Chappie

not surprised that they are refusing to do balance changes right before the mini-expansion comes out. At least the problems in the meta this time are far smaller then in dawnbreak.

Leave shadow alone until it is actual cancer pls. I dont want a repeat of pre-nerfs! As for the other classes..... I would hit elf song or brambles for forest I agree on the silva nerf Swords dragon knights can burn in hell And blood could probably do with a buff. I agree on the reach of the archedemon buff but not the vira one. I think that is fine as an evo instead I would buff that piece of trash legend they are pushing right now to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING THAT JUSTIFIES LOSING 3 MANA NEXT TURN. A 2 damage AOE and rush could be good abilities for it. Gives you a strong play but weakens your following turn to compensate.

And here I am having not faced a single lion deck since the last batch of nerfs. Puppets, midsword and aggro forest though? ALL THE TIME. Like, out of 10 games I see maybe 1 craft that isnt one of these 3 and when I do its typically heaven.

Made it to finals and lost game 1 because I bumped into burn rune and bricked. How is it Rune continues to be the bane of my existence in every GP even in formats where its not even competitive? It has c-blocked my finals run in almost every GP (only 1 of the dawnbreaks and the take 2 ones are the exception) I have done! The craft must hate me as much as I hate it.....

The thing is, while all of those are evo targets they are all also not vanilla without an evo. Its not like in heaven where running lion+papa banish can get annoying with a bad curve. And yeah, the synergy with lady gray is gross and I love it.

Easy, 3 of shadows gold and legendary because they are amazing and have me excited to play shadow for once. 3 of the portal gold because its gross in puppets 3 of the heaven gold because its pretty good in summit and probably going to meme with heavens NepNep because its as close to getting my fav card back in rotation as I am probably going to get. passing on everything else.

whats this? A good legendary that isnt an over restricted/overbalanced piece of garbage? Color me shocked.

Hmmm the gunner girl is ok when going second but insane going first where you can keep the opponents board clean with first strike. Cygames I thought we were supposed to be fixing this major issue in the meta....

Lack of strong evo effects was only ever a fraction of why going first was so important in this game. So not much changed even after getting good evo effects because of the following.... 1. removal keeps getting weaker overall. 3 damage 2pp spells keep rotating out and our replacement for 2pp removal is limited to 2pp or lower cards prior to its 6pp enhance. This flows into another issue... 2. Pressure cards are now easier to keep alive. Things like mars LOVE that 3 damage removal keep rotating out. Sure there are still some cards like scripture that can tag em but the fact that its less common matters. 3. Wards are stronger. This actually helps going first rather then second because you can protect your smaller aggressive weenies and pressure cards (and the wards are tankier with the weaker removal in the format) 4. Strong win conditions that are hard to answer. Puppet players going first have BOMBS that go off at 8pp and 9pp and it can be hard just surviving 1 of them when they get to go first. Meanwhile going first yourself they are on the defensive because you got to play your BOMB first since you hit 8pp before them. 5. Lack of comeback mechanics. That 6pp evo guy that banishes the board sounds like a good comeback card and it can be but its in the wrong craft and everyone else lacks something with a similar effect. Even then, the person going first gets access to it first and can use it to secure the board and keep pushing damage so this is obviously not an easy issue to solve. On a positive note, the standard format is reasonably diverse with 4 competitive classes and 2 decent ones. Only shadow and blood suck but maybe the mini expansion can help with that.

Is that an insect dragon? That thing is awesome! After all this time I have some slight urge to play forest..... Of course I cant stand the craft outside of that (brambles makes me rage so much) so I might not follow through with this urge.

Group A gives you orb shards to make something you like animated. So there is that I suppose....

Right now matches do come down to luck in rotation. Its not just portal with free rush everywhere, just about all the crafts except dragon (cares more about a good curve of ramp) and blood (has too much crap locked behind evos) have so much tempo that you cannot really answer if they go first with even an average hand (so you need to pray they brick while you draw really well). Basically all crafts have a 60+% winrate going first (yes it has gotten that bad) So there are rarely any "back and fourth" games and its usually a blatant curbstomp if you lose the coinflip. The closest game I had in awhile was going first and bricking while my opponent got an insane curve and even then they only barely beat me due to topdecking dragon knights 3 turns in a row. That is how much luck you need to win going second these days. Best classes right now are sword, forest, portal and heaven. Dragon and rune are in the middle, shadow and blood are awful overall. Funnily enough, a mini-expansion is kind of what we need unlike last meta where we desperately needed nerfs. The issues that plague the game right now can only be fixed with strong cards that reward going second or can act as comeback cards to reclaim the board. THe only alternative is mass nerfs across multiple crafts to fix this fist/second issue.

terrible rewards but no reason not to participate I guess. All I have to do is go first 4 times. I am sure I can manage that easily enough.

I am hoping for another legendary amulet like seraph. Its silly to me that the class that specializes in amulets only has a single amulet legend. Actually.... can we just reprint seraph please? I loved that card and I cant stand unlimited because of dshift......

Petra seems pretty cool in rotation since even a vanilla 1/2 1 drop like gobby is very strong in the format. This is a gobby with an upside that can protect pressure cards like dark hind which can be potentially game winning by itself. Thunder behmoth seems like a card they were super cautious with. They want to experiment with "overload" and keep things super tame before trying to get more exciting with it down the line.