pile. While this hurts a lot of cards with other effects (Commission-er Rules, A Few Heel Men) I think its biggest impact will be to make people strongly reconsider playing cards such as Break it Out Break You Down Breakin’ Rules Breakin’ Ground and Simply the Best, the old standby for ring removal. Getting a crucial ring removal effect reversed with either of these cards just once will be enough to convince most players to find a different strategy. Just a couple more prematch cards to analyze:
62/170 This set is really set up to attack the predominant metagame that existed up through No Way Out - and nowhere is that more evident than on Not On My Broadcast. Its obvious intent is to reign in the two deck types that win purely by playing actions - Divas Win Condition decks, and That's It decks. It slows these decks, which normally win with a flurry of actions, preferably after wiping out their opponent's hand, to a virtual crawl. That's It, in particular, has to find a way to blank this card because the second part of its effect prevents it from playing enough cards with 'That's' in the title to achieve the win condition. The interesting secondary effects of this card are also worth noting. The fact that it limits players to one copy of non-superstar specific non-set-up action cards in the ring could hurt a LOT of decks that simply run 3 each of staple cards like Shoot Action, That's Broken, Grab the Mic, etc. With such a wide range of actions available, if a player feels there's a good chance of running into this card they'd be well advised to instead run two copies each of a greater number of actions that fill similar roles, to ensure against getting caught with a bunch of dead cards in hand. And poor Eugene is going to get nailed by this card if he keeps resorting to Tajiri's Double Chop, so perhaps we'll see a bit less of that Eugene build.
61/170 And finally, one of the cards to make the biggest splash in No Way Out was In the Interest of Fairness TB. Players maximized this card with Carlito and it powered two such players to Worlds qualifier victories. The card was strong enough to see play in many superstars, and if your opponent ever dropped all three in the prematch it generally meant your hand was going to be annihilated. Now there is a simple answer for that strategy which, in one card, almost completely eliminates the effect of your opponent's Interests of Fairness. The Best Laid Plans, like A No Show above, has an added benefit for Heel decks, and can’t even be packed by Face decks - a pretty good clue that Face was seeing a significantly greater representation in tournaments recently. The card will of course hurt the standard Carlito/Interest of Fairness decks, but it also nails a lot of other cards and deck types. Heat got a very useful prematch action in No Way Out, It's Getting Hot in Here, which allowed its player to discard up to 4 heat cards at the end of the prematch to force their opponent to discard the same number -1. That card takes a hit from Best Laid Plans. One of Triple H's staples since Survivor Series 3, The Game Is Back and the Game Is Here to Stay TB, gives your opponent -3 hand size with the significant drawback of giving yourself -1 prematch slot, becomes a virtual coaster in a tournament where people pack Best Laid Plans. It's worth noting that extra-draw prematch effects, like Underrated Superstar and Givin' Em High Fives, have to resolve before Best Laid Plans - so if your opponent is attacking your hand size you might do better to pass on those cards and just play Best Laid Plans. Finally, Andre the Giant is sure to be popular in the Great American Bash era, and one of the reasons is his backstage card that gives his opponent -1 hand size for every prematch card they play. Best Laid Plans lets you sidestep that disadvantage, and play prematch cards to your heart's content. I doubt that will sway many people from playing Andre, but were certain to see a lot less Interest of In the Interest of Fairness TB in this set, and Triple H players might like to find a different Feud to pack. To wrap it up, the Chyna Effect basically comes down to the fact that a lot of players can be psyched out by what they feel is an "auto loss" - the chance that they could run into a particular deck or even one particular card that is designed to shut down their deck entirely - such that they drastically change their deck or play a different superstar entirely, even if the chance of running into that card is minimal. When Happy You're Here was released, Jericho was still a mediocre superstar - needing to get to 5F to use the card against anybody but Chyna - but a Chyna player knew that if they faced Jericho in the elimination rounds, there would be no way to get by him. Similar effects can be seen with Right to Censor and Backstage Politics, or the card Calling You Out and its opposite number, You Rang?. Sometimes a card doesn't have to show up in a single deck to drastically change the way people play, and I think that's going to be as apparent in the Great American Bash era as ever. Time to put away your Interests of Fairness, your That's Its, your Old School Wrestling Matches and Simply the Bests, perhaps to give your legends a rest - unless you want to gamble that nobody plays the cards that can turn these strategies back on themselves in an instant. -John of Team BTY
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