Review: Shadowverse (Japanese Hearthstone)

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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

So Golem assault is 2cost for...

Put a Conjure Guardian into your hand. Enhance (6): Put 2 more into your hand. Earth Rite: Subtract 1 from the cost of all Conjure Guardians in your hand.

That's not a win condition card on its own but does it make existing golem cards more viable? Unfortunately War cyclone still wipes the board of em
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Post by Username17 »

OgreBattle wrote:So Golem assault is 2cost for...

Put a Conjure Guardian into your hand. Enhance (6): Put 2 more into your hand. Earth Rite: Subtract 1 from the cost of all Conjure Guardians in your hand.

That's not a win condition card on its own but does it make existing golem cards more viable? Unfortunately War cyclone still wipes the board of em
Golem Assault enhance is trash. On 6 mana it's "burn a dirt rune: do nothing" and on 7 it's "burn a dirt rune, put a Guardian Golem into play, two more are coming." That's strictly worse than Juno's Secret Lab. You might be able to do something with Abomination. But then you're just using a 6 mana spell to increase your hand size by 2, and that sounds much worse than Melvie or Kaleiescopic Glow. For Abomination purposes, the 6 mana Golem Assault is basically just Spellbook Decription at that point.

The real purpose I think is to cast it on 2 with no dirt runes in play on turn 4. You know who wants a 3/3 ward for 4 mana that triggers spellboost twice? Daria and D-Shift. Both decks want that. Think of it as a 4 mana Clark that also spellboosts spells and is a 3/3 Ward. It has a dirt rune effect, but I think it's supposed to live in a no dirt deck. It's an Insight where you pay 1 extra PP to guaranty that the card you draw is also a spellbooster and is strictly better than Clay Golem or Carbuncle.
Josh wrote:If you do run Urd and Laura for the OTK combo, what other decent value cards offer synergies with those two?
Urd does good things with followers that have storm naturally and doesn't trigger fanfares. So the obvious is Blood Wolf. Blood Wolf is great with Demon Key in any case, but Urd gives you an extra face attack to your opponent and doesn't make it smack you again. Urd is best friends with both sides of Soul Dominator, and Soul Dominator can be snagged with Bandersnatch but not with Baphomet. So if you're trying to Key out the Spawn, then Soul Dominator is fine, but if you're trying to Bandersnatch it out you probably do not want.

Urd plays extremely well with the Iceblade Warfiend since she heals it and gives it another rush attack. But Iceblade Warfiend sucks and I don't care.

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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Previously overlooked interaction of the moment:

Venomous Pucewyrm's stat gain triggers independent of whether you actually have cards left in hand to discard. There may be a semi-viable aggro dragon build exploiting that.
"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 Omegonthesane »

That's always been the case for Disco Dragon's "discard X and then Y" effects (as opposed to "whenever you discard X, do Y") Even benefited from it once or twice with Griffon Knight.
Indeed one of the new Dragon cards is meant to exploit that, discarding your lowest cost *Dragoncraft* card when played so that you discard sweet naff-all if your hand is all neutrals.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

So, sunk all rupees into new expansion. Pulled 4 copies of Beauty and the Beast but zero blood Legendaries.


Early observations:

Predictably, Spawn of the Abyss is the most common deck, and at least so far -- the deck to beat. I'm gonna have to toy around with my valkyrie's spear runecraft deck to try out some Mutagenic Bolt loads against it.

Ambush sword may be actually viable now. Still unsure if shield of flame replaces whole-souled swing or if it replaces art of the ninja as general removal for sword.

Emphemera triggers on each attack - so +3 damage for an evolved Old man and Old Woman or an enhanced Albert (or a Hydra or Anne, but you are not playing those). She may yet have a place in storm heavy decks. (If you can generate 4 shadows by turn 3, a turn 4 Ephemera who lives into turn 5 gets you an 8 damage Phantom Howl before evolution)
"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 DSMatticus »

I pulled a Cthulhu and have the vials to craft a playset, but am unsure how I want to build around it. Too many damn options.

I think the additional self-damage mechanisms (particularly Big Knuckle Bodyguard and tsundere Grimnir) may return Soul Dealer to trash status. He was barely hanging in there by the end of the TotG meta anyway, and now you can semi-reliably curve yourself into vengeance even if you don't draw Belphegor, so who needs the old man?
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Post by Archmage »

My first version of a Spawn deck had Demon Keys and a few more 5-cost minions in it, but I think the fact is that if you're running both Baphomet and Bandersnatch you don't want to actually draw a Spawn, you want to tutor it, and playing a key on turn 3 or 4 is a troubling tempo loss up front even if it has the potential to drop something expensive into play on T6.
Spawn v2
1 - Ambling Wraith x3
2 - Blood Wolf x3
2 - Vania x3
2 - Baphomet x3
2 - Razory Claw x3
3 - Demon Commander Laura x2
3 - Veight x3
3 - Disagreeable Tsundere Demon x3
4 - Wardrobe Raider x3
4 - Big Knuckle Bodyguard x3
5 - Scarlet Sabreur x3
5 - Bandersnatch x3
6 - Demonic Storm x3
8 - Spawn of the Abyss x2
Enthusiastically welcome criticism, especially about the midgame cards. Righteous Devil is probably better than Wardrobe Raider, but I don't have them and don't want to craft them yet. I could craft a third Spawn, in which case I'd drop a Demonic Storm. I don't have a third Laura and I'm not sure I want one. I've pulled off the Laura + discounted Spawn dream exactly once, but I haven't played too many games yet. Overall as it is right now the deck doesn't care too much about being in vengeance but wouldn't mind dropping into it in the lategame for a Laura combo and should be able to deliver enough chip damage that Spawn actually ends the game like it's supposed to.

I did have a hilarious game versus a grindy Runecraft deck where I got totally shut down by snowmannification and Mutagenic Bolt.
Last edited by Archmage on Thu Jun 29, 2017 2:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Archmage wrote:
I did have a hilarious game versus a grindy Runecraft deck where I got totally shut down by snowmannification and Mutagenic Bolt.
Yeah, grindy rune is actually the first thing I built upon this xpac coming out.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Thu Jun 29, 2017 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

So I have yet to hit upon any actually *good* builds. But it's worth noting that Lion of the Golden City and Eagle Man cost reductions trigger on "come into play" not "played" so Goblin Princess reduces their cost by 3. Also, Tin Soldier is a neutral so March Hare's Tea Time is the 5-cost amulet which combos with lion both coming and going.

And today, I am hitting a LOT of Alice -- it looks like Goblin Leader is the new Grimnar (in that it goes in 85% of all decks), and between Alice and Empherera boosting, Spawn might actually end up too slow to truly dominate the meta.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Thu Jun 29, 2017 7:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"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 DSMatticus »

If you thought Spawn was going to dominate the meta, you were smoking crack. The problems with Baphomet combos were pretty well explored back in TotG with sneks, and that deck sucked balls. I suspect Demon Key, in practice, will be too janky and inconsistent to be part of a wincon, and that really just leaves Bandersnatch. Bandersnatch is a T7 play that tutors your wincon on T8, and that is slow even by the standards of the TotG meta. But unlike Baphomet, Bandersnatch doesn't require you to play 5pp 2/1's and 3pp nothing-amulets and die because your board is terrible. You get to just be a mostly ordinary control deck and on T7 you Bandersnatch-and-trade and on T8 you have your wincon. That's fast enough to be viable in the TotG meta if your craft has the cards to support you on the way to T8, and Bloodcraft looked like it might. But even in the best circumstances, it would have been fighting for Aegis's slice of the pie - and Aegis's slice wasn't that big to begin with.

The problem with Wonderland Dreams seems to be that the game has hit a critical mass of cheap followers and boardwide buffs (non-craft specific, at that) that there there may no longer be room for stupid things like "metas" or even "a game." I guess we'll see how people build to counter it, but I'm starting to suspect they may have fucked the game with this one.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Well part of the problem with building to counter the cheap neutral follower plus generic buffs is that most anti-aggro packages are going to be looking at at cheap wards like Ding-Dong, Grimnar, Angelic Knight and cheap healing like Unica....all of which are pretty synergistic with Alice and your craft's pro-neutral stuff (Rabit Ear, Caterpillar, Witch of Sweets, Lion of Golden City, etc) so the initial attempt to counter ends up looking a lot like a mirror match.

We'll see if the meta evolves to come up with more innovative answers.
"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 John Magnum »

I'm trying a Jabberwock deck, which right now is basically just a Ramp Dragon deck with a slightly funky curve. Instead of 2-cost followers, I have Goblins and Ivory Dragons, I ditched Israfils to free up a cost slot, and I dropped Grimnir for Goblin Leader. It seems to work okay, although since I only have the one Jabberwock and I haven't played it that many times it might just be because the Ramp Dragon framework itself is really good.
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Post by John Magnum »

Huh. Just missed a chance to check out an interaction I'd never considered before. What happens if Seraph Lapis, Glory Be is destroyed on the opponent's turn? I assumed that the card text is that the owner wins the game, but maybe it's the current player? I should've tried to play Bahamut to see if that'd work, but didn't think of it in time. Does anyone know how that goes?
-JM
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Post by Username17 »

I opened 76 packs and only got 6 legendaries. But two of them were Alice, and a quickly crafted 3rd copy gave me a pretty decent Alice Sword deck. That thing is insane. You can still lose to Lion Haven or Ramp Dragon or Aggro Blood, but the deck is very good and very consistent.

Jabberwocky Dragon seems good. You play out cheap bullshit creatures like you're an Alice Deck, but you also have ramp and then you randomly transform all your goblins into Fortes and Genesis Dragons. Random, but randomly powerful too. And if you do deck building properly, there's really nothing you can trasform Ivory Dragons into that isn't pretty great.

I tried swapping some cards out of Alice Sword to make Alice Rune and it didn't work at all. Not sure what's going on there. Abomination decks seem like they have legs, but all the Rune decks I've faced so far seem real bad.

Shadow got its toys taken away in the form of a big nerf to Reaper right when the expansion hit. Shadow is just real bad right now. I don't even see Luna on the ladder. It's dubious as to whether Reaper could keep up with Alice in any case (although Reaper + Goblin Leader sounds like it would have been a great turn 5), but without a 2 cost Reaper there's just no fucking way.

I don't understand how Forest is supposed to work. Fairy Dragon is obviously overpowered and so is Fairy Driver. And I just don't even know how you're supposed to make Fairy Combo go off. Forest has a lot of moving parts and I haven't seen a working version with the new set.

Haven's new stuff is just stone cold awesome. I haven't seen the Elana deck I was contemplating in action. Mostly people seem to be making Lion decks. I have a positive record against Lion Haven with my old Ramp Dragon, my Aggro Blood, and my Alice Sword decks. But I've also lost against it with all of those, and when Lion Haven gets all its ducks in a row you basically can't win. I really do want to see what Tenko and Odette do in Elana now. Also I haven't seen Seraph rear its head.

But the deck to beat seems to be neutral rush, and neutral rush is better as Sword or Haven than it is as other factions. So those are going to be the winning crafts.

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Post by Josh_Kablack »

I really do not understand the decision to nerf Reaper the day the expansion drops -- any nerfs should have happened in the last round Relevant Comic

Plus it would have made a lot more sense to put relevant answers to Reaper into the expansion. They could have made a removal spell that works like's Khway last words in that it doesn't target but does select the opponent's strongest follower, or a slightly better version of Bladed Hedgehog which matched a reaper's growth or just some cost-relevant sweeps. Heck cost-relevant sweeps are looking like they would have been a very good idea in light of how this expansion's meta is shaping up.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Fri Jun 30, 2017 5:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"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 DSMatticus »

Eachtar is a stupid fucking card. The "worst" case scenario is that it's a 5/6 body accompanied by 8-12 follower damage in trades and the typical case scenario is that it's a 5/6 body accompanied by 8 follower damage in trades and 6+ face damage, all for the low low price of 7 orbs. Their refusal to nerf that convinced me Shadowverse's designers were asshats and that the game was going to have a shelf-life after which point it'd be 90% turn order and draws and you'd have to be a drooling moron to enjoy it. But beyond that I was relatively happy with the TotG meta compared to RoB, and I expected to get a few more expansions out of it before we hit rock bottom.

But so far Wonderland Dreams is some dumbshit and I'm not sure the final meta will be worth a single damn. They've got a lot of shit to nerf, and some of it's going to have to be legendaries, and Cygames doesn't nerf legendaries.
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Post by OgreBattle »

It's Eachtar that makes cards like cemetary reaper more valuable, it's Eachtar that benefits from the shadows made by an early catacomb prince.

I wonder why every card but Eachtar has been nerfed.

Anyone got good Earthrite Sigil cards from the expansion? I got the Witch's Cauldron and gingerbread house but don't have the rares and legends yet.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

While pre-nerf Catacomb + Reaper was nutso, neither of those was Eachtar's primary enabler. If you wanted to specifically nerf Eachtar decks without nerfing Eachtar himself: your first target should have been Death's Breath - which puts 9 points of Warded HP on the board on curve 6 to shut down Aggro from closing out the game and then sets up Eachtar with buff-delivery followers for face damage. One curve later and not-quite as good Immortal Thane and enhanced Zombie Party were also strong multi-body plays to set up the Eachtar win.
"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 GreatGreyShrike »

I feel like Orthrus would have been a better nerf target than Death's Breath - DB is a staple of Nep decks who probably don't need a nerf and has some lace in Tyrant / Minthe who also could have eaten a nerf, but Orthrus was added in TotG and is really really strong for both aggro and midrange.

I have been playing a bunch of Dirt Rune. I am not prepared to say that it's good, or even definitively not bad... but Dirt Rune is really good at controlling and wiping the current meta Neutralcraft decks - it goes like 75 - 25 against Sword Neutral so far (though a lot of that is doubtless due to people deckbuilding badly). All hail Old Levi and Young Levi!
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Post by DSMatticus »

Orthrus? Orthrus wasn't even in most tourney midrange shadow decks.

I am as surprised by that as you presumably are, but it's true. I personally like Orthrus more than Cerberus, because even if she's a smaller body and the effect is random, it just feels like a much better curve. Cerberus makes me feel like I wasted my T5 on nothing but a 3/3 and then leaves me grumbling on T6 and T7 about how I don't even have the orbs play the spells because I'm playing Death's Breath and Eachtar.

In the end, I don't really think there's a way to nerf Eachtar other than, you know, nerf Eachtar. Hell, with Wonderland Dreams you could nerf the entirety of Shadowcraft into the ground and they could just run neutralcraft into Eachtar and still have what is most likely a viable deck.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Nerfing Death's Breath really would be like shitting directly into Nep's open mouth. The archetype has very narrow tolerances and losing your 6 drop just isn't an option when your game plan involves living to see turn 9. Of course, that might not matter now that neutralcraft is so fucking stupid and blood is common enough again that Hungering Hordes is an issue.
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Post by Username17 »

By the end of TotG block, the highest winning deck was Aggro Shadow, not Midrange Shadow. Aggro Shadow runs Cerberus but not Eachtar and its T6 knockout punch is Phantom Howl.

The best way to nerf Eachtar is to leave it the fuck alone because the highest winrate Shadow decks didn't even fucking use Eachtar. Eachtar is a real good card and all that shit, but you literally win more games by just not having any 7 drops in your deck and going lower to the ground.

If Cygames wanted to stop the Shadow juggernaut at the beginning of TotG, then nerfing Prince Catacomb and Reaper would have done it. Nerfing Reaper at the end of the block when they were about to unleash the hell that is Aggro Blood and Neutral Sword just seems puzzling. What is that, an incentive to innovate? Because Midrange Shadow already probably can't keep up in this Aggro dominated minigame. Neutral Sword sees your 4 PP Prince Catacomb and just feels bad for you. I mean, that's like 2/2 worth of stats that gives +1/+1 worth of stats to each follower already in play. That's... so cute. Alice is almost twice that on both ends, being a 3/4 to begin with and giving the bonus to followers still in hand.

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Post by Omegonthesane »

I drew two of Beauty and the Beast, so am playing a janky Roach netdeck where as it was in the RoB days Gobu can only get Roach, with a splash of carrots and Into The Looking Glass to help ensure I have 3 "neutral" cards to make B&TB unremovable as well as big and scary.

And frankly it isn't fast enough by a country mile to get me from AA3 to Master but I'm not in a hurry to craft legendaries just yet. (Even Alice).

EDIT: and shortly after that I switched netdecks in a fit of pique to a nominally-control deck with not a card above 6.

I will now swear profusely at the existence of OTK Ambush Sword and the fact I could've stopped it it I hadn't filled my fucking board with fairies or had been willing to trash my next draw by bouncing one of said fairies back into deck to make room for... I think it'd have to have been an Ancient Elf.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Sat Jul 01, 2017 6:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by DSMatticus »

FrankTrollman wrote:By the end of TotG block, the highest winning deck was Aggro Shadow, not Midrange Shadow. Aggro Shadow runs Cerberus but not Eachtar and its T6 knockout punch is Phantom Howl.
This is another one of those cases where I have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

So, here's the deal with pre-nerf TotG aggro/midrange shadow; the premise of the deck is that the best-in-slot for each spot on the curve is gratuitously obvious and all the synergies point in the same goddamn direction anyway. Aggro and midrange were not two different deck archetypes doing two different things, it was just a continuum of decks with slightly shifted curves that all planned around winning within the same 2 turns through pretty much exactly the same plays in exactly the same order.

For example, here is an "aggro" shadow deck from the TotG release tournament. And presumably the reason that guy decided to call his deck "aggro" instead of "midrange" is because he has 1 less eachtar and a couple more 1-drops. Seriously, here's his curve compared to my midrange shadow's:

Code: Select all

PP   #    #
1    8    5
2    11   12
3    4    8
4    9    9
5    6    0
6    0    3
7    2    3
The total orb value of those decks is 122 and 128, respectively. He runs 2 Eachtars, I run 3. Sure, there's a difference there, and you can definitely find aggro decks with lower curves than this guy's, but I reiterate that people continue to be shit at classifying decks and I must stress that the line between aggro shadow and midrange shadow is more of a loopy squiggle. The cards were just independently fucking awesome and any coherent curve progression would end up producing a viable deck. You just couldn't fuck it up.

Post-nerf, the faster shadow decks fuckin' disappeared from the meta. The hit to Catacombs slowed down the engine of death by a turn, and if you're already going to have to slow down you may as well start stuffing your deck full of as many Death's Breaths and Eachtars as you possibly can because that 1 turn was the entire goddamn difference between your decks in the first place. It wasn't what cards you wanted to play, it was just that one wanted to win on T6 but would settle for T7 and one wanted to win on T7 but would take T6 if you gave it to them. And that ended up giving Aegis room to exist and leaving vengeance blood with an aggro-shaped hole to fill.

Anyway the tl;dr is that yes "aggro" shadow ran Eachtar because people continue to be shit at classifying decks and naming lunacy aside the only tier 1 shadow decks left in the meta by the end of TotG were the midrangiest ones even if some people were dumb and still called them aggro.
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Post by Username17 »

DSM wrote:This is another one of those cases where I have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
That is obvious. You haven't been keeping up with the rank meta and the things you say are completely out of touch with what was going on.

Deck names are generally unreliable, especially in the first fucking week of a release.

Aggro Shadow is a deck. It existed before TotG, and continued to exist the entire run of the expansion. Most of the time it was less popular than Midrange Shadow. At first because it didn't win as much, and then because everyone had Eachtars and Eachtar is obviously awesome.

Aggro Shadow is a deck that goes from 1 to 5. The most expensive card in the deck is Cerberus. The average game length is 6 turns (not "ideal" length, average length). There is no room for Eachtar because the game is supposed to be over by then.

The dream curve is:
  • T1: Play a Dude
    T2: Play a Dude
    T3: Play a Dude
    T4: Play two Dudes
    T5: Play Cerberus, Evolve an attacker and go face with it.
    T6: Phantom Howl, Coco, Mimi, Evolve a Ghost, swing for 11.
That's the deck. In the final month of Tempest of the Gods, people managed to figure out a few ways to fight Midrange Sword and some play patterns that could let you survive an Eachtar or kill your opponent right through it with storm minions the following turn. But Aggro Shadow pretty much just roflstomped everyone except Haven (getting all your Shadows banished still hurts). Highest winrates in the format.

Shadow was the best in Tempest of the Gods because it only needed a few cards to actually use death triggers or Shadows to get its full synergy. Every random neutral dude fed the death triggers and left a shadow in its wake and even fucking spells left a shadow behind. So you could run what was essentially an all-in synergy deck and an all-in card quality deck at the same time.

The only cards that the two best decks in the craft (Midrange and Aggro) ever used that actually used class mechanics (that is: spending shadows) were:
  • Soulsquasher (2)
    Phantom Howl (4)
    Death's Breath (6)
    Eachtar (7)
Everything else in the whole deck was just a good card or something that gave value while you were getting your dudes killed. It's like if Swordcraft had been set up so that literally every card in the game carried the Officer trait and on top of that they could run a few Commanders that synergized with Officers. And you'll note that Phantom's Howl often did not appear in Midrange Shadow while Death's Breath and Eachtar generally did not appear in Aggro Shadow.

Shadow isn't good anymore. First of all because the synergy cards that give you bonuses while random dudes die (Reaper and Prince) have had their cost raised so they are now below curve unless you manage to trigger them on at least 2 other followers and aren't actually above curve unless you get them to trigger on 3 - and that's just more board presence than you are going to have in the early game when you care about what your 3 drops and 4 drops are going to do. And the second is that Rabbit Necromancer is no longer big.

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