That's EXACTLY what happened with Dwarves and BT decks at GenCon. Everyone feared Dwarves a bunch so they just ended up playing them.

BigV said:

Now I'm not a total statisitcal genius but just within the terms of what you presented your sample is skewed from the start. And not an attack you either there V. If the question is "Is Judgement/Haunted City Empire too powerful of a deck type?" then you have set aside the top 6 empire players as a control and then find decks AND players who can compete with them and then redo the scenario over and over plotting the results. You can't get the answer to a question that is both yes and no depending on where you are at in the world by judging the results of just one tournament. Not to say there aren't other results out there. Just saying lets be civil about this and learn what makes the deck so good. Within that one learns how to defeat without changing one's own deck into just a kill verena deck.

Pretty soon I'll be able to get out and play some games again (waiting on a baby to be born, my first). and then I can add more than just my two cents. But really it'll take some more vocal folks to hammer out some solutions to verena much like we hammered them out for BT, skaven, and reclaim the fallen and post it with support. People learn from observation more than lecture and doing that via forums is a bit difficult so perhaps we should work on this while continuing the discussion and reconvene at a later time this month with our results?

My empire aggro control beated Verena the last times I played against her, could be due to a error in the Verena list. Can you post the winning from the tournament?

Personally, I think moving deck sizes up to 60 would help just as much. Very easy to hit your combos in 50, especially with a full mulligan and no draw cap.

That would knock down discard decks I guess, but a small price to pay for the fact that the metagame has been dominated by one deck pretty consistently since the game came out. Is part of that people playing it becuase it is supposed to be good? Probably. But most of it is real. Dwarves were the best build (other than maybe Repeater decks), and there were plenty of other decks that could have gotten into the Top 8 if they were stronger than Dwarves or Bolt.

I think this is a very elegant way to control the meta-game without using a sledgehammer.

I concur with your ideas, Rings. I've always loved the idea of bumping up the deck sizes. It's an elegant solution AND it makes the game last a bit longer but not TOO long (something that I suspect the developers would like to see).

Wytefang said:

Higher card count decks are coming but at the momment there's just not enough cards duplicating effects for enough different card combos to be viable for everything. Corruption and banish effects we have a plenty but control cards like support & developement destruction are still expensive cash wise to come by unless you bought 3 core sets and kept that up. In a game where you can only have 3 of a card in a deck you don't want to bury your combo when these games use the advantage of getting your combo out first and pressing that advantage.

60 card decks with a 3 of limit is my favorite format that I have played.

The 60 card 4 of format that MTG uses leads to more uniform decks that I like to see and really the 50 card 3 of format is nearly identical. The 75 card 4 of format that The Spoils uses works well, but a 75 card deck in sleeves is pretty unwieldy. The 60 card 3 of format that they have in AGOT seems to work very well to me.

TL

Harliquine said:

Greetings for that, at first!! That's an important thing!

Anyway, the BigV statements aren't about a single tournament...but about our "ENTIRE" national league (started in October)...30 and more tournaments and Verena is always there...

I can't post decklists (players denied me the possibility to do that and as organized play coordinator I can't do anything against them or I'm...DEAD )...

But trust me...This year I didn't take part to the league just to dedicate myself to the "management" part and people often send me lists and talk with me in "private" about what's going on during playtestings in several metas...Everyone is hatin' Verena, even Emprie players (some of 'em, like me, are lookin' for the cure more than an improve for it )...

It's beatable...But not in the long run. Controls, destroys, moves stuff, locks...

I've to say...The lists I've seen (the winning ones) are pretty good and full of "weird" choices...But that's the way of the competition!

Now with the (great) restricted list mechanic, the best player is the one who refills better than others the 9 empty slots...And that's what the whole big tournament was all about...Great choices for mirror matches...

I'm not sayin' anything about our general meta (even if I recognise is one of the strongest I've ever seen and I'm not talkin' for "nationalist spirit", I hate Italians in general ...nor I'm talkin' about me (I didn't even played this season)...I'm talkin' about what I see around the world (by forums, regionals, tournaments)...

The Verena decks I tried "for fun" (building THEIR lists just to figure out how they worked) destroyed everything. That's what we're talkin' about...Not philosophy...

not archetypes or themes. There's a list that wins almost any tournament.

Something similar happened two years ago in CoC...There were a couple of american metas where used to play wonderful players...A couple of them started to say "we tested 2 different combo decks...They're unbeatable."

Everyone laughed at them sayin' "naaah, those colours are not "that" powerful"...

Guess who won worlds?

The new Restricted list will (sadly for Empire fans) put a good solid hurtin' on the Verena deck, no doubt. They can only have ONE of the following key cards:

1. Wilhelm

2. Mining Tunnels

3. Innovation

4. Warpstone Excavation

I don't care how "good" any deck is, but having to only include ONE of those cards is going to nerf that deck something fierce. And the Dwarves took about as tough of a beating, too, imho, from the Restricted List. Yikes!

Wytefang said:

In the end, as we well know, things are "ever-changin'" in LCGs, but sometimes changes take quite a bit to become "active"...

The game is obviously "slowin' down" and I like the idea...Legends, fat guys of the previews...Everything is coming "back to basics" and still evolving...

I can't wait seein' some big guys in actions and lookin' forward for longer games...

'cause...

...when the game gets longer, control gets stronger.

The Empire deck gets worse after the restrictions, no doubt - but deck strength in a vacuum doesn't mean anything, it's only relevant as a relative measure to the other decks in the metagame.

Dwarves are hurt the most IMHO since Mining Tunnels and Reclaiming the Fallen were the best cards in their deck. Destruction decks generally get hurt quite a bit too because without Warpstone they are lacking good supports.

Empire has a bunch of decent supports, notably Derricksburg Forge and Hidden Grove. Also, they didn't lose anything really critical (Wilhelm is good but, I think, overrated) so they come out ahead overall comparatively.

Each opinion that will follow is based on the direct game experience of the italian national league matches.The reality is that after the release of the Restricted List, the deck-Verena Empire has lost the only real opponent in a position to intimidate, the Dwarves.The difference is that the Empire, with the release of the new Quest + Willy + Hidden Groove, remain unchallenged, if possible, even more.

Instead of reducing the potential of the Empire decks, Limitations have greatly reduced the potential of the main antagonist and resized (but only a little) the imperial domination.The destruction is still light years away.

JMHO

Mordechai said:

+1

For me, banning or restricting cards is not the best solution. To balance a format you just have to bring new cards that counter/update previous meta. By this way it's less frustrating [for players and deckbuilders] than having cards not allowed to play (due to a ban or a restriction). For sample, why not giving a counter to the destruction side with a cost like "sacrifice a unit in X zone", "discard a card of the same type", "taking X damage on your capital", ... By this way, all great cards like Verena or Recclaiming will not be a problem. Giving balanced [and powerfull] card to all faction [with their nemesis or solution] is the solution to a good format !!!

That brings severe power creep, when you try to counter powerful cards (either that sounded like a good idea at the time, or just become powerful with shifting meta) by releasing more powerful cards. Not only that way lies madness, you turn many existing cards useless, sub-optimal, or both. Sometimes it's just more elegant to scrap an ill-advised concept and start from scratch.

You don't need to have overpowered card to counter current ones. For sample a neutral counterspell (with a drawback like a sacrifice or capital damage) accessible to destruction could solve the problem and encourage to build more destruction deck.

Banning or restrecting cards do not solve anything but shifting the meta to another big one...

TheVagabond said:

The problem with this is that you end up with a bad meta for a very long time. With the design/production cycle times that they have, they can't just release a card in the next BP to fix a current problem. Stuff being designed now won't be released for 6+ months, and you can't really anticipate what the problem cards/combos will be 5 months from now. If you only try to "fix" the meta by adding cards, you may end up with many many months where nothing is released that fixes the problem.

I think what they did was a great solution. Soul Stealer is still a bit of a head scratcher. But, I hated feeling like I was being forced to play with certain cards because everyone else did and that if I didn't, I didn't have a competitive deck. This was a great fix.

Doc9 said:

Some argue that the exclusion of Verena was a head scratcher. I think the creation of the list was a good idea. It's just shy of being perfect.

I think the deck of Verena is not the main problem with the imperial deck. Right now you can make an imperial deck your opponent keeps drawing one card per turn almost the entire game. And so it did not win because you have no cards in hand to make your game. In fact you can build this deck sla smoothly only with Wilhem, so the list above has not affected practically nothing

Doc9 said:

I don't think Soul Stealer was really a problem card before, but I think it might have become one with decks generally not putting as much on the table on turn one. It's a pretty swingy, random card since it is so much better if you go first. And DE really wants to play Innovation since it has so many tricks for opponents' turns, so I think it was probably a good idea to make them choose. It was clearly a no-brainer card for DE decks since Slave Pens meant it was always *at least* a generic removal card.

In my opinion alot of the current balance issues in the game could be solved by the introduction of more tactic mitigating abilities, especially for the detro side. As it stands I don't think players face enough uncertainty when playing tactics, or bulding tactic heavy decks.

....as opposed to playing expensive units, which is just asking for trouble. I'd also like to see the availability of some unit immunity options (with appropriate costs) such that if you play an expensive unit, you can go to some length to ensure he doesnt get sniped by a cheap action/tactic the next turn.

rzarectz said:

It's what I try to say. In the previous restricted list meta, dwarves and empire were the top tier deck because they could response to any big treat (with demolition, specific runes, verena, ...). By adding specific destruction tactics like magic counterspell I think you can solve the problem by giving a chance to the destruction side to counter all big treats.

With the restricted list you have just frustrated the dwarf players. Empire still the best deck. If in each cycle you have a dominated deck and you restrict cards to solve the problem you will finish by restricting all cards. It's absurd. What I like in a card game is to play the cards I bought. I dislike having cards and not able to play them (like in all card game with the block system). It's like spending your money for nothing. In my location many players will stop playing thinking that this game start to come as the other CCG : you buy, you buy and at the end you have cards that you can't play !!!!

You can still play all of the cards at this point. What I do like about the way they have done the restrictions in this game is that you can still play three of any card that you want.

Yeah, it was a really good solution. Now nobody can play the "I have useless cards sitting in my box that I can't ever play" card. Well, except for the extra base set and first cycle "commons." It especially makes sense because Innovation and Warpstone Excavation would have been really bad as singletons.