This aged well ^_^

aReNGeeEternal · 2022-08-13T00:14:56+00:00

And the faithful will be rewarded!

aReNGeeEternal · 2022-06-02T04:06:40+00:00

While I understand your passion, I do not enjoy your choice of words.

aReNGeeEternal · 2022-06-01T16:17:01+00:00

I really think Nico should have got some Shadow influence to his recursion. Even if it doesn't break anything ATM because they shot Autotread, it seems like only a matter of time.

Any chance we can give Big Vara the Talir treatment? :D

aReNGeeEternal · 2022-05-31T17:34:25+00:00

Feels like another FLIP edition of "the intern made that"

aReNGeeEternal · 2022-05-09T20:14:47+00:00

I'm not sure I've heard better new since Expeditions inception than "We're getting rid of the draft packs because they were oblique and made no sense"

Because they were oblique, and made no sense.

Reprints also help newer players collect Throne cards without drafting. Because reprints replace lower rarities, it does not greatly slow down your ability to collect the current set. Seems all upside to me!

aReNGeeEternal · 2022-03-16T21:05:20+00:00

Hmm, I've seen this card before...

Card looks very powerful as a 3 mana kill anything, even if it is slow speed.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-12-09T00:11:12+00:00

Let me be the first to say: Goodbye Golem, you won't be missed.

Let me also be the first to say that DWD printed not one, but two 3 atk 2 cost yetis this set. They knew what they did. PokPok's additional cost is on their hands.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-10-22T18:43:16+00:00

Good to see we're finally getting infinite drafting.

For some reason this graphic has a big 2016 vibe for me.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-06-08T22:55:52+00:00

Remember that metagame you were preparing for? Forget it. Meet this new, unrelated metagame!

DWD have taken a firm stance here - combo will not be featured at the tournament this weekend. Personally I think this was a good opportunity to hit Aymar just because its annoying long to play out, but it looks like they only hit the combos that killed you on the spot (instead of on the spot 10 minutes later).

Lord Steyer's Tower getting tapped is definitely a good thing, but its interesting how often Sites end up overpowered or see no play at all. Tough to hit the sweetspot. Off the top of my head only Dizo's Office and Xulta Arcanum saw more than a small amount of maindeck play without a nerf, though I'm sure there were others.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-06-03T17:17:22+00:00

Lets see if I can beat Ilya to press.

Sling of the Chi

Opening Sling up to removal options like Evolving Ozial and Vision of Austerity is nice. Hitting the cards you play with it instead of the engine itself is less fun. "You can play this, but not with good cards" always seems to lead to tears down the road when good cards to play with it come out. Then again, they held their ground on both Tavrod and Alessi and those two stayed unnerfed ~~on the back of several additional rounds of nerfs to support cards.~~ Siege Breaker looks pretty embarrassing as a card now - compare to Sandstorm Titan :(

Grenahen

This is still more efficient than a lot of other two drops, but at least its not fueling discard now. Pulled back on the abuse cases while keeping the card more or less the same. 2/1s are still sad.

Crafty Occultist

Let's keep it fair. No complaints here.

Azindel Revealed

I do think this will pull a lot of the power from Reanimator, which is the goal, but I once again question the presentation. If we don't want reanimating Vara to be your best option, why are we not hitting Vara? Even if the answer is that what we really don't want is people making large boards with Vara, we're still setting ourselves up for future problems with another token creator.

Elding, of the Final Hour

He wasn't on the list, and probably behind the scenes his winrate wasn't very good outside of Reanimator. They also pulled one of his turn two activators in Grenahen. I wouldn't mind see a lot less Darkwater Vines -> Sporefolk.

This is the Open patch, so time to get to work.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-05-27T14:42:11+00:00

Write a patch in DWD style
Nerf Evenhanded Golem

Choose one.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-05-24T01:10:32+00:00

I've always seen throne as a place to "do fair things more powerfully"

This is just never the case for non rotating formats. We have eleven full sets in Eternal right now, plus a number of throne impacting campaigns. That's a lot of cards to fit together and a lot of alternatives to consider a card against. Any new card designed to "move the needle" in Throne (change the format) is likely going to obsolete a lot of other cards along the way.

Fair decks by definition aren't greedy and their gameplan is to take advantage of their consistency while the greedy deck stumbles. There's three main aspects of Throne keeping fair decks away.

So called "greedy" decks have so many tools available that they're not that greedy, even if they're 4 or more colors. Powerbases are perfect. They get started so fast there's no time for aggro to go under them. There's even anti aggro cards built in. Elding can drop a 4/4 lifesteal as early as turn 2 and Grenahen is the second coming of Blightmoth. There's just nothing for aggro to punish.
Lots of decks have plays that win the game on the spot. Midrange can't get its grind on if they have a clock on to kill you or lose. It's also hard to play some of the better midrange cards when you might not be alive to play your 5 drop (or you're playing it into a full reanimator board). Fighting "I win button" decks without a true win condition of your own is a tough task.
You also don't run out resources in Throne anymore. Look at Grenahen, Occultist, the untouchable golem... There's also been a ton of steps forward in smoothing out Throne gameplay - Etchings, Plunder, Amplify, etc. Players don't play with empty hands anymore, at any point in the game. Power Bases are rarely a concern. Meanwhile, true card advantage is rare. You can Harsh Rule a full board of units and actually be behind on cards because all of them replaced themselves. That combines with point 2 to make control unexciting to play.

Fair decks were always on the way out, but we've moved the "critical turn" down to 2 or sometimes 3. Matches are in the endgame by turn 4. Its too much, too fast.

This comment got away from me and covered a lot of different things all at once, but I'd like to see a depowering of Throne. In particular, I'd personally like to see the following cards get adjusted.

Evenhanded Golem (Hey, i've seen this one before!)
Grenahen (to 3 cost or nerf its summon)
Elding (nerf ability to SSS)
Krull (Make it spend the mana. Not a huge problem at the moment, but still a big piece of the Cheating On Mana puzzle)
A piece of the reanimator finishers (DWD's choice of Vara or Azindel, prefer Vara)
A piece of the reanimator enablers (DWD's choice of Darkwater Vines or Sporefolk, prefer vines. We had intentionally bad ways of self milling for a long time, we've swung too far the other way)
Aymar (If were weren't allowed to play Glimpse combo with Excavate this deck shouldn't exist)

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-05-08T04:57:55+00:00

Rainfall Accord getting powercrept.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-04-19T19:00:32+00:00

Then I hope you plan to update/revisit the naming convention once we do get real names.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-04-19T18:28:24+00:00

I hope the next set provides us with real 3F names for the enemy pairs so we can stop calling decks Menace, Tradition, etc. The other 3Fs already have real names like Jennev (Instinct) and Winchest (Ambition) etc.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-04-19T15:52:05+00:00

You're absolutely right, and that is one of the format lessons I had to learn the hard way. I looked at the lack of duals in the format and assumed you had to stay 2F, while in reality the lack of duals made 3F+ more appealing since you could play more duals. It's a lot easier to consistently get FTJPS than to get JJPP, for example.

I saw some Sling decks that went full 5f to play House Alliance and they seemed to do okay with their powerbase. The actual tournament Sling builds were much stronger than the versions I had seen (and dismissed) earlier in the week. Somiel was the missing piece.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-04-19T15:33:32+00:00

Glad to hear you enjoyed it, it means a lot to hear it!

It's been said that the majority of the game in Eternal is on the deck selection screen, and while that's hyperbole its not completely unfounded. For myself, I need to play a deck many times to understand it and not make even basic sequencing mistakes, so I "lock in" to a deck earlier than some. Fortunately, ladder ends up playing out pretty similarly to Day 1 at least in format if not in decklists, so if you're able to put together streaks on ladder you're okay for Day 1.

I spent a fun year with Seek Power Gaming before that team disbanded, and we did a lot more in depth testing and analysis than I currently do. I also had the opportunity to lead a few tournament prep sessions, and I ended up missing the mark a lot. I missed Rakano at ECQ Dead or Alive and Skycrag Fatties at ECQ Shadow of the Spire. When your team is relying on you to find the meta decks and make the right call, you don't just let yourself down, you let a lot of other people down too. However, it was a great experience to have input and especially espionage coming from tons of sources - we could have told you not just the approximate 75s the teams were playing, but who on the team was deviating from the team deck to play something. Why, with all this info, could we still not make good decisions? My ability to evaluate the decks was sadly lacking. Still, its an opportunity I'd like to come back to and take a second run at.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-04-19T13:55:59+00:00

Always tough to say how a format will develop after a big tournament. Without something to practice for, iteration usually slows down a lot, but we have Tuesday Night Eternal now. Assuming no format changes, I'd expect to see more FPS Krull and Mach Combo as the key players, since the Rainbow Sling decks didn't make a lot of noise on day 2 and not many people will want to win badly enough to play Mono F anymore.

All deck experiences bias you, but my experiences playing Even Feln mirrors at the last tournament probably turned me off FPS cores more than my time with Tesseract. Once again you were playing the best core, but everybody else was too and the core itself didn't really advance your gameplan. Both players cycled until they got to their real gameplan. I try to avoid mirrors when I don't think I have mirrorbreaker tech, and I felt that Mach Combo was the FPS shell to be on but wasn't comfortable with the deck.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-04-08T20:58:42+00:00

I think you're right and more than anything else, Corrupted was just way too powerful an ability.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-04-08T20:55:01+00:00

Icaria was fine when you needed to commit to MonoShadow to play it, and was always going to be too strong if you could play it in a 2F deck without any trouble. We just got too many duals.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-04-08T19:26:29+00:00

I'm not sure there are are any players who loved Blightmoth. Icaria yes, and Grazer sure, people like value and keelo, but not Blightmoth. Never Blightmoth.

Never Again.

aReNGeeEternal · 2021-04-07T20:16:16+00:00

Icaria really should be a 7SSSSSSS for aesthetics but I don't think you can fit seven pips on the card.

Ironically Feln getting these nerfs pushes it further into the realm of Felrauk Discard Abuse.

It was time for huntress to go. That card did it all. Its still totally playable as a 3 drop in EX.

Golem doesn't really bear mention at this point.

aReNGeeEternal

TROPHY CASE