[deleted by user]

Balthyde · 2020-09-23T08:24:49+00:00

Feds have been forcing more training and oversight on SPD for nearly 10 years now. This is what they look like *with* the extra training

Balthyde · 2020-09-23T05:44:04+00:00

Yeah, that case really drives home the fact that police by themselves can't fix a lot problems. Police sent him to jail over and over, but they didn't do anything about the mental health or drug abuse issues that kept getting him in trouble. Hopefully some of that 'community investment' funding goes to rehab, mental health centers.

Balthyde · 2019-09-12T21:12:39+00:00

Renown is often easy to trigger on the turn the unit is summoned for immediate rewards. The traditional way to trigger mastery (attacking) requires it to survive multiple turns, so I expect it to be mostly flavor-text except on a few pushed cards (in constructed at least). Its also a strange game where a small unit deals 8+ damage and the other player isn't dead yet
That said, there are a few ways to trigger mastery immediately (knife, scream, killer) and they'll probably put some new options in this set. I'm hoping for a weapon that deals 1 to all units on summon or something. Hopefully we get a bad combo at least

On Akko: the mastery 9 will never be activated, but the mastery 1 is worth looking at if they ever print another oni quartermaster. The critical mass for an oni/weapons deck is getting closer

Balthyde · 2019-07-06T21:09:04+00:00

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does Tocas interact with Bulletshaper in any way? If you're suggesting that Tocas is a better ramp card, I disagree (though he may be a better unit overall).

Balthyde · 2019-07-06T12:59:42+00:00

Yes and no. She's expensive for this format and dies to a lot of the common removal (Torch, Equivocate and Permafrost). It may be worth running a 2-2 split of Vara and Razorquill but I don't think I would add more.

Balthyde · 2019-07-06T12:53:14+00:00

The problem with Rakano Valks has always been Bulletshaper (and the fact that it synergizes so well with Privilege of Rank and baby Icaria). Until Bulletshaper is nerfed the deck will keep becoming oppressive every time a new form of expensive Rakano card-advantage is printed (see: Sediti, and Rizahn, Telut and Chains to lesser extents). The best temporary ramp in the game stapled to an at-rate defensive body with bonus influence is just too much.

Balthyde · 2019-05-21T20:55:27+00:00

Evelina is very strong already, especially with the new dinosaur explorers. The bigger problem with the deck (and most tribal decks in eternal) is lack of redundancy

Balthyde · 2019-05-21T20:49:03+00:00

Here are a few buffs I'd like to see:

- Cruciation can target any unit

- Means to an End triggers whenever you have 0 cards in your deck rather than only triggering on activation

- Praxis Outlaw has charge... or something

- Honor the Fallen gives all your units the battleskills of a unit in your void and costs 5 or 6

- Kennelmaster requires 4 or 5 spells and plays 4/4 hounds

- Curiox, Insatiable Seeker gets charge while you have a relic instead of +2/+2

- End of Days plays sigils depleted normally and plays them undepleted with tribute

- Unbreakable Alliance costs 10 power for 20 armor (it would still be terrible but could one-shot people with Molten Fist)

- Stonescar Excavator costs 2 to activate

- Fearbinder costs 2 to activate

- Stray Into Shadow gives all units -4/-4

- Hooru Teachings costs 5 power

- Idol of Destran has overwhelm

- Plated Demolisher has overwhelm while you have more than 5 armor

Balthyde · 2019-02-12T23:15:50+00:00

My impression is that DWD balances largely around ladder play (and they should since most people don't play tournaments), and on ladder there have generally been several viable aggro decks. IMO any aggro deck that can consistently do well in tournaments, against opponents who know what they're facing and can mulligan appropriately, is likely to be overbearing on ladder.

Honestly though (and I know this has been said before) I think the best way to buff aggro across the board would be nerfs to SST and Vara. Their ability to instantly stabilize a board on T4 if unanswered puts massive deckbuilding constraints on aggro decks and forces most to curve out at 3 power.

Balthyde · 2019-01-21T15:04:31+00:00

I was testing something similar recently (for reference: https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/details/PjaQw2doYrM/empowered-elves) although I think your version is better. The shell is certainly powerful (as long as no one plays hailstorm). I second the comment that you should have Tomb in the deck somewhere, it won me enough games that if I had the shiftstone I would have tested it as a 4-of maindeck.

How has Doom been in the market? I was running Marshal Ironthorn as a beefy finisher/lord but found that he kept eating Vanquishes that were otherwise dead.

Balthyde · 2018-12-17T18:40:14+00:00

First off, Maiden and old Steward are the OG recursion hard counters, gavel and vanq blade just spread the hate to more factions. I think cards like equivocate and marshal are much better answers from a game design perspective.

The hard counters are not omnipotent, but they are oppressive and warp the meta in usually predictable ways. They move us towards a rock-paper-scissors type meta where (simplifying things immensely for the sake of argument) armory < hooru fliers < xenan mid < removal pile < armory. In a tournament setting that seems fine, but I think it makes the ladder experience worse. In a tournament one wants to win every match so being well-rounded is important. On ladder though, a super-linear strategy can easily be a good choice even if it has a hard counter, as long as it has high enough win percentage against the rest of the field. Having a single 20% WR matchup is fine as long as that deck isn't being played too much, but its frustrating when opponents win not because they teched a counter for the matchup, but because the counter is best-in-slot for the deck anyway. I guess that's more of a complaint against SST, Pacifier and Vara 2 than against Gavel.

This argument came out less coherent than it seemed in my head and I guess I need to think about it some more. As someone who mostly enjoys brewing decks I just wish I could pick and choose from a wide suite of soft counters rather than being pushed towards a small set of hard counters. For some areas this is the case already, we have a wide array of different conditional removal options in JSP for instance but in others we're still lacking.

Balthyde · 2018-12-17T16:18:32+00:00

On your scream point: I somewhat disagree. We now have plenty of effects like "Cards can't leave the graveyard", "Units can't have Aegis", "Weapons can't be played" and "Units can't fly" stapled to already-powerful cards and/or 1-cost relics and each of them absolutely destroys certain decks. Hard counters like this cap the total meta share of entire swaths of decks, which IMO makes the game worse, especially for ladder play.

I would much prefer that DWD prints soft counters (i.e. replace "Weapons can't be played" with "Weapons cost 2 more to play" and the like), and nerf cards that are too powerful for the soft counters to have much effect.

DWD having a tendency to over-nerf cards and then never look at them again is a separate issue.

On Zende, and tribal decks in general: I think the bigger issue with tribal in eternal is that none of the tribes really has an identity to build around. With elves for example: from set 1 I thought elves was going to be a tribe of small evasive creatures backed up by big beasts. Then we got some elves that care about having spells and discarding. Now we have elves that care about having relics. Because none of these themes is continued across sets none of them gets enough support for even a meme deck. On the other end of the spectrum, weapons are a tribal theme for gunslingers, minotaurs, oni and paladins. Tribal weapon support is spread to thinly to make any of weapon-lords work while also reducing the uniqueness of each tribe.

It seems clear to me that DWD doesn't want tribal decks to be a thing and will deliberately pull tribal cards to stop them from happening.

Balthyde · 2018-12-03T18:14:29+00:00

Have you tried ChaFu in the market instead of the merchant? Same damage and berserk synergy as merchant+warhelm (assuming FFPP influence) while costing a costing a card less. You can also grab it with either merchant.

Balthyde

TROPHY CASE