i remember back in cotc days, the first 5 turns determined whether you win. who went first was the big obstacle but if they didnt have the optimum plays, they lost. games went quick, maybe lasting 8 minutes. if they went longer, people complained. at the time, being the first mobile card game and most of the player based liked to play it on the bus or train to and from work, play it on their lunch break and they wanted to be able to play 3 or 4 or more games in that short span of time. having a game take 20-30 was awful. as you could only play one and it put you in a bad mood. first turn advantage needed to be dealt with by the game maker. the best he could do at the time was the -1 card draw at the start and no shadow energy at the start. wasnt that good then but it was all that could be done with the amount of cards we had.
death racing was a big term and it was basically how the whole game was played. many articles were written about this. as well as how to disrupt the player going first. not as many because there wasnt much you could do but hope they didnt have the optimal start (which was fairly easy to do actually, have the optimal start). humans dominated because puwen, jasmine, aldon was just too powerful a start. for shadow, pretty much only logan and darkclaw could compete against humans and of humans, eladwen dominated. those early plays plus her ability, she was a goddess.
what happened to them? puwen, jasmine and aldon, nothing did, they remained the dominate early plays for human for a long time and shadow struggled. logan, darkclaw and eladwen were nerfed/changed. pretty much only eladwen survived those changes. she couldnt hit the hero anymore, just allies. not a bad change, but it slowed her down a bit. solo darkclaw, pretty much died. you might think that was a good thing with all the stall hate, but he was actually really fast. it didnt take him long to kill you, he did it around turns 7 or 8.
as the years progressed, new cards came, changes to the game happened. and slowly, very slowly, longer games took the place of fast games. midrange and control took over from aggro/rush. new cards and nerfs had a huge effect on those early turns of the game. making midrange and control, stall and mill more possible. making larger decks more and more viable. consistency of a 40 card deck became less and less of a dominate power. with rush dying off and cards that helped you survive those first few turns being made, nerfs to early advantage cards happening, this is where the game has moved to and keeps moving to.
the all powerful puwen/jasmine/aldon, which had no changes made to them, is no more. very few play puwen and no one plays jasmine. aldon is still around but he helps later game more than early game like he used too.
so here we are now. early game isnt as important or strong as it was. not saying there are not some great early games. those that do well in the early game can dominate, until they get nerfed. but the overall power of the early game across all heroes is in a weakened state. and that means three things happen. one: a deck that has a super early game (sosilo, homun, etc) can over dominate. two: larger decks can do well. three: stall decks can take over.
the game has changed, it has evolved and i dont see that as too much of a problem. i dont even see how the current game is much of a problem.
i do see one problem, which continues to lead the game down its current path. thats nerfing what becomes good. rush decks took major hits, mage rush and other ally rush. very rare to see either anymore. which is one of the things done to the early game. twilight took advantage of a weakened early game and dominated. where is it now? templar had some fun but took some nerfs. sosilo dominated, took some hits, still does some dominating, hard to nerf something when you are nerfing the wrong things. but still, its taking advantage of the weaken early game. more things dominated and were nerfed, usually because one person did extremely well with a deck, people copied it and did not do too bad, other people complained, devs looked at it, saw it was popular now, nerfs came. rinse and repeat.
baduruu took several hits. and they were really the wrong things to nerf. why? because baduruu himself is just set up to be a really good early hero. unless his bows are nerfed, he is going to stay that way. nerfing the deck he currently does well with, doesnt change that, just kills cards. the decks he used were just well tuned and worked together. he has gone through a lot of deck types, currently, unless i am wrong, its undead baduruu. and i hear complaints about undead.
so here we are. with a meta where stall decks are pretty good. decks that can make allies huge in the early turns dominate. more than 40 card decks are probably better since the early turns are weaker and the consistency of a 40 card decks doesnt matter as much. and that leads us to lay low lance. who pretty much takes advantage of all three of those things.
ive been here 3 times, with fairly large breaks in-between. maybe thats why i can see this. maybe i am full of crap. what i see, as the years have went by, is a change from faster games to slower ones. decks that won by taking advantage of the early turns are nerfed away. decks that one person does really well with, get copied and over played and then are nerfed. pretty much anything that helps early turn advantage after DP gets nerfed.
the first 5 turns are still important, not as much, but still is, but the importance of it has changed. its no longer about dealing early damage or having board control. its changed to setting up a longer game. i think that is an inadvertent change, with the devs thinking something dominant or just popular needs to be fixed. which has slowly removed most of the advantage of early board dominance. so much so, that the only ones that can do it are decks that can generate a 10/10 ally by turn 4 or 5.
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