Other quality-of-life changes also coming in the impending February update, see notes here.1. Piercing Rune (Runecraft spell): If an allied follower evolves, change the cost of this card to 2 (previously 1).
2. Goblin Mage (Neutral follower): Put a random follower that costs 2 play points or less (previously 2 play points) from your deck into your hand.
Yeah when the meta became Luna dropping the most uninteractive win condition on turn 3 (Thanks for printing Prince Catacomb, Cygames! Zombie Party is totally not insane too!) I sort of lost a lot of interest in the game. When you're Shadow, to a slightly less extent Dragon (this coming from someone who pushed to Masters in RoB with Dragon) or "everything else" I really don't see a point to playing the game. RoB was a far superior meta and I'm really missing it right now.They finally did it: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articl...banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-04-24
View attachment 81215
RIP
I was actually planning on taking this to Eternal Weekend (I'm in Pittsburgh so it's right here in my back yard) but I guess I need a new deck now. I just speculatively ordered a playset of Scroll Rack on the offchance that top-less miracles turns out to be good, but in the meantime I'm probably going to sleeve up my Stoneforge Mystics so I can keep casting JTMS and Snapcaster.
Shadowverse, more like SHADOWverse, amirite?
View attachment 81216
I've gotten really tired of playing ladder when Shadow is just so busted, I don't think I've ever seen the metagame so skewed, and I'm eagerly awaiting the day when it gets a much-deserved nerf.
In the meantime, I've been playing more Take Two, and I've actually been enjoying it quite a lot. I've seen my T2 winrate increase since the expansion, and I'm not sure whether this is due to an influx of new players or the fact that T2 has become a more skill-testing game mode; I'm guessing it's a combination of both, but I definitely feel like the T2 has gotten more skill-based. The new expansion added a bunch of new powerful golds and legendaries, and each deck now gets access to 6 (4 on-class, 2 neutral); when almost every deck gets access to some powerful cards, the outcome of games is decided much less often by someone playing a single overwhelming card like Olivia or Bahamut, and more often decided by who's able to curve out, make better use of their evolution points, and balance tempo plays with value plays. ("When everything's overpowered, nothing is.") The fact that having a good deck is more about having a good curve and less about lucking into individually-powerful cards means there are also more "traps" for less-experienced player to stumble into, and overall less variance and fewer "feelbads" for me as an experienced player.
What program are you using to record wins and losses? I use shadownote but i'm not a huge fan of it since it's all manual.snip
I save all of my 5-0 decklists in take two (when I remember to export the decklist before going to the rewards screen), and I use the crude method of just putting a link to the decklist and some notes into a spreadsheet. I don't track my stats apart from that, though I probably should, given the amount of time I put into the game.What program are you using to record wins and losses? I use shadownote but i'm not a huge fan of it since it's all manual.
Right now my two TCGs of choice are Magic (modern format, since nobody plays legacy) on the physical front, and Shadowverse on the digital front, and I think both are actually in pretty similar states right now.
Ever since the banning of Splinter Twin, Magic's modern format has been pretty rocky, with various linear decks clawing for the position of "best deck in format" and getting banned out one by one. Eldrazi (the version with eye of ugin), dredge, inefct, and suicide zoo were all hyper-linear aggro or combo decks that basically ended the game on turn 3 (sometimes even earlier!), and all were met with the ban hammer. (Maybe it would be more accurate to call it a "ban scalpel," rather than a hammer, as they managed to weaken most of these decks without completely removing them from the format.)
Now, the most powerful deck in the format is Grixis Death's Shadow, and I think I'm actually pretty okay with that. Snapcaster has always been a hallmark of decks that just want to play a fair, honest, grindy game of Magic, and this is the first time since the Splinter Twin ban that the best deck has been a Snapcaster deck. The deck is super interactive, dedicating a ton of its slots to discard spells and removal, and it plays a grindy midrange gameplan, eking out card advantage with cards like Snapcaster and K-command. It actually has a very Jund-like feel to it, and as with Jund, it's hard to complain that a deck is too good at playing fair Magic. (That's not to say that you can't make that argument; power level is always a consideration, but games that are lost due to variance and non-interactivity are often a greater source of the "feel-bads".) Even though Death's Shadow does get to "steal games" by just playing a bunch of cheap gigantic creatures, it's hard to complain when you're losing to a deck that plays so much interaction. I mean, the deck plays counterspells, which seems to be such a rare thing in modern. It honestly feels like the modern version of the legacy Grixis delver deck.
There's another thing that happens when you have a deck like Grixis Shadow at the top of the format: more people try to go over the top of it. You see fewer linear combo decks that try to outrace them (since those are exactly the kind of decks that Grixis Shadow tends to prey on), and you see more decks that are trying to "outgrind" shadow, either by committing to the late game (as you see decks like UW control) or go completely over the top (as Eldrazi Tron does). There are also some decks that just try to be better than Grixis at playing fair and honest Magic, and these tend to come in the form of Collected Company decks (either Humans or the Vizier combo) or Hatebears/Death&Taxes.
In short, if your format is going to have a "boogieman," you could do a whole lot worse than having it be Grixis Shadow. Grixis Shadow is the kind of deck that punishes you for running a hyper-linear combo deck and rewards you for playing fair.
I think Shadowverse is in a similar spot. Blood is the "best deck" that makes and shapse the format, but it's also the kind of matchup where you tend to win by playing a grindy midrange or control deck, whereas older tier 0 decks like Dragon tended to punish you for trying to play fair.
Somewhere around the time of RoB I feel like we went from a world where an evolve point meant "you get to trade up" to a world where an evolve point meant "you get to rush in for 2 extra damage," and I think it was around the time of the Piercing Rune nerf that being on the draw (and having the extra evolve point) went from being an advantage to a disadvantage. Now, being on the draw is still a disadvantage, but it feels like we're back to a world where evolve points are something that you use to interact with your opponent's board as opposed to just SMOrc-ing faster.
I actually have been climbing ladder by playing "classic" control decks like Seraph and D-shift, and I've encountered people playing decks like Elana on ladder, so it certainly takes me back to the period when I enjoyed playing Shadowverse the most. (Or as my pal Levi would say, "It's just like back in the old days!")
I think the metagame as a whole is in a good spot, even if a few adjustments are needed. Some part of the neutral package probably needs a nerf (it just feels impossible to win against a perfect neutral curve into Alice). Blood is just too powerful. Apart from the obvious Spawn/Baphomet package, Tove might actually be the best part of the curve despite being the most unassuming as a "mere" 2-drop. And while he might not be OP, Knuckle is just annoyingly better than his "peers." (Imagine if you took Banisher Priest/Dragon Warrior, and buffed it that so evolving into a 4/5, it evolved into a 5/6. AND then you made its evolve effect a fanfare effect instead, i.e. it can kill something turn 4 even if you're on the play. That's Big Knuckle Bodyguard.)
My main deck lists:
View attachment 85490 View attachment 85491 :
I save all of my 5-0 decklists in take two (when I remember to export the decklist before going to the rewards screen), and I use the crude method of just putting a link to the decklist and some notes into a spreadsheet. I don't track my stats apart from that, though I probably should, given the amount of time I put into the game.
Screengrab from Gamepress's meta decks analytics, which pulls data from Shadowverse Log (Japanese site)what is this
Maybe I'll come back to this in a couple weeks since the new set's out. I've not been following it much lately but there isn't really a reason for that outside of Netrunner distracting me. I couldn't care less about community opinion or tier lists though i just want them to keep making interesting cards and keep making S Rank with what I want.I can't just sit here while no one talks about Eternal. They finally dropped the new set...y'know, the thing that everyone wanted? And no one here is talking about it?
So two weeks ago, Omens of the Past released. Metagame is pretty crazy right now, even though a bunch of the top players are playing Praxis Midrange (and some plebs are starting to follow). Reddit doesn't think it's that good. Some people are laughing at that notion, but I am inclined to agree with Reddit on this one. It doesn't "feel" like a Tier 1 deck even though that's where the community is placing it. There's nothing the deck does that is unfair or considered OP. Even the deck's marquee card, Heart of the Vault, as good as it is, doesn't have this huge game swinging effect. It's only game swinging if you're at parity with lower health units or slightly behind (the cost reduction on the card you draw is super nice though). It's just a good, solid midrange deck. I doubt it will stay "Tier 1" because of this and people will figure out how to beat it, dropping it to a strong Tier 2 deck where it belongs IMO. It just feels too much like Elysian Midrange which was never a Tier 1 deck in the history of the game IIRC. In almost every card game I've played, the first deck that gets figured out always starts as the "best" deck but is almost never Tier 1 by the end of the meta for that expansion/block. Some people say that Omens of the Past in general feels underpowered when compared to Set 1, but even if they're right (it's WAY too early to definitively say that), the set is a little more than half the size of Set 1 soooo...idk? I'm just glad the other 5 factions finally got some supporting cards and there are quite a few good ones. You can still basically play what you want right now, though, and you will run into everything under the sun on ladder.
And, before anyone tells you, no, Skycrag Aggro is not cancer. Deck isn't that scary tbh.
They also made a slight tweak to the reward system that benefits the more casual players and hurts the tryhards a bit. Now, instead of always getting a silver chest every 3rd win in Ranked, they basically frontloaded the rewards to earning a pack from the latest set for your first win of the day, but after your 10th ranked win, you will only earn bronze chests. The chests can still upgrade, but of course the chances of upgrading to a diamond chest are lower if the chest starts out as a bronze one than from silver (chest upgrades are the best feeling in Eternal, bar none). Of course the tryhards are kinda mad ("I can't play for silver chests as much as I want anymore REEEEEE") but everyone else seems pretty happy.
Been having a ton of fun lately. Still a blast for me to play, though it's probably because it fills that "MTG itch" that I didn't even know I still had (stopped playing MTG over a decade ago).