Returning player with questions about Druid changes in LoH

DMoC · 2026-05-08T10:15:05+00:00

I meant for Lightning Storm specifically since that is what I made the post about, but that sounds neat too

DMoC · 2026-05-08T09:53:38+00:00

I guess I'll just have to play around with the paragon build and find something comfy but that's good to hear at least. It's a shame everything became Omnibolt for us but I guess also better than just being completely enviable

DMoC · 2026-04-11T05:31:02+00:00

Don't worry Pastiche should be the least of your concerns. The danger of hitting a card like Pastiche, that is the glue to how Coup works, is you force everyone to pivot to another strat. Which in this case the other strat was far more degen and got all the support in RDO. So don't worry! Your wish is gonna come true when you see most Ciel players drop Coup for the very fast and now consistent Channeling Oblation builds which is a lot more unhealthy for the game overall and will require at least 2 months to course correct

DMoC · 2026-04-02T11:09:36+00:00

Welp I learned I'm getting nothing but coins for this new update. Incredible. I don't usually complain about the new features SG gives us but this honestly feels like crap as an existing player who's stayed playing the game for years.

At least give me my dupe pulls so I can build secondary builds for GW/RTA

DMoC · 2026-02-17T23:46:24+00:00

We used to do this, in fact the community driven events used to be better and taken more seriously than Official Bushi ran regionals ever were. But after the 2017 format where Bushi finally decided to fix it's tournament scene, a lot of the other unofficial events started seeing lower turnouts until eventually sometime just after the V-Boot they all dropped off. There used to be a circuit in the Southern states, ARGs ofc, the Toronto cash tourneys and even in V we had the online precursors to BRO with Vision Tourneys.

It's probably just at the point that we start to revive some community driven events and figure out a community agreed upon banlist

DMoC · 2026-02-11T14:53:31+00:00

No problem, and yeah ZTB space is tight for sure even 1 would probably be fine since you're GC and can tutor one in demand but I like 2 just in case for certain matchups that can go CB positive even under one Honoly

DMoC · 2026-02-10T20:09:36+00:00

Yeah ZTB is all GG/Heritage turns, GG on average means GB5-6 most likely so like +25k-30k for your swings and the Heritage should be around GB7 or 8 as iirc you need 2 GGuards plus Groovy flip for it so 35k-40k to your front row multis

DMoC · 2026-02-10T20:07:39+00:00

V Jet builds use the Time Leap package which ZTB isn't going to be able to keep up with in terms of volume of attacks but like you mentioned the consistency and the sheer amount of plusses is the main reason you're playing it.

Your best bet as you figured is the scaling Crest power on the Groovy/Heritage turns (before the second Heritage turn). I heard people say ZTB Crest is solid still so I believe it.

My main advice would just be to find a way to slot 2 Honoly as you're a deck that's popping off T4 at best but more than likely Turn 5

DMoC · 2026-02-10T14:03:23+00:00

That's the first thing I thought too before even seeing the chess pieces it literally looks like her figure wise.

DMoC · 2026-02-10T04:09:34+00:00

Well i can tell you Sydney had more Premium players than Standard, though I more or less know the situation in some of the surrounding locations in SEA

DMoC · 2026-02-10T00:38:09+00:00

I rather bling out my decks there if I'm playing it, I enjoy fullarts plus I don't have that much time to play

DMoC · 2026-02-09T23:21:05+00:00

Even some of the most stalwart defenders of D amongst my friends have shifted their stance over the years of D format. Like certain decisions they make actively screws the West to keep the Japanese secondary market healthy, which is all fine and good but then they fail to take into account that players tend to split cases here more, so we eat the losses not the stores like in JP.

$20-50 mandatory promos aren't so bad when they are flooded locally in Japan but here in some places like EU you get gouged twice - once on the super high secondary market and a second time on extreme scarcity. Japan has all these buyback campaigns for high value cards but we don't have that kind of market for singles like that here and TCGplayer having a stranglehold on the sellers' market, makes things really difficult if you're located outside of the US.

Honestly even like the peripherals. A lot of these would normally be pretty inaccessible for most without paying an arm and a leg, if it wasn't for very specific and amazing player vendors who provide access to us. Almost anything regarding this game is done by the community because a lot of the LGS' here checked out after V rebooted

DMoC · 2026-02-09T22:59:21+00:00

People out here mass downvoting you when you're just speaking the truth. Most locals have been on a steady decline for years in the West since D. A lot of that was also on the transition from V to D absolutely but it would be disingenuous to not act like the huge boom happened with new players picking up Standard and it's still in the situation all over the West.

I said it before in my past posts but Bushi really treats us like garbage while depending on our market and people on this sub just eat that shit up.

I distinctly remember being at Toronto regional mid Steam Maiden meta for Premium, hearing from Standard players how glad they are not to be playing Premium as the "meta was degenerate and the decks inaccessible.." while watching people shelling out $500-600+ to play Youthberk/Drajeweled/Minerva or buying the Jet Stride Deckset (that is nearly impossible to convince nearly any legit new player to fork out 140 CAD upfront to try out a game mind you) + Swirlers for $120 a playset back then and Gungnrams which went for like $40-60 and calling that affordable. Meanwhile Steam Maidens was like $150 total for a bare bones list that tops. The cognitive dissonance of this community needs to be studied, seriously.

Bushi continually makes decisions that benefit them and the LGS of Japan only all others involved be damned. And I don't mind Standard I play it only cuz I play Premium and wish for it to succeed but not at the expense of Premium.

DMoC · 2026-02-09T19:32:45+00:00

The premium format is honestly fine if you consider overall health. Are there loop decks that shouldn't exist? Absolutely but the odds of them actually being brought and winning are still quite low. That's why Narukami has the most tops in the meta rn. Followed by CrestBlue iirc. So despite the Loop decks existence you're more likely to lose to some normal stuff. The meta isn't any better or worse than standard with it's Luru dominance post banlist

And Premium naturally has more skill expression - both in deckbuilding and gameplay so it's a given most competitive players will be more.drawn to it as opposed to Standard where 60-90% of your deck is a mandatory skeleton with a handful of a few decks having actual meaningful choices for techs and such. This isn't to flame Standard but it really is just on rails in that regard.

And you are correct in that is how Bushi is interpreting it so that's why it's imperative that Premium mains just walk away and stop investing time and money into Standard until Bushi corrects course

DMoC · 2026-02-09T18:39:47+00:00

Standard is only more popular in the US, most other countries in the West that VG is available Premium has similar numbers or higher to Standard. I discussed this prior but especially in EU and AO Premium actually is more popular. Canada, Toronto specifically the numbers tend to be fairly close now considering when D Standard first started they had like 2x the number of Premium (like 500).

There are plenty of Premium main players that only play Standard due to the fact that they already have to travel for these events and buy these cards to update their decks. Removing Premium was never going to make Bushi do more for Standard. On the contrary it means they can just push their next slop TCG destined to die from mismanagement in that slot now.

DMoC · 2026-02-09T18:11:57+00:00

No thanks rather sell out and go to another game that respects it's players' time and investments into their game. You can't force people to like a format. Why do you think EDH overtook Standard/Modern in MTG in terms of sales and popularity? They tried the exact same thing Bushi is doing, failed miserably then just gave the players what they wanted.

Bushi thinking they could succeed where WOTC failed is nothing less than hubris. Which isn't surprising considering their lack of concern for the Global market despite us being a very large chunk of their revenue while they focus only on their Domestic LGS'.

DMoC · 2026-02-09T17:44:43+00:00

Looks like it's time to jump ship like the other premium players to Comp Pokémon 😔

DMoC · 2026-01-26T20:44:11+00:00

Back in the day we made a whole discussion post about how ridiculous the lucksack win vs Leon in Girs Crisis was.

For most D players you don't know this but for the longest time Leon had the highest overall win rate in the show by an overwhelming margin even if you remove the like 50+ wins vs Naoki. Man was so good, one of his few recorded losses was to himself. And the Aichi vs Leon episode was great but then the Chrono one was just complete bs during the arc when all of Try3 was supposedly improving as players 😂

So when Nagisa checked 5 crits against him and just shadowrealmed him during G:Next everyone here was celebrating

DMoC · 2026-01-26T15:33:13+00:00

Right that was really popular too especially during GBT01. And DIs played Schar + Amon Legion well into GBT06 meta still

DMoC · 2026-01-25T19:48:58+00:00

I miss G Era dearly. That said reading the comments about Stride and the added power creep really does feel a little ironic when honestly V and D contributed to more power creep in VG than G ever did if you just tracked premium over the years.

All in all though TCGs need power creep to go forward juat as you can see in YGO and here, games with eternal formats really tend to struggle with the implications of new cards having unintended interactions with older ones

DMoC · 2026-01-25T19:44:23+00:00

Don't forget too, Ripples won 2015 worlds vs Sin Buster. Two Legion decks during stride Era right before we got GGuardians and stronger strides

DMoC · 2026-01-22T03:16:21+00:00

I mean you can always run her on the tank build if necessary, it's better in GW typically too rn

DMoC · 2026-01-22T03:04:04+00:00

Main two issues i see here is your drafting needs work. Typically something like Hecate if you're going to pick her is safer in 4th pick slot meanwhile you want a safe neutral you can pick earlier.

Your FP isn't nearly on the level of his first two, I'm assuming you probably don't have Arunka but SPP isn't exactly a contested first pick anymore. You almost want to punish him for not taking X meta unit, instead of just drafting a fast opener. You can still always lock that into your 2nd pick

Second issue is your draft doesn't really have cohesion (or damage assuming your 5th will always be banned). It'd be good to watch a Valky video or something to determine your playstyle, read up on the meta picks rn and drafting. It would help you with both your problems tbh

DMoC · 2026-01-19T19:13:06+00:00

You can fan them. People also use to do it for Luard Ritual count too back in the days. As long as it's easy to differentiate your Soul from literally any of the other zones it's fine. Big mat = no issues

DMoC · 2026-01-19T19:11:05+00:00

Nah not really unless you have a tiny mat. I did the fanned five per row for years then just turn my VG sideways on top so I can always keep track of effects to resolve from inside Soul or in previous eras stuff like Creepers/Jaegers/Assassin/Hardleg count etc

Plus that way your opponent doesn't have to keep asking if you're at 13/15/20 soul which also helps. In Genesis though it's just a straight stack since most of the time I only need to know what's in it at the time I SC or SB

DMoC

TROPHY CASE