It just feels really bad to see your opponent get your strong cards and know that you can't get them. [...] that spike in the klepto player's happiness is mirrored by a massive drop in the happiness of the player from whom they stole cards.
I regard this as a subjective judgment. I've never felt bad about an opponent copying cards from my hand or drawing/copying cards from my deck in any card game, specifically Hearthstone and Runeterra. In fact, I've always wondered why anyone would be inclined to run cards which allow them to do that (apart from deck synergies that capitalize on, say, using cards that didn't start in your deck). In fact, in many cases, I'm happy when my opponent takes stuff from my deck, knowing that they can't typically incorporate it very well into their own game plan.
Yesterday, I played my longest Legends of Runeterra match ever, clocking in at over 40 minutes in Constructed format. I was using a Lux & Heimerdinger deck, my opponent played Lux & Karma.
Luckily, my Luxs and Heimerdingers afforded me with enough board presence to keep things under control, but at the same time, my opponent had a free block plus 5 Nexus health each turn, so I didn't manage to push any meaningful damage through.
The scales started to tip in my favor at about round 15-20 when I used my own Unyielding Spirit first on Heimerdinger, then on Lux. I also managed to amass a good amount of top-end Heimerdinger turrets and killed my opponent's Karma with Final Spark twice.
In the end, after a hard-fought battle, I won the game with one huge attack in the final round, after which I would've won anyway because my opponent had emptied their deck.
What was your longest game yet? Anything to share? Did you enjoy it?
I have been thinking about it since making that post and I agree with you. I think a good way take make it balanced would be if the elusive card has either taken damage or done damage in any way. They lose their elusive statues since they have now been seen.
I'm not sure making Elusive only last for a short time is the right way to go. But I'm not completely opposed to it, either.
Assuming it would get implemented, I'd drop the "damage taken" part at the very least. In fact, I'd say only eliminate a unit's elusive status after it has attacked and dealth combat damage. Anything else would make the keyword too weak in my opinion.
This game actually makes it even easier to counter deny spells with their reserve mana mechanic which I'd kill for in MtG.
How's that? I always figured the ability to bank 3 spell mana favored the player using Deny, not their opponent. The Deny owner can play their units on curve -1 every round and still be ready to counter.
I don't think its a bad mechanic. I just think there are to many of them. Its such a strong mechanic in and of it self it should be dedicated to a few key cards but not be made so you can literally build a complete deck full of them.
I think limiting Elusives this way would only delay the problem, though - as more expansions come out, the natural expectation would be for more Elusive cards to be released eventually. So I'd see it as a short-term solution at best. I'd rather they try to balance the actual mechanic and/or the units which possess it for the sake of the game's long-term health.
Sorry in advance, I know I'm being pedantic here (because you're basically right), but not all games remove your original hand from the mulligan pool.
No, no, point taken. I can be pretty pedantic myself, so I actually appreciate being called out on details I may get wrong :).
Personally, I think the way it works (at least I'm pretty sure it does) in Hearthstone and Runeterra is ideal: You can't redraw the exact same instance of a card you chose to mulligan, but you can draw another copy of it. In Magic, redrawing from your full deck makes swapping cards weaker, while a theoretical mulligan variant preventing the player from drawing a copy of the swapped-out card feels a bit too strong.
I think that the main problem with this combo is that you are realy likely to toss one (or more) of your combo pieces while leveling up Maokai
I think that's why the OP mentioned in their first post that the deck relies on sacrificing units instead of Toss effects. I imagine this would be an overall slower method to level Maokai, though (You'd have to rely a lot on token generation).
I assume you mean "mulligan" ("milling" usually refers to removing cards from your opponent's deck). If so, it works in this game just like it would with real-life cards: The exact cards you've selected from your hand are excluded from the redraw pool, but you can certainly draw additional copies of those cards if you're running multiple in your deck. It may be frustrating to get a copy of the same card you just mulliganed away, but it's perfectly logical and consistent.
Or maybe you already knew all that and just wanted to vent a little :P. That's fine, too. Everyone gets annoying mulligans every once in a while.
You wont waste the token, they stack. You can keep it for whenever you have time to play and use them up later, granted only max 3 per week.
Oh, I understand that, but once they start piling up, it's going to take that much more time to use them all. So what I meant is I feel I 'need' to use one per week to get my value from the free tokens instead of simply amassing them.
Ever since Maokai and Veteran Investigator were revealed, I've been planning to construct a deck including both (along with a ton of cheap minions/tokens coupled with some Toss cards). However, as more Bilgewater cards were revealed, it felt like combining Maokai with Bilgewater Toss was the way to go.
I think I'll still try a P&Z variant, but not one that's completely focused on an Exodia combo. I'll just try to hold onto any Investigators I draw until Maoki levels up, and then I may only need to survive 2 more rounds instead of 4.
Of course, as you said, if the opponent has any way to shuffle cards back into their deck, this whole concept falls apart. But I think I'll try anyway and see how it goes.
This is only a problem for ppl who wanted to main Expeditions and progress their Champion collection in the same time, which i can understand and i was one of those ppl, but have since moved to the "dont have time to play these", so im glad i get the Champion from the Vault.
Same here. I used to play 3 expeditions per week in order to fill my champion collection, but over time, I realized that I enjoy the constructed format more, and going through 3 full expeditions every week barely left me with any time to play constructed. So at this point, I'm glad I only 'have to' play 1 expedition per week (in order not to waste the free entry token).
Some very good points there, meisterz. I can definitely see your argument regarding the Nautilus plus Maokai combination, and also that Investigator would be less valuable in expeditions. Regarding that card, however:
The other downside is that mirror card draw in "arena" type formats is bad because YOU are paying the up front mana cost for the card draw. Sure it could lead to finding a better card or better play, but chances are you're giving your opponent more options...and they don't even have to pay the 2 mana cost for it.
I still don't see it. Yes, your opponent gets a 'free' draw, but so do you: You paid 2 mana for a 3/2 body on the field, which is alright (Let's say slightly sub-par) mana-cost-wise. So the 'free' draw applies to both players.
EDIT: i clicked on the trade button, then click it again and now it shows me the correct placement: the real offer was MY 5 drop for the 8 spell.
Yeah, I've run into the same issue before. Actually failed to make a desirable trade once because of it. But your method seems to work: Switch the cards forth and back once, and the wrong positioning should fix itself.
This definitely can't be normal game behavior when your opponent disconnects out of spite. The game would simply let the opponent's timer run out and you could continue playing and beating them. If your game froze up / got stuck as a result of your opponent leaving, I imagine that'd be a rare bug. I find it more likely that it was your own connection screwing you over at that moment.
I don't quite see how Whirling Death could be considered an anti-Teemo card. If anything, it's worse against him than most other units in the game because if Teemo attacks alone, you can't play it (unless you have an elusive unit to block, in which case you wouldn't need Whirling Death in the first place).
Blade's Edge and Death Lotus are excellent in the early game, but won't single-handedly do the job once Teemo has leveled up. Just mentioning that for completeness' sake.
Lucky me, I haven't played against this deck archetype yet. It sounds like an awful time.
It's one thing to replace a card - the different name helps make it clear that players should expect different behavior.
I'm inclined to disagree on this particular point - I pretty much never read card names during a match. The card image is the single most recognizable element to me, and the only one I need. Because they didn't change the image for Accelerated Purrsuit, I wasn't even aware it was a different card until I saw somebody pointing it out on the forums.
Maybe when odds return to normal, there will simply be fewer Deep decks and the whole thing will feel better.
I also have to disagree here. If an expedition archetype is badly balanced, its prevalence in the game mode doesn't affect its power level. The only difference is that you'll be annoyed by it less often, but the core problem persists. Getting your Deep bonus 10 cards earlier means you'll often be able to trigger it 2-3 rounds earlier than in constructed, which is quite a massive difference.
Also Veteran Investigator also seems like a bad expedition card. You never want to give your opponent extra card draw.
I've never understood the logic behind this, myself. Of course, letting your opponent draw cards is generally disadvantageous. However, if I get to draw one at the same time, it pretty much cancels out, doesn't it? Only point I could see against this is if the opponent is running some sort of combo deck, which naturally benefits more from having a bigger hand than other decks.
This card looks to be Maokai's best friend to close out the game. I've never been a fan of drawing or copying cards from my opponent's deck/hand (in Hearthstone, for instance); I'd much rather draw from my own deck so I can be sure the cards I get actully synergyze with my game plan. But the fact that this removes cards from the opponent's deck seems huge for a mill concept like Maokai's.
I'm really mixed on this change overall. I kind of liked the board management aspect of having to keep a spot open for a new unit to play if you have a lot of stuff on the board. But on the flipside, it occasionally created very boring board states where you're left with nothing to do if your opponent refuses to kill any of your (weak) units. I'll have to see how it works out in practice before I can make up my mind.
Maybe they could make some deck recipes centered around new cards (mainly champions) and allow any player to play those for the first week(s)?
Isn't that part of what expeditions are for? At least regarding the new region. I mean, you only get 1 free token per week, so if you want to run more trials, you'll have to pay for them. But Riot purposely upped the probability of Bilgewater-based buckets to pop up for expeditions. This should give players a good chance to draft decks around the new Bilgewater champions.
Disclaimer: I haven't started an expedition on the release patch, so this is all theoretical.
Personally, I like the idea of changes like this to accommodate the Expedition format.
But I've always been stumped as to why they did this to Purrsuit of Perfection in particular. I think it's an unnecessary change - the card works exactly the same (and with the same efficiency) in constructed and limited. Deck size has nothing to do with it. Perhaps Riot figured that drafting buckets made creating a deck filled with 1-ofs too difficult? If anything, I'd advocate reducing the threshold to 15 cards for constructed, as well (In most matchups with my Catastrophe deck, I get nowhere near the required 20).
On the flipside, the Deep mechanic obviously benefits quite massively from the lower deck size. I would like to see a change to the mechanic for Expeditions only, like triggering at 10 or less cards in the deck; possibly even 5, but that might be a bit too punishing as players would have a maximum of 5 turns to benefit from their buffed units.
I regard this as a subjective judgment. I've never felt bad about an opponent copying cards from my hand or drawing/copying cards from my deck in any card game, specifically Hearthstone and Runeterra. In fact, I've always wondered why anyone would be inclined to run cards which allow them to do that (apart from deck synergies that capitalize on, say, using cards that didn't start in your deck). In fact, in many cases, I'm happy when my opponent takes stuff from my deck, knowing that they can't typically incorporate it very well into their own game plan.
Yesterday, I played my longest Legends of Runeterra match ever, clocking in at over 40 minutes in Constructed format. I was using a Lux & Heimerdinger deck, my opponent played Lux & Karma.
By the time of about round 7 or 8, my opponent played an Unyielding Spirit to save their Lifesteal Radiant Guardian. In the following turns, I tried to remove the unit twice with Detain and Hextech Transmogulator; both were countered with Will of Ionia.
Luckily, my Luxs and Heimerdingers afforded me with enough board presence to keep things under control, but at the same time, my opponent had a free block plus 5 Nexus health each turn, so I didn't manage to push any meaningful damage through.
The scales started to tip in my favor at about round 15-20 when I used my own Unyielding Spirit first on Heimerdinger, then on Lux. I also managed to amass a good amount of top-end Heimerdinger turrets and killed my opponent's Karma with Final Spark twice.
In the end, after a hard-fought battle, I won the game with one huge attack in the final round, after which I would've won anyway because my opponent had emptied their deck.
What was your longest game yet? Anything to share? Did you enjoy it?
I'm not sure making Elusive only last for a short time is the right way to go. But I'm not completely opposed to it, either.
Assuming it would get implemented, I'd drop the "damage taken" part at the very least. In fact, I'd say only eliminate a unit's elusive status after it has attacked and dealth combat damage. Anything else would make the keyword too weak in my opinion.
How's that? I always figured the ability to bank 3 spell mana favored the player using Deny, not their opponent. The Deny owner can play their units on curve -1 every round and still be ready to counter.
I think limiting Elusives this way would only delay the problem, though - as more expansions come out, the natural expectation would be for more Elusive cards to be released eventually. So I'd see it as a short-term solution at best. I'd rather they try to balance the actual mechanic and/or the units which possess it for the sake of the game's long-term health.
No, no, point taken. I can be pretty pedantic myself, so I actually appreciate being called out on details I may get wrong :).
Personally, I think the way it works (at least I'm pretty sure it does) in Hearthstone and Runeterra is ideal: You can't redraw the exact same instance of a card you chose to mulligan, but you can draw another copy of it. In Magic, redrawing from your full deck makes swapping cards weaker, while a theoretical mulligan variant preventing the player from drawing a copy of the swapped-out card feels a bit too strong.
I think that's why the OP mentioned in their first post that the deck relies on sacrificing units instead of Toss effects. I imagine this would be an overall slower method to level Maokai, though (You'd have to rely a lot on token generation).
I assume you mean "mulligan" ("milling" usually refers to removing cards from your opponent's deck). If so, it works in this game just like it would with real-life cards: The exact cards you've selected from your hand are excluded from the redraw pool, but you can certainly draw additional copies of those cards if you're running multiple in your deck. It may be frustrating to get a copy of the same card you just mulliganed away, but it's perfectly logical and consistent.
Or maybe you already knew all that and just wanted to vent a little :P. That's fine, too. Everyone gets annoying mulligans every once in a while.
Oh, I understand that, but once they start piling up, it's going to take that much more time to use them all. So what I meant is I feel I 'need' to use one per week to get my value from the free tokens instead of simply amassing them.
Ever since Maokai and Veteran Investigator were revealed, I've been planning to construct a deck including both (along with a ton of cheap minions/tokens coupled with some Toss cards). However, as more Bilgewater cards were revealed, it felt like combining Maokai with Bilgewater Toss was the way to go.
I think I'll still try a P&Z variant, but not one that's completely focused on an Exodia combo. I'll just try to hold onto any Investigators I draw until Maoki levels up, and then I may only need to survive 2 more rounds instead of 4.
Of course, as you said, if the opponent has any way to shuffle cards back into their deck, this whole concept falls apart. But I think I'll try anyway and see how it goes.
Same here. I used to play 3 expeditions per week in order to fill my champion collection, but over time, I realized that I enjoy the constructed format more, and going through 3 full expeditions every week barely left me with any time to play constructed. So at this point, I'm glad I only 'have to' play 1 expedition per week (in order not to waste the free entry token).
Some very good points there, meisterz. I can definitely see your argument regarding the Nautilus plus Maokai combination, and also that Investigator would be less valuable in expeditions. Regarding that card, however:
I still don't see it. Yes, your opponent gets a 'free' draw, but so do you: You paid 2 mana for a 3/2 body on the field, which is alright (Let's say slightly sub-par) mana-cost-wise. So the 'free' draw applies to both players.
Yeah, I've run into the same issue before. Actually failed to make a desirable trade once because of it. But your method seems to work: Switch the cards forth and back once, and the wrong positioning should fix itself.
This definitely can't be normal game behavior when your opponent disconnects out of spite. The game would simply let the opponent's timer run out and you could continue playing and beating them. If your game froze up / got stuck as a result of your opponent leaving, I imagine that'd be a rare bug. I find it more likely that it was your own connection screwing you over at that moment.
I don't quite see how Whirling Death could be considered an anti-Teemo card. If anything, it's worse against him than most other units in the game because if Teemo attacks alone, you can't play it (unless you have an elusive unit to block, in which case you wouldn't need Whirling Death in the first place).
Blade's Edge and Death Lotus are excellent in the early game, but won't single-handedly do the job once Teemo has leveled up. Just mentioning that for completeness' sake.
Lucky me, I haven't played against this deck archetype yet. It sounds like an awful time.
I'm inclined to disagree on this particular point - I pretty much never read card names during a match. The card image is the single most recognizable element to me, and the only one I need. Because they didn't change the image for Accelerated Purrsuit, I wasn't even aware it was a different card until I saw somebody pointing it out on the forums.
I also have to disagree here. If an expedition archetype is badly balanced, its prevalence in the game mode doesn't affect its power level. The only difference is that you'll be annoyed by it less often, but the core problem persists. Getting your Deep bonus 10 cards earlier means you'll often be able to trigger it 2-3 rounds earlier than in constructed, which is quite a massive difference.
I've never understood the logic behind this, myself. Of course, letting your opponent draw cards is generally disadvantageous. However, if I get to draw one at the same time, it pretty much cancels out, doesn't it? Only point I could see against this is if the opponent is running some sort of combo deck, which naturally benefits more from having a bigger hand than other decks.
This card looks to be Maokai's best friend to close out the game. I've never been a fan of drawing or copying cards from my opponent's deck/hand (in Hearthstone, for instance); I'd much rather draw from my own deck so I can be sure the cards I get actully synergyze with my game plan. But the fact that this removes cards from the opponent's deck seems huge for a mill concept like Maokai's.
I'm really mixed on this change overall. I kind of liked the board management aspect of having to keep a spot open for a new unit to play if you have a lot of stuff on the board. But on the flipside, it occasionally created very boring board states where you're left with nothing to do if your opponent refuses to kill any of your (weak) units. I'll have to see how it works out in practice before I can make up my mind.
Isn't that part of what expeditions are for? At least regarding the new region. I mean, you only get 1 free token per week, so if you want to run more trials, you'll have to pay for them. But Riot purposely upped the probability of Bilgewater-based buckets to pop up for expeditions. This should give players a good chance to draft decks around the new Bilgewater champions.
Disclaimer: I haven't started an expedition on the release patch, so this is all theoretical.
Personally, I like the idea of changes like this to accommodate the Expedition format.
But I've always been stumped as to why they did this to Purrsuit of Perfection in particular. I think it's an unnecessary change - the card works exactly the same (and with the same efficiency) in constructed and limited. Deck size has nothing to do with it. Perhaps Riot figured that drafting buckets made creating a deck filled with 1-ofs too difficult? If anything, I'd advocate reducing the threshold to 15 cards for constructed, as well (In most matchups with my Catastrophe deck, I get nowhere near the required 20).
On the flipside, the Deep mechanic obviously benefits quite massively from the lower deck size. I would like to see a change to the mechanic for Expeditions only, like triggering at 10 or less cards in the deck; possibly even 5, but that might be a bit too punishing as players would have a maximum of 5 turns to benefit from their buffed units.