Eternal Card Game The Misplay Meta - Stormbreak Expedition Open |
- The Misplay Meta - Stormbreak Expedition Open
- Eternal After Show - Stormbreak Expedition $5k Open ft LightsOutAce & Doc28!
- Stormbreak $5k Expedition Open Final Results
- Reimagined: even elysian is up!
- Stormbreak Expedition Open Preparation Report
- Factionless Fire Belax Part 1 - Throne Game Play & Deck Building Videos
- Mechanic Question
- Belax Promo Overview
| The Misplay Meta - Stormbreak Expedition Open Posted: 19 Apr 2021 10:40 AM PDT
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| Eternal After Show - Stormbreak Expedition $5k Open ft LightsOutAce & Doc28! Posted: 19 Apr 2021 05:48 AM PDT
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| Stormbreak $5k Expedition Open Final Results Posted: 19 Apr 2021 12:49 PM PDT
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| Reimagined: even elysian is up! Posted: 19 Apr 2021 11:56 AM PDT the next episode of reimagined is up, and this time we look at even elysian, a deck that dominated an ecq [link] [comments] | ||
| Stormbreak Expedition Open Preparation Report Posted: 18 Apr 2021 10:23 PM PDT This was the format I had to craft the most cards for during my testing. It was the tournament I tested the second most different lists for, after the Xenan Strangers tournament where I was desperate for something, anything to play other than Stranger. I didn't find anything else for that format, and I'm not sure I found a good deck for this one either. I did go through a large number of decks and humorous format misconceptions along the way, probably the most of any tournament format, so I wanted to use this report to take a look back at the evolution of my thoughts on the format. For this event, I mostly worked alone, testing on ladder, supplemented by a few discussions (arguments?) with camat0. I read both the Misplay Meta Report and the DWD Format Primer, but neither had a major impact on my opinions on the format. April 8 I started learning the Expedition metagame the hard way, down in Bronze 3 after having not played EX in many months. With no starting points, I selected a LightsOutAce deck on EWC (Elysian spells) and got to grinding ladder. That deck is fun to play, but has the same problem it always does - it's very hard to win without Wump on board. So I started playing a pair of control decks, Hooru Control and Argenport Control. These decks taught me a few lessons that took a long time to unlearn. For one thing, I thought Lord Steyer's Tower (abbreviated as LST) was the best card in the format, and decks should focus around playing/beating it. I also thought the best card to play with/against LST was Speaking Circle. I also fell in love with Medium Svetya, probably because my control decks played no actual win conditions. I thought that the core of LST/Circle/Svetya would be the core to the format, and finding the best shell for it would find me the best deck. I also played my first builds of Rakano Aggro at the time, which taught me that Flash Fry doesn't hit sites and that I love Tarra, Ever Loyal. Great to see warcry back! But more on her in a moment. April 10 My first attempt at a LST deck was Combrei Ramp. Enter the Monstery is great, and you can play lots of ramp units to go with it. This experiment didn't go very well - it hilarously had no answer to opposing LSTs other than Speaking Circle, which further reinforced my belief that it was the key card of the format. I also somehow failed to learn the lesson that Trail Maker just never lives - I thought it was a fantastic part of the LST/Circle/Svetya core for a long time. Another key learning at this time was the power of Touvon on boards where neither me nor my opponent were doing anything because we were playing speaking circle decks. I ported this core, minus Svetya, to Xenan in order to play Nectar of Unlife to kill LST. Yeah, I was going pretty deep here. In my experience, Rakano and Xenan are either the best deck by a mile or wildly unplayable, and Xenan was not the best deck today. I returned to earlier Hooru/Argenport builds to think, and saw on ladder and reverse engineered a "cool" At Any Cost deck, which mostly ramped up to 8 shadow and then sat with At Any Cost in hand for eight turns waiting for the last four. For whatever reason, that was really appealing to me. Needless to say, that deck sucked. April 12 After I shook that off, I wanted to try one of the aggro decks. I had been often encouraged to try soldiers, but I wasn't sold on the Hooru builds and couldn't find a 3F build that looked serious. I tried my hand at a 3F build, and demonstrated quite clearly that I didn't understand how powerbases worked in expedition, nor what cards were playable. This deck featured Tarra, and would not be the last. Unfortunately, it couldn't cast the majority of its spells, so I abandoned the shell. I decided to combine my two favourite cards - Tarra and LST - in a new Argenport Valkyries shell. I stuck with this deck for a long time, and it slowly taught me that the powerbase in EX just wasn't good enough to support Kira and co on any meaningful level. If you didn't hit XXX XXX, they weren't any good. I did a lot of back and forth dithering on market - I wanted to play J Etchings alongside Devouring Shadow or Kira alongside S Etchings a lot, and had a hard time choosing to tune the deck mostly J or mostly S. Unsurprisingly, this did not make the powerbase very consistent, nor did it improve the deck. I lost a lot of time on this first iteration. Here is an excerpt of my format notes from this period:
April 13 Up to this point, I've exclusively talked about decks that I played. That's because I had barely made it D3, and was mostly playing against CardsIOwn.dec and MarchDecklistINetdecked.dec, so I didn't learn a lot about what the top ranks thought the format looked like. I had more or less only seen FPS as Mach Combo, or as FTPS Sling, which was a (til then) traditional FTP Sling deck splashing shadow for Shoaldredger, Grenahen, and Display of Knowledge. On this day, DWD published their Format Overview, which was mostly just Suny's Mach Combo build. However, camat0 also introduced me to the Mono Fire lists that were running around high ladder, and I started to see more variation in FPS decks as I climbed. At this point, I thought sling lost to everything, because the 4F decks had much worse powerbase and the 3F decks couldn't do much if they didn't have sling. I did think the Mono Fire deck had some legs, but didn't like how combo focused it was - you either killed them or had a bunch of rampages in hand and no units in play. Too coinflip for me. I built a Tesseract deck instead, building off an aborted Grenadin Aggro throne deck. The deck didn't end up being any good, but it was a ton of fun to play and I don't blame anyone who ended up on a Tesseract list. Unfortunately, I do think that was the worst FPS shell you could have played. You basically needed to win the game the turn the Tesseract came down, or draw 6+ cards (same thing) or you just lost when Tesseract died. Saccing two Sparking Vermin to Tesseract also only drew 2 cards, which weirdly removed it immediately for my consideration even if that wasn't really that make or break. April 14 Along with Mono F, camat0 also told me Jetpack was great against Mach combo, a deck I thought was going to be the deck to beat at the event. So I decided to revise Rakano with 4 Jetpacks. I probably could have gave up on this sooner, but I picked up a new pet card while building this deck - Autotread. I thought Gloves of the Pyromancer proving two cards to discard (the gloves, plus the outlaw you draw when your hand is empty) was so cute, and I thought Gloves was the best weapon with Lynax, so this combo ended up in a number of iterations. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as I thought. Discarding cards is kinda booty, and there weren't actually anything good to kill with 1 damage, so I was spending a lot of cards in hand to kill 2/2s that didn't matter and flat losing when my Autotread died. There were also other problems... As usual, Rakano removal suite sucks. So I did what any veteran Eternal player does when their removal sucks - I switched to Praxis Sentinels! More pet cards here, I really wanted to play Redplate Crusher, which also showed up in earlier Rakano builds. I also saw one guy kill my Speaking Circle with Ancient Defenses and assumed that was great. This was the deck that I really shoould have learned that Trail Maker never survives, as Condem/Display of Menace/3 damage spells absolutely murdered him over and over. I saw a lot of variation of the FPS shells during this time. I also got a lot of removal out of Opum's Technique, but quickly learned that laser blast was kind of booty - it was tough to do more than 3 damage without Barricade Basher or a 5 drop. I also refused to craft Opum - I was well out of stones, and Moonstone Vanguard took his place. Opum probably would have been great, but the Autotreader shell wasn't. I did decide that Shoal Custodian was great, but unlike most other pet cards, never found another deck to force it in. April 15 - Tipping Point Fire aggro was a dead end. While playing a brief iteration on Argenport Valks I managed to read Ornois Roa and notice that he prevents spell damage to you. I thought "Hey, that counters Mach combo." I was also really proud of my Sentinels tech, using Porcelain Mask to silence Overloader, so I then tried to make Usbat work in some kind of Combrei Aggro deck? Despite many warnings, I still hadn't learned that Trail Maker doesn't survive, and yes I was still trying to play Tarra and LST. This was the first deck to include Broti, though, and he wasn't awful. I decided that Alhed was great and that the real core of any serious EX deck was Alhead/Trail Maker/Ornois Roa/Usbat. If that sounds really bad and really sad, that's because it was. I gave up on Combrei due to the cumbersome removal options and leaped into Xenan to grab those juicy Exploits and Send an Agents. Also Curtain Call because I lost to it once. If none of the cards in the last two sentences sound like cards people played at the Open, well, there's a reason that they didn't. I had my two lowest lows at this point, and really hated the format. First, I lost to, and I quote, "murderofcrows on the most murderofcrows deck possible, he's using darkdown scroungers on nectar of unlife and display of ambition" which broke my spirit. I was beyond ready to give up on the format. Fortunately, I complained about it to camat0 and he set me straight, then gave me the advice I needed. He said, "I saw you playing som xenan trash. You can do stupid shit or complain about stupid shit but no both. If your play is to play exploit and and kill after turn 6 your deck is shit." This, along with some more unprintable profanity, was exactly what I needed to hear in order to break out of misconceptions about the format. First of all, it wasn't slow. Racing Mach Combo (and Sling) was going to be more effective than trying to play hate cards, given the hate cards available. Light disruption was better than dedicated slots. Also, I gave up on the ground game. By this point, I had seen enough disposable chump blockers to understand that you wanted flying or overwhelm, and I had explored the overwhelm units sufficiently to give up on them. Therefore, I responded to camat0's well intentioned comments about midrange being terrible by locking in on a 3F valk deck. It... was okay. Better than a lot of the other junk I had tried, but still too slow. The gap between the decks with good turn 2 plays and the decks with bad turn two plays was made most obvious to me with this deck. Valks had great removal, great 3 drops, and reasonable late game - but just couldn't contest the board on turn 2 and so was always playing from behind. April 15 - Breakthrough? I went back to 3F soldiers since I still didn't like Hooru Soldiers and thought that was the best non Mono F aggressive deck (despite never playing Mono F). My initial tuning ended up fitting Bonti into the list, a huge upgrade to its aggressiveness over my first attempt, as well as Glen Scout, a card I thought was replacement level but greatly overperformed and surprised me. I wasn't happy with the overabundance of 3 drops, but I did manage to stop playing Tarra, at great personal cost. The powerbase was absolutely garbage, but I did have enough success to get camat0 to look at a later iteration, which basically salvaged my day one. Firstly, he called me an idiot for not playing Common Cause (which was correct, and I forgot about despite playing it in Valks and Sentinels and even Grenadins previously). Secondly, he suggested playing 2 Seek Power, which were great. Finally, he got me to stop playing Argo's Techinque, a card that was just never impactful enough for the slot. For a long time I thought it was soft disruption at Mach Combo, but eventually realized that they get the power from amplifying before you can cast Techinque, so it just does nothing. I did go back and forth with camat0 over the market, which was basically a 1 card market - From Anguish, which was great all tournament against Mono F/Sling/Actual Tesseract etc. It was an innovation from FJS Valks, where I often hit FFFSSS and turned it off (which helped turn me off the deck). We were still missing a piece - playing Auric Record Keeper and I hated it. camat0 gave the deck a spin and eliminated some more cards you could maybe play. It wasn't until Midnight on Thursday, the night before the tournament started, that while furiously browsing options I landed on a real alternative - Asri Patrol, a 2/2 flyer soldier no other text. Not the most exciting discovery, but a key one here. I scrolled past it the first five times I saw it, but I was getting really desperate for a 2 drop for curve reasons and Alhed was NOT working with the power base. I realized that I was playing the same card already (Glen Scout) and remembering that Tinker Overseer was so strong it got nerfed, bit the bullet and made the switch. Here's the deck after camat0's advice and convincing myself a play a 2/2 flyer. April 17 - Day One Asri Patrol was indeed the missing piece, and gave the deck the curve it needed to pressure down the various other decks before they could kill me, mostly FPS varients. The removal suite also lined up pretty well against Mono F and I was able to tempo them out a lot in intesting. Mandrakes gave me the most testing. For whatever reason, I didn't face Rainbow Sling until the tournament proper, so didn't learn how that matchup went until it was too late to make changes. I spent the day trying Mask Maker on another camat0 suggestion, and not drawing Mask Maker in a single game, played a 3/3 split to hedge it being great/terrible. It ended up below average - I'd rather have two copies. The first seven games of the tournament proper went 4-3 and included some of the worst play you've ever seen. In a fever dream I'd rather not recall, I started with 2 common cause and a Mavenloft Huntress in hand, and ended the game with 7 power, no Common Cause, and 2 Maveloft Huntress stuck in hand with no second Primal influence. Words fail. However, I took a break and was able to reset and come back playing well enough for 14-5, with the 2 byes giving me a final score of 20-8 and a berth in day 2. April 18 - Day Two Decklists not coming out til very late on Saturday stressed me a ton for whatever reason, then I got more stressed about making a metagame breakdown and what to call various FPS builds. Couldn't tell you why, it didn't matter to my tournament gameplan. As I previously mentioned, I hadn't really considered Hooru Soldiers a deck, but I ended up facing it in the first round. It was basically doing what my deck was doing, but playing cards like Argo Ironthorn instead of bad two drops, so I had to win fast. I didn't in game 1, died to Argo, outtempoed in game 2, and made a key misplay in game 3 which, while costly, was not a deciding factor. I was on the back foot the whole game and got outvalued by a late Dovid -> Argo draw. I do think the deck I played was pretty well positioned against the various FPS builds, but didn't like my Mandrake or Sling matchup. Or my soliders matchup, evidentally. Given where I was on April 15, I can't really complain about my result since I definitely wouldn't have Top 64'd with any of the decks I was playing at that time. In the end, I managed to get the format to a state where I tolerated it and can think of four EX formats I liked less off the top of my head. Certainly a big win compared to where I was before! Going forwards, I'd like to work together with other people more. I get in my own head a lot, and if my format read is wrong I'm in trouble. camat0 is a very useful resource, but he goes even more black and white than I do and leaves the nuance as an exercise to the reader. [link] [comments] | ||
| Factionless Fire Belax Part 1 - Throne Game Play & Deck Building Videos Posted: 19 Apr 2021 09:34 AM PDT
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| Posted: 18 Apr 2021 08:05 PM PDT Is Regen supposed to stop all overwhelm damage from hitting the face? What about two different instances of regen? [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 18 Apr 2021 09:00 PM PDT
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