I went to a prerelease event where they demoed the starters. The Dis shadow deck walked all over the other starter deck atleast 3/4 times in all players hands. We have since then become more competent at the game but it does not seem to be improving the balance between them. This is at a card shop with a lot of competitive MTG players and individuals who enjoy card games in general. All of us (over a dozen people at the event) felt that the Dis/shadow deck had the other starter deck beat. I have opened some weird decks for this game that took some real thinking and timing to implement successfully but I still fell like the sanctum/logos deck is always playing "from behind". Has anyone experienced the opposite of this? Im just curious.

Are you referring to the "teaching" decks (Radiant Argus the Supreme and Miss "Onyx" Censorius), or the other two (i.e. real) decks? I've found that the teaching decks aren't balanced at all. I've only used those twice, playing each deck once myself, and Radiant won pretty handily both times. Seems to me FFG would want to teach new players with pretty even hands. Or maybe they want to establish high and low baselines to test the other decks against?

It’s amusing that for everyone person saying one starter deck is dominant, there is another person saying the other one is. Radiant Argus cleaned house in my starter games, but I only used the starters twice then moved on to regular decks since then.

They are good for learning the game, I’d leave it at that.

27 minutes ago, Lupulor said:

Are you referring to the "teaching" decks (Radiant Argus the Supreme and Miss "Onyx" Censorius), or the other two (i.e. real) decks? I've found that the teaching decks aren't balanced at all. I've only used those twice, playing each deck once myself, and Radiant won pretty handily both times. Seems to me FFG would want to teach new players with pretty even hands. Or maybe they want to establish high and low baselines to test the other decks against?

He has to be referring to the "teaching" decks if you read which houses he then references (and because all other decks are algorithmically created).

18 minutes ago, Grant.Paice said:

He has to be referring to the "teaching" decks if you read which houses he then references (and because all other decks are algorithmically created).

Well, I was just making sure I was clear on what he was saying. I have a couple algorithmically-generated decks that have Shadows and Dis together and a couple that have Logos and Sanctum together. I don't remember which actually came in the Starter set and which I bought as solo decks, and thought FFG could set up the Starter set to have 1 Shadow/Dis/??? and 1 Logos/Sanctum/???. Doesn't hurt to make sure I'm inferring correctly before responding.

Overall the 'starter' is not a good buy. I have steered all my friends away from it. The two pre-determined decks are not only poorly matched, but they have misprints.

The tokens are the same thing you can make with 5 bucks of glue chipboard and a printer at the public library.

You are essentially paying $40 for 2 decks and serviceable but totally lack luster tokens. Instead buy 2 decks and spend the other $20 on some nice tokens from etsy. Nice tokens are totally unnecessary but do improve the tactile sensation of the game. I personally find nice 3D or laser cut acyllic much more satisfying to see on the table than cardboard.

But hey to each their own.

10 minutes ago, Krashwire said:

Overall the 'starter' is not a good buy. I have steered all my friends away from it. The two pre-determined decks are not only poorly matched, but they have misprints.

The tokens are the same thing you can make with 5 bucks of glue chipboard and a printer at the public library.

You are essentially paying $40 for 2 decks and serviceable but totally lack luster tokens. Instead buy 2 decks and spend the other $20 on some nice tokens from etsy. Nice tokens are totally unnecessary but do improve the tactile sensation of the game. I personally find nice 3D or laser cut acyllic much more satisfying to see on the table than cardboard.

But hey to each their own.

I think the stater set is a perfectly reasonable cost for what it contains. $20 for 2 random decks. Amber, Keys, Damage, and Chain trackers are probably worth at least $10 for the quality. I'll give power and stun a value of $0 as they are just playing cards. Team Covenant's upgraded tokens are $68 dollars, so I think $10 is a more than fair price. That leaves the teaching decks valued at half the price of a normal deck, which again seems very fair.

I will admit that it is probably not a good buy for experienced gamers, as this game isn't that complicated and we tend to have lots of extra bits, but this game is built in a way that is very accessible for new gamers, and for them it is a very fair price.