Pendekar: What the?!

[setratus]

Where the heck did this guy come from??? I'm a CPC/POW newb that just bought the whole POW Revival set. Pretty neat stuff, especially with the MMA rules (I'm not a big MMA fan, but the ruleset is fun and fairly easy to pick up as a COTG type game should be!). Anyhoo, three level 3 moves on level 2 offense... three finishers on top of two choice situations on Level 3 offense meaning that he has a 5 in 6 chance of getting a finisher or at least a re-roll, he has a decent power and agility stat, and he has a reversal on level 3 defense?

I don't know if this is his rookie year or if he's been around for a while, but I don't remember ever really hearing about this guy before (granted, I just got back into COTG about 6 months ago), but this guy has megastar stats on him, but from the way it sounds in the basic character description (haven't read the full POW handbook yet), he's not described as a tier 1 wrestler. How has he been doing in other feds???

Next week, since my COTG draft league has grown by 2-3 players, we're restarting the fed and doing a new draft. Older players keep two wrestlers/tag teams of the four that they have from each of the divisions (Universal, I-P, and Tag Team), and then we draft back up to 3 in each division (4 each would have caused too long of a card). Anyway, some of the players called for the banning of the Pendekar card from the draft as he was called 'broken'. As the commish of the fed, I allowed him simply because he is an official card, he's tough but beatable on defense, and on top of that, if I ban him, I'd probably have to ban Monolith and since Monolith is on my team, screw that!!! ;D
Anyway, I explained that Pendekar has the potential to be a Monolith-buster which would be very valuable to the draft fed considering that he went undefeated in the last season for the fed (won the initial Universal title in a battle royal and then went about 10-0). We'll wait and see.

[Aquinas]

I don't have his stats in front of me, so I'm kind of going from memory....but while his offensive abilities are really really good, for whatever reason he wins about as much as he loses in my fed.

He seems to be a solid mid carder, but he's never really dominated.

[Tournament Master]

He is balanced well enough that he isn't too powerful. A midcarder, who has the ability to wear anyone out if he isn't put away right off the bat.

[Trent Lawless]

There's a system used around these parts called the Rahl Ratings that ranks each card's toughness based on several important factors. I don't know all the ins-and-outs, but I believe I was once told (by Mike M probably) that Pendekar winds up somewhere above midway. His "gimmick" is that he's extremely good at reversing a compromising position to his favor (hence the turnaround on L3D) and that when he gets you down, he can be pretty merciless. But one of his main weaknesses is only one turnaround on L2D, which is the level where most action takes place.

As a cruiserweight champ, he's been pretty dominant for me, but he doesn't really rise above that level.

[welsh]

Plus, don't forget if you use the Official rules, you re-roll on Level 2 Offense if you don't want to take the (c) move, or with my house rules you can only re-roll once and have to use the second roll, so his Level 3 O might be escapable.

[setratus]

welsh said:

Plus, don't forget if you use the Official rules, you re-roll on Level 2 Offense if you don't want to take the (c) move, or with my house rules you can only re-roll once and have to use the second roll, so his Level 3 O might be escapable.

I remember when I first played this game in my teens, I rerolled anything with a (c) until I got a different result unless I really wanted to do the chart move. Nowadays, I go with the more commonly used rule in the gaming universe that you can only re-roll once unless specified by the rules that you can re-roll as much as you want.

With that being said, yes, you can escape out of a level 3 lock with Pendekar, especially as he has a Level 2 move on Level 3 offense, but considering you have a 50% chance of rolling one of his finishers already, adding 2 chances of getting at least a re-roll out of it is pretty darn tough!

This is all based on seeing the card, but not playing it yet, so I'm going on everybody else's history with him being a mid-carder. If he had a really tough offense but didn't have that level 3 reversal, I'd probably would have just said 'Wow, powerful offense, terrible defense', but that Level 3 reversal can be a huge advantage.

[MikeMcKinney]

Pendekar is a very solid midcarder and can give any superstar a run for his money.