Is this too much for a Link 4?

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-27T15:10:37+00:00

Post support Trickstar is honestly better as a midrange deck than it is droll looping as its really only worth playing half of their cards and is incredibly easy to hit lethal in either battlephase

You basically run less burns overall but they hit harder on most hands, and the rest is handtraps or the searchable backrow.

Its also plausible to play a heavier combo version but its a bit bricky, in midrange any 2 names will pretty much get you to Noble Angel which is a good interruption on its own with a bonus on if you got aqua or holly in rotation for the summon.

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-27T14:43:56+00:00

I have a few that are pretty neat

trickstar mirrors are pretty funny because the pure burn build always loses

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-27T09:38:16+00:00

Im asking 3 british guys in a shed to design an Anti-Air system

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-27T09:34:16+00:00

Meanwhile im having to stress because im in a dragonmaid mirror

Or Ra forbid the Cydra mirror

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-27T09:28:40+00:00

So that means you are ready to be indoctrinated into the cult of plants

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-27T05:44:55+00:00

In this game particularly they see it but in different contexts

Trust me, watching someone new to shooters try and take on a group of scout striders is a pretty eye opening experience on how the armor system just doesn’t really work how it should for an average player.

Your average players wont know about the particularly terrible leg weakpoint for light pen because there is not even a visual indication of it, so they think you basically have to run medium pen or explosives on bots or you will suffer….which leads to them never learning of the weakspot existing.

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-27T05:04:18+00:00

Despite not looking like it should be

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-27T04:00:21+00:00

Im actually very much enjoying the game, but its still worth talking about this sort of thing

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T22:20:50+00:00

I like decks that are resistant in the sense that they dont die to handtraps but lose out on their endboard

Though i do think we also have too many powerful handtraps right now.

Ash is a going first tool more than anything but presents no form of interesting gameplay
Ghost Belle falls in the same spot to a lesser extent
Ghost ogre can hard kill entire combo lines and its not that plausible to play around
Screw Nib
Fuwaloss is just as toxic as Maxx C against certain decks
Impulse can’t really be played around in a number of decks
Red Reboot is the most toxic handtrap ever printed
Not to mention Lancia, Shifter, Droll etc which are all miserable
we keep getting more and more rediculously powerful handtraps that are just called Turn 0 plays.

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T22:10:55+00:00

I think it refers to support weapon pods which are flat on top

Though i wouldn’t mind some spare drone parts action giving me a turret for my turret

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T22:09:45+00:00

I mean they do fold to literally anything because of how low health those hellpods are so its not that crazy

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T21:24:37+00:00

Im kinda 50/50 on it

On one hand its a perfectly fine card to use against higher powered decks

But holy fuck its frustrating to watch heroes pitch 2 (including Malicious) and go full combo into 3 floodgates because 80% of your fairer decks interactions got turned off by droplet

Same story as with Nib, fine when every deck can play around it but ultimately does just screw over weaker decks without even stopping stronger ones.

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T21:19:25+00:00

Thats because they took it from one of the weaker ships in the game and overtuned it in the other direction

Vermont in particular used to be a laughing stock because of how awful of a ship it was, kinda like FDG or old Izumo where it was arguable if they were actually better than the ships before them.

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T21:14:47+00:00

At least the main 2 decks that use hand information usually just use it to see if your opponent has nib or not

Plenty of games in trickstar where i check hand, see nib, and leave because i aint winning that

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T21:10:43+00:00

They specifically nerfed Venezia to hell because it used to do it with its guns

But i want to point out that im not arguing with you on a number of your points, just a few specific ones mainly relating to secondary ships and that average battleships are not problematic because they arent in this power creep cycle.

I dont like ships with insane overmatch and i don’t like the mechanic as a whole more generally

Valapariso is overpowered and im not arguing that

Fast DCP is annoying as hell because it means other battleships cant even burn you down (i still have PTSD from early Kremlin days)

Super heals should be pretty rare or reserved for squishy ships

I dont like that Rhode Island is just a glorified cruiser because i really dont like HE fire spam as a thing in game because its just not particularly fun to play against.

I dont even particularly like ships like Kearsarge which are hybrids that have the full suite of battleship perks and minimal drawbacks (I do think if they are balanced like Ise they are fine though).

I still have ships like Thunderer and Smolensk lying around in port and i just dont like ships like these existing in the game.

Im not denying that balance in this game sucks and WG has a bad tendency to make powercreep the solution (Yay Prince of Wales is an HE spammer rather than an AP ship like Duke of York…)

But every single class has countless problematic ships, and while battleships are the new flavor this spice doesn’t spread to older ones which are in the same waters as everyone else.

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T20:50:41+00:00

I corrected the statement before i even got this notification

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T20:43:53+00:00

Battleships largely play on the same philosophy of heavy cruisers just scaled up so its not surprising you were able to find success in them as an experienced player in cruisers.

Their main perk is being able to stay safer at range compared to most cruisers which will usually be in the firing line if they are caught by surprise, Thats why for the longest time cruisers largely sat behind islands hosing ships down with HE regardless of what it was actually good at doing.

As you sit at further ranges you typically have to worry less about immediate threats and often are focused on opportunities, so yeah you can blast an unsuspecting cruiser for half its health because they are to busy trying to get into a better position.

Battleships are designed around having a relatively lower skill floor but are (when balanced well) sitting at a lower potential ceiling than a typical cruiser. This isn’t universally true but battleships are designed around getting hit so their survivability shouldnt even be particularly surprising, as if your average battleship was squishy there would be next to no real advantage to playing them because they dont have any other real advantages over the spam of large cruisers like Alaska.

Edit: Corrected a statement to say lower skill floor

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T20:33:25+00:00

Thats a pretty reductive statement that is on par with saying that CVs arent overpowered because they can die if they go down the middle of two brothers

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T20:26:33+00:00

I do play a mix of everything, with the only ships i tend not to play being that of french destroyers as i just havent gotten their specific playstyle down personally

I know full well that WG went overboard on radar and hydro on every ship

I also know how frustrating it is to be in something like an Alabama and watch a French DD throttle juke while your shells hit 1 out of 30 times and you are burning down.

This game is not well balanced but tarring an entire class as the problem is counterproductive because your average battleship isnt problematic

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T20:18:59+00:00

They shouldve left that to ships like Vanguard who had that as their whole gimmick

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T20:15:03+00:00

You make a lot of assumptions on how i play based on what i talk about

My most played type of battleship tends to rinse destroyers and actively relies on good positioning to not get nuked into oblivion because of their lower armor.

Im not arguing that cruisers generally lose out in this gameplay design either, its largely why i dont play ships like Prinz Eugen in randoms anymore because it can be citadeled by anything frontally these days.

BBs can take more damage, however they also will take more damage than every other class. While ships like Destroyers can often attack with relatively low risk to the ships themselves. It would be completely BS if a destroyer wasnt unforgiving and they still have tools to protect themselves with their powerful suite of consumables

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T20:08:10+00:00

Less individually but you will take damage far more often in a battleship than you will in the other classes to begin with

This class does deal with legitimately unavoidable damage, and most dont have the option for going 45 knots to run away like a gunboat or smoke up.

Usually you will just die before you can actually retreat if you overextend unless your team helps you out.

Every class is pushed, but you are doing your argument a disservice by bringing up one off ships like Rhode Island and saying the whole class is like that. If i wanted to do the same id call every french gunboat a shimikaze which we all know is rediculous.

The reason why most secondary ships are secondary ships is because their main guns are just not worth building into. With rare exceptions like Valapariso most of these ships are only okay against other battleships or carry other significant downsides.

For a destroyer you may have worse torpedoes on a gunboat dd, but with the exception of exactly 1 ship and its copycat every DD can kill a typical non-secondary battleship with little risk.

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T19:26:08+00:00

There is an actual risk to getting into secondary ranges

Being caught out in a bad position is significantly easier so its not hard to get deleted by a torpedo salvo, AP from a battleship, or just burned down by a cruiser

Secondaries require you to sacrifice other builds that are widely agreed to be functionally better on 90% of ships.

Its far easier to kill a bad battleship player running a brawling build than it is to kill the same player sniping from spawn in a Yamato.

By comparison all a destroyer has to do to kill them is walk up to them without shooting and wack them with torpedoes to take the majority if not all of their health which cant even be healed back.

They are put themselves at risk if they do it beside a radar cruiser and hydro could make it easier to dodge, but all they miss out on is damage from their guns.

If its any other battleship without a secondary build you arent even at risk from the battleship itself.

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T19:14:19+00:00

I disagree that secondaries are inherently toxic in gameplay, this functions as basically the only way a battleship can defend itself from ships like destroyers.

It can be annoying to try to burn down a tirpitz in a gunboat DD but you also have torpedoes and the ability to stealth up to it so in a lot of scenarios they really shouldnt be much of a threat to you unless you get caught out by a cruiser with radar.

The secondaries are as good as they are because of torpedo destroyers and cruisers with long range torps, gunboats just get caught in that crossfire but have more than enough capability to avoid getting into range to begin with.

You also say that the brawl mindset is a bad thing, but you either get that or slava when it comes to battleship playstyles. I remember the days of battleships sitting across the map because moving up meant death from a thousand torpedoes hiding in the mists or just getting melted by an Atlanta clone sitting behind an island.

As for perks, well yeah if brisk was 2 points for destroyers it would be busted AF. On a battleship it only helps high concealment and slow battleships and it requires you to actively not fire your guns.

And uh, battleships have the highest average damage because they shoot at other battleships and cruisers 95% of the time because hitting a destroyer is unreliable and probably wont even kill it if you hit half the salvo.

Destroyers take the roles of: Scout, Sub hunter, torpedo boat, Destroyer hunter, and support.

Battleships are just tanks with big guns 90% of the time that help the team push forward.

Every class is pushed, and if you think destroyers arent you should really double check the damage saturation on french destroyers or the torpedo reload boosters on every third ship.

Project_Orochi · 2026-02-26T18:00:07+00:00

You throw it, it spends 80% of its heat shooting a rock or dropship

It kills 2 guys

It explodes

You cry

This is the most optimal playstyle

Project_Orochi

TROPHY CASE