I've been trying out a new E/G Gravelock deck (it's pretty raw; I don't think I have any decent Energy rares except the three Gravelock Elders and two Violent Dispersals), and I'm finding that I cannot beat mono Growth. Or come even remotely close. I lose board control early and then it's just totally over; I can't draw cards fast enough to recover. Does anybody have any suggestions for what cards to shoot for to prevent this? I'm starting to suspect that the matchup might be flatly unwinnable without Thunder Surge, which I have none of. And possibly also Potion of Resistance, which I also don't have.
I've been trying out a new E/G Gravelock deck (it's pretty raw; I don't think I have any decent Energy rares except the three Gravelock Elders and two Violent Dispersals), and I'm finding that I cannot beat mono Growth. Or come even remotely close. I lose board control early and then it's just totally over; I can't draw cards fast enough to recover. Does anybody have any suggestions for what cards to shoot for to prevent this? I'm starting to suspect that the matchup might be flatly unwinnable without Thunder Surge, which I have none of. And possibly also Potion of Resistance, which I also don't have.
Can we see your decklist?
What I've seen so far is that duochrome decks will only work if you're splashing into 3 cost cards at the most for your off-color. So you can splash green for Eye of the Eagle, Ragged Wolf, Sister of the Fox, Crimson Bull, Kinfolk Brave and possibly Vaettyr.
Also, just as a general playing tip, make sure you're always turning a card into resources until you hit 7 or 8 resources, and never let your opponent get more than 2 resources ahead of you. It's basically like droning in Starcraft.
Here's what I have so far. Some of this is admittedly either filler or experimental stuff that I probably won't keep in the long term. I just don't know what the most blatant gaps are yet.
Nutrition plus a couple of structures is something that I thought might be cool but has yet to pay off. Two more Iron Whips is the cheapest step I can take at the moment (I'm kind of digging the various things you can do with some combination of Iron Whip, Desperation, Bear Paw, and Relentless creatures).
So, do we know what determines the "Victory" portion of your end-match score? Because I went from getting decent gold from the AI last night, to now getting shit today, even though I went up to Medium, and it seems to be tied to my "Victory" score being half of what it was last night. Despite the fact one of the matches was a near shutout.
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The more I play against Energy, the more I feel like it's not even worth attempting to run an Energy deck without at least two Potions of Resistance. It's like the best card in the game. All but completely shutting down Growth for three rounds for one mana? No wonder my Gravelock deck is totally nonfunctional.
There's really nothing more discouraging that finding out you basically can't play a deck until you get three copies of a no doubt very expensive card. Especially when there are also a bunch more that you should probably have on top of it.
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
I'm starting to come to the realization that the way resources work in Scrolls really hamstrings deck variety. Splashing colors is stupidly hard, and guarantees tempo loss against mono decks. i think costs should have a colorless component, and a few multicolor scrolls in the future would be very nice.
I wonder if having the Memorials immediately increase the alternate energy (as in, what happens when you sacrifice for mana) rather than simply increasing the max wouldn't help to alleviate this.
I won my last two matches! In both I locked down the middle area with Tool Initiate buffed Destroyers, it was a killing field that had to be avoided. It's hard to seal the deal though, with the Destroyers taking up space. Maybe Golem Skin would help after the Destroyers serve their purpose. I could use more Machine Priests too.
The more I play against Energy, the more I feel like it's not even worth attempting to run an Energy deck without at least two Potions of Resistance. It's like the best card in the game. All but completely shutting down Growth for three rounds for one mana? No wonder my Gravelock deck is totally nonfunctional.
There's really nothing more discouraging that finding out you basically can't play a deck until you get three copies of a no doubt very expensive card. Especially when there are also a bunch more that you should probably have on top of it.
You can use Plating as a ghetto replacement for Potions of Resistance until you build-up the gold to get the real deal. They're not that expensive - about 450 ea. That's 2 games against a Hard AI, or 3-4 against a Medium AI.
So, do we know what determines the "Victory" portion of your end-match score? Because I went from getting decent gold from the AI last night, to now getting shit today, even though I went up to Medium, and it seems to be tied to my "Victory" score being half of what it was last night. Despite the fact one of the matches was a near shutout.
From what I can gather, it is bother players point totals added-up. So if you completely crush the AI, and therefore it doesn't draw any cards or do any damage, you'll get less points (but the tradeoff is that the match should be much shorter).
I haven't even seen a potion of resistance yet and I've played... a lot of games! I definitely don't think it is necessary. I would probably run it if I got one... but I use plating to delay big guys until I can position something to nuke them, and blocking all damage once indefinitely is harder to get around than lowering damage to one for three rounds. Most growth players will just choose to go around the enchanted unit until it is no longer an issue I would expect.
I haven't even seen a potion of resistance yet and I've played... a lot of games! I definitely don't think it is necessary. I would probably run it if I got one... but I use plating to delay big guys until I can position something to nuke them, and blocking all damage once indefinitely is harder to get around than lowering damage to one for three rounds. Most growth players will just choose to go around the enchanted unit until it is no longer an issue I would expect.
Here's the difference:
I play Cannon Automaton and enchant it with Potion of Resistance. For 3 rounds, you have to basically ignore it (and everything behind it), because you'd need to hit it four times for at least 2 points of damage a piece (depending on the damage source) to take it off the board.
I play Cannon Automaton and enchant it with Plating. Hit it with one Ragged Wolf and the plating is gone, and I can freely chew through it with Great Wolf or whatever.
Potions of Resistance create huge problems for Growth, especially when sitting on stuff like Gravelock Elder, Hellspitter Mortar or Iron Ogre. For 3 rounds, the enchanted units are basically invincible - and you can only really attack around them if the other player is not contesting the board center.
A few wins over the weekend (and this morning) make me think that I might stick to Quick Play for a bit. I'm sure it's just small sample size bias, but Ranked seems to be less kind to me, despite the games taking just as long. It's like, I don't quite have a winning deck. But I can sure make losing take a while!
Also note my spare scrolls for trade / sale in my sig.
Managed to complete this decklist tonight. It's pretty fun, but probably outright inferior to just straight-up Mono-Growth.
I see your running only 2x of one memorial, I assume your trying to use two to avoid the need to sac for energy as much as possible but you'd still in worst case gonna have to cycle your whole deck once to have the energy to use 24% of your deck. You could put 3x of both memorials to increase your resource ramp which allows for some better combo's.
Now I'd like to ask why your using gun automaton, and iron whip. Gun automaton only brings ranged attack which obviously helps deal with growths hatred of spiky units but with only 3 in the deck it's not gonna make a big difference (Especially given they have only 2 attack and 3 hp). Iron whip doesn't seem as dicey to me but growths main strength is cooldown reduction and one of it's weaknesses is low health so while I could understand it in a pinch I feel like the slot could be better utilised.
Now some cards your missing the first is the massively good growth rares (godhand, Quake, Fertile Soil and kinfolk brave). Obviously godhand outside of monogrowth is just too expensive. Quake is up there as well but I could potentially see it thou ruling it out due to cost is fair. Fertile soil however would increase your card draw by ridiculous proportions (you only have sister currently for draw) and could even be used on things like copper automatons if the enemy shut them down but didn't kill them.
On the Energy side it's easier to say what i'd consider are potion of resistance, plating, magma pack, overdrive (all cost 1 or 2). potion helps to sure up your relatively squishie creatures for a few turns. Plating does the same but as your critters are generally low hp plating may work better (in energy you almost always want potion, but plating might work better for growth). mamga pack and overdrive are both just a little extra control to work on negating the the lack of quake. mamga pack has the added benefit of potentially winning you the game (or at least putting you in a good position). Overdrive helps negate the more annoying Structures by having them time themselves out while your not overly worried (Waking stones make the best targets as do most structures that are hidden away).
A few wins over the weekend (and this morning) make me think that I might stick to Quick Play for a bit. I'm sure it's just small sample size bias, but Ranked seems to be less kind to me, despite the games taking just as long. It's like, I don't quite have a winning deck. But I can sure make losing take a while!
Also note my spare scrolls for trade / sale in my sig.
I'm not sure if quickmatch takes into account your skill rating like ranked does. It might just be straight up throw any two random people in a match which when coupled with the fact it's normally used to test new decks or just as a generally less competitive mode it's easy to see why it'd be easier
Yeah, I may have squandered my money a bit, buying the Growth pre-con and getting unlucky with boosters. Now I have to collect 3x Quake, 2x Kinfolk Brave, and 2x Fertile Soil to close in on a competitive growth deck. And that's another 7k or so.
One of my weekly cards is a potion of resistance. If you want to pay the 1000 gold it would take me to buy it, I'm happy to get it for ya. I also have 2 memorials to buy, each for 100 gold (Law and Stone Pact) if someone needs.
The more I play against Energy, the more I feel like it's not even worth attempting to run an Energy deck without at least two Potions of Resistance. It's like the best card in the game. All but completely shutting down Growth for three rounds for one mana? No wonder my Gravelock deck is totally nonfunctional.
There's really nothing more discouraging that finding out you basically can't play a deck until you get three copies of a no doubt very expensive card. Especially when there are also a bunch more that you should probably have on top of it.
You can use Plating as a ghetto replacement for Potions of Resistance until you build-up the gold to get the real deal. They're not that expensive - about 450 ea. That's 2 games against a Hard AI, or 3-4 against a Medium AI.
Yeah, I thought I could get away with using Plating too. It doesn't work. At all. There are a million and a half ways around it. You need the real deal. It's true that the potions are cheaper than I thought, though. I assumed that they'd cost a fortune since there's absolutely no reason not to put them in every single deck with energy in it, but I guess it's just not glamorous enough for people to appreciate it.
Also, re: your G/E deck: you aren't getting nearly enough out of your energy to make it worthwhile. Gun Automatons are efficient, but the nature of these sorts of decks is that you still want to rush to 5 or so in your primary element ASAP for Great Wolves or whatever your lynchpin is. So you aren't getting turn 2 Gun Automatons, you're getting like turn 6 or 7 Gun Automatons. Copper Automatons and Iron Whip are great on paper but probably not worth the lost combo opportunities from not having more Growth by themselves. You probably want more cheap buffs and fewer creatures.
I'm trying to crack the G/E nut myself, but it's still a work in progress. My current infatuation is with taking Gravelock Raiders, Gravehawks, and Great Wolves along with Desperation (which nobody uses). Surprise +6 Relentless creatures everywhere, on top of other generically good Energy spells and buffs. The Raiders probably aren't worth the slot, though. The current incarnation of the deck is already bloated and I had to take out Mangy Wolves, which I'll probably live to regret even with Iron Whip taking up the slack.
I'm getting really goddamn annoyed at how a game can be decided by your starting hands and there's fuckall you can do about it. Really needs a balance pass.
Yeah, the game is in dire need of a mulligan option. It's very, very easy to go four turns without seeing even a single creature that costs less than 4 resources. You can't even say it's a matter of poor deck construction; you can take literally every card that's worth a damn in the early game and still have it happen because you might only have three or four viable creatures available to begin with.
Yep, drawing both my Cannon Automatons, two Tick Bombs, a Bombard and a Burn or Incendiaries or Concentrate Fire as my opening hand is always "fun".
Of course, then the other half of the time I draw all direct damage and nearly force my opponent to rage quit as I kill everything they put out, one by one, so yeah, randomness needs a balance and a mulligan would work nicely.
ok some of these damn trials are stupid hard...death from above? how the hell do you beat that crap
You ain't seen nothing yet. The Hard trials are bullshit, and imho need a total redesign.
I'm getting really goddamn annoyed at how a game can be decided by your starting hands and there's fuckall you can do about it. Really needs a balance pass.
^ So much ^
The game also really suffers, in my opinion, from a lack of reactive mechanics. Sometimes the other guy just drops 3 thunder surges in a row, and you more or less just have to scoop at that point. It makes the game feel a lot more coin-tossey than I like in a CCG.
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Can we see your decklist?
What I've seen so far is that duochrome decks will only work if you're splashing into 3 cost cards at the most for your off-color. So you can splash green for Eye of the Eagle, Ragged Wolf, Sister of the Fox, Crimson Bull, Kinfolk Brave and possibly Vaettyr.
Also, just as a general playing tip, make sure you're always turning a card into resources until you hit 7 or 8 resources, and never let your opponent get more than 2 resources ahead of you. It's basically like droning in Starcraft.
Nutrition plus a couple of structures is something that I thought might be cool but has yet to pay off. Two more Iron Whips is the cheapest step I can take at the moment (I'm kind of digging the various things you can do with some combination of Iron Whip, Desperation, Bear Paw, and Relentless creatures).
I got a Fertile Soil, a Quake, and a Fertile Soil.
score
I'll trade you one for a kinfolk brave?
There's really nothing more discouraging that finding out you basically can't play a deck until you get three copies of a no doubt very expensive card. Especially when there are also a bunch more that you should probably have on top of it.
I wonder if having the Memorials immediately increase the alternate energy (as in, what happens when you sacrifice for mana) rather than simply increasing the max wouldn't help to alleviate this.
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[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
You can use Plating as a ghetto replacement for Potions of Resistance until you build-up the gold to get the real deal. They're not that expensive - about 450 ea. That's 2 games against a Hard AI, or 3-4 against a Medium AI.
From what I can gather, it is bother players point totals added-up. So if you completely crush the AI, and therefore it doesn't draw any cards or do any damage, you'll get less points (but the tradeoff is that the match should be much shorter).
I'll try to confirm this in a few.
EDIT:
Hm, nope.
I have no idea how the score is calculated.
Managed to complete this decklist tonight. It's pretty fun, but probably outright inferior to just straight-up Mono-Growth.
Here's the difference:
I play Cannon Automaton and enchant it with Potion of Resistance. For 3 rounds, you have to basically ignore it (and everything behind it), because you'd need to hit it four times for at least 2 points of damage a piece (depending on the damage source) to take it off the board.
I play Cannon Automaton and enchant it with Plating. Hit it with one Ragged Wolf and the plating is gone, and I can freely chew through it with Great Wolf or whatever.
Potions of Resistance create huge problems for Growth, especially when sitting on stuff like Gravelock Elder, Hellspitter Mortar or Iron Ogre. For 3 rounds, the enchanted units are basically invincible - and you can only really attack around them if the other player is not contesting the board center.
Also note my spare scrolls for trade / sale in my sig.
I see your running only 2x of one memorial, I assume your trying to use two to avoid the need to sac for energy as much as possible but you'd still in worst case gonna have to cycle your whole deck once to have the energy to use 24% of your deck. You could put 3x of both memorials to increase your resource ramp which allows for some better combo's.
Now I'd like to ask why your using gun automaton, and iron whip. Gun automaton only brings ranged attack which obviously helps deal with growths hatred of spiky units but with only 3 in the deck it's not gonna make a big difference (Especially given they have only 2 attack and 3 hp). Iron whip doesn't seem as dicey to me but growths main strength is cooldown reduction and one of it's weaknesses is low health so while I could understand it in a pinch I feel like the slot could be better utilised.
Now some cards your missing the first is the massively good growth rares (godhand, Quake, Fertile Soil and kinfolk brave). Obviously godhand outside of monogrowth is just too expensive. Quake is up there as well but I could potentially see it thou ruling it out due to cost is fair. Fertile soil however would increase your card draw by ridiculous proportions (you only have sister currently for draw) and could even be used on things like copper automatons if the enemy shut them down but didn't kill them.
On the Energy side it's easier to say what i'd consider are potion of resistance, plating, magma pack, overdrive (all cost 1 or 2). potion helps to sure up your relatively squishie creatures for a few turns. Plating does the same but as your critters are generally low hp plating may work better (in energy you almost always want potion, but plating might work better for growth). mamga pack and overdrive are both just a little extra control to work on negating the the lack of quake. mamga pack has the added benefit of potentially winning you the game (or at least putting you in a good position). Overdrive helps negate the more annoying Structures by having them time themselves out while your not overly worried (Waking stones make the best targets as do most structures that are hidden away).
I'm not sure if quickmatch takes into account your skill rating like ranked does. It might just be straight up throw any two random people in a match which when coupled with the fact it's normally used to test new decks or just as a generally less competitive mode it's easy to see why it'd be easier
I only have 125g right now though. *plays a game*
Yeah, I thought I could get away with using Plating too. It doesn't work. At all. There are a million and a half ways around it. You need the real deal. It's true that the potions are cheaper than I thought, though. I assumed that they'd cost a fortune since there's absolutely no reason not to put them in every single deck with energy in it, but I guess it's just not glamorous enough for people to appreciate it.
Also, re: your G/E deck: you aren't getting nearly enough out of your energy to make it worthwhile. Gun Automatons are efficient, but the nature of these sorts of decks is that you still want to rush to 5 or so in your primary element ASAP for Great Wolves or whatever your lynchpin is. So you aren't getting turn 2 Gun Automatons, you're getting like turn 6 or 7 Gun Automatons. Copper Automatons and Iron Whip are great on paper but probably not worth the lost combo opportunities from not having more Growth by themselves. You probably want more cheap buffs and fewer creatures.
I'm trying to crack the G/E nut myself, but it's still a work in progress. My current infatuation is with taking Gravelock Raiders, Gravehawks, and Great Wolves along with Desperation (which nobody uses). Surprise +6 Relentless creatures everywhere, on top of other generically good Energy spells and buffs. The Raiders probably aren't worth the slot, though. The current incarnation of the deck is already bloated and I had to take out Mangy Wolves, which I'll probably live to regret even with Iron Whip taking up the slack.
I just want those sweet, sweet buffs/debuffs Order has.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
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Faith Blessing
Decimation
Eternal Statue
Stuff in sig is available for trading.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
I hate you all.
Of course, then the other half of the time I draw all direct damage and nearly force my opponent to rage quit as I kill everything they put out, one by one, so yeah, randomness needs a balance and a mulligan would work nicely.
You ain't seen nothing yet. The Hard trials are bullshit, and imho need a total redesign.
^ So much ^
The game also really suffers, in my opinion, from a lack of reactive mechanics. Sometimes the other guy just drops 3 thunder surges in a row, and you more or less just have to scoop at that point. It makes the game feel a lot more coin-tossey than I like in a CCG.