Review: Shadowverse (Japanese Hearthstone)

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Whipstitch
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Post by Whipstitch »

Zombie Party is best party.
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Post by DSMatticus »

So, Aegis is apparently the Havencraft tournie deck in both North America and Japan. The meta obviously isn't settled, but for now it's there and all non-Aegis (including Seraph) is on vacation. The calculus seems to be that you get to drop a bunch of amulet accel and run a deck skeleton that is much more effective at controlling the board, which is good because aggro shadow is fucking scary. It hasn't won anything, and I don't think it's going to, but it does look a little bit like it might singlehandedly fill the meta's space for generic control deck. Which I suppose isn't surprising, because it's a really solid matchup against other slow-ass control decks.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

I thought tournies were currently 40% dragon ramp subtypes, 40% aggroshadow variants and then one aegis deck showing up beside the daria, commander sword, vengence blood and/or wolf forestcraft decks to fill out the roster.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Post by Username17 »

Josh_Kablack wrote:I thought tournies were currently 40% dragon ramp subtypes, 40% aggroshadow variants and then one aegis deck showing up beside the daria, commander sword, vengence blood and/or wolf forestcraft decks to fill out the roster.
Pretty much. Aegis isn't the top of the tournament ladder or even a massive contributor to the tournament scene. The statement was actually that everyone who plays Haven in tournaments is playing Aegis rather than Seraph or Storm. I don't know why they'd do that. Possibly they are concerned that people are going to play grindy control decks to fight Dragon with. But I don't know why they wouldn't just do D-Shift for that match, considering that D-Shift also facerips Aegis. But apparently Aegis is a positive winrate deck overall according to the latest Meta List. I don't know who Aegis is getting wins against. It certainly isn't Storm Ramp Dragon.

Interesting article on cheapass decks you can play Here.

Also Gawain is playable now. I've seen people try a couple different Commander Swords. The one which goes really big and has Roland and shit seems to be "kind of shitty" but the low to the ground midrange deck that gets value off Luminous Mages seems pretty good.

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Post by Whipstitch »

My deck bricked so hard that I lost to an ambush deck. Feels bad, man.
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Post by Zaranthan »

The deck winrate isn't broken down by player rank the way the class matchups are, so I'd wager those Aegis decks are winning against lower ranked players either botching their aggro plays or trying to run control against it without changing their strategy.
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Post by DSMatticus »

This is the last NGE Open Top 8. Final tallies look like this:
5x aggro shadowcraft
4x ramp dragoncraft
2x midrange swordcraft
1x aegis havencraft
1x aggro bloodcraft
1x midrange dragoncraft
1x vengeance bloodcraft
1x white wolf forestcraft
There are supposably two midrange shadowcraft, but if you check the deck list it's actually just aggro shadowcraft so I threw them together. The midrange dragoncraft really is its own weird ass thing that is not ramp dragon. The vengeance bloodcraft deck is basically last gen control blood running Belphegor and Blood Moon. That's it. I understand and yet am baffled nonetheless.

This is the top 4 for both of the JCG Opens, because the JCG continues to be split in two in a way I don't entirely understand. Is it just two tournaments back-to-back? I don't get it, whatever. There are errors in those listings. Two of those Aegis Havencraft decks link to decks that are not even Havencraft, so yeah. But if you trust the decks themselves, then you've got:
2x DShift Runecraft
2x Ramp Dragoncraft
2x Aegis Havencraft
1x Roach Forestcraft
1x White Wolf Forestcraft

and

3x Ramp Dragoncraft
2x White Wolf Forestcraft
1x Daria Runecraft
1x Aegis Havencraft
1x Aggro Shadowcraft
Between those 32 decks, you've got 9x Ramp Dragoncraft, 6x Aggro Shadowcraft, 4x White Wolf Forestcraft, 4x Aegis Havencraft, and then a smattering of stuff that shows up 1-2 times. Aegis Havencraft is not a big winner in the current tournie scene, but it is not currently insignificant. It seems to be the new go-to generic control deck in a meta that has made generic control decks a little bit less viable overall.
Zaranthan wrote:The deck winrate isn't broken down by player rank the way the class matchups are, so I'd wager those Aegis decks are winning against lower ranked players either botching their aggro plays or trying to run control against it without changing their strategy.
Control decks in RoB were honestly quite slow. It was the era of Bahamut, for crying out loud; a stormless 10-drop. Playing control in ranked was always a little bit rough, because the decks that wreck you the hardest are also the cheapest decks to put together, but it wasn't necessarily an exercise in pure masochism. There's enough lifegain and removal in the game to put up a real fight against aggro. Havencraft always had those tools, but now it has a finisher with hard inevitability that makes it the favorite in lots of control-vs-control matchups. But I do think it's in a worse position overall than either Control Bloodcraft or Control Swordcraft were pre-TotG, simply because there are two new kids on the block and they both fuck you up hard and fast. Regardless, there is always going to be space for random ass control decks in the Conquest format, and at the moment Aegis looks a lot like the one true choice for that.
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Post by Whipstitch »

From what I can tell the super low ranks are a memetastic clusterfuck right now. I've been rolling through people because my midrangey Nep fares better against the Aegis and Melvie bullshit people are trying than it did Seraph or DShift. Meanwhile, a fully kitted Nepdeck has a bajillion tools for killing or outracing Ambush Frog and is in a better spot against aggro blood than it used to be because you can now try to mulligan for Zombie Party and have an answer for turn 2 Yurius that doesn't involve eating a bunch of damage, burning multiple cards or messing up your ideal curve.

EDIT: I keep beating down the pokey multiple LB Dramp decks just fine. Fucking group think.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Fri Apr 07, 2017 7:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Wow, my (non-frog, non-cannon) Aggro sword deck is on a roll and into the low-end of B ranks. Currently getting 5+ win streaks.

I wonder if that's still "memetastic clusterfuck" territory or if I'm actually hitting a weak spot in the meta with a variant that drops all of the mass-buffs for a variety of card-ratio stuff to set up favorable trades, break wards, and rebuild my board immediately after a sweep. It's fast enough to race traditional aggro if it needs to, but has enough midgame to trade into them while also getting around most of the slower decks' early answers to aggro.

Remembering to let Aiela live against ramp and to trade anything into Shadowcraft pre-Reaper/Catacomb drop helps a lot too.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Sat Apr 08, 2017 2:46 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Whipstitch »

My biggest worry with that deck would probably be dramp Israfil bullshit but there's really only so much that can be helped. The private matches were helpful for me given that I've been tinkering with Death's Ledger but fundamentally I just think turns 4 and 5 are too important to be dropping shit that you can't evo right away.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Sat Apr 08, 2017 3:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Private matches were helpful for me too. Funny how Spring Cleaning worked out to be a clutch card while D-Shift was just always stuck in my hand. I would agree with you swapping out Death's Ledger. My suspicion is that Frank was right and the true use for that card is in a Neutralcraft deck with a shadow package. Don't know if it was my draws, but you look to be weak to Seraph -- which probably isn't going to be common in a meta where Lightning Blast is so prevalent.

As for my ranked deck, which you didn't see as I was testing other builds -- D-ramp has been winnable, but it has required a lot of consideration of the potential impact of Rahab, Breath of the Salamander and Sybil. Ramp reaching the later board sweeps (Israfil, Bahamut, Enhanced Lightning Blast) are already in "I gotta pull the last few points of damage with Storm now or I lose) territory. In theory I'm more worried about some of the combo blood packages out there running Azazel -- but those have yet to catch on beyond a fringe so I may be safe there.
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Post by Whipstitch »

My standard kit is a bad matchup against Seraph too but I think that particular variant was falling on its ass harder than usual because I was dicking around with bellringer angel and simultaneous soul conversion and ledger instead of just one or the other which made things too durdly. Usually I ditch the ledger and just run some more removal, lurching corpse and necroassassins or even just go control. Mind you, none of those alternatives listed are actually good against seraph--like I said, it's always been a bad matchup--but bellringer does virtually nothing against seraph and the necrocorpse combo at least has a much easier time eating big blockers and puts a controllable 3/3 on the board. Plus, between card draws and the Ledger it's disturbingly easy to drop Nep with no liches left in your 3 or 4 slot, something which makes her super duper bricky if you have even a single slot filled on your board. I mean, it's always sad when you don't pull Mordecai, but midrange can often live with it because a 5/5 and a 4/4 often still demands an immediate answer but pulling Nep and literally nothing is sad trombone.

[Edit] Blew all my spare rupies on ToG packs and was super disappointed until I got an Eachtar on the last pack.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Sat Apr 08, 2017 4:35 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by nockermensch »

I did an ambush frog deck and can confirm it is indeed a meme deck. I still get better results with my poorfag royal banner + albert + tsubaki deck.

It's a given that the wins I get running Pepecraft are hilarious, but the win rate is bad (like 30% bad). And some of these wins were against people (curiously heaven and runecraft so far) that fucking gave up the moment I dropped that damn frog on turn 3.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Open question: fastest possible goldfish wins per each craft? Assume oppenent just passes each turn.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Well, off the top of my head I would point out that you can turn 4 goldfish just with neutral cards. Drop a goblin, spam wise mermen, throw out the bear of your choosing then drop a turn 4 Demonic Strike to finish.
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Post by nockermensch »

Josh_Kablack wrote:Open question: fastest possible goldfish wins per each craft? Assume oppenent just passes each turn.
With swordcraft, the earliest win seems to be turn 4:

1 quickblader
2 front lines, front lines
3 keen enchantment, quickblader
4 keen enchantment x2

This makes for 20 damage at turn 4, even if you're the first player and can't evolve yet. I wonder if a turn 3 win is even possible.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Fastest death I've googled is...

"
Player 1 ambling > blood pact > direbond = 9 damage

Player 2 ambling > wolf > razor + ambling = 11 damage for the lethal
"

Blood vs Blood
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Post by OgreBattle »

Frog of Destiny is a fun deck to play against. This guy had a massive 11/something untouchable frog and I was near death, dropped Bahamut and swept frog and well away, guy conceded.

I should try out a frog deck myself
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Post by Whipstitch »

Swordcraft has a whole mess of ways turn 4 goldfish due to Commander synergy and it's possible to fit several paths into the same deck. For example, I've got a budget swordcraft deck that overall kinda sucks due to its fragility but at the end of the day it still gets me through daily missions fast because a combination of Quickbladers, Palace Fencers and Centaur Vanguards can slap the shit out of any control deck that trips over its own dick in the early rounds.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Just hit B2, currently on an 8 match win streak.

Here's my main Aggro sword list:

$1 Cost
3x Quickblader (Actually the "katana unleashed" promo variant)
3x Vanguard
3x Mentor's Teachings

$2 Cost
3x Fearless Banneret
3x Whole-Souled Swing
2x Palace Fencer
1x Princess Vanguard
1x Veteran Lancer
1x Maid Leader

$3 Cost
3x Art of the Ninja
1x Ruthless Assassin

$4 Cost
3x Floral Fencer
1x White General
1x Jeno, Mattress Vanguard

$5 Cost
2x Avant Blader
3x Luminous Mage
2x Monica, Cloudhall Admiral
2x Albert, Mattress Salesman
1x Execution
1x Dance of Death

Curve 9/11/4/4/12/0/0/0/0/0
Followers 29
Spells 11
Amulets 0

Officers: 16
Plus 6 spells that can summon officers, 2 fanfares and one Last Word that summon officers, 3 evolves that summon officers, 3 fanfares that tutor for officers and 3 copies of a passive that summons officers off of either player's evolve.

Commanders: 13
Plus 3 fanfares that summon commanders and one that tutors for a commander.

So things general play out as between a 1 to 1 and a 2 to 1 officer to commander ratio in any given game.

So I know that the curve tops out at 5, but I play this just slightly on the midrange side for an aggro deck. As mentioned previously, it's smart to trade into AggroShadow before Catacomb or Reaper drop, and it can be the right play to make similar trades into AggroBlood to end up further ahead on the board before Vengeance triggers.

The basic plan is to push turn 1-3 damage, then try to leverage evolution synergies and then have a couple of decent 5-cost options to choose from each game to try to push the last few points through or hold on until the Albert / Art of Ninja enhance effects can win it on turn 9.

Comments of card selection:

3 Quickblader - duh. You have to get into weird commander / control sword builds to not pack three of these.

3 Vanguard - Meh. A 1 point follower with the officer tag.

3 mentor's teachings - This is so good that I'm baffled by those aggro sword lists that just run one of these. In the good case it's +1 face damage now for 1 orb and doesn't take a card. In the bad case it's +1 orb to try to draw a more helpful card. If you're not running aggro, then it might sit in your hand uselessly for a few turns.

3 Fearless Bannerets - this is a 2/1 for 2, but the ability provides a lot of bonus value in the midgame. It triggers off both your own and enemy evolutions, which makes it either a way to increase advantage or at least a lightning rod for enemy removal.

3 Whole-Souled Swing. This turns around a slower start, chips away at enemy troops with ward and gets good value if played after an opposing sweep. It's just pretty durn good.

(2+1) Palace Fencer / Princess Vanguard. The fencers are ludicrously fast damage in the optimum case, buffing a blader/vanguard. But the one princess I originally put in because I didn't feel it was a good investment to craft a third copy of a common has stayed as minor insurance against Angelic Barrage and splash damage from Breath of the Salamander.

3 Art of the Ninja. This is mana-efficient removal for wards and gotta-kill enemies like Yurius, Minthe and opposing Luminous Mages. It is also occasionally a notable lategame threat.

3 Floral Fencer. With an Evolution, this puts 3 bodies on the field - which helps to recover after an opposing sweep. With a Banneret, that's 6 orbs two cards and one evo point to make 5 new bodies -- which is an adequate recovery to keep up pressure after an opponent just spent 6 on Themis or an Enhanced Breath of the Salamander or 5+ an Evo on an Ancient Lion Spirit clear. I still think I probably should drop one of these for an alternate 4-drop, but unsure if any of the other options are as good in this deck.

3 Luminous Mages. SO MUCH VALUE in this deck. Two bodies helps recover after an opposing sweep. Freevolving the Knight can trade for 3 damage and also push up to +3 face damage through right now. Freevolving the Mage puts a decent-stat lightning rod on the board as well as setting up for free buffing of the other commanders in the following turn.

Avant Blader / Monica / Albert -- running 2 of each of these means I usually have options on turns 5-7. Monica with Evolve is decent removal, Avant Blader is prep against an expected sweep (note that the officer cost curve in this deck is 6/5/1/4 so that a turn 6+ blader almost always gives at least one extra body to put on the field immediately) And Albert is obviously the crazy-go-nuts must-craft sword legendary that can close out games with Storm.

Things I'm not so sure about, but keep running so long as the deck keeps putting up these kinds of win streaks:

Jeno: I'd actually like him better if he DIDN"T have the Enhance. 4 orbs for a 4/3 rush is pretty decent. 6 orbs for a 4/3 rush is crap, and the inability to pass on the enhance cobines with the 5-follower limit on the board to mean that more than once I've been unable to make the ideal play of FIRST dropping Jeno to trade into Yuris/Damus/Evolved Bard/Ward etc, then dropping and evolve something else to trade. This is actually a big deal in conjunction with all the 5-drops that get evolution value. Plus he reduces the odds of drawing things which are immediately playable if drawn off of Avant Blader's fanfare. I'm considering replacing him with a 2nd White General, a 2nd Ruthless Assassin, Cursed General, Amelia, Latham, Gemstaff or maybe even crafting a Gawain (although his enhance could cause similar curve issues)

Dance of Death and Execution: I have mixed feelings about running one of each of these. Each have been valuable in games -- but with only single copies that's value from luck, not from strategy.

Maid Leader: She's in here as a Cantrip, not as a tutor, but I wonder if I might be better with another Palace Fencer /Princess Vanguard/Veteran Lancer or even a Naval Guard Simone.

Veteran Lancer: Again, feels weird to be only running 1-offs. Still having something with Ward is occasionally useful. Not sure if the less-reliable but bigger potential upside Simone would be an improvement?

Alwidra's Commnad: This is the obvious aggro-sword choice which I'm
NOT running. Originally the choice was due to my collection. But I'm doing well enough and I like the option of playing 5 drop plus a 1 or 2 drop in the turns where Alwidra would normally be played, so I dunno.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Tue Apr 11, 2017 6:57 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Josh wrote:As mentioned previously, it's smart to trade into AggroShadow before Catacomb or Reaper drop, and it can be the right play to make similar trades into AggroBlood to end up further ahead on the board before Vengeance triggers.
I think trading into aggro blood is the right move generally in aggro-aggro matchups. Aggro blood has virtually no draw/tutor and subpar midgame card value (though TotG has improved that a bit), but they have a bunch of different ways to deal 5+ damage directly from their hand to your face by the time you're in the midgame.
Josh wrote:Dance of Death and Execution: I have mixed feelings about running one of each of these. Each have been valuable in games -- but with only single copies that's value from luck, not from strategy.
Ehh, my beef with execution is that it destroys amulets instead of banishing them. You're giving up 2 face damage to have the option of using the card to counter the subset of amulets that don't have scary last word effects. The face damage is probably going to win you more games.
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Post by Whipstitch »

DSMatticus wrote: I think trading into aggro blood is the right move generally in aggro-aggro matchups. Aggro blood has virtually no draw/tutor and subpar midgame card value (though TotG has improved that a bit)
Yeah, it's definitely improved but unfortunately Shadowcraft is still standing their wishing you good luck from behind 7 proxies 5 skeletons that they got for free after you swept all their dudes.
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Post by Username17 »

Shadowcraft's aggro matchups are hilarious. Someone really needs to update the skeletons meme pic to include Luna.

Image

Anyway, so the weirdest competitive deck for me is Midrange Blood. Blood Moon has been a total bust for me. I mean, it can win, but passing on turn 3 is bad and drawing Blood Moons in the late game is bad and there just isn't enough card draw in this thing to get all your parts working. So I turned to see what people run when they want to get 1st place in a competitive Japanese tournament and run Midrange Blood. And what do I see? This Monstrosity.

It runs Belphegor and Soul Dealer but no Blood Moon. Its plan is just to take the fucking damage, all ten points of it and not fucking care because it keeps enemies on the back foot for the rest of the game. The really surprising part to me though is the fact that the deck isn't running any Bloody Mary.

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Post by DSMatticus »

Yeah, the blood meta is super fucking weird right now.

Blood Moon has turned out to be a great big nothing. It's a card you want to run three of, only ever want to play one of, and it belongs in decks that can't sacrifice the tempo required to put it on the table. I kind of thought there would be some crazy combos there, but in the end it just hurts too much to play. Meanwhile Belphegor is a 4/4 for 4 that draws you two cards and Soul Dealer is a 6/4 with ward, and they will both stab you in the face until you are at 10 life or below, and that's fine. Everything is going to be okay. Look at all the cool things you can do when you're bleeding profusely out of your face. You could take a ride on an airjammer. You could visit a zoo filled with giant snakes. You could go on a date with Laura.

Pre-TotG, Blood had what were likely both the fastest and slowest decks in the meta. Now, the game is overall much faster (or at least much harder to slow down) and people are adapting control blood into something like midrange/late storm, and the value of cards like Belphegor and Dark Airjammer and maybe even Soul Dominator are so tempting that aggro blood is cutting some of its bat shit to fit them. There's definitely a convergence toward the middle going on, which is interesting, but also a little sad. The more I tinker and adapt, the less I feel like I have two completely different decks and more like I have the same deck running at two slightly different speeds.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

I one hundred percent expected there to be a killer app that made Soul Dealer competitive. I am just really surprised that the thing that makes Soul Dealer playable is Belphegor. It's just the same effect but arguably better on a card that costs the same amount. But that's exactly the point: if you have two copies of that effect you can run a deck that has a reasonable chance of actually playing it and make plans around that happening. It's like how the thing that made Ramp Dragon playable was Sybil. It's not dramatically different from Fervor, but the fact that you can run more than 3 cards in the 5 cost ramp slot makes your turn 6 plays so much more likely to be Ouroboros.

I was tired of losing with Shadow so I crafted three Reapers and started running Goblin Princess and so far things look good. I really expected Goblin Princess to be a cornerstone card of Pendant Dragon, but it turns out that who really cares about a bunch of disposable bodies and a guaranteed future play is Luna. She has so many cards that synergize with three small bodies and a powerful last words ability that it's nuts. Prince Catacomb, Urd, Reaper, and even Eachtar. I'm really considering crafting Eachtar. He's insane.

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