Review: Shadowverse (Japanese Hearthstone)

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maglag
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Post by maglag »

You know, single-player wise, I just love how in Shadowcraft your random wild wolf/abomination just pulls out a deck and challenges you to a children's card game.

Doubly so when berseker Rowan in dragon form challenges that shadow boss and the whole battle is they going RAWR at each other as cards are played.

Also pulled two Grimmirs today which makes a full set with the one I already had. My ramp storm dragon doing pretty well for something that has zero crafted cards.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

I think that the card game itself is an abstraction of the fights that are happening....but it's certainly more amusing to think of it your way.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

Fought shadowcraft

turn 1 dropped that graveyard amulet that generates a shadow

turn 2 dropped that amulet (1) that creates a ghost when you play a necromancy card, then played a skeleton (1), so a ghost was summoned, and then played the 8/8 Lord Atomy

That almost makes me want to craft two more Atomy's. Alllmost
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Post by John Magnum »

Dragon and Shadow nerfs were announced. Prince Catacomb costs 4, Zell costs 4 but becomes a 3/4 body, Lightning Blast loses the Enhance effect entirely. My bet is that Catacomb and Zell will be fairly useful, but Lightning Blast will probably just be ignored entirely once the nerf hits.
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Post by maglag »

"Exile anything from play" for 6 mana will still have its uses. In particular with Oroboros being pretty popular for dragon decks, plus still screwing over Havencraft's uber amulets, whereas Shadowcraft will always have nasty last word effects you would like having a way to stop.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

So Rahab, Sybil, Oroborus, and Isifril are untouched? Seems likely there will still be at least one s-tier Dragon deck.. Kinda unbelievable that Eachtar isn't hit by that nerf - Shadow is going to stay top tier or better well into the july expansion.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Mon May 22, 2017 4:42 pm, edited 1 time 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 John Magnum »

I'm not sure how worthwhile Lightning Blast is now when Odin's right there. For two mana more, you get a 4/3 body. I guess Lightning Blast is still nice for when you want to combo it with a 3- or 4-drop. Lightning Blast + Rahab or Lightning Blast + Dragoon Scyther could be pretty sweet and you can't do that with Odin.
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Post by Username17 »

Lightning Blast is basically dead. Also too, you are not going to use new Zell for anything. But the real bottom line is that while Zell is super good and Lightning Blast is an OK out to otherwise bad situations, neither of them are actually necessary for anything. Most of the time, Zell is just a 2-drop with "your opponent must kill this" tattooed on his head. A straight replacement of him with Unica or Shapeshifting Mage is pretty close to value neutral. Sahaquiel Ramp is basically dead now, but I'm not convinced it was ever that great to begin with. Ramping to Ouroboros is still good, and the secondary game plan has always been just playing a Genesis Dragon for the last 9 damage. Ramp Dragon decks will change a lot at the margins, but the core is still early ramp into Sybil into Ouroboros with a Forte chaser and that part is unchanged.
Josh wrote:Kinda unbelievable that Eachtar isn't hit by that nerf - Shadow is going to stay top tier or better well into the july expansion.
Shadow had two different top tier decks pre-nerf. Aggro Shadow and Midrange Shadow. And while Midrange was probably a better deck, Aggro Shadow also did very well and ran zero copies of Eachtar. The only cards that Aggro and Midrange Shadow both use that aren't extremely replaceable are Prince and Reaper. And obviously those two cards feed each other to an incredible degree. So by nerfing either one of those, both Aggro and Midrange Shadow feel it in their nards.

Prince Catacomb was obviously the right choice because he's the one that made going first so fucking important in the Shadow Mirror. Turn 3 Prince and trade boards was super brutal and extremely hard to come back from. Your opponent had 3/3 worth of stuff in play and you had an empty board. And then your own Prince Catacomb wasn't worth shit and just languished in your hand.

Obviously, at 4 mana, Prince Catacomb is not worth casting. You'd rather have Hell's Unleasher or Urd or Assassin or Orthus to cast on 4. So the 3 slot that was Prince Catacomb's to enjoy goes to Grimnirs or removal spells or Attendant of the Night if you weren't already running him. Prince Catacomb doesn't get a 4 slot, so the card effectively no longer exists.

Aggro Shadow and Midrange Shadow are still going to be good, but they are going to be a lot less good and have a much smaller advantage when going first. The actual lists won't change much - they might run slightly fewer Phantom Howls and obviously they need replacement cards for 3 Prince Catacombs. But Shadow is really deep and will have no difficulty filling those slots with high quality cards and going on much as before.

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Post by Omegonthesane »

Lightning Blast is silver, Odin is legendary. That and the points difference mean I suspect it'll still be a one-of in decks that aren't willing to craft Odins.

And Call of Coctyus into 4-drop Zell still promises to be hilarious, and was already a turn-9 9-play-point trick at earliest. Does mean I'll have to chuck Goblin Mage from my cancer deck later tonight.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Mon May 22, 2017 6:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Reaper Shadow's 3 slot now probably goes to Bone Chimera, which gives you up to 3 bodies, but hitting the timing to sacrifice multiples of them to feed the Reaper is a lot harder than with Catacomb.

I don't disagree that Catacomb needed a nerf, but I don't think a cost increase was the best option there.

Zell is now solely a trick-shot combo piece (like Elven Princess Mage) instead of a must-craft super bear (like Levi). There are going to be decks that count on Zell plus Servent or Wyvern Caviliar / Drgaon Emissary cost reduction to get in big storm hits -- but the decks are going to have to be tuned around that instead of just including in on top of their default Oroboros / Forte + Genesis / Sahaquiel to stall for Satan plans.

I'm still worried about how broken anything in future sets that could reliably beat the good ramp dragon decks is going to have to be. I mean Aggro has to get at least 23 damage through Rahab + Breath of the Salamander by turn 6; Control has to be able to land a one-turn kill combo before Genesis Dragon finishes off what Forte starts; and Midrange has to be able to cope with Oroborus from 2-4 orbs behind the curve. And anything that meets any of those three criteria is going to severely strain the entire meta.
"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 »

Josh_Kablack wrote:I'm still worried about how broken anything in future sets that could reliably beat the good ramp dragon decks is going to have to be. I mean Aggro has to get at least 23 damage through Rahab + Breath of the Salamander by turn 6; Control has to be able to land a one-turn kill combo before Genesis Dragon finishes off what Forte starts; and Midrange has to be able to cope with Oroborus from 2-4 orbs behind the curve. And anything that meets any of those three criteria is going to severely strain the entire meta.
Yeah, ramp dragon has fucked the game hard. The only three possibilities are that it remains the top-tier deck in perpetuity, it gets nerfed, or Shadowverse becomes a complete pile of garbage worth no one's time. There's no way to powercreep back into balance without a game that is made entirely of lolwtf and RNG.
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Post by Whipstitch »

it's fun sticking the boots to rookie nep pilots in mirror matches
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Post by John Magnum »

Ramp Dragon mirrors are really fun for me to play, I love seeing multiple big threats hit the table and deal with each other and I love trying to calculate "What's the most threatening position I can create without leaving myself open to dying next turn?"
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

I'm currently fiddling around with a Pendant Ramp dragon in unranked. Lacking Sybil I'm a bit vulnerable to hard aggro, but man Pendant + Grea keeps actually working. Anne swings to clear their board, then half the time Grea lives to swing for 10+ the following turn and finish up with Pendant Boosted Grimnar, Scyther or Earthshock Ogre.

It's still probably not nearly as good as Sybil + Forte + Genesis Dragon wallet storm even post-nerfs.
"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'm currently fiddling around with a Pendant Ramp dragon in unranked. Lacking Sybil I'm a bit vulnerable to hard aggro, but man Pendant + Grea keeps actually working. Anne swings to clear their board, then half the time Grea lives to swing for 10+ the following turn and finish up with Pendant Boosted Grimnar, Scyther or Earthshock Ogre.

It's still probably not nearly as good as Sybil + Forte + Genesis Dragon wallet storm even post-nerfs.
Sybil is simply better than not-Sybil options. You can play a Pendant turn 5, but playing a Sybil Turn 6, ramping to 8 the following turn, putting an effective 7/7 Rush on the board, and healing yourself for 3 is exactly where you want to be.

You simply should run 10-12 Ramp cards in anything but the most facey of Face Dragon decks.

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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Agreed, aside from the part where I have zero of Sybil, Forte or Oroborus and am unwilling to pay the vial costs to craft multiple copies of multiple legendaries. What's surprising is how well this deck is doing despite the glaring lack of key legendaries.
"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 »

There was already that one silver card that ramped you when you evolved it. I ran it for a while before just crafting 3 Sybils out of the vials from torching several months' worth of animated cards. Felt like it wasn't worth the lost evo point.
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Post by John Magnum »

It seems like Nephthys is back, and capable of really amazing recoveries. I'm still figuring out what works best against them. Ouroboros turns out to be a star player against Khawy, since unlike most of the rest of your threats Ouro dies outright during the combat. So Khawy's Last Words gets directed elsewhere, possibly whiffing entirely, and you get an Ouroboros back while they're down one Watchman.

One-of Odin seems like it'd be worthwhile for this matchup while also having decent utility against midrange and other control decks.
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Post by Whipstitch »

The only thing that annoys me is that ppl will believe it's due to the blast nerf when honestly I was way more jazzed by the Prince nerf and to a lesser extent zell. Shaggro and storm was holding me down waaaaay worse than 3xLB ramp.
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Post by John Magnum »

Yeah, I think Shaggro getting hit is a much bigger deal. The thing is that LB is already an incredibly slow response to Nephthys, so if things have reached that state the deck is probably fine. Getting better inevitability on turns 8+ is fine, but actually surviving to recovery turns like 6-8 in the first place is an important prerequisite.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Really looking like post-nerf Dragon and Shadow are still top of the meta by a potentially problematic amount.

I mean now Aggro Dragon and Neph Shadow are viable while fewer different variations of Ramp Dragon and Aggro Shadow are.

Haven has some marginal counterstrategies, Blood is just slightly behind in power, Silver Bolt Wallet Forest is just-barely viable, Swordcraft cannot win without Albert (and is still in negative winrates with him). And Runecraft is basically D-Shift decks hoping the opponent is running Aegis.
"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 »

Current usage totals is that Haven is the second most-used craft.

Nerfing two cards in Dragon hurt quite a bit, and now the various forms of Ramp Dragon win 51% of their games. This is hard as fuck to figure out from Shadowlog, because they divide the Ramp Dragons up into groups that don't make sense and boil down to "counts as X if you saw a win condition" which means that a bunch of Ramp Dragon wins don't count as Ramp Dragon for some stupid reason and it reports a losing record for the second most played deck, which is full retard. Anyway, if you add em all up, Ramp Dragon wins 51% of the time. Good, but not amaze balls. It has a weak matchup against Aegis and is unfavored against Midrange Shadow. That's not a place you want to be. It's kept positive winrates by absurd winrates versus Forest, Sword, and Rune.

Aegis is a dumb deck that is almost literally incapable of beating combo. We're talking winrates against D-Shift and Seraph of less than thirty percent. But it is teched against Dragon and Shadow and posts positive winrates against Aggro Shadow, Midrange Shadow, and Ramp Dragon. And that's all you need to grind on Ranked these days. God damn that card is cancer.

At the moment, Vengeance Blood seems to be fast eclipsing Ramp Dragon as the deck you play if you don't want to play as one of the many playable Luna decks. But that requires 3 copies of Belphegor, Soul Dealer, and likely Bloody Mary as well. Everyone freaked out about Blood Moon before TotG hit, turns out the actual card that deck wanted was fucking Soul Dealer and had been there the whole time.

Anyway, they've started to release cards for the next set. Only 8 cards teased so far, and probably you won't see any of them very much. There's a 4 drop in Blood that kills an enemy with 3 toughness or less as a fanfare (and face punches you if you aren't in Vengeance) and that will probably end up in no tier one decks because I can't imagine that displacing Dark General, Belphegor, or Soul Dealer and I also can't imagine a dec wanting to play more than nine 4-cost cards. There's the White Swan and Black Swan, which are both weird as hell - when you play them your opponent freespawns the other swan dancer and your swan dancer freevolves. So the first thing your swan maiden does is murderstabs her sister, leaving you with a 6/1 for Shadow's Odile or a 5/1 for Haven's Odette. Then Black Swan does 2 damage to all enemy followers at end of turn and White Swan heals all your followers by 2 at end of turn. That would be pretty fucking exciting on 4 or 5, but the Swans appear to cost 6 so you'll never use them. Even accounting for the fact that they become dramatically better when your opponent has a full board they still aren't good enough to fit in the 6 slot of either Haven or Shadow.

There's a new Legendary Neutralcraft follower who is a 3/4 for 4 whose fanfare is that all the other Neutralcraft followers in play and in your fucking hand get +1/+1. Sadly does not pre-emptively give buffs to Goblin tokens that Goblin Princess has yet to spawn. Still probably good enough to make Neutralcraft a thing, still don't think you want to run Neutralcraft as anything other than Dragon. There's also a 2/2 for 2 in Runecraft that makes you draw a card if and only if your hand has more Neutral cards than Rune cards. So that's supposed to be a piece for Ginger Rune, but I don't know if there's actually enough pieces to make Ginger Rune work, or if Ginger Rune is going to lean heavily enough on Neutral cards to make that 2/2 be "not terrible."

The new Forest card is a 3 mana amulet that detonates at the end of any turn where you have 4 different followers. When it detonates, all four of your followers get +2/+2. Not sure if they have to be actually different or if you're allowed to T1 Fairy Circle, T2 Fairy Bringer, T3 Amulet, T4 four 3/3 Fairies. Seems strong. If you have to have an ecclectic group the whole thing is a lot less strong, because I don't think filling up a deck with Felpur Kittens and shit is where you want to be.

The new Sword card is a way toned down version of Shadow Reaper - a 1/3 that gets +1/+0 when an enemy follower dies. Combos well with Blitz Lancers.

The new Dragon card is a 6 mana hard removal spell that becomes 4 mana after you've played a 5+ mana creature. That is so bad that I can't believe how bad it is even accounting for the fact that I already know that's it's bad beyond belief. But then last time around they teased only hot garbage for Dragon until right up at the end when they showed Sybil and Ouroboros.

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Post by DSMatticus »

I don't think Bloody Mary sees a lot of serious play, but weirdly there were a couple Blood Moon decks whose players did well in the last tournies (both NA and JCG). 3x Blood Moon, 3x Belphegor, 0x Soul Dealer; the wincon is to baphomet into a flood of snakes and everything else is removal/lifegain. Basically, a variant of pre-TotG control blood that can outrace Aegis and therefore doesn't autolose in the current meta, and basically the blood deck everyone thought would be a thing and then never was. I suppose the nerfs to Zell and Prince, which slow their respective decks down by at least one turn, and the nerf to Lightning Blast, which the discount snakes combo was absolutely fucked by, finally brought the meme to life. Wind god bat blood even recently got first place in a JCG tournament. I wasn't expecting that; I thought aggro vengeance Soul Dealer was the hip new thing.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Well I can guarantee that the actual name of the new Bloodcraft card will not be nearly as entertaining as the mangled auto-translate currently floating around. I mean, what opponent could hope to win against an "Australian Fist Bouncer Bar" deck?

Alice looks like she potentially takes Rahab's spot in Saquiel Ramp and everyone else just throws the single copy of her they pull into the neutralcraft Valkyrie's Spear deck they use to win off-craft missions in unranked.

Bladed Hedgehog will fit into a bear slot in some Sword decks, but it does not answer any of the meta-relevant questions which Sword cannot currently answer. (Poor mass/random removal, no banish/transform, no finisher for control sword)

Sweets Witch is maybe supposed to slot into Ginger Rune....but Ginger is so future-proof defensively designed that it's going to need a wholeheckuvajobbrownie more to become relevant. She's more likely to slot into the Runecraft iteration of the Valkyrie's Spear off-craft missions in unranked deck.

The Swans are hard to evaluate without more official translations but from what I can glean currently, it does seem like their main use is going to be trying to combo to get two triggers of "Whenever another follower evolves" effects without spending an evolution point., But Deathchaser is too expensive to drop the same turn as a 6 cost and there are no pre-Wonderland Havencraft cards which do that (Godsteel Wings is the closest). Even doing something like using your freevolved Swan to trigger a Dark Conjurer or Heavenly Hound Fanfare isn't happening at 6 cost.....so the utility of these depends what else is in the set.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Wed May 31, 2017 5:21 pm, edited 3 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 Omegonthesane »

Am I missing out on any meaningful memes by having built up seven goddamn net decks instead of trying to make a decent Neuteredcraft deck for unranked?

(Way more than seven really, if you count flip-flopping between archetypes. It feels so long ago that Daria was my only legendary, and she's still my only animated legendary since most of the ones I have are crafted.)

Also am I doing it wrong by having declared ranked and only ranked forevermore from the moment I twigged what was going on with score rewards (or at least from the moment where I had a tournament tier deck of every single craft)?
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Wed May 31, 2017 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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