Seeing as you think that elusive and challenger minions are the only options, I can see why you think that, but you're ignoring LOTS of other counters Riot put into the game, and don't understand how to counter them (as are the people that upvoted your post).
The following spells can kill Greenglade Duo, even when buffed:
Thermogenic Beam
Black Spear
Mystic Shot
Purify
Single Combat
Culling Strike
En Garde
Get Excited
Noxian Guillotine
Whirling Death
Avalanche
Detain
Grasp of the Undying
Atrocity
Vengeance
Frost kill effects
Judgement
The Ruination
With elusive options, challengers and the above cards, you CAN deal with elusives. Put some in your deck
I haven't played with Ashe, but she has two really poor downsides - her 5/3 body doesn't seem to work well with her ability, and I don't understand why I have to use my next draw step to draw the Crystal Arrow when she levels up. You really need to have a lot go right in a game for this card to work. I've seen some pretty spectacular games with her, but I felt they were fairly selective.
I think some (but not all) of the elusive creatures need a bit of slight nerf.
I don't think there's any problem with Greenglade Duo for example. If your deck can't kill a x/2 or a x/3 after 1 or 2 buffs, then your deck deserves to lose.
Navori Conspirator seems a bit strong with a buff. Without this creature in the game, usually the best you can do on turn 2 is a 3/3 - a 4/3 is really above the curve and has few responses. Having 1/5th if your life taken off is pretty big. I'd say a 2/2 would be less punishing.
Shadow Assassin is too good. A 2/2 creature that flies and draws a card, in Magic the gathering, at common rarity would cost 4 or 5 mana. Why does it cost 3 for?
Kinkou Lifeblade looks balanced with a 2/3 statline, but even with 1 buff, this card is pretty nuts and puts itself out of challenger range, making it very difficult for non-elusive decks to deal with it.
I feel like Shadow Isles, Nox, and to a lesser extent, Freljord and Damacia since they have more challengers, could have some random "Reach" keywords thrown on to their units to balance out the Elusive mechanic. We don't need a lot of them either - just give each of these factions 1 or 2 "Reach" creatures. I find it difficult to believe that any of those 4 factions would refuse to develop defenses to an enemy threat that they have a major weaknesses against. I mean, if you wanted to destroy their civilization, you could just send a bunch of Elusive creatures at them and their civilization would be wiped out. It doesn't make sense.
For example, Legion Grenadier could say:
Last Breath: Deal 2 to the enemy nexus or an elusive follower
I think new cards need to get made that actually look like Ballistas or Archers or Magical stealth detectors to make reach cards make sense, as the existing card pool lacks reasonable options.
The only downside is deck boredom and not enough diversity. I'm sure this will correct itself over time, but I can't really make that many decks, and because resources are so rare, I'm a bit scared to craft stuff until I know what the meta looks like. So, I'm just an evil person playing spiders for now.
I'd love to try an Ashe deck, but that 5/3 body and the card draw replacement effect (rather than drawing a brand new card) is really poor and I'm scared to craft her, for example. It's just not worth the risk.
Heimer looks cool, but also easily countered due his poor body and how expensive the card is. The deck also has to draw it. The deck is also fairly expensive on the crafts.
So, spiders it is. I'm just saving most of my wild cards and shards.
You can Purify it, or use Mageseeker Investigator, to remove Last Breath condition.
While not as good as the creatures that silence in Hearthstone - they probably took a cue from the constants nerf to silence creatures due to cramping design space in that game - but the effect is still there in the game.
I have to be honest, this is one of the only card games I have played where I feel like my deck - even on so-so draws - has a fighting chance each game, and that I am able to execute my strategy. Once I had the right spell ratios to units to take advantage of spell mana in reserve properly, I honestly felt like the game was less curvy and less draw dependent. I actually feel like I can recover if I don't play on curve in this game.
I'll take this over getting land-flooded or land-screwed and getting punished if I can't play on curve any day.
That's really good to know. Yeah, I did notice the issue where the # of wildcards was not going down. When I was getting errors from the server about not being able to craft, it said I had 7 rare wildcards, but when I re-entered the collection, I saw 0 rare wildcards.
I'm hoping I didn't lose any rare wild cards at least and it's just not tracking what happened properly in the purchase history.
In my Purchases history, it says that I bought 5 copies of Senna. I may have actually crafted 5 - I'm not sure. Like, I may have crafted more than 3 and the server didn't sync up with my crafts or something?
Anyway, I can refund 2 of my rare wildcards, but when I do, it says that it will invalidate one of my decks. Did I spend 2 extra wild cards? Is this a bug?
I sent a support ticket, but I haven't heard from Riot in 2 days.
I don't even think The Ruination is that good of a card. It's 9 mana. If you really don't like it, play more card draw units to keep your hand full, or use Deny.
You can also play around it and not fill up your board - just create a board that is scary enough that they need to use it without putting out all of your resources. Often times, your clock to kill your opponent is pretty similar with less creatures because you will over-kill them.
Compared to other card games, this is a really expensive card. In magic the gathering, this card is often 4-5 mana for a similar effect (or even upside, like gaining life for all the creatures that died or not being counterable).
There's also a big opportunity cost to having this card in your deck - it sits in your hand and does nothing, so until you can play it, it's like having 1 less card than your opponent.
Seeing as you think that elusive and challenger minions are the only options, I can see why you think that, but you're ignoring LOTS of other counters Riot put into the game, and don't understand how to counter them (as are the people that upvoted your post).
The following spells can kill Greenglade Duo, even when buffed:
With elusive options, challengers and the above cards, you CAN deal with elusives. Put some in your deck
I haven't played with Ashe, but she has two really poor downsides - her 5/3 body doesn't seem to work well with her ability, and I don't understand why I have to use my next draw step to draw the Crystal Arrow when she levels up. You really need to have a lot go right in a game for this card to work. I've seen some pretty spectacular games with her, but I felt they were fairly selective.
I think some (but not all) of the elusive creatures need a bit of slight nerf.
I don't think there's any problem with Greenglade Duo for example. If your deck can't kill a x/2 or a x/3 after 1 or 2 buffs, then your deck deserves to lose.
Navori Conspirator seems a bit strong with a buff. Without this creature in the game, usually the best you can do on turn 2 is a 3/3 - a 4/3 is really above the curve and has few responses. Having 1/5th if your life taken off is pretty big. I'd say a 2/2 would be less punishing.
Shadow Assassin is too good. A 2/2 creature that flies and draws a card, in Magic the gathering, at common rarity would cost 4 or 5 mana. Why does it cost 3 for?
Kinkou Lifeblade looks balanced with a 2/3 statline, but even with 1 buff, this card is pretty nuts and puts itself out of challenger range, making it very difficult for non-elusive decks to deal with it.
I feel like Shadow Isles, Nox, and to a lesser extent, Freljord and Damacia since they have more challengers, could have some random "Reach" keywords thrown on to their units to balance out the Elusive mechanic. We don't need a lot of them either - just give each of these factions 1 or 2 "Reach" creatures. I find it difficult to believe that any of those 4 factions would refuse to develop defenses to an enemy threat that they have a major weaknesses against. I mean, if you wanted to destroy their civilization, you could just send a bunch of Elusive creatures at them and their civilization would be wiped out. It doesn't make sense.
For example, Legion Grenadier could say:
Last Breath: Deal 2 to the enemy nexus or an elusive follower
I think new cards need to get made that actually look like Ballistas or Archers or Magical stealth detectors to make reach cards make sense, as the existing card pool lacks reasonable options.
The only downside is deck boredom and not enough diversity. I'm sure this will correct itself over time, but I can't really make that many decks, and because resources are so rare, I'm a bit scared to craft stuff until I know what the meta looks like. So, I'm just an evil person playing spiders for now.
I'd love to try an Ashe deck, but that 5/3 body and the card draw replacement effect (rather than drawing a brand new card) is really poor and I'm scared to craft her, for example. It's just not worth the risk.
Heimer looks cool, but also easily countered due his poor body and how expensive the card is. The deck also has to draw it. The deck is also fairly expensive on the crafts.
So, spiders it is. I'm just saving most of my wild cards and shards.
You can Purify it, or use Mageseeker Investigator, to remove Last Breath condition.
While not as good as the creatures that silence in Hearthstone - they probably took a cue from the constants nerf to silence creatures due to cramping design space in that game - but the effect is still there in the game.
I have to be honest, this is one of the only card games I have played where I feel like my deck - even on so-so draws - has a fighting chance each game, and that I am able to execute my strategy. Once I had the right spell ratios to units to take advantage of spell mana in reserve properly, I honestly felt like the game was less curvy and less draw dependent. I actually feel like I can recover if I don't play on curve in this game.
I'll take this over getting land-flooded or land-screwed and getting punished if I can't play on curve any day.
Some of the boards look cool, but I'm scared to buy one if I don't know what the music sounds like.
Is there a way we can sample the music tracks for each board?
Yep, I did that on Sunday. Just waiting for them to respond.
That's really good to know. Yeah, I did notice the issue where the # of wildcards was not going down. When I was getting errors from the server about not being able to craft, it said I had 7 rare wildcards, but when I re-entered the collection, I saw 0 rare wildcards.
I'm hoping I didn't lose any rare wild cards at least and it's just not tracking what happened properly in the purchase history.
In my Purchases history, it says that I bought 5 copies of Senna. I may have actually crafted 5 - I'm not sure. Like, I may have crafted more than 3 and the server didn't sync up with my crafts or something?
Anyway, I can refund 2 of my rare wildcards, but when I do, it says that it will invalidate one of my decks. Did I spend 2 extra wild cards? Is this a bug?
I sent a support ticket, but I haven't heard from Riot in 2 days.
Help?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1j99ujvx8zjs96n/5-sennas-purchased.png?dl=0
I don't even think The Ruination is that good of a card. It's 9 mana. If you really don't like it, play more card draw units to keep your hand full, or use Deny.
You can also play around it and not fill up your board - just create a board that is scary enough that they need to use it without putting out all of your resources. Often times, your clock to kill your opponent is pretty similar with less creatures because you will over-kill them.
Compared to other card games, this is a really expensive card. In magic the gathering, this card is often 4-5 mana for a similar effect (or even upside, like gaining life for all the creatures that died or not being counterable).
There's also a big opportunity cost to having this card in your deck - it sits in your hand and does nothing, so until you can play it, it's like having 1 less card than your opponent.
The card is fine.