So, a hero deck that includes Ancient Wisdom, Renewed Purpose, Don't Get Cocky, Bring Balance, and Award Ceremony can draw the entire deck in one turn. You only really need eight of those ten available to draw the deck. If doing so, there's plenty of resource gainers like Truce, Well Connected, Respite, Long Con, Premonitions, etc that make it so they are all playable first turn. Should this have really been allowed to happen?

Already, there are Salvo/Launch Bay decks abusing this. I've seen a Scoping the Target deck that can drop about twelve upgrades turn one, play Swiftness/Control/Scoping/Rebel/Rebel to kill three characters. I've also seen a Qui-Gon Resistance HQ deck that can use his ability 25 times on turn one. All of these decks have holes, but why on earth was this allowed to happen? I get that in this game you'll likely see every card in your deck before a game is over. But, all on the first turn by just sacrificing eight cards of deck space? This means any character + 22 card combination made from here on needs to be balanced against a first turn game-ender.

C'mon FFG. You just limited design space by giving way too much draw to hero decks. Doesn't take much to see that drawing an entire deck is an NPE for your opponent. Fix it...

While I do see your point on the current status of these decks, these types of decks discourages use of straight aggro decks and make use of other arch types, suddenly disrupt side and discard sides have a lot more value, while the game toutes two differnt types of win conditions in reality most decks go for the straight aggro approach, by these deck being made available straight forward build using auto include and auto exclude will have to re think building strategy.

I'm a wee bit out of the loop in this game, so I've not come across these deck archetypes yet, but it seems to me you're saying that there's an archetype against which a decent mill deck can win turn one without actually having to do a lot of work.

Excellent.

1 hour ago, Stu35 said:

I'm a wee bit out of the loop in this game, so I've not come across these deck archetypes yet, but it seems to me you're saying that there's an archetype against which a decent mill deck can win turn one without actually having to do a lot of work.

Excellent.

http://swdestinydb.com/decklist/view/21980/hotcakesherootk-3rdplaceat14playerscwwriteup-1.0

Nope, super aggro deck using Launch Bay and Salvo.

6 hours ago, Stu35 said:

I'm a wee bit out of the loop in this game, so I've not come across these deck archetypes yet, but it seems to me you're saying that there's an archetype against which a decent mill deck can win turn one without actually having to do a lot of work.

Excellent.

Actually makes mill more difficult. You don’t lose by mill until all the cards in your hand are discarded. By drawing the entire deck you make Yoda, Cassian and others that discard from the top of deck useless. You don’t have to discard down to five cards at the end of your turn, so you end up with a 15+ card hand size.

Certainly a good argument for enforcing maximum hand sizes like in Magic the Gathering

Or putting an upper limit on what Launch Bay or Salvo does as they did with Rigged Detonation:

The limit is the card that says, discred down to your hand size . You play it as your last card and poof their deck is almost gone. I think it's needed to have variety and haven't seen it being to difficult to play against. They may surprise you once but matches are best of 3 and all you do is say , well that won't happen again. Rotation will fix most of this soon enough anyway.

Rotation, all things going well is at least 8 months away (March/April).

I waited through Hyperloop, Poe/Maz and the FN-2199 there comes a straw that breaks a camels back.

It take more than just saying that won't happen again, how do you stop this. There is a lot of recursive cards to make sure the strategy doesn't stall out for card removal, I can see a couple of outs, but the are not going to be easy or consistent.

My main problem is that this is just common sense from a design standpoint. Limit draw during your turn. Make it rare, situational or too expensive to chain.

And, this isn’t their first screw-up here. In the first edition of Game of Thrones LCG they had to implement a draw cap because they didn’t properly balance the draw cards.

I think I get the thought behind these cards. They made hand discard too good so the counter is more cards in hand. The solution caused a whole different kind of problem though.

Every set except Legacies has had a complete NPE deck make a tier one appearance. This has two with Salvo/Launch and Yoda/Cassian mill crap (not to derail the topic but why is mill a win condition?)

I played against this and destroyed it on turn one. All it takes is any of the several cards that let you resolve an opponents die as your own.

2 hours ago, Joelist said:

I played against this and destroyed it on turn one. All it takes is any of the several cards that let you resolve an opponents die as your own.

Like the post says, all these decks have flaws and counters. But, the game designers going forward have to test against a player with 25 cards in their hand. Does anyone feel confident they can do that without making something even more broken?

Also, the Salvo deck is just starting. It will get teched to better handle the hard counters. Right now it uses Friends in Low Places to remove mitigation. I think that will change to Scruff Looking in most builds to get around the two plus cost reversal stuff.

Up until this point, draw was pretty much useless in Destiny - none of those cards were particularly playable until it hit critical mass. While it's something they probably should have been aware of, I think it's a little unfair to blame them *too* harshly for it; without a rules change the alternative is basically don't have draw cards or make them unplayable.

Having said that....yes, they need to do something. It's always going to be a potential design flaw, and specific counters don't work (e.g. Launch Bay vs Qui-Gonn/Resistance HQ require completely different counters). And I'm sure they will do something, it's just a matter of how long it takes them to do it. It's not something I'd expect them to do overnight because they need to make sure it works (unless they restrict the draw cards for now, and then find a solution).

It's not like other rules had to be changed because of two or three characters (over writing). Playing a 2 games out of 3 format fixes most of the issues with surprise decks like this. All you have to do is mitigate one die to win. Like others have said don't claim, hang in there you may get to draw more cards and draw the 2nd mitigate you'll need. If this deck were that strong it'd be winning every store champ like Poe/Maz or FN did for months.

Destiny in general has it's flaws. Too many ambush/gain action abilities that allow people to get lucky and pull off unstoppable moves. (Sabine as prime example) Which leads to a negative play experience as it's non-interactive. Mill has the same effect keeping you from playing more than 1 or 2 cards a hand. It's still tons of fun to play. Hence play it more do 2 out of 3 and the better deck will win. If something beats you consistently, build it yourself and join them. The point of a game is to win. If you're not playing the best deck out there, you need to change your deck. When we all end up on the same deck, the game is broken.

19 hours ago, gokubb said:

Actually makes mill more difficult. You don’t lose by mill until all the cards in your hand are discarded. By drawing the entire deck you make Yoda, Cassian and others that discard from the top of deck useless. You don’t have to discard down to five cards at the end of your turn, so you end up with a 15+ card hand size.

3 simple words: Lying in Wait.

" Force an opponent to choose and discard cards from their hand down to the number of cards you have in your hand."

and that's just specific tech against this one deck. From what I've seen now that i look into it, this whole "draw their entire deck" schtick is actually very easily countered by having some mitigation in hand and not claiming the battlefield too soon.

Premonitions is also a **** of a card against this launch bay otk.

The problem with these specific counter cards is will you have them in your first hand and have enough of them to stop your opponent from ripping them out of your hand?

Pretty sure the hard counter to QuiGon/Res.HQ isn't a card.

"I'll use Resistance HQ"

"Cool. I'll pay the resource."

"Awww, dang."

33 minutes ago, TheoGrizz said:

Pretty sure the hard counter to QuiGon/Res.HQ isn't a card.

"I'll use Resistance HQ"

"Cool. I'll pay the resource."

"Awww, dang."

Yeah but if constructed correctly you would have some cards that disrupts resources before you start the chain

Disrupts how many resources? All of them? Even if I don’t spend any, and try to roll them for more? And also handles any disrupt *I* roll? If you sit down across from one of these decks you have to go in with the mentality that you are not going to play your deck’s normal game.

EDIT: this wasn’t supposed to sound aggressive, I’m just in a hurry at the moment and know I’ll forget later.

It's a fun type of stunt but a lot of things work against it:

- Lying in Wait

- ANY card or character or Upgrade that allows you to resolve an opponents die as your own

- Force Throw

- Boba Fett

And so on.

5 hours ago, Joelist said:

It's a fun type of stunt but a lot of things work against it:

- Lying in Wait

- ANY card or character or Upgrade that allows you to resolve an opponents die as your own

- Force Throw

- Boba Fett

And so on.

Lying in Wait is the only card that stops the Launch Bay OTK on its own. If you Force Throw it, great, you kill one character. Then they Strategic Plan and do it again. If you Reversal it, great, you kill one character then they Strategic Plan and do it again. The deck kills all your characters in one or two hits while you can only whittle one with an answer. And, that's if the answer isn't pulled out by Friends in Low Places or Scruffy Looking Nerf-Herder.

Again, the problem isn't necessarily this combo, its the drawing the entire deck and the consistency of hero combo decks going forward. You can nearly guarantee an Infamous, Never Tell Me the Odds combo for a Sabine Deck first turn for a minimum nine damage. And, then again next turn. That combo isn't hurt terribly by the answers to Launch Bay OTK. There's mill possibilities where you gain enough resources and draw enough cards to play Strength Through Weakness three or four times first turn.

Any combo that requires eight cards or less to pull off can now consistently be dropped first turn. Eight cards in the deck for draw, four to six for recursion if it is even required (Rebel, Cheat, Return of the Jedi, Fond Memories) and then eight to ten cards for resource gain. Launch Bay is the current flavor, but it is not the only problem and as the meta shapes out there will be more. These are all negative play decks for the opponent.

7 hours ago, TheoGrizz said:

Disrupts how many resources? All of them? Even if I don’t spend any, and try to roll them for more? And also handles any disrupt *I* roll? If you sit down across from one of these decks you have to go in with the mentality that you are not going to play your deck’s normal game.

EDIT: this wasn’t supposed to sound aggressive, I’m just in a hurry at the moment and know I’ll forget later.

Diversion alone can will wipe out 4 resources before recursion, so 'just have money' really isn't any kind of answer.

But I think people are misunderstanding. As gokubb is saying, the issue isn't a specific deck, it's that pretty much ANY combo deck can become too consistent if you can draw your whole deck (and use it to get money). Every new card that gets released that has even a sniff of being abusive potentially becomes a problem.

12 hours ago, Abyss said:

Diversion alone can will wipe out 4 resources before recursion, so 'just have money' really isn't any kind of answer.

But I think people are misunderstanding. As gokubb is saying, the issue isn't a specific deck, it's that pretty much ANY combo deck can become too consistent if you can draw your whole deck (and use it to get money). Every new card that gets released that has even a sniff of being abusive potentially becomes a problem.

So now they're paying for 2 Diversions, 2 Rebels, Resistance HQ, 2 Award Ceremonies, 2 Ancient Wisdoms, a couple of free cards... If the opponent Rebels on Diversion, then it isn't played on something else. There is a limit to how much can be done; there is no card in Destiny that says "Do all the things." What happens in the event that I am showing a base resource side on three dice? 5 Diversions? What if I remove the dice that actually have discard sides? Starting whichever round you get through the Diversions, you can start concentrating on killing Qui-Gon. "Just have money" is a fine answer, that may have been dismissed on the presumption that I didn't think my answer through. (*) That's my fault in that I didn't give explanations and went with "Aww, dang."

I'm not misunderstanding. This was a specific example of the larger point, which was, "If you sit down across from one of these decks you have to go in with the mentality that you are not going to play your deck's normal game." Each of these decks require a somewhat different gameplay approach to counter.

Where we disagree is the consistency of these decks. They aren't winning left and right.

And soon enough, so much rotates out, including Launch Bay, Qui-Gon, Award Ceremony, Truce, Resistance HQ, Diversion, etc.

I don't think it's a serious design flaw, and I think the future is going to be just fine. That's not to say they won't change something, just that I don't think they need to do so.

On 7/29/2018 at 9:24 AM, gokubb said:

Actually makes mill more difficult. You don’t lose by mill until all the cards in your hand are discarded. By drawing the entire deck you make Yoda, Cassian and others that discard from the top of deck useless. You don’t have to discard down to five cards at the end of your turn, so you end up with a 15+ card hand size.

Thats the key issue with such decks, or being able to abuse No Mercy if you can load your hand up. There really should be a Maximum hand size and at end of turn you have to discard down to that.

2 hours ago, GamerGuy1984 said:

Thats the key issue with such decks, or being able to abuse No Mercy if you can load your hand up. There really should be a Maximum hand size and at end of turn you have to discard down to that.

There is no villain version yet. The whole point of the thread is too many cards got created for hero that allow you to draw. With all your cards in hand so far people have used this to aoe for 12-22 damage (launch bay x = cards in hand + salvo to resolve it as AOE), Qui-gon for 20 some damage using Rebel HQ if the opponent spends all their money. They all have foils, but you may not draw the foil or roll it on the first turn. These decks win turn one so a discard step won't stop them. I don't know how consistent they are, but if you suspect your opponent is playing one don't claim. Mitigate the launch bay die two or three times and you win.