Posted: 29 Jan 2022 04:24 PM PST

For the TL;DRs: suck it up. If I was good at YouTubing/Twitching, I'd do it there. But as it stands, I like to do things in written form and like to read rather than watch in many cases.

So, since the main thread is really cluttered up and wanted to give more than a yay/nay reaction, decided to do a text-by-text breakdown of the patch.

Now, since this will be a bit of a critique thread (I do hate nerfs, and it's well known that human beings have loss aversion), I'm going to start off by saying:

"Holy shit, ever since PSulli has come back, communication has been so much more amazing and DWD's done a great job."

So, even if I might have bones to pick with this patch, I wanted to first preface by saying that it's so awesome that PSulli is back, that DWD's more communicative, and that it feels like it's day and night from before PSulli came back. DWD has been so much more awesome (nerf patches aside) since he came back.

So, for starters:

This patch really reminds me of the Stonescar/Combrei nerf patch after the last throne ECQ that felt fairly reactionary. Or the one that nerfed Sicaria before then after Boxer took it down with Even Feln. Generally, I dislike the idea of "balance by nerf" in throne, as I feel like removing strong factional mechanics/signposts (E.G. Felrauk, HotV, too much in Rakano to list, Hurler + Xo in Skycrag (sort of) etc.) homogenizes the game too much.

Generally, I really wish DWD focused more on the why players run certain cards that may be too omnipresent and create more options to access those play patterns so people wouldn't be compelled to play only a select few decks or cards. E.G. "people play Xo + hurler all the time for free cardboard. Cool, let's revisit echo/fate and give players more options to do things in that direction" or "people play HotV in Praxis style strategies, cool, let's give them more choices for value bombs"). Is that power creep? Sure. But I do think throne should be the place to do cool, novel, sometimes busted (depending on draw) things, rather than it just being the same creature basher that expedition is, albeit with better cards.

In any case, let's go:

Jotun Hurler – Now 4/4 with "Summon: Create and draw two Snowballs." (was 3/3 with "Fate: Create and draw a Snowball")

So, I think this basically deletes Jotun Hurler. Drop him turn 5, get to snowball an X/1 on...turn 6. So, that's useless because that Kira deck leveled Icaria and Kira by then already, that red aggro deck with t1 oni ronin ran you over, and that time midrange deck already dropped initiate -> Tocas -> etc.

2 snowballs god knows when are utterly worthless. If you need the raw cardboard that at least tries to mimic snowball's original use, unstable form can still pop aegis.

Xo of the Endless Hoard – Now 6FFF 6/6 with Flying, Inscribe, and "Summon: Create and draw a Fire Sigil." (Was 8FFFF 6/6 with Flying and "Fate: Create and draw a Treasure Trove.") The Ultimate ability is unchanged.

The change to Xo is a bit more interesting in that he's not just irrelevant. Inscribe means power earlier on, costing 6 means there's a very real chance an opponent absolutely must answer him or risk losing to his ult (as opposed to him basically never coming down at 8), and some 7+ drop cards being playable means a deck like FTJ arcanum or some sort of Rakano deck may be legit interested in him. And with making an F sigil immediately, he's somewhat of a cross between a really chonky listener and Grodov's stranger, which...isn't the worst spot to be?

Let's get to the actual meat and potatoes of the text, though:

These two cards are flavorful, evocative designs that lean into digital-only space, and as cards that come with two cards attached, one of which deals spell damage and the other that draws a card, they unlock some novel synergies. The data bears out that they are extremely powerful as well, but they are disproportionately represented in the game's highest competitive ranks; they aren't ubiquitous staples like Torch. For many players, this level of scrutiny might be curious. After all, there are plenty of Fate and Echo designs that can provide two cards without any work. But a Snowball or a Treasure Trove is much stronger to have in your opening hand than the other options, and Xo has the added benefit of being an arbitrary way to win after a game has dragged on for a long time, and the underlying structure and synergies of the two cards are conducive to dragging games out.

So, this tells us some interesting stuff:

1) DWD actually does look at top tier competitive play. That said, I'm not sure I actually like this admission, simply b/c I think top tier play is fairly stratified into "super-active teams" (TRS, TBC mainly, maybe E-C depending on how many of us are active, TIL as well), and...everyone else. I feel like chasing this tiny subset of players around with the nerf bat feels very reactionary, and I'm not sure it's all that good a look. Team decks can often skew deck representation in tournaments simply as a function of a team doing its prep work, and I hope DWD has some way to account for the fact that "oh look, Boxer, Popo, and NotoriousGHP all brought the same 80. Did they miraculously just independently arrive at the same exact 80?" No. They worked as a team. Please account for this, DWD.

2) Snowball and trove are stronger in the opening hand because they don't require you to actually stick a unit. If your opponent's on the play with some removal, that means you basically don't get to stick a unit for a while barring some sort of aegis shenaniganry. I do think this shoots evo's stock way up, however, as it's still "more cardboard" in a deck that revolves around sticking units (Ely spells), with an aegis merchant and Plunk. Flying Plunk, anyone? Also, given evo just went STONKS, also consider Alessi.

3) The phrase "conducive to dragging games out" I find pretty disturbing, as it isn't the first time we've seen it. Recall that we saw the same sort of justification with the evenhanded golem nerf (goodbye and good riddance, you won't be missed). The reason this phrase particularly concerns me is the idea of "hey, we don't like anyone playing a long game, no matter WHICH strategy they use". It isn't just that "unitless" control isn't a good play pattern. Now we're scope-creeping that to any strategy that just wants to play a long game and grind opponents down instead of "kill you by turn 7 or lose"? I hope I'm just being needlessly paranoid here, but the idea of a good deck having a longer-than-desired game length necessitating nerfs feels like it'll get more nerfs thrown in this direction on some very fun to play decks. Again, I'd love to be wrong here, but sometimes, I do like playing decks that extend the game. Casting multiple copies of Helio and drawing 15 more cards than my opponent is fun for me.

None of this is news to people who regularly play the format, so why act now? For starters, even though this is the moment when we are deciding to change these cards, it isn't the first time they have been a topic of conversation internally. They have both already received live-balance attention in the past. We nearly took action on them in a recent patch, and no balance meeting has occurred without them as a topic. Additionally, there is no reason to believe the situation will improve organically over time. We are going to continue to make cards that interact with drawing cards, the Market, and a myriad of other mechanics that interlock with these two, and the proof of theory here is that these cards have gotten more powerful over time, not less, in spite of the card pool becoming larger and more powerful each time we release a set.

As it turns out, free cardboard that can also be useful if you don't have the way to cash it in (merchants, strategize, plunder, crafty) will be good. As I said above, I wish DWD would lean further into providing extremely competitive cards for players to accrue resources rather than simply praying their top 15-20 cards are enough to win. Cards that basically say "draw 3 cards and end your turn" are much less interesting IMO. Cards that transform "blank cardboard" or use your life total to draw cards while gaining board presence seem more interesting than "another wisdom of the elders clone".

The final piece of this–"why now?"–is the Skycrag Midrange deck. Beyond being among our best performing and most commonly played decks on the ladder, it recently won the Cold Hunt LCQ. From our perspective, this is the boiling-over point. Xo and Jotun Hurler along not only Howling Peak Smuggler, but a variety of secondary cards that all speak to converting "blank" cards into something productive–Jekk, Mercenary Hunter, Dazzle, Maveloft Huntress, Crafty Occultist, Know When to Hold 'Em. The deck doesn't necessarily play "badly"; it has a number of units and removal spells and plays a fairly interactive game. But the degree to which the deck is about grinding small advantages, drawing the perfect mixture of power and non-power cards, and then winning the game with the leftovers versus caring about the particular nature of their cards and their opponent's cards is not good. The experience is numbing and repetitive, and that becomes actionable when it is also powerful and common.

1) As /u/LightsOutAce1 has said in the main discord, this paragraph's conclusion is just wrong. Of course as a Skycrag mid player you care about your opponent's cards. You want to use your snowballs on X/1s or to pop aegis, you want to use Kenna's killer to take out 4/4s or smaller, you want to use Jekk to hit things Kenna can't (Iadria, for instance), and so on. Yes, there is an element of attrition to it, but there's usually an element of attrition to various midrange decks (E.G. my stormhalt plating taking out two of your units, my Zido getting a 2-for-1, etc.). I'm not sure how one arrives at the "you don't care about your opponent's cards" conclusion from this. At all.

2) Again, we see DWD return to the refrain of "the experience is repetitive". I feel like I've seen DWD use this phrase so often that it feels like a sentence just used as a catch-all. What does this sentence mean, in particular?

Does it mean that a deck can execute its plan consistently? (E.G. "A reanimator deck will try to self-mill and play a fatty from the void every game") If so, that's a really silly statement to make, since what makes a deck good is its ability to execute its plan (whatever it is) consistently. If the only way to avoid being called a "repetitive" deck is for your deck to just have a built-in failure rate in which it just rolls over and dies, I don't think that's a good deck at all. So yeah...this is throne, good decks execute good plans consistently. Everyone's repetitive, then?

Does it mean that a deck is just too omnipresent? Well, The Misplay's meta report has often shown a far healthier meta than say, Legends of Runeterra, that often had various decks get above 10% with regularity. I think it's been a long time since any deck has really been so omnipresent that it felt truly repetitive to face off against. How repetitive is too repetitive? 10% of the meta? 7%?

So again, what does "this is a repetitive experience" mean besides "we want to nerf this deck for reasons"? Can DWD please elaborate a bit more on what makes a deck "repetitive" as opposed to "competitive"? Because if I want to make a competitive deck, you bet I want it to do similar things, all game, every game.

Circling back to the beginning–there is a lot to like about these designs. We know these cards are iconic parts of the game, and they are many player's entry-level education into the depth of Eternal's game engine. That's why, instead of a straight nerf, we've changed the cards to accentuate the positives. We like creating cards, we like units that can provide contextual card advantage, and we like a good story. So let's get that experience on the table. Jotun Hurler and Xo are still capable of providing the advantages they did before, but instead of it stemming from manipulating zones behind the scenes, now you actually have to play them. The synergies are still there–referring back to the current version of Skycrag Midrange, the new versions of Xo and Hurler still work well with the Market, Plunder, and all the other usual suspects, but not at the beginning of the game and not repeatedly coming in and out of the market. In comparison to their previous version, they are both significantly more powerful as cards when you actually play them, and Xo is picking up Inscribe, to boot. We believe both of these cards still have a home in competitive play, and from our perspective a much happier home.

So, see the beginning. I think Xo definitely sticks around in some capacity, depending on whether or not DWD continues to let decks exist whose plan is to play cards that, in their own words, are:

conducive to dragging games out.

Jotun Hurler, on the other hand? Gone.

What does this mean?

Well, X/1s suddenly just got a fresh breath of life. Darkblade Cutpurse, Hojan, baby Icaria, Kira (EWWWWW), Oni Ronin, initiate of the sands, and logistics expert--here's to looking at all of you. It also means autotread got a nerf by proxy. No more "2 pieces of cardboard for 1 draw", though autotread rarely found itself in a deck with either Xo or Hurler before, so...not that big a deal?

Other losers are Wump and Mizo (no more hurler), but who's getting gigabuffed by proxy with the new 2/2 contract faegis dinosaur that means twilight hunt is far more defensible maindeck, since it can now come out turn 2.

Anyway, onto the Combrei side:

Combrei Relics is still among our top decks in Throne, even though several key cards were nerfed in previous live-balance patches. With how hard the deck is to interact with at a baseline, it is something we keep a close eye on, and its representation and win rate have increased in recent weeks.

So, a couple of things here:

First off--Mail's and Avyoine's Combrei lists very much weren't relics lists. They were Combrei (bordering on mono-J) midrange lists, with plenty of units, such as Jada, enforcer, baby Icaria, Sediti, and a couple of different Svetyas. The "eggs" Mail named the deck after was simply the interaction of Big Svetya giving everyone aegis. (Dear Mail: aegis is pronounced like Egypt--I.E. Ee-jiss, or ay-jiss)

Secondly, the idea that combrei relics continues seeing high use: I don't see why the only remaining control deck in the format continuing to see play--especially after getting the coolest relic weapon we've gotten in a long time in Stormhalt Plating--is necessarily a bad thing.

Furthermore, and let's drill down here:

With how hard the deck is to interact with at a baseline

And whose fault is that, DWD?

Given how powerful various relics are and have been in the past (sling, shrine to carver, throne room, waxing moon, now stormhalt plating), WHY is this still a phrase DWD uses? Instead of, you know...actually creating more maindeckable cards that interact with relics? Primal can transform relics. Fire and time can blow them up. Justice can silence them. Shadow can steal them. Every faction has some way of theoretically interacting with relics. Beyond that, the only thing that matters is whether or not a card has enough rate to see maindeck play. For instance, want to allow J to interact with more relics? Theoretically, DWD can buff desert marshal to be able to silence relics. Or valk enforcer (Y I K E S). Primal's evolving Olzial can come down to a 4-cost 4/3 (still not maindeckable, I think?). And so on. But, I think the point stands. Essentially:

DWD: "this is hard to interact with."

Also DWD: "And despite acknowledging this problem, we'll continue letting it be a problem."

The goal here was to take away a little bit of rate without taking away the personality, or removing a card so unique in functionality that the deck could no longer exist in its previous form. One card stood out compared to each other option, which is Enter the Monastery. In some ways this card is analogous to the previous version of Xo and Jotun Hurler–a dull, hard-to-interact with method of accruing additional resources.

The part that frustrates me here is that all the sudden, a plain vanilla SPELL is:

a dull, hard-to-interact with method of accruing additional resources.

Sometimes, I feel like the Eternal devs want to make a different game than Eternal. That is, spells are a fundamental part of the game, and are usually the most balanced

method of accruing additional resources

Why? Because they do their one thing (accrue additional resources), and that's it, rather than either: "accrue additional resources and still demand an answer" (E.G. Grodov's Stranger), or get removed and leave the payoffs that demand someone "accrue those additional resources" stranded, causing a fairly negative play experience.

Are spells in Eternal just supposed to be a way to sometimes click on your opponent's stuff (terms and conditions may apply)? Why exactly are we calling a fundamental card type in this game (spells) something that's

a dull, hard-to-interact with method of accruing additional resources

Does this same statement apply to every one-and-done method of generating card advantage (every primal card draw spell, Helio, etc.)?

I really dislike the implications of this particular statement.

The deck is not short on ways to ramp power or accumulate additional cards, and there are a variety of substitutes available for it.

In this particular case, there are indeed a variety of substitutes available, at which point, it's a question of rate. Which means...the problems that the Combrei relics deck poses really haven't been addressed at all, really. Just "hey, here's another nerf, please play the deck a little less"?

One last thing I do wonder:

Are patches like this an attempt for DWD to balance the game, or to constantly change the meta? Something I've seen with throne lately is that almost after every throne ECQ, there are now nerfs, especially aimed at whichever deck was the winner. Yes, I get it, throne has all the cards ever, so decks won't change unless they absolutely must, but...I do feel like the pattern of "the reason a player won wasn't that they picked the best-positioned deck for the day, or played better than their opponents, but because their deck was obviously busted". That is, a balance patch occasionally? Fine. But a balance patch constantly on the heels of ECQs just looks like bad form in that it's just developers chasing the player base around to prevent netdecking.

"Oh hey, this deck won the ECQ? Quick, nerf it before it's netdecked too much!"

DWD, can you please let the meta evolve organically, rather than just making it a point of procedure to constantly nerf anything in throne? I can't speak for anyone else, but the constant nerfs creates a feeling of loss of ownership and agency, and thereby, decreases my desire to play the game.

Please let players play with their cards, rather than take them away because TRS/TBC/etc. performed well at yet another ECQ.

Again, to put the buns on the critique sandwich:

It's amazing to have PSulli back. Contract/Inscribe are amazing, and DINOS DINOS DINOS DINOS hype Hype HYPE HYPE HYYYYYYYYYYYPPE. Eternal does a LOT of things well, so let's just break the habit of taking people's toys away as a matter of procedure, yes ?=)

submitted by /u/Ilyak1986
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The hard life of a fast Rakano player

Posted: 30 Jan 2022 01:27 AM PST

submitted by /u/MartenInf
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Is it worth dusting the legendary card “serpent’s hive”?

Posted: 29 Jan 2022 07:28 PM PST

In my humble opinion, I know it may be good for certain situations where if you may need some throw away adds to maybe block some attacks, but I've rarely to nearly never seen this card really in a good light, it's requirement for Primal sigils seems too high and for just two adds I think it's an easy throw away card, if some of you think it's not, I'd like to hear your thoughts, please keep this discussion polite people, we're all people when we discuss things like this, let's keep this civilized

submitted by /u/KnightlyFighter
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Twitch Drops?

Posted: 29 Jan 2022 08:55 AM PST

Anyone else not getting them the past few days? Followed these steps to no avail: https://old.reddit.com/r/EternalCardGame/comments/lfs6kk/twitch_drops_not_working_solution/

submitted by /u/org2n
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Beacon Jank

Posted: 29 Jan 2022 08:52 AM PST

I've been messing around with this beacon deck for awhile. Figured I would share for any jank players out there.

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/tTOfp_9XnAU/bacon-on-the-ranch-beacon-jank

submitted by /u/decoy10
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