Review: Shadowverse (Japanese Hearthstone)

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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowverse/co ... eal_chart/

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/09/12/ ... ends-cards

This one's in Korean but translated:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowverse/co ... hadowverse

8pp 5/5
Loki
Neutral card
fanfare: Give this effect to the leader, When the follower activates fanfare (except the ability to select an object), activates fanfare one more time (this effect does not stack)
Loki's effect works for a next fanfare follower and it disappears

Only working on a single fanfare effect that doesn't require specific targeting blunts my enthusiasm for it, but wonder if there's anything it'd be good for.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Well, it's an 8pp rushless, stormless, wardless 5/5 to set up a T9 combo play. Looks like a dragon meme card to me.
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Post by OgreBattle »

More reveals:
Barbarossa. 5pp 5/4. Swordcraft. Commander. Legendary
Rush
Last Words : At the start of your next turn add a Barbarossa to your hand, if the size of the opponents board is 2 or less make it cost 8, if it is 3 more, make it cost 2.

Magic Owl. Runecraft. Bronze
2pp 2/2
Evolve : Spellboost the cards in your hand twice.

Valley of the Dragons. Dragoncraft. Silver
7pp. Amulet Countdown 3
At the end of your turn, put 1 dragon on to the field.

Parallel graves. Shadowcraft Bronze
2pp Amulet
Whenever you put a follower on to the field, gain a shadow

Demon of the Thunderstorm. Bloodcraft. Gold
5pp 4/4
At the end of the turn, if not in vengeance deal 1 damage to both leaders, if in vengeance deal 1 damage to all enemy characters.
Source: SV Reddit (credits to /u/ImperialDane)

Well I have a Juno's Lab deck despite how slow it is, Valley of the Dragons is something I'll try out especially with how few Dragon legendaries I have.

Wonder i Barbarossa can make support cannon more viable.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

OgreBattle wrote:.Wonder i Barbarossa can make support cannon more viable.
The answer to that is NO.

It's probably going to see play in some of the higher midrange sword builds, and it provides a combo-answer that Control Sword needs as a single card. (Turn 7 Barbarossa + Cyclone Blade can do 5 damage to 3+ enemy followers and 10 damage to one enemy follower)

But Support Cannon is a 5-cost amulet with no immediate effect in a craft with good early value and a lot of rush/ambush/storm, but with no healing, weak cardflow, and overcosted sweeps. Any Support Cannon deck wants to drop support cannon on turn 5. Which then means that your opponent has their turn 4 board plus an uncontested Drop and Evolve to seize board control. So what Cannon needs to be viable is either a turn 4 play that stalls (ala Tribunal or Death Sentence) and/or a turn 6 reset (ala Themis's Decree).

But remember that Sword is already overflowing with strong 5-drop Commanders (Albert, Luminous Mage, Monica, Aurulia) as well as a couple of 5-drop officers (White Ridge, Kunochi,) and 5-cost neutral drops (Card Knights, Wind God, Hector) that various sword decks want.

So what Support Cannon really wants 6/7/8 cost Commanders that have better synergy than Jolly/Otohime; Frontguard/Roland; and Enraged/Charlotte/Alexander. Alternately, Cannon needs more cheaper commanders and better ways to draw them in hopes of setting of turns with a 5-drop and a cheaper commander. So Lux and Perseus are the new cards that might just push Cannon out of Meme tier.
"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 »

Cannon needs to be able to play multiple followers in a turn. Barbarosa is a nice fit for the deck, but Perseus and Romeo are better.

Of course, what Cannon really needs is to be able to fill out a curve. The complete lack of playable 2-cost Commanders is still a giant bright flaming "Fuck You" to Commander Sword. Cinderella and Barbarosa are upgrades to already playable card slots - but they literally have no 2/2 Commanders for 2 mana. It's the most important slot in the fucking game, and Commander Sword has zero cards to put in it.

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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Palace Fencer is a totally playable 2-cost Commander. Of course he's only 2/1 and the very synergy that makes him playable is specific to OFFICER cards - which are non-synergistic with Support Cannon.

The problem is equal parts that Cannon lacks a curve, and that key parts of any curve you try to build with Commanders lose their officer and/or swarm synergies in a Cannon build.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Tue Sep 12, 2017 10:39 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 Josh_Kablack »

For those still playing, Starforged is live, and so is the FATE promo.

Take Two is kinda cool since I wasn't paying attention to the teasers for the last few weeks, so everything's new again.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Thu Sep 28, 2017 2:05 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 DSMatticus »

The decision to nerf Alice at the end of Wonderland Dreams pisses me off. It's just so brazenly transparent. "We knew she was bad for the game, we knew we had to do something about it, but instead we spent the entire expansion shitting out whatever nerfs we could think of to band-aid the situation until she stopped being the game's mascot."
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Yeah, it kinda feels like their change to design philosophy is that they've gone from "push the new cards via power creep" to "push the new cards by nerfing the old ones"

BY my count they've nerfed 11 of the 108 cards in Wonderland before Starforged went live.
"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 Josh_Kablack »

FWIW, the early deck to beat is looking to be Mars Sowrd:

On top of Mars being a pre-evolve must kill snowballing advantage card that's going to have her cost nerfed to 4 sometime in the next 90 days: Lux is a top-tier tutor, Juliet gives Sword another 2/2 Storm option at 3 cost, and Round Table assembly ties it together. Bolting that package into any of the pre-wonderland aggro / midrange sword builds gives you either a really fast aggro deck or a midrange deck that trades favorably after their storm followers hit your face.

Personally, I've been having fun shocking people with my Hippogriff rider deck. People do not expect Dragoncraft to be running a midrange swarm, and swapping Goblin for Stairway to Heaven gave it just enough staying power and resiliency against sweeps. It might actually be a good deck if I craft some Fortes or Prime Dragon Keepers
.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Fri Sep 29, 2017 9:34 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 Josh_Kablack »

Just noticed that the game is now tracking levels above 100.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Sun Oct 01, 2017 6:10 am, 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 Username17 »

DSMatticus wrote:The decision to nerf Alice at the end of Wonderland Dreams pisses me off. It's just so brazenly transparent. "We knew she was bad for the game, we knew we had to do something about it, but instead we spent the entire expansion shitting out whatever nerfs we could think of to band-aid the situation until she stopped being the game's mascot."
The nerf situation is a full-scale disaster. Let's take a look at the first Grandmaster deck from Wonderland Dreams:
Image
That's not a joke. There are fifteen differently named cards in that deck, and nine of them have been under the nerf hammer. That's ridiculous. The simple reality is that Wonderland Dreams was a flaming cock-up of epic proportions, and their new strategy of nerfing the hell out of every Tier 1 deck every month is fucking insane. There's no upside here.
Josh wrote:Yeah, it kinda feels like their change to design philosophy is that they've gone from "push the new cards via power creep" to "push the new cards by nerfing the old ones"

BY my count they've nerfed 11 of the 108 cards in Wonderland before Starforged went live.
Also they nerfed a bunch of cards that comboed with the cards in Wonderland Dreams because "lol, go fuck yourself" and they nerfed some other cards like Ouroboros, Frog, and Reaper "just because."

I have no idea what decks they are trying to clear the way for, but right now they seem to be nerfing cards in every top tier deck each month plus some additional decks. There seem to be some severe methodological problems with however they decide which decks need nerfing. Because even when you grant that they are out there nerfing Tier 1 decks even when those decks are less than 13% of the meta and have winrates under 54% (and thus only barely Tier 1), they are still out there nerfing Dragon and Haven while Dragon and Haven are just bad.

One of the issues seems to be that since people can't differentiate different Dragon archetypes easily, they lump them into a single "Ramp Dragon" archetype. And then they are constantly concerned that the resultant super-archetype is played frequently. Well, yeah. If you add the playrates of five or six different archetypes from any craft you'd get a number of plays that was relatively high compared to singular archetypes from other classes. It's just such a stupidly obvious data error that it's still genuinely shocking that the company wouldn't have figured this out even though this issue with Dragoncraft has been an issue for months before they decided to do a regular nerf schedule in the first place.

But honestly I have no idea what the motivation for nerfing Snow White was. Yes, she was rediculously powerful and is now just "pretty good," but none of the decks she lived in had decent winrates when they brought the hammer down.

It feels like there's basically no end in sight, and that there will be multple nerfs every month, and that an actual majority of those nerfs will be bad ideas that make the game worse.

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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Minor Quibble: the Goblin Mage nerf happened back in the RoB Era, over a full expansion before Wonderland, so it's possibly inappropriate to have that one X-ed out in the graphic.

But in general, I would really like to see more using expansions to give crafts better tech cards and answers to existing threats they have trouble with and less using nerfs to try to patch things.

Pre-Starforged, Ramp Dragon had problems with Ambush Frog. Sure they might get lucky with Breath of the Salamander splash damage early, Dragonnewt Fist was a questionable tech choice, and Shield of Flame did enough damage to clear Grimnar and Rahab so Bahamut was Dragon's only reliable answer - and that was at least a turn too slow to work.

The answer here should not be "nerf frog and shield" but should instead be "give Dragon new tools". Inexplicably, they did both:

They nerfed Frog and Shield of Flame right before they gave Dragon a decent answer to Frog which Sword damn near requires the pre-nerf Shield of Flame to answer.

Right now, look at the Prime Dragon Keeper ramp deck. I have no idea if it's even good, but anything Sword can do once Dragon Keeper hits the table on turn 6 or 7 is a loss. You can't trade into it, so you need removal that can answer a 5 toughness follower. For Sword that's a 6-cost Enhanced Shield of Flame, a 5-cost Dance of Death (etc) or using an evolution point on Maisy or Axe Destroyer or the longshots of Support Cannon or Cyclone Blade. But every one of those (save Maisy) costs Sword more orbs, and at least the same cards and Evos that Dragon spent on the Prime Dragon Keeper when Dragon has already ramped and has better lategame options than sword. Plus even a card and orb neutral trade is a minor loss since, the PDK showed up with another follower to do face damage and likely clear a follower.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Sun Oct 01, 2017 5:08 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 Username17 »

Josh wrote:Right now, look at the Prime Dragon Keeper ramp deck. I have no idea if it's even good
I have been playing it. Seems pretty good. I was boycotting the ranked matches through Wonderland Dreams, but I think I'll hit Master with it. I've had a couple of 6 match win streaks, and now I'm a bit over 500 points from Masters. I could probably grind it out tonight, and still might depending on how things look after dinner.

Early reports put it at a winrate of 58%, which is obscene. Bonus points because if you google translate shadowlog it comes out "original dragon" which is totally metal. Seems like its only really unfavorable matchups are a few dedicated control decks.

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Post by Korwin »

Is there crafting advise in this thread?
Red_Rob wrote: I mean, I'm pretty sure the Mayans had a prophecy about what would happen if Frank and PL ever agreed on something. PL will argue with Frank that the sky is blue or grass is green, so when they both separately piss on your idea that is definitely something to think about.
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Post by Username17 »

Korwin wrote:Is there crafting advise in this thread?
Crafting advice should change massively over time, because the environment changes constantly. Sometimes that's as simple as a new card set making a card that used to see no play suddenly become a core card in a legit Tier 1 or Tier 2 deck. Sometimes it's as aggravating as a new round of nerfs making a deck worthless or making another deck over powered by removing things that were acting as checks on it.

Example of the first is Soul Dealer and Atomy. Soul Dealer was unplayable garbage until Tempest, when enough Vengeance cards got printed that burning half your own life could be considered an upside. Atomy has always been a high roller deck where sometimes you bullshit out an 8/8 on turn 3 and other times your deck is garbage. But now that Starforged is out there's randomly enough card and shadow generation in Shadow that Atomy is a playable Tier 2 or even Tier 1 deck.

Example of the second is the entirety of Wonderland Dreams, where they nerfed shit every single month, purging decks from the book of the living constantly. When they nerfed the shit out of Eachtar and made his deck garbage, they didn't give you a refund on any Cerberus or Thane you'd crafted - you just got the vials back for Eachtar himself. When they nerfed Alice Haven you got the vials back for Golden Lion and Alice, but all the vials you spent on Tribunals or Dark Jeanne or whatever are like "lol fuck you."

Right now the top decks of each craft are:
  • Tempo Dragon
  • Aggro Sword
  • Aggro Blood
  • Atomeme Shadow
  • Combo Forest
  • Storm Haven
  • Dirt Rune
But that could change. Ginger Rune still has a better winrate than Dirt Rune and could replace it next week or the week after. If Cygames continues its nerf spree, it's almost certainly going to nail Prime Dragon Keeper to the fucking wall. Atomeme is weird as hell and its winrate could fall off a cliff if people figure out some weakpoint. If some control archetype gets its act together, Aggro Blood and Aggro Sword are extremely linear decks that have targets on their head.

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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Well, I've joined the darkside and crafted a Prime Dragon Keeper Deck. It absolutely needs the 3 PDKs, it really really wants at least 2 of Sybil and it's somewhat helped by 1-2 of { Forte / Genesis / Zeus } as alternate finishers but so much of the deck is bronze that it really feels like a bargain compared to the previous Wallet Ramp Dragon decks.

The deck is not unbeatable, but it almost certainly unfair. And honestly that makes it feel like even more of a bargain, because it means next month I';; get a full refund on the vials I spent to craft those PDKs.
"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 »

I've been running PDK with only 2 PDKs.
  • Staircase x2
    Ivory Dragon x3
    Fire Lizard x3
    Mushussu x1
    Dragon Summoner x3
    Matilda x2
    Dragon Oracle x3
    Breath of the Salamander x2
    Aiela x3
    Scyther x3
    Prime Dragon Keeper x2
    Sybil x3
    Fervor x3
    Forte x2
    Jabberwocky x2
    Genesis Dragon x3
My version has 9 Legendaries and 7 Golds. But yes, the rest of the deck is practically free. My version is pretty similar to the original Grand Master version. My innovation was to use double staircase, which I'm proud to say is now standard.

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Post by Mistborn »

So I've recently gotten back into the game because I heard D-shift was a viable deck again.

So I'm now running this list.

2 Angelic Snipe
3 Insight
3 Commence Expiriment
3 Magic Missile
3 Wind Blast
3 Kaleidoscopic Glow
3 Golem Assault
3 Concentration
1 Sorcery Cache
3 Fate's Hand
2 Firey Embarce
3 Dimension Shift

3 Magic Owl
1 Arriet Soothing Harpist
1 Chimera
3 Flame Destroyer

It seems the apocalypse has finally arrived as people are playing earth rite cards in their spellboost deck. In general this build is a little faster than the old version if somewhat less controlling. I managed to go off on turn 7 in my second game with the deck which is something that I don't think ever happened before. It feels like it's good enough that people shouldn't be playing durdle control.
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Post by OgreBattle »

You might want more chimeras, an evolved owl followed by chimera clearing the enemy's biggest follower makes for an aggressive turn 4-5

So for Atomy decks is frozen mammoth required or what? I've been playing at A2 without frozen mammoth as I figured it's a dead card without also having a turn 4 Atomy at the ready.

Also for Swordcraft have any of you tried a Mars deck? The tough part is getting Mars to survive the turn after it drops, or waiting many turns after to drop Mars plus an evolved floral fencer
Last edited by OgreBattle on Fri Nov 17, 2017 7:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

On the one hand I get the impression that Frozen Mammoth is a "win more" card in that if you can suck up the tempo loss to make your Atomy turn that much more overwhelming you're probably won anyway. On the other hand I fucking hate playing Atomy so probably suck at it as well.

Certainly there are tournament Atomy decks that forsook Mammoth.

And I was using Commence Experiment in D-Shift before Starforged - it's a spell that costs 1 mana, and Golem Assault was Wonderland.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Frozen mammoth is also handy to have around when the opponent drops a bane-rush unit or 5pp kill spell, which is pretty much every time I deploy a turn 4 Atomy
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Post by Username17 »

To be honest, the constant nerf cycle has fully worn me down. After they nerfed Ginger Rune and PDK into unplayability two months running, I gave a few of the remaining meta decks a try, but they just weren't nearly as fun. Tempo Dragon was the most fun a deck in Shadowverse got, and now that it's gone I just don't care any more. I haven't opened the game in more than a week, and I'm not sure what could bring me back.

Cygames has literally said that they intend to destroy decks that a lot of people like on the grounds that a lot of people like them. That's fucking insane.

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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Well I can't help but mentally edit the new craft in Chronogenesis to be "Poochiecraft". This may change as the meta settles, but so far the common Poochiecraft decks are ludicrously random. The core mechanic counts whether you have an even or odd number of cards in your deck - so many Poochiecraft cards either add "artifact" cards into your deck and/or tutor random artifact cards out of your deck. Most of the cards which add artifacts into you deck add randomly selected artifacts from a set of four. So not only are you increasing variance with deck size, you're also adding random cards to your deck in play and then tutoring random targets from among the set of cards added. That pretty much makes the game all about RNG, so that Poochiecraft's worst matchup is looking to be its own draws.
"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 »

In light of the last post in November, I feel it worth noting that there weren't any nerfs for the final month of Starforged.

I had enough luck with Lion Haven to make me assume that its subpar winrate was due to my being shit at the game rather than that not being a valid archetype in the current meta. Since I typically have a sub-50 win rate with tournament net decks.

...and 90% of those wins are the opponent conceding when I manage to drop Badb Catha onto a stiff board. Makes me wonder if MidShadow is going to start including Badb Catha; I drew 3 of her so kinda biased.

ETA: Cannon Sword at last has a 2/2 for 2 Commander in Noble Chancellor. Bonus points: no abilities that interact with the Officer keyword.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Mon Jan 01, 2018 12:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
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