Eternal Card Game The Problems with Evenhanded Golem

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• The Problems with Evenhanded Golem
• Shadow of the Spire Pre-Orders are Live!
• HEALTH UPDATE: TNT member breezo
• It took all month and the ranks ain't great but first time triple masters! First time ever for masters in draft.
• Lady Luck is on my side today :)
• [Shadow of the Spire Spoiler] Archmagister's Prophecy
• Party Pooper - a Cookout control deck to prey on all that RDW aggro
• Availability time of Legendary Shadow of the Spire today?
• Is there some kind of deck in a similar playstyle to how Gruul aggro/ramp from MTG usually plays around?
• “Dead Men” a WIP
• Eternal Events: Cookout (feat. Cost-Reduction Warp Praxis)
• Which campaigns should I buy?
• Extra large deck size... is that a thing now?
• Icaria Shadow Midrange
• Inside The Mind of MTG Pro Watchwolf92. Eternal Draft Battle! People Should Definitely see This If They Want To Improve At Decision Making!
• Cheap Deck for Cookout Event
• Draft Advice

The Problems with Evenhanded Golem Posted: 29 Apr 2020 03:04 AM PDT Evenhanded Golem has always been a polarizing topic for players – some really like it, some really, really don't like it. As with any card players really don't like, you'll occasionally see calls for nerfs and the like, however, such posts often focus on how the cards feels to play against or only briefly cover why the card is too strong. I believe that Evenhanded Golem has problems beyond pure card power, and I wanted to lend my voice to the discussion by attempting to highlight some of these wider issues. My understanding is that Evenhanded Golem was originally created as an alternative to Merchants, which were in turn designed to give decks extra flexibility and power. You were offered extremely powerful card draw at the cost of loss of access to answers from market, (then) severe deckbuilding restrictions, and a higher level of variance from the loss of merchant consistency. Broad stroke #1: Evenhanded Golem no longer achieves its design goals. Evenhanded Golem is now more powerful than merchants. Merchants were their own bag of worms, but the shift to make all markets into Black Markets cost merchants a ton of their power. Players can no longer run copies of cards in their market alongside copies of cards in their deck, so a ton of the consistency merchants offered is now no longer available. Merchants are more expensive than Evenhanded Golem and require an additional card in hand to work, giving you no additional card advantage. Meanwhile Evenhanded Golem offers you +1 card in hand every time it's played – on par with a warped Heart of the Vault, a card considered by some pre-nerf to be the strongest in the game. The loss of a market is no longer a problem. Markets previously served two purposes. First, they offered a deck additional consistency and a way to guarantee drawing a specific card. Second, they offered silver bullet answers and flexibility. As mentioned above, consistency is no longer a draw towards markets, and the game has advanced to the state where silver bullets are no longer as powerful as they once were. As new cards were printed, answers have become more and more flexible and more and more maindeckable. Think back to Even Elysian and its Sodi's Spellshaper powered removal suite. TheBoxer's ECQ winning 5f deck (congratulations, by the way!) plays a full silver bullet suite right in the main deck, powered by Keelo. Prideleader is no longer played in Even decks, but offers players maindeckable relic answers they used to have to market for. These are just a few examples, but as time goes on and more cards are printed, it's inevitable that these kinds of "maindeck answers" will continue to sidestep the cost of losing markets. And with how good Evenhanded Golem is at drawing cards, you'll find those answers. Last, but certainly not least, the Bargain mechanic if ever expanded upon offers future Golem decks ways to use even those theoretically unusable market slots. Deckbuilding restrictions are no longer sufficiently restrictive. Carrying on with the point from the last section, we've simply reached critical mass on both powerful cards and fixing. As TheBoxer's ECQ deck proves, colorless Evenhanded Golem doesn't need to restrict itself to just one or two factions and can cherry pick the best cards in all the factions. Golem decks, for one reason or another, are no longer high variance. This is partially due to more access to in deck tutoring to find the golem (Keelo and Grazer, for example), but mostly due to a critical mass of cards that do similar things. Card draw plays really well with itself, since it can find more card draw, and when all of your cards do similar things it doesn't really matter which two you draw off the top. Broad Stroke #2: Evenhanded Golem is hugely restrictive to both the balancing of current cards and the design of future cards. Evenhanded Golem turns card costs on their head. A card casting one power is better than one costing two… but not for even decks. Evenhanded Golem is greatly limits card balancing options. Worthy Cause was too strong at 1 power, but now that it costs 2 it's seeing play in Golem decks. What happens now, increase it to three cost? Worthy Cause may not a problem card itself, but think of a theoretical four cost card that is a problem. What do you do? Nerf the card itself? If Golem doesn't want it, nobody wants it, because Golem decks are stronger than "normal" decks. Increase its cost to 5? Now nobody wants it. Reduce its cost to 3? Maybe it's now too strong in non-even decks. Now imagine hypothetical non-even decks have a strong three drop. You don't want it to see play in even decks, so you can't reduce the cost. You're left with only the option of reducing the card's strength, even if you don't want to. Evenhanded Golem severely limits the power of two and four drops that can be printed. Every future card needs to be seen through the lens of "what happens if they play this with golem" which leads to certain design choices. This also means that cards are going to be a lot less powerful when NOT played alongside Evenhanded Golem, in a "normal" deck. Evenhanded Golem prevents the development of even cost market cards. We've seen Direwolf Digital branching out with new Market designs, but they simply can't print any that cost 2 or 4 without giving Golem decks free access to markets, something I assume they'd want to avoid. Broad Stroke #3: Evenhanded Golem can't be tuned in its current state. There isn't a meaningful nerf to the Evenhanded Golem that doesn't kill the card entirely. Obviously, changing its cost to an odd number doesn't work. Stat nerfs won't change the formula – you could make it a 0/0 and its still the best draw spell in the game. Changing its cost to four is a big nerf, and probably where they'd have to go, but probably leaves Golem in a place where it's too weak to be a real deck anymore. Or worse, it's still a real deck. Nerfing cards around Evenhanded Golem doesn't work. We've seen this approach taken many times before, from Tavrod to Alessi – hit the support cards! Unfortunately, being colorless and with every even card in the game at their fingertips, you can't realistically attack the supporting cast. In a month or two another Golem deck will be back, using entirely different cards, and you'll have had all the previously discussed problems with actually balancing those supporting cards along the way. Printing answers to Evenhanded Golem is problematic. This seems to be Direwolf Digital's current line, with cards like new Milos and Open Contract. However, this runs into three major problems. Firstly, Evenhanded Golem doesn't matter at all once it's been played, so the only way to address it is to fundamentally change the opponent's deck before it can be played. Secondly, it only costs 2, so making an answer trade even or better on power is not easy to do and leads to some very strange designs. Do we want more cards like Royal Decree? Finally, you end up with the same problems as you do when balancing two drops. If golem decks are balanced around being unable to use golem due to a hate card, they're going to be too strong when they have access to it. If they aren't, the effects of the hate card could be crippling. Regardless, it turns into a game of draw your answer before they draw their threat. These three points are the main reasons that I think Evenhanded Golem is a problem. Personally, I believe that Direwolf Digital is well aware of Evenhanded Golems power, but their hands are tied due to Broad Stroke #3. Any change either does too much or too little. However, I also believe that this is a long term problem and that down the line changes will need to be made. It's just a question of whether we do so now, or defer it down the road when it becomes an even bigger problem. submitted by /u/aReNGeeEternal [link] [comments]

Shadow of the Spire Pre-Orders are Live! Posted: 29 Apr 2020 09:33 AM PDT Shadow of the Spire pre-orders are now available! Earn a bonus Draft Ticket and get immediate access to FIVE new cards! Pre-order directly from Dire Wolf for even more value! We have also made the following fixes and improvements: Fixed an issue where the Eremot's Designs theme deck would lose its deck image after being edited. Mistrust should no longer incorrectly trigger if units are played in response. Units stolen by Touch of the Umbren and Hostile Takeover should no longer be drawn from the void for the incorrect player. Fixed an issue where Mastery VFX would sometimes not play correctly. Fixed an issue where Praxis Trove would not always function reliably with Reweave. Fixed several issues where cards with "When a spell is played directly on..." text would not trigger properly when copied spells were played on them via Burr-Spore Fern. Cards that referenced "more than one faction" have been updated to say "multifaction" instead. What decks will you build with the new cards? If you have any questions or feedback, let us know at support@direwolfdigital.com or via in-game Feedback under Options! submitted by /u/DireWolfDigital [link] [comments]

HEALTH UPDATE: TNT member breezo Posted: 29 Apr 2020 04:38 AM PDT Hi, folks. I wanted to give you all an update on TNT member breezo/breezeaux who suffered a major heart attack and subsequent stroke in February. For those that don't remember the situation, you can read this post from when I discord chatted with his wife two weeks after the incident. Last night, I spoke to breezo on a Discord call, and he is in good spirits. He is home from the hospital where he spent more than a month. He escaped the hospital just as lockdowns and stay at home orders were ramping up. His words are sometimes slurred (a result of the stroke) and he struggles to find and pronounce them. He is having to retrain his body how to perform things we take for granted like using a mouse with his right hand (he can't). He's trying to learn to use his left hand for that. He has been able to watch some streamers and enter Twitch chat (he mentioned sifudanny and ThePlatypusKing in particular as channels he has missed), and he misses the interaction he used to have with the community there. But as words are hard and typing is impossible, he's unable to really participate any more. I know this first hand as on Monday, I noticed breezo was lurking and I called out to him. We were all excited he was there, but it was obvious he struggled to type and was unable to. After that, his wife and I scheduled a call so he and I could talk. He mentioned in our call that people had wanted to set up a GoFundMe for his benefit, and he said please don't. By his description, he is one of the lucky ones. He had insurance (and now he doesn't have to work any more and can try to play games more. He laughed at that). I would suggest that if you were feeling charitable and wanted to do something, you could make a donation to your own local food bank or other charity to help folks in your community who may be affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic. He wanted me to let you all know that he really appreciates all the well wishes. I also wanted to give a shout out to DWD who were very responsive in helping get breezo back into the game when I reached out to them for help. submitted by /u/marvin_the_imp [link] [comments]

It took all month and the ranks ain't great but first time triple masters! First time ever for masters in draft. Posted: 29 Apr 2020 02:58 PM PDT submitted by /u/leglocktopus [link] [comments]

Lady Luck is on my side today :) Posted: 29 Apr 2020 10:07 AM PDT submitted by /u/Ehrahbass [link] [comments]

[Shadow of the Spire Spoiler] Archmagister's Prophecy Posted: 28 Apr 2020 07:54 PM PDT submitted by /u/Alomba87 [link] [comments]

Party Pooper - a Cookout control deck to prey on all that RDW aggro Posted: 29 Apr 2020 06:35 AM PDT submitted by /u/DiscoIgnition [link] [comments]

Availability time of Legendary Shadow of the Spire today? Posted: 29 Apr 2020 06:46 AM PDT Is there going to be an announcement when it is available on the DWD store and I assume it will then appear there? Anyone have an ETA? I like the look of all the cards so far and want to support to DWD. submitted by /u/LotteryDonk [link] [comments]

Is there some kind of deck in a similar playstyle to how Gruul aggro/ramp from MTG usually plays around? Posted: 29 Apr 2020 08:49 AM PDT Hey, getting a bit tired of playing my Yeti aggro deck and while I enjoy dragons in expedition, it can be be a bit slow, so I am looking for something in between. It doesn't have to be tier 1 or anything, just something fun since I am currently playing a lot of Gruul aggro in MTG and would enjoy something similar in Eternal. Thanks guys! submitted by /u/Serariron [link] [comments]

“Dead Men” a WIP Posted: 29 Apr 2020 03:36 PM PDT https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/yUtywbEXuc8/dead-men I'd like some advice. It's a bit of a janky deck, using a few Direct Damage allies to cheese Deadly, and a slew of normal weenie Deadly allies. A little bit of synergy with Crystalline Chalice (it can buff everyone but Yetipult) for draw and some ambush fun with Sudden Schism. Scream mainly just used to possibly cheese out a deadly Yetipult, Belligerent or Stormcaller to pick targets for assassination. submitted by /u/Killtrend [link] [comments]

Eternal Events: Cookout (feat. Cost-Reduction Warp Praxis) Posted: 29 Apr 2020 02:19 PM PDT To watch people explode each other in the World's Greatest Card Game, go here: https://youtu.be/DSpQB0yMHfE Firebombs explode without notice and players are flooded with value in this rapid fire cookout event. I brought a odd but exciting blend of cost reduction and warp in the Praxis faction combo. Please enjoy this coverage and then take your opportunity at free prizes by going and playing Eternal today! For the decklist I used in the Cookout event, visit Eternal Warcry: https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/Qn3MuGop_pM/cost-reduction-warp-praxis Follow me on Twitter to get updates about my activities and new releases: https://twitter.com/ProbablyRedTV submitted by /u/ProbablyRedEternal [link] [comments]

Which campaigns should I buy? Posted: 29 Apr 2020 01:45 PM PDT Just spent my first dollar in the store today for the 4200 gem package and was planning on buying some campaigns. Any advice on which campaigns? I'm particularly attached to that guy who -1/-1s a creature and all creatures that share a type. Guy is broken imo. I hear a lot of different opinions about what cards are at the top of the busted pile. I need help spending my money. submitted by /u/czerkthejerk [link] [comments]

Extra large deck size... is that a thing now? Posted: 29 Apr 2020 01:07 PM PDT I don't ever remember noticing before but in the week or two I've played against several opponents playing decks with 150+ cards. Not a huge sample size and this was only in silver. Is this a new thing people are doing or is it just a weird coincidence that I've noticed? The only benefit I can see is that it's anti-mill but I didn't think mill was a big thing at the moment. Also, there are better ways to counter mill. Aside from that it seems like you just make your decks worse in general (due to consistency). Has anyone else seen this? Incidentally, I do play mill and think I've won most, if not all, of these encounters. They seem to struggle to draw really impactful cards and even when they stop me milling I can still beat them down faster. Not sure what the game plan is for them. submitted by /u/dsarchs [link] [comments]

Icaria Shadow Midrange Posted: 29 Apr 2020 01:01 PM PDT Here's a list I whipped up today to slot in Zombie Icaria! The EWC link is here but not up to date (Old icaria takes the slot) as EWC has not updated. Super consistent for gauntlet and a good midrange grinder in Throne. Would love your comments (especially for market choices) :) Cheers! ​ https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/86d1Qz5Ht-w/icaria-shadow-midrange ​ Decklist: ​ 1 Last Chance (Set1004 #17) ​ 4 Street Urchin (Set6 #187) ​ 3 Suffocate (Set1 #251) ​ 3 Annihilate (Set1 #269) ​ 4 Argenport Instigator (Set1 #268) ​ 4 Blackhall Warleader (Set4 #201) ​ 4 Vara's Favor (Set0 #35) ​ 3 Desecrate (Set1005 #17) ​ 4 Kerendon Merchant (Set4 #217) ​ 4 Rhysta, Acantha's Herald (Set5 #168) ​ 4 Incarnus, Makkar's Listener (Set7 #144) ​ 4 Vara, Vengeance-Seeker (Set1004 #19) ​ 4 Tasbu, the Forbidden (Set6 #217) ​ 4 Icaria, First Reaper (Set1087 #11) ​ 17 Shadow Sigil (Set1 #249) ​ 4 Cabal Standard (Set4 #193) ​ 4 Emblem of Makkar (Set7 #121) ​ --------------MARKET--------------- ​ 1 Eremot's Designs (Set1007 #9) ​ 1 Makkar's Quiver (Set8 #123) ​ 1 In Cold Blood (Set1003 #15) ​ 1 Dizo's Office (Set5 #182) ​ 1 Vara, Fate-Touched (Set1 #307) submitted by /u/Ehrahbass [link] [comments]

Inside The Mind of MTG Pro Watchwolf92. Eternal Draft Battle! People Should Definitely see This If They Want To Improve At Decision Making! Posted: 28 Apr 2020 07:07 PM PDT submitted by /u/JohnnyDlol [link] [comments]

Cheap Deck for Cookout Event Posted: 28 Apr 2020 06:13 PM PDT Went 7 wins twice in a row with this list I threw together. Shiftstone cost is very low so I thought some newer players might want to use it to grind a few packs. https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/BB-OB8CMzmM/cookout-red submitted by /u/ToastFaceKillahhh [link] [comments]

Draft Advice Posted: 28 Apr 2020 10:47 PM PDT I have a few draft tickets I'd like to use, but my record in draft thus far is abysmal. Any tips would be appreciated. submitted by /u/sirbiggsalot [link] [comments]

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