We were looking forward to the Regional for a while, moreso because we couldn't make the Aldershot event. We'd been doing a lot of testing to see if there was a deck that could go 50-50 with the Orcs and had to conclude that there wasn't. Other decks could beat the Orcs, but not with any great consistency, even by Dark Elf discard deck that I had wanted to play as soon as Shades were previewed. We finally decided to just play Orcs as we feel that we had the fastest deck in the environment and so any lack of control elements was compensated for by raw speed. Well, that was the plan until Friday night. I'd been tinkering with by Dark Elf deck and thought that I'd rather have a few tricks available to me in case things went wrong. With a last-minute adjustment (decks are always better if they're adjusted on the morning of the event) I committed to the Elves. In the end four of us headed down: Me playing Dark Elves, Alex playing Orcs, Jacky playing Orcs and Ben playing High Elves. During the train journey we managed to convince Ben that my unit-less High Elf deck was better than his deck so he switched. With every deck we had either designed or co-designed by me I was going to get a lot of feedback on my card choices which was one of the reasons for going (no matter how good you think you are a small play group can prove to be degenerate).

There were 22 players that turned up, the largest attendance so far. Having to win six rounds of Swiss to finish first was daunting, but we were hoping for at least some top four finishes.

Round 1: Ben Clapperton (Orcs)

I have never met Ben but we both post on a UK forum and for some reason I think that he has long hair. After thoroughly confusing him by mentioning this we get down to business. He's playing Orc blitz with Troll Vomit which may or may not be problematic. All I care about when I play Orcs is whehter or not they have a bonkers opening hand.

Game one: We both burn one zone but I establish a better board position. He plays Troll Vomit but in my turn I can play two Clan Moulder Elite which means that his second zone burns.

Game two: This is essentially a repeat of the first game. It's close but I think that I play Thanquol after the Troll Vomit this time.

1-0

MVP: Cheap Skaven units.

Round 2: ??? (Orc)

Game one: He wins the die roll but lets me go first. My turn one is a Walking Sacrifice, a Vile Sorceress and a Contested Village. In his turn one I play two Hate. He can't come back from such a loss of tempo and board position.

Game two: His turn one is a Spider Riders. His turn two is two more Spider Riders and a Clan Moulder Elite off We'ez Bigga. I scoop.

Game three: This is quite close until I get either two Vile Sorceress or Sniktch (I forget which). I hose his hand a board into oblivion.

2-0

MVP: Vile Sorceress.

Round 3: Ben Blackwell (High Elves)

I don't like playing mates early in events as it's bound to knock one of us out of the top four. It will be even worse if I lose to my own deck.

Game one: I roll him so quickly it's ridiculous. A combination of Hate and multiple scouts means that he never really gets going.

Game two: I get a poor start and he gets set up quickly. Gifts of Aenarion+ Repeater Bolt Thrower cripples my board and I scoop.

Game three: It's closer than either of the other two games but he is never able to disrupt my tempo long enough to get set up. And early Thanquol was key.

3-0

MVP: Thanquol or Hate.

Round 4: Mark Donnelly (Empire)

Apparently this is the guy that won the Aldershot Regional but the only thing I care about is whether he can win the Judgement lottery.

Game one: He goes first and starts well (Peasant Militia and Runefang) but I play Shades in my turn one and two and he doesn't have the card draw to stall me. I finish off by calling in the Skaven heavy mob.

Game two. He has a great start (including Peasant Militia and Runefang)He wins the Judgement lottery early. I scoop.

Game three. He gets the Militia/Runefang combo again and kills an early Thanquol with a Zealot Hunter. It's looking grim but we both stall slightly and then he makes a big play mistake by playing a Reiksguard Swordsmen which are then sent back to his hand in my turn, costing him valuable resources. I manage to survive three Judgements during the game and eventually pip him to the second zone via a timely application of Skaven facebeating.

4-0

MVP: Shades or Thanquol.

Round 5: Alex Marsden (Orcs)

Another mate and the deck we spent a long time designing. I know that this is going to be down to who has the better draw as we've played variations of this game so many times.

Game one: I have to go second but a turn one Hate followed by two Shades (Innovation) cripples his hand and he can't get established.

Game two: He gets a bonkers draw. Experience has taught me that it's effectively impossible for me to win. Lots of guys on his turn one and I think that we wins on his turn three.

Game three: I go first playing a Vile Sorceress and a Contested Village knowing that without a Walking Sacrifice I'm stuffed. He playes a Lobba Crew and Pillage (Innovation). I play Thanquol on my turn. He plays a second Lobba Crew. I'm about to scoop when I draw a second Thanquol. He stays on the board and in my next turn I play Sniktch. This lets me start to clear his board and he runs out of steam. I regain tempo and play lots of guys and crush zones.

4-0

MVP: Shades or Thanquol

Round 6: Andrew Watson (Dark Elves)

This is essentially a mirror match made worse by the build countering itself (Dark Elf/Slaven is one of the best ways to beat Skaven decks). It was going to come down to luck of the draw but I'd like to think that a few of my deck choices gave me an advantage (Walking Sacrifice for the card draw and Caught the Scent to hit units bounced by Har Garneth).

Game one: My Shades eat his hand and he can't get set up before the Skaven heavy mob arrive.

Game two: His Vile Sorceress trumps my hand of Shades and some timely Hates mean that he has to great a board position.

Game three: This is very close but I see Sniktch first and make him discard his (and his Thanquol) with a Caught the Scent. He's one point short of burning my second zone before the Sniktch/Rat Ogre slaughterfest kicks off and I clear his board and burn his second zone.

A bit of luck has seen me go 6-0 (anyone who goes undefeated in the Swiss has had a bit of luck on their side). Alex comes in fourth, Ben in eighth and Jacky thirteenth (showing that a new player may do well with Orcs but those little play mistakes make all the difference). I'm glad the that the High Elf deck was reasonable but the overall results haven't changed our perception. The environment is deformed, blitz is far too good and Warpstone Excavation is broken (not just overpowered but it actually damages card design). I could have just written MVP: Warpstone Excavation in every round that I saw it.

Thanks to Jim for running the event and decklists will be forthcoming (maybe tomorrow or Monday).

Bah, you and Bountyhunter are both too fast for me!

Played in the sheffield regional today. Fairly large field of about 22 people with a surprisngly wide range of deck types. Several dwarf decks, an empire and hig elf deck but with the majority being destruction. I played Dark Elf/Skaven.

Round 1: Orc
This was not the typical orc rush deck, definately teched to take account of the existence of dark elf. A few odd choices with quests but it was using some chunky 3 and 4 HP units and Pilgrimage! Unfortunately it couldn't quite keep up with the level of Skaven murder, couldn't defend all three zones and couldn't avoid Chillwind on the more weakly defended second zone and I took the game 2-0.

Round 2: Orc
A much more traditional Orc rush deck. Very fast, very dangerous. Using a comibination of Rock Lobber and the Orc Relic to potentially burn two zones in one round. Good draws gave me a 2-0 win although both were pretty close.

Round 3: Empire
A fairly traditional Empire Judgment pump deck, made more dangerous with the new relic. If you let it get up to speed then it will generate a major card and resource advantage. Game one was exactly that scenrio with a Will/Judgment combination hurting me badly. Game two was very different, I managed to consistently kill his Kingdom units while applying fast damage leaving him with no time to set up the advantage. Game three was closer, a failure to play a development may have cost me the game and I lost 2-1. More targetted hand removal would have helped although the decks ability to pump out multiple two HP units was probably most decisive.

Round 4: Dark Elf
Sort of mirror match up although this deck seemed to run fewer Skaven than I had and more Dark Elf units. Mortella provided some amusement in one game and there were interesting Lobber Crew/Elite Wars but I snuck through 2-1.

Round 5: High Elf
Unitless bolt thrower, its a deck which I have been experimenting with as well but I dont think it has quite enough cards to make it work. Having no units means you must draw into your damage negation every turn until you can set up your kill combo og Bolter and mass Kingdom resources. It has tough game play decisions to make around the bolter, use of developments and timing of cards, especially having to wait until it has Both bolter and Disdain to protect it against Pillage/Demolition. Game one I managed to use Hate with Chittering Horde in both of his first turns followed by a mass of Skaven. Not even a Flames and 3 consecutive Master Runes were enough to save him.

Game two again saw a Hate/Chittering Horde combo and by turn 2 with the benefit of Innovation I had Thanquool, Snitch and an Elite on the table. He was also running Judgment but forgot to develop destroying all of his resource generation and I had held cards back.

Round 6: Dark Elf
This was very much a mirror match up. We compared decks after the match and probably less than 10 cards were different between the decks. Game one went to him, game two was mine with an early Snitch. Game three was close but taken by him due to a Snitch which was capable of killing Elites by the end amd my inability to draw into him. Having Greyseer bounced by Har Ganeth is also annoying.

I went 4-2 overall and was slightly disappointed there wasn't a cut to top 4/8. The Winner was Crowdedmind, my opponent in Round 6. Second was the Empire deck. I took third with the Orc Rush deck I played in Round 2 fourth.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable tournament which has opened up the possibility of a variety of alternate deck ideas. It was interesting to see that Orc rush was not dominant. I was pleased to see a number of Order decks even if they might not be the most competative. There was a fair bit of chatter about potentially broken cards. Oddly enough Snitch, Thanquool and Elite top that list even, perhaps especially, from those playing them the most.

The main issues with the game seem to me to be the inconsistent, or strange, rulings, some very loosely worded card text for which there really isn't any excuse nowadays and the failure to provide full Tournament rules. Personally I am not certain that the game designers really understand the game that well, or at least that they have underestimated the effectiveness of rush (we even had Dwarf rush!).

I hope that the actual situation is that the cards for the first cycle were created and sent to print early on in the games life and that we may start to see some genuine anti rush cards in the new cycle rather than 10 cost epic spell coasters which will rarely if ever see play.

With my mini rant out of the way here's my decklist for the tournament:

Units:

Clan Moulder Elite x3
Greyseer Thanquool x3
Deathmaster Snitch x3
Poisonwind Globadiers x3 (should have been Clan Rats)
Gutter Runners x3
Vile Sorceress x3
Shades x3
Lobber Crew x3

Tactics:

Chillwind x3
Hate x3
We Need Your Blood x3
Chittering Hirde x3
Innovation x3
Invoke Khaines Wrath x2 (dubious choice)

Support:

Warpstone Excavation x3
Contested Village x3
Har Ganeth x3

I skipped Walking Sacrifice as I missed the combo with Har Ganeth. I need to check the definition of leaving play (really how is anyone new to this game supposed to have a chance!). I would also heartily recommend Hate to every Dark Elf player, the ability to mess with your opponents start is amazing.

Thanks for posting these thoughts - my only question is concerning what the heck "I scoop" means?? Never heard that term before - it means nothing to me. I have to imagine it means that you lost but for the life of me I cannot unravel its etymology.

I'm not surprised by the tournament deck environment, though, and fully agree with Andwat about hoping the environment improves after some more sets.

Sorry!! I forgot to congratulate CrowdedMind on his victory!!! CONGRATS!!! WOOT!!

Wytefang said:

Congrats to crowdedmind! I'd be really curious to see the Empire deck that placed 2nd, as I don't have any good Empire decks at the moment (certainly some that are decent, but not really good).

What a bizarre bit of lingo. I'll not be using it anytime soon but it's good to know, thanks Clamatius.

Thanks guys and greetings to everyone!!!

Great analysis and thoughts...I quote almost everythin.

I'm an "anti-skaven" player...The fact that someone who plays Skaven says that there's a problem means that he's a great person. Pretty honest.

I hope to see more lists, especially the Empire one.

crowdedmind said:

Completely agree. Almost every start for destruction players was draw hands, check for warpstone, re-draw if you didn't get one.

I didn't use to see this card as much of an issue, but I've gone a little the other way on this card now and I now think it seroiusly needs (at least) the addition of the limited keyword to stop gamebreaking double warpstone starts for rush decks which spell death for the opponents. Just stopping the opponent being able to both Contested Village and warpstone in the first turn would be a great change to the current environment.

DB_Cooper said:

I dont think there is anyone who makes serious use of Skaven who would disagree that they are distorting the environment. We are playing them because they are Tier 1 competative decks and few decks have an answer for them.

Of the top 4 decks 3 were destruction. Both of the Dark Elf decks had a lot of Skaven cards in them. Mine was running 15 units and 3 chittering hordes. Mike was running 17 units and no Hordes. I am not certain if the Orc player was playing much Skaven as neither game lasted more than about 3 turns. I suspect not much other than the Elites as it was very focused on getting down 2-4 units by its first attack and burning you to death.

I can give you a fairly good idea about what the Empire deck was running. It had a resource engine fuelled by Shrine to Taal and Contested Stronghold. Lots of 2HP units and the chunky Peasant Militia, I suspect it skipped the 1HP ones like the warrior priests precisely because of Dark Elf. It was running Johannes and playing him fairly consistently together with the relic and Pistoliers for plenty of bounce. Zealot Hunter was there as anti Skaven. Obviously it had Judgment and Will of the Electors but it was also running Iron Discipline and Forced March.

Nice report

Any chance to know the full deck of the empire player?

Andwat said:

I love the analysis here - my only gripe is the slight over-use of Magic terms that a portion of us have no clue about nor care much for. If possible, can you try to make an effort to explain some of these terms when you use them (or probably more easier for you) just use a more normal, non-slangy term. Thanks!

I haven't played Magic since about 1998 but have played Babylon 5, L5R, the original Game of Thrones, Warlord, Raw Deal and a few others since then. Terms like Tier and Bounce were common in all of them. They are ubiqutous at this point rather then being particular to any particular game.

hi im alex i came 4th in the event and i thought i would share my event with everyone as well.

me and mike started by looking at the orc deck and trying to make it as fast as possible, we came up with this list but for future i think i would replace the seduced and basha's for 2 copies of foot of mork and 2 of thanqel that guy is nuts.

3 seduced by darkness

3 we'z bigga!

3 pillage

2 waaagh!

3 innovation

2 rock lobber

3 choppa

1 basha's bloodaxe

3 warpstone excavation

3 contested village

3 spider riders

3 clan moulder's elite

3 lobber crew

3 crooked teef goblins

3 snotling pump wagon

3 squig herders

3 followers of mork

3 veteran sellswords

so round one:

i played some dark elf deck that i think was like the one that one an event, i think he has posted his event report already bu i think you can read it all there.

i pritty much get a stupid quick hand in both games and smash him before he can get started.

round 2:

i play vs another d elf deck and these game dont go as well. in both games he has a quicker start plus some disruption to slow my draw down.

i think that is what the game goes down to in this match can i kill them before they draw thanquel and snitch, if they see them im dead, there pritty broken, i dont think any other cards i care about (guys wise) other than maybe the sorcess, but it depends on how the rest of the draw is for her, i think thats where foot could help to take her out. without the skaven heros tho i dont think there fast enough unless they draw lots of we need your blood.

round 3:

next is a orc mirror which im fine with as most people play slower cards like vomit or the camp. the fact that you can 7 cards ion the table turn one is big and you can normally swing for 5 with your first attack. unless they hit waaghs or an equally fast draw i dont think there as fast as you.

this is what happened here, after they vomit ive already done a lot more damage than them and i kill them off quite quickly.

round 4:

here is the marsden match, seems like when ever me and my brother play he seems to beat me, excpt when its a tournament i like it that way.

he was playing the dwarf deck that i think is very close to being a good deck, unfortunatly its not quite there as its slower than my deck.

saying all that game one he wrecks me with double slayers (the 2 cost one) and double scout sniper, sad times with all my dudes in the bin its hard to win.

the next two games go a lot better for me and win easy, its hard for the dwarfs to come back from tempo loss as they play fair with there loyalty. a few pillages and lobba crew and he cant play much save one card a turn. guess thats how you win in this game draw the right cards at the right time, lucky me!

round 5:

now i play the mike who hasnt lost yet, playing the dark elf skaven deck. same as before really they get some disruption and im screwed. the 3rd game was intresting tho like mike says, i get a double lobba crew and pillage start to totally wreck his first couple of turns, but luckly for him he doesnt need to have board pressence or tempo or anything really all he needs is the two skaven heros and togther they kill all guys and burn both my zones.

nice deck.

now im not going to say the orc deck is fair in any way cause its not, but at least you have to draw a lot of broken cards (lobba crew, pillage, warpstone, etc. ) in a game to win, apprantly he only needs 2. when a deck wins off the back of effectly doing nothing for 2 turns agasint the fastest deck in the room by using 2 cards, you know there is something wrong.

round 6:

last round and im 3-2 at this point no one likes 3-3 so i want to win, im playing my friends unitless bolt thrower deck, again a deck that is nice but just not good enough in the face of so many broken cards, now normally i use broken in a lose sence but in this game i do mean broken the aggro cards are too good. but ill talk about that in a bit.

this game wasnt close exctp for the funny game one where he goes first and then i preced to play all 8 cards from my hand and 6 a zone, nice turn 1!

unfortunaly for me he plays innovate and then blows all my guys up with judgement, ah crap. i win the next two games in finish 4th not bad but i dont think i did anything well to deserve that 4th just made the best cards and killed with then quick.

i think the best way to 'fix' this game would be to ban lobba crew, clanmolder ellite, snitch and warpstone.

then i think all you would need to do is say units cannot attack the first turn they are played and i think you can fix a lot of problems. aggro decks would still be viable and control decks might do better too!

anyway thats enough of my rambling in very bad english!

Andwat said:

I don't agree. I've played many CCGs since the launch of Magic and I've not heard of many, at all, of them. This has been discussed ad nauseum in these forums already but as a new game, W:I deserves the use of its own vernacular. I don't generally have an issue myself as long as a previous term is easily deduced, but many of these terms either make no sense without previous experience hearing them or require a bit too much insider info. Not terribly useful. Feel free to keep using them if you want people to not really catch everything you're trying to communicate but I'd suggest finding more common terms to use otherwise.

Just my opinion, of course...but anyway, back on topic...can someone get the Empire player to post his or her deck here? I'd love to see it.

Tier 1 is a term I normally only hear from people with Magic backgrounds. I don't like it because of how it characterizes decks, in multiple tiers with wide gulfs normally between them. It also only recognizes a deck as being Tier 1 if it is winning tournaments, and pretty much casts everything else as Tier 2 or lower, despite a deck showing that it can hold its own in regular play. I prefer tourney deck or competitive deck and social or fun decks as my dividing line. A Tourney deck is anything optimized to play the best cards for your decks purpose and the necessary cards to support it with the idea of winning or locking the game as quickly as possible. A Fun or social deck is a deck intended for just that social play with a few mates over beer and snacks.

Bounce however is a descriptive term I've heard from players all over with backgrounds in various ccg and some with any. A card that goes from your hand to the playing field and then back to your hand is bouncing like a ball. I've also heard it used to describe the mobility mechanic on the pistoliers and Johannes, as in bouncing from zone to zone.

if you were living in france you would learn french.

i think people use ccg lingo all the time and its a great way to describe things that cross over from game to game.

if you dont know it thats fine but you shouldn't expect other people to change the way they speak.

Yes, if we lived in France we would speak French. We play Warhammer: Invasion, shouldn't we be using it's language by that same reasoning? I'm hardly as concerned about it as Wytefang, but outside of his occasional ax grinding it is not too much to ask that people who use terms that originated outside of this game to define them. If someone started using Rugby terms to describe things I'd have to ask for an explanation because I don't play rugby. Of course I won't get too upset by it either, though I might get frustrated if they were used so frequently without explanation and no context to get the jist of it.

agg said:

Conversely they shouldn't expect fans of this UNIQUE and NEW game to adjust to their usage of terms from previous games. What makes more sense? To allow the game to provide and develop its own unique slang terms or for all of us to constantly have to figure out what weird term someone used means since they played Game X eight years ago and they used that term so all of us should too? No thanks.

Each to his own, let's not let this thread devolve into that again. Just be aware that you may be questioned repeatedly about terms if you choose to use confusing ones from other games in this game's forum. Not the end of the world, certainly...

If you really think about it though, most terms regardless of if they have a history or not will need to be explained in some capacity as they are typically just made up. A tier is not a new thing. The podiums that olympic athletes stand on to get their medals are "tiered" so that the better is "top" or higher.

The only way I can see W:I having unique terms that won't require some kind of explanation is if the term is a direct rip-off of a keyword or something, like "corrupt", and then it's not slang.

If I made up some completely unique term for just W:I that has no link to an existing W:I term, it would still need to be explained. Because of this, I think people really need to get off of blaming the other games and just go with the terms that are most common and understood that can be transported over. Tier, and bounce, and metagame are all broad card game terms that can be used for W:I, so I see no reason to make up some other term just for the sake of being different.

And in response to Dormouse's comments, I'll admit that it's a pretty big pet peeve of mine so I let it get to me way more than I should. Mainly, just take the time to define your particular slang (from whatever older game you've played) so we can all be on the page or, as I suggested, be ready for people to not really understand everything you're trying to share with us. (I imagine that folks would prefer to eschew confusion when posting.)

darkdeal said:

Well I wouldn't say that's a good solution either (to just make up confusing new terms) - I'd prefer for things to develop organically and come from the community - that way we'd all know what the terms mean.

Wytefang said:

That's the thing, this lingo comes from other card games using an ever-expanding pool of game cards, that have tournaments and similar game mechanics. Surely new lingo won't develop "organically" when many people are already using this lingo? And if everyone is already using it, the odds of something entirely new developing for Warhammer: Invasion alone are very very low when the terms already exist. The reason everyone uses them, is because they're common to every card game. They organically developed with magic and stuck for the past ~17 years. What would you use instead of metagame or environment? Instead of tier 1? Once you understand what they mean, you understand that "spelling them out" would be very complicated when the idea you want to get across can be written out in a single word.

If you don't understand a word, feel free to ask, but the lingo isn't going to miraculously change for this one game.

Personally, I think that's pretty limiting and short-sighted on all accounts. I also definitely can't agree that they're "common across every game." That's not at all true. Some concepts are the same but there are plenty of unique terms in other games. The mindset that "well, everyone should use these terms from Magic because it was first" - not to pick on Magic but it seems to have generated its fair share of confusing terminology - or that "everyone here who is playing a new, entirely different game should expect to have to use previous terms developed from an entirely different game" are both patently unrealistic and somewhat silly.

Perhaps an example will help. If you played Softball (which is a sport some folks enjoy) but then decided to join a Flag Football team (another sport), would you expect the Flag Football team to start using terms like "leaving runners on the bases" or "he struck out looking" rather than that particular game's own vernacular just because YOU came from a Softball background? You wouldn't. Yet there are people who have shown up to this new game's forum with expectations that we should all blithely start using the terms from their previously favorite game without question. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

If you feel that the example above is unfair since the two sports are (admittedly) quite different (akin to using terms from videogaming to discuss CCG gaming and thus not at all similar, really, for purposes of my point) we can use the example of playing with one Softball team from the deep South compared to one in the Bronx. Slang terms that you and your softball buddies might have used just won't be as funny, as applicable, or accurate with your new Northern team as they may have been with your good ol' Southern buddies. Same concept.

I'm not (and I doubt anyone is) expecting the entire fan-base of previous CCG players - which is probably most of us here - to stop using the most commonly understood terms (some things sound like exactly what they are OR can be reasoned out and those are terms I'm fine with). I find some of those terms (and this is just speaking for myself, of course) either pretentious or annoyingly clique-y but that's my issue, certainly. The problem is, however, that there is even variance and weirdness between people from the same previous games (like M:TG players, for one example) so that it's hard to know what the hell they're even saying half the time but "****! Doesn't it make them sound knowledgeable or hip?" ::: rolling eyes ::: That's my issue here. If you suspect that someone may not be familiar with a term and you don't explain it, be prepared for some of us (maybe just me, maybe others) to ask you to explain it and then you're having to waste a bit of time you wouldn't have needed to waste since you chose to use an unfamiliar slang term.

Wytefang said:

I haven't played Magic in over 15 years. When I did play, it wasn't for very long. Maybe a year. I didn't play it long enough to know any of the terms really. But, I know what the term 'bounce' means. I know what the term 'tier' means. These are not hard words to figure out in association with this game. Quit making a big deal out of what terms people want to use. If it has been discussed ad nauseum...it is because you can't help but comment every time someone uses a term that YOU feel shouldn't be used. Quit trying to control how people describe their game.

My issue centers around two things...

1) Some of them are just dumb sounding and have no easily discernible meaning and could easily be replaced with another term that is a regular part of the English language and therefor no explanation needed, or a slang term that is just easier to parse. Take "fatty" for example. After much reading I gathered this was being used to describe a large powerful unit... but that term makes no logical sense. I thought fatty was being used to describe an expensive but worthless unit (big cost low strength as a fat person would be big in girth but with limited athletic ability). Bruiser, Tough, Tank, Heavyweight would all be easier to understand and far more accurately descriptive.

2) They can (not necessarily do) foster a certain mentality which is not particularly useful and potentially a harmful to paradigm shifts. Tier 1 is not too difficult to understand, we know what a tier is, and other than some slight confusion about whether 1 is the low or high number, most people should be able to figure it out even if they have never played a CCG before. But it creates a hard and fast line between a decks worthiness, and as I said often does so based on the current known metagame, rather than on the efficiencies of the deck itself. This means what is considered Tier 1 at any given time is not necessarily the best decks, just the ones that had the best results from the last set of tournaments. It crystallizes thinking, structuring it, and not always in the most beneficial manner.

I'm fine with people using terms that are meaningful to them, I just hope they remember they may not be to all of us, and where lingo, jargon, and slang can be set aside to use a more easily understood term, that it can help all of us, especially on a forum like this with a lot of non-native speakers of English, and those who do speak English that is, shall we say, MORE English than American.