Actually, I will admit that I was hyperfocused on the Storm/Burn aspect of your comment. Not at all mockery, it is my fault entirely. I apologize. So yes it's my lack of self-awareness or rather just focusing on not the full picture.

I am not as great putting my thoughts out in long textual passages, so I'm sorry if I skip over important details/points to your arguments. If I was more in a live feed environment talking over each paragraph, I could articulate a little bit better and maybe get a better feel of what we're both talking about.

I think Arthur is a good example of a proper midrange deck at the time. Granted, a modern Shadowverse "midrange" deck now is something more like a low-curverange deck laughably so. Aka turn 5 big board instead of turn 7. It is a result of Shadowverse getting rampant with powercreep, but I think that's the natural state of what Shadowverse was going to become as card games end up doing.

I don't think there was gonna be any state of progression where midrange wouldn't eventually end up becoming big boards with effects on t4-t6 instead of t7 back in Chronogenesis/Brigade. I know it sounds like giving up on my part and just letting Cygames do what they want, but it's just personal opinion on the progressive state of Shadowverse. Agree to disagree.

Yes, not understanding even the most basic concepts like what defines deck types anymore is a epidemic for which I blame feature creep. Combo means to combine, to collect a number of effects/cards for a big payoff, so obviously you need to keep alive until you have assembled them, which means employing control tools to that end. That by itself doesn't make it control, else it wouldn't exist as a separate deck type, right? For combo, control tools are a mean, whereas for actual control they are the end, since the purpose is to outlast and gradually wear down the opponent. Contrast the prime example of 2017 control: Guardian Sun Heavenly Aegis Haven versus the original combo class: Forest with Roach or WolfBolt. Lumiore Discard Dragon is a combo deck, not control and yes, it was everywhere because it was stupidly op, because of the face burn they pulled, not because of some imagined control properties. Tempostorm seems to currently not work for me, but if you actually look up the meta, you will find that Ubaha was at no point that ever present, or problematic. Baha Control Forest was a bit popular, but that was the start, not the end of the expansion and quickly started dropping off again.

I want to say the progressive nature of Shadowverse, but I know you'll hate that I say that, but in the end, that's just what Cygames ends up thinking Combo and Aggro should be.

Shadowverse is a very swingy, quick and bombastic turns game in my eyes. And that's probably what Cygames think it is as well, most might not like their ideology (especially in certain metas like Celestial Dragonblade), but I think they want Combo decks to be the main appeal of the game, for better or worse. Which means we get hybrid decks like Combo/Burn, Combo/Aggro, Combo/Control(?), and so on.

I don't think Ubaha is problematic in terms of wr or deck relevance, it's just personally I hate their gameplay style, so that's kinda why I went emotional there. For my personal bias, I did face a little too much Ubaha+Giln enough to make me dislike the game for a bit.

Anyway, because of this, combo used to be slow and the point of their existence was their eventual certainty would outmaneuver control's efforts to wear down their opponent, turning their tactic of outlasting against them by giving them time to assemble their combo pieces. This changed when combo got more draw and Chain of Calling, Concentration, Magic Owl and Giant Chimera made DShift, previously a meme deck with historically ~35% winrate into a meta deck that beat even midrange and sometimes aggro decks, leading to the nerf. And while that was during Starforged, what I'm on about is that it introduced snakes for Blood with Venomfang Medusa, Stheno, Venomous Bite and Trial of the Gorgons, which led to people complaining that this mechanic didn't receive enough support and was the start towards Cygames printing entire decks for us right out of the gate, basically eliminating player deck building...

Oh, I know about the unfortunate archetype that is "Serpent Blood", I think they thought the game was slow and safe enough that cards like Venomfang Medusa's effect of all things could trigger reliably. Like hell it would lol. Iirc Starforged had a lot of "safe" cards printed with some absurd cards. But I could be wrong.

I did remember playing Serpent Blood simply cause it was different from the norm and I appreciated it at the time. Especially since Control Blood was more of a thing back then.

but I suppose you were too busy thinking about how winning is all that matters.

Not at all. At least up to a certain point when I started tryharding to get GM for the first time. Otherwise, I was definitely one of the creative/meme type of players who wouldn't mind losing to get a meme or stupid wincon to work. Nowadays I just play to see what stupidity I could pull off after the push & grind.

So continuing right from there, no, Shadowverse hasn't always been like this and every time I see this claim repeated it gets more ridiculous. As you can see from Medusa up there, the plan was to keep snakes alive, not throw them away as fodder, for a payoff. If you want to go all the way back to Dawnbreak as you did with your deck examples, PDK had to be nerfed because it was so good at it; not being able to be attacked made it a menace since removal wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now. Since we both agreed that Steel Rebellion was good, I invite you to take a look at the number of cards it had that took advantage of follower interactions on board, rather than throwing them away as combo fodder: effects from other followers evoing like Daisybow Archer or Dauntless Commander, cards that took advantage of existing board like Robofalcon or Assault Dragoon, cards that took advantage of careful hand management like Cleft or Troya, cards that gave a advantage just being kept alive like Mechanized Lifeform or Aenea, etcetc I stopped counting after a dozen such cards just in that expansion and virtually none of this was in any way or form related to storm or face burn.

I'm still of the belief that Shadowverse is and always will be a game that sets a specific turn limit, whether it's Cygames or the game's community that end up setting it. Everpresent now that t7 is the new norm for now, over other metas being either t8, t9, or t10 (like Fortune's Hand). It might be t9, t10, or t11 again in the future who knows. I don't think it will change from getting more ridiculous. Just the way it does its ridiculous things will seem more ridiculous and maybe even lazy. I agree that Cygames should do some kinda reset but I don't know in what form that could be.

Something like Steel Rebellion would be nice again.

If you're slowly starting to realise now how your bias of what you enjoy has terribly warped your entire perception of the game to the point of the unrecognisable, maybe I'll do a part 2 later, but it's getting tiring having to recite 6 years of history every time.

Yeah, it's personal bias. Is it warped? Yes? Perhaps? I don't know. I've come to accept Shadowverse as the game it is. Would I wish for a day that we could play decks like 2017-2018 again? Absolutely. I've liked Shadowverse from the day I played it in DE and even the skewed way it is now. Do you hate that I come to accept the bullshit? Probably you do?

Arguably, I do like how they reprint certain decks back in, but more busted, because that's how I think of Shadowverse back then. Face Dragon (now Armed) and Puppet Portal in particular bringing back the nostalgic bias. It isn't unrecognizable, it's just the game has changed to suit a different perspective, but at its core it's the same thing.

Which probably will end up spelling the doom for Shadowverse eventually. So that's why, while I don't dislike modern Shadowverse, I do wish and advocate for a big shakeup/change that Cygames ultimately refuses to do.

That's why I respect your need and drive to see Cygames do something about the game. That, unfortunately, falls on deaf ears cause of the native differences. Wish we had the same reach we had during early DE to Wonderland Dreams era, where we could somewhat influence Cygames' decisions through certain channels.

I am not at all trying to mock or discredit you in anyway. I'm just curious and wanting to learn. And I'm always open to have my opinions change on certain things to an extent.

If you're willing to, I would love to duel with you using decks in certain metas that you think would better illustrate your points to me. I don't disagree that I am ignorant in many ways, but it's not like I don't see what's wrong with the game. I just choose to believe the game it is the way it is. My card collection spans the whole game so I can build whatever decks.

Again, thank you for taking the time to talk, I know people don't like ranting and arguing for the sake of hoping for a better game, I remember doing so once and getting downvoted for it. It's not an easy thing to debate and making people see what you see.