I got murdered, MURDERED, for the first four games or so and was close to posting about this trash-ass deck you had no business suckering people into playing. My bad.
You should consider naming it A.F. Kay because skipping the first three turns is actually legit gameplay.
Oh yeah, you should legit be passing turns 1-2 unless you have an Avarason Sentry. For mulligan, I usually will keep one Sentry and one Barkeep (more Barkeeps vs aggro). Rolling into turn 3 with 6 mana can give you Grasp or Wail vs a variety of boards.
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I was dicking around with Swim's Braum/Anivia deck today. Not performing as good as I'm hoping, but I had some really really shit card draw for a lot of games.
Last game I finally won after like almost 30 turns. The other guy was running some sort of aggressive Lucian/Thresh deck. I managed to shut him down but literally didn't draw any useful cards for another like 8 draws or something and so we basically stalled for time. I had fucking 2 Vengeance and 2 Ruination in my hand within the first few draws. Which came in handy for shutting the other guy down eventually but really slowed me the fuck down.
But I finally managed to draw into my first Anivia. And then did Anivia + 2 Chronicler of Ruin and slapped him down with triple Anivia for the win.
How many sets do you guys think we'll get before they start a rotation? (Not a balance complaint, just thinking)
YEAAAARS. It's almost not worth worrying about right now because if it lasts that long hooray. Rising Tides is 122 cards, and Magic sets are what, three times that many, and only rotate after four sets annually. So maybe in three years. Maybe. I'm assuming the new card release pattern is the same number of cards per region but split over smaller drops, so that could change. It also behooves them to have a larger card pool to make it more difficult for f2p players to own a given percentage of available cards.
Netrunner didn't even live long enough to see rotation and it was planned for after 8 years.
8 years sounds way longer than most. I agree that it'll be a couple years but probably not that long.
Magic published Alpha in August '93 and started Type 2 in January '95.
Hearthstone released in March '14 and Standard started in April '16.
Shadowverse released in June '16 and Rotation started in Dec '17.
Duelyst released in April '16, started Standard in April '18, then ended it the next month. (Their patch notes indicate that the player base wasn't interested in Standard)
Not sure what else to check. I think Gwent and Eternal don't do rotations?
How many sets do you guys think we'll get before they start a rotation? (Not a balance complaint, just thinking)
YEAAAARS. It's almost not worth worrying about right now because if it lasts that long hooray. Rising Tides is 122 cards, and Magic sets are what, three times that many, and only rotate after four sets annually. So maybe in three years. Maybe. I'm assuming the new card release pattern is the same number of cards per region but split over smaller drops, so that could change. It also behooves them to have a larger card pool to make it more difficult for f2p players to own a given percentage of available cards.
Netrunner didn't even live long enough to see rotation and it was planned for after 8 years.
8 years sounds way longer than most. I agree that it'll be a couple years but probably not that long.
Magic published Alpha in August '93 and started Type 2 in January '95.
Hearthstone released in March '14 and Standard started in April '16.
Shadowverse released in June '16 and Rotation started in Dec '17.
Duelyst released in April '16, started Standard in April '18, then ended it the next month. (Their patch notes indicate that the player base wasn't interested in Standard)
Not sure what else to check. I think Gwent and Eternal don't do rotations?
Again, magic launches a lot of cards. I haven't played a lot of those other games so I wouldn't know their card output. I looked up hearthstone and they do put out very few cards. Probably slightly more than LoR given the adventures but pretty close.
I'll say two years seems like more of a tradition than anything hard and fast. Players were sick of a lot of the cards in Netrunner five, six years after the fact and I think that's just staleness and early balance issues which can be avoided with a digital card game.
It wouldn't surprise me for two years though. I also suppose that you could argue magic's card count is inflated for constructed. Many cards are bad and only for other formats like limited or commander so the pool of cards that are intentionally designed for standard play might actually be more LoR sized.
+1
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
The nerfs are a'comin. He does say next patch. Does he mean this next one, or the next monthly balance patch? I wouldn't mind making the non balance patch into a balance one.
Also humorous this is after swim beat him on stream with elusives.
I think that does highlight a problem with the current region setup in that Ionia both has most of the elusives and also the powerful cards that shutdown a lot of strategies that would also counter elusives.
+2
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
I would actually really like to see them address the fact that large swaths of factions are terrrrrrible.
PnZ is a terrible faction. All of their good cards are basically Heimer/Vi/Ezreal and burn spells. There was an infographic that PnZ has most of the 100 least played cards in the game and it's almost half of the faction. Ionia is also kind of bad, but the cards that it DOES have are so good. Almost every faction has at least some things that seem play, so it seems diverse but a lot of things are just a small handful of good cards that get repeated.
Isn't that unavoidable though? You're not going to put a below average or even average card in your deck. Is there any universe where people use Arena Bookie, a card I literally just learned existed because I included unowned cards while scrolling through the collection? Although yeah most of the 4+ PnZ cards are trash, which isn't great.
Ionia is the closest region to blue in Magic, and Kinkou Elusives at least plays very similarly to mono Blue tempo does, so I don't think it's necessarily a regional design flaw.
Having innate haste lends a lot of power to evasion though, and elusives tend to be much larger than fliers are. 1 mana fliers are 1/1s, and 2 mana fliers are usually 1/1s with an effect and rarely 1/2s or 2/1s. Having that extra 1 power on Navori Conspirator, Navori Bladescout, and Greenglade Duo halves the clock.
Ionia is the closest region to blue in Magic, and Kinkou Elusives at least plays very similarly to mono Blue tempo does, so I don't think it's necessarily a regional design flaw.
Having innate haste lends a lot of power to evasion though, and elusives tend to be much larger than fliers are. 1 mana fliers are 1/1s, and 2 mana fliers are usually 1/1s with an effect and rarely 1/2s or 2/1s. Having that extra 1 power on Navori Conspirator, Navori Bladescout, and Greenglade Duo halves the clock.
And, importantly, in MtG attackers can't block (without vigilance). A major drawback to flyers is just that going all in on them means leaving yourself open to more efficient bodies on the ground so you have to devote resources there.
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
He's 100% right. I think it's just that all these decks are just sailing past each other. At least when it was Burn aggro only the other decks did shit. Now it's just different flavors of aggro that doesn't give a shit. Elusive, burn, overwhelm, some combination of the above. Hell, even right after Rising Tides there were still midrange decks. It's all just uninteractive aggro or the Anivia deck holds off until turn 10 and just attacks with a kajillion Anivia.
Anivia is the new Karma/Ezreal, but it pays for the "having a ton of healing making it harder to be rushed down" with "well I can't kill you in literally one turn" which is basically a meaningless cost.
Edit: You know what it is? Blocking feels irrelevant. Elusive or overwhelm don't care, or care less. Burn doesn't need that much combat damage to get there. Anivia doesn't care, block, don't block, I'll deal 6 to everything anyways.
He's 100% right. I think it's just that all these decks are just sailing past each other. At least when it was Burn aggro only the other decks did shit. Now it's just different flavors of aggro that doesn't give a shit. Elusive, burn, overwhelm, some combination of the above. Hell, even right after Rising Tides there were still midrange decks. It's all just uninteractive aggro or the Anivia deck holds off until turn 10 and just attacks with a kajillion Anivia.
Anivia is the new Karma/Ezreal, but it pays for the "having a ton of healing making it harder to be rushed down" with "well I can't kill you in literally one turn" which is basically a meaningless cost.
Edit: You know what it is? Blocking feels irrelevant. Elusive or overwhelm don't care, or care less. Burn doesn't need that much combat damage to get there. Anivia doesn't care, block, don't block, I'll deal 6 to everything anyways.
Braum/Aniva still feels better then Karma/Ezrael imo. They actually put things on the board and you've still got a turn or two to close the kill with Anivia if you've been applying good pressure all game.
But yeah, in general I think whatever they tweaked has left as in an all "aggro burn" meta. It's just different ways to do it. But it's all just ways to avoid having to engage with the enemy board and go straight to face as fast as possible, which I think just never feels good.
I've always thought most people who play these games fundamentally want to, like, play cards. To put shit on the board and have it to cool interactions and then smack other things with them. When strategies that don't allow that to happen become too dominant, it annoys people.
I actually thought last patch we were in a pretty good spot. Midrange decks were all over the place. It felt nice.
He's 100% right. I think it's just that all these decks are just sailing past each other. At least when it was Burn aggro only the other decks did shit. Now it's just different flavors of aggro that doesn't give a shit. Elusive, burn, overwhelm, some combination of the above. Hell, even right after Rising Tides there were still midrange decks. It's all just uninteractive aggro or the Anivia deck holds off until turn 10 and just attacks with a kajillion Anivia.
Anivia is the new Karma/Ezreal, but it pays for the "having a ton of healing making it harder to be rushed down" with "well I can't kill you in literally one turn" which is basically a meaningless cost.
Edit: You know what it is? Blocking feels irrelevant. Elusive or overwhelm don't care, or care less. Burn doesn't need that much combat damage to get there. Anivia doesn't care, block, don't block, I'll deal 6 to everything anyways.
Braum/Aniva still feels better then Karma/Ezrael imo. They actually put things on the board and you've still got a turn or two to close the kill with Anivia if you've been applying good pressure all game.
But yeah, in general I think whatever they tweaked has left as in an all "aggro burn" meta. It's just different ways to do it. But it's all just ways to avoid having to engage with the enemy board and go straight to face as fast as possible, which I think just never feels good.
I've always thought most people who play these games fundamentally want to, like, play cards. To put shit on the board and have it to cool interactions and then smack other things with them. When strategies that don't allow that to happen become too dominant, it annoys people.
I actually thought last patch we were in a pretty good spot. Midrange decks were all over the place. It felt nice.
Braum/Anivia is kind of trading one horrible enlightened setup for another. Might you live an extra turn against the Anivias? Sure maybe, but unless you have double board wipes you're still probably dead, and even then they might just have rekindler or mists call. It's about the same hope as "maybe they don't have enough cheap spells" in Karma/Ezreal. What you gain in the short window of time at the end you lose because they're running grasps, withering wail, and innkeepers so your odds of killing them before they get online are pretty low when it's trivial to gain an additional 50% of your starting life total while also clearing the board of threats.
Last patch was really good! I think Runeterra has basically always done a good job of being a fairer magic and making it more based around the board and combat. It has a lot of those good feelings of when you just started and Shivan Dragon or Serra Angel was an amazing card.
He's 100% right. I think it's just that all these decks are just sailing past each other. At least when it was Burn aggro only the other decks did shit. Now it's just different flavors of aggro that doesn't give a shit. Elusive, burn, overwhelm, some combination of the above. Hell, even right after Rising Tides there were still midrange decks. It's all just uninteractive aggro or the Anivia deck holds off until turn 10 and just attacks with a kajillion Anivia.
Anivia is the new Karma/Ezreal, but it pays for the "having a ton of healing making it harder to be rushed down" with "well I can't kill you in literally one turn" which is basically a meaningless cost.
Edit: You know what it is? Blocking feels irrelevant. Elusive or overwhelm don't care, or care less. Burn doesn't need that much combat damage to get there. Anivia doesn't care, block, don't block, I'll deal 6 to everything anyways.
Braum/Aniva still feels better then Karma/Ezrael imo. They actually put things on the board and you've still got a turn or two to close the kill with Anivia if you've been applying good pressure all game.
But yeah, in general I think whatever they tweaked has left as in an all "aggro burn" meta. It's just different ways to do it. But it's all just ways to avoid having to engage with the enemy board and go straight to face as fast as possible, which I think just never feels good.
I've always thought most people who play these games fundamentally want to, like, play cards. To put shit on the board and have it to cool interactions and then smack other things with them. When strategies that don't allow that to happen become too dominant, it annoys people.
I actually thought last patch we were in a pretty good spot. Midrange decks were all over the place. It felt nice.
Braum/Anivia is kind of trading one horrible enlightened setup for another. Might you live an extra turn against the Anivias? Sure maybe, but unless you have double board wipes you're still probably dead, and even then they might just have rekindler or mists call. It's about the same hope as "maybe they don't have enough cheap spells" in Karma/Ezreal. What you gain in the short window of time at the end you lose because they're running grasps, withering wail, and innkeepers so your odds of killing them before they get online are pretty low when it's trivial to gain an additional 50% of your starting life total while also clearing the board of threats.
Last patch was really good! I think Runeterra has basically always done a good job of being a fairer magic and making it more based around the board and combat. It has a lot of those good feelings of when you just started and Shivan Dragon or Serra Angel was an amazing card.
It's really not that bad imo. You don't need to board wipe Anivia. You can't do that 99% of the time anyway. You just need to kill them off before they can get the 1 or 2 swings into you they need to win the game. And during that time they are likely not doing much healing since getting your 2-3 Anivias up and running is likely chewing up a turn or two worth of mana. It's still strong but there's more room to maneuver then with the old Karma/Ezreal style.
I’ve played a lot of Anivia/Braum. Just play Deep and get your free win against it. Of course, you probably lose out to so much more...
Deep always feels to me like it's not Tier 1 or anything but it's frequently a tough game against a lot of the better decks. I feel like it's one of those matchups you have to be on your game with or they will suddenly be snowballing you.
He's 100% right. I think it's just that all these decks are just sailing past each other. At least when it was Burn aggro only the other decks did shit. Now it's just different flavors of aggro that doesn't give a shit. Elusive, burn, overwhelm, some combination of the above. Hell, even right after Rising Tides there were still midrange decks. It's all just uninteractive aggro or the Anivia deck holds off until turn 10 and just attacks with a kajillion Anivia.
Anivia is the new Karma/Ezreal, but it pays for the "having a ton of healing making it harder to be rushed down" with "well I can't kill you in literally one turn" which is basically a meaningless cost.
Edit: You know what it is? Blocking feels irrelevant. Elusive or overwhelm don't care, or care less. Burn doesn't need that much combat damage to get there. Anivia doesn't care, block, don't block, I'll deal 6 to everything anyways.
Braum/Aniva still feels better then Karma/Ezrael imo. They actually put things on the board and you've still got a turn or two to close the kill with Anivia if you've been applying good pressure all game.
But yeah, in general I think whatever they tweaked has left as in an all "aggro burn" meta. It's just different ways to do it. But it's all just ways to avoid having to engage with the enemy board and go straight to face as fast as possible, which I think just never feels good.
I've always thought most people who play these games fundamentally want to, like, play cards. To put shit on the board and have it to cool interactions and then smack other things with them. When strategies that don't allow that to happen become too dominant, it annoys people.
I actually thought last patch we were in a pretty good spot. Midrange decks were all over the place. It felt nice.
Outside of the group of players that just want the most efficient deck possible - the ladder structure also pushes players to play the most efficient deck - which is often the one the other player doesn't get a chance to interact with.
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
Naw I fucking hate the Anivia deck. I think it's too trivially easy to get a lot of them out. It's shenanigans. You're punished for killing the Anivias, you're punished if you don't kill them, it's lose lose. It feels terrible.
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
@SeGaTai I mean, I agree with both of you. I think players would rather do that, but they would also rather win more. If winning isn't fun though, people will stop playing, so then all you'll be left with is the people who like playing what wins, or the hardcore (like me) who will just keep playing and hating everything.
All the cards that interact with the graveyard feel stupid and broken. I know they brick often enough that I can't generally call them OP but it is counter intuitive at best. The graveyard should be like in Gwent (and I assume MTG) where you can see what's in it and the revive effects take the card out of it. You wouldn't have obviously silly outcomes like Anivia storm and they could have other cool effects, like in Gwent you can play a big boy and then play a different card that eats it out of the graveyard later, but your opponent can banish it first, etc.
I mean, people probably hate Heimer Vi at this point, but I just keep beating up on Anivia by bouncing it forever
No, Heimer Vi feels like it at least plays the game (to me). If you can kill Heimer, he does indeed stay dead. You can put pressure on him because he doesn't have access to good healing, so even if he does go off you can still finish him off if you dealt the damage early. Heimer Vi passes my "is this fine?" test because it's possible to be able to knock him off his game. Oh shit, I wanted to bank spell mana into turn 5 but I need to not die, I better play this creature. Oh shit, he culled my Heimer, so even though I got two or three elusives, that's all I have right now. Oh no, he wiped my board of weak X/1s. Heimer Vi can also lose in the end game, he doesn't have inevitability. He can be Ruinated, he can lose to an Ezreal going off, all manner of things.
Contrast this to Anivia/Braum...what would you even do to knock them off their game plan? All of the cards are either 1) don't die or 2) abuse Anivia. Even if you kill all three of their Anivias, it's not over. There's Rekindler, and Chronicler onto Rekindler, some decks run Harrowing. Anivia seems binary on a lot of levels. Do you have bounce or the ability to shuffle or obliterate her? Do you just curve out amazing, or they don't find enough healing?
Other control decks (CorVIna, Karma/Ezreal, Karma/Lux) felt like they had counterplay and that their deckbuilding had tradeoffs between removal, healing, and damage potential/inevitability. Karma/Ezreal? High removal, low healing, high burst damage potential. Corvina, great removal and healing, low inevitability (Ledros can be very slow). Karma/Lux had worse removal and burst damage potential but high inevitability and strong healing to get there. Anivia has access to probably the best damage/healing package out of SI while at the same time being effectively more unstoppable than unyielding Lux because you could at least kill Lux before she became invulnerable. There are basically nine copies of Anivia in the deck and you have to kill all of them twice.
Naw I fucking hate the Anivia deck. I think it's too trivially easy to get a lot of them out. It's shenanigans. You're punished for killing the Anivias, you're punished if you don't kill them, it's lose lose. It feels terrible.
You need the right cards in hand to start multiplying Anivia. It's not super hard with a Shadow Isles addition but it's still chewing up some mana and getting the draw. And the only time killing Anivia is a bad idea is when they don't have the ability to do that themselves, in which case 1 Anivia is not that scary most of the time and if you can't beat there ass down before it gets you, you were probably in a terrible position regardless. Killing off Anivia's is difficult but generally a good idea actually. Especially one they put out early cause the egg just chews up board space and as long as you kill it before 10 it's all good. Plus the Egg means they can't drop Ruination.
And man, Heimer/Vi is like the opposite of playing the game. It's a deck that is all elusives and removal. It's entire plan is to stall you out by killing your units and/or going face with elusives and then dropping Heimer to beat your ass down with endless elusives. With just a splash of Vi for taking out big targets and/or the alternate win condition. It's way more of a "No, you don't get to play the game" deck.
That's good to hear. I think they are getting a lot of feedback from people who are just tired of this meta already.
I suspect there is no way around them needing to take a bat to the skull of Elusives in some fashion. The entire meta right now is elusives, different kind of elusives, even more elusives and 6 Anivias.
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Sorry, you're right, I was confusing cycle count with years.
Oh yeah, you should legit be passing turns 1-2 unless you have an Avarason Sentry. For mulligan, I usually will keep one Sentry and one Barkeep (more Barkeeps vs aggro). Rolling into turn 3 with 6 mana can give you Grasp or Wail vs a variety of boards.
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Last game I finally won after like almost 30 turns. The other guy was running some sort of aggressive Lucian/Thresh deck. I managed to shut him down but literally didn't draw any useful cards for another like 8 draws or something and so we basically stalled for time. I had fucking 2 Vengeance and 2 Ruination in my hand within the first few draws. Which came in handy for shutting the other guy down eventually but really slowed me the fuck down.
But I finally managed to draw into my first Anivia. And then did Anivia + 2 Chronicler of Ruin and slapped him down with triple Anivia for the win.
8 years sounds way longer than most. I agree that it'll be a couple years but probably not that long.
Magic published Alpha in August '93 and started Type 2 in January '95.
Hearthstone released in March '14 and Standard started in April '16.
Shadowverse released in June '16 and Rotation started in Dec '17.
Duelyst released in April '16, started Standard in April '18, then ended it the next month. (Their patch notes indicate that the player base wasn't interested in Standard)
Not sure what else to check. I think Gwent and Eternal don't do rotations?
Again, magic launches a lot of cards. I haven't played a lot of those other games so I wouldn't know their card output. I looked up hearthstone and they do put out very few cards. Probably slightly more than LoR given the adventures but pretty close.
I'll say two years seems like more of a tradition than anything hard and fast. Players were sick of a lot of the cards in Netrunner five, six years after the fact and I think that's just staleness and early balance issues which can be avoided with a digital card game.
It wouldn't surprise me for two years though. I also suppose that you could argue magic's card count is inflated for constructed. Many cards are bad and only for other formats like limited or commander so the pool of cards that are intentionally designed for standard play might actually be more LoR sized.
The nerfs are a'comin. He does say next patch. Does he mean this next one, or the next monthly balance patch? I wouldn't mind making the non balance patch into a balance one.
Also humorous this is after swim beat him on stream with elusives.
I think that does highlight a problem with the current region setup in that Ionia both has most of the elusives and also the powerful cards that shutdown a lot of strategies that would also counter elusives.
PnZ is a terrible faction. All of their good cards are basically Heimer/Vi/Ezreal and burn spells. There was an infographic that PnZ has most of the 100 least played cards in the game and it's almost half of the faction. Ionia is also kind of bad, but the cards that it DOES have are so good. Almost every faction has at least some things that seem play, so it seems diverse but a lot of things are just a small handful of good cards that get repeated.
Having innate haste lends a lot of power to evasion though, and elusives tend to be much larger than fliers are. 1 mana fliers are 1/1s, and 2 mana fliers are usually 1/1s with an effect and rarely 1/2s or 2/1s. Having that extra 1 power on Navori Conspirator, Navori Bladescout, and Greenglade Duo halves the clock.
And, importantly, in MtG attackers can't block (without vigilance). A major drawback to flyers is just that going all in on them means leaving yourself open to more efficient bodies on the ground so you have to devote resources there.
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Anivia is the new Karma/Ezreal, but it pays for the "having a ton of healing making it harder to be rushed down" with "well I can't kill you in literally one turn" which is basically a meaningless cost.
Edit: You know what it is? Blocking feels irrelevant. Elusive or overwhelm don't care, or care less. Burn doesn't need that much combat damage to get there. Anivia doesn't care, block, don't block, I'll deal 6 to everything anyways.
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Braum/Aniva still feels better then Karma/Ezrael imo. They actually put things on the board and you've still got a turn or two to close the kill with Anivia if you've been applying good pressure all game.
But yeah, in general I think whatever they tweaked has left as in an all "aggro burn" meta. It's just different ways to do it. But it's all just ways to avoid having to engage with the enemy board and go straight to face as fast as possible, which I think just never feels good.
I've always thought most people who play these games fundamentally want to, like, play cards. To put shit on the board and have it to cool interactions and then smack other things with them. When strategies that don't allow that to happen become too dominant, it annoys people.
I actually thought last patch we were in a pretty good spot. Midrange decks were all over the place. It felt nice.
Braum/Anivia is kind of trading one horrible enlightened setup for another. Might you live an extra turn against the Anivias? Sure maybe, but unless you have double board wipes you're still probably dead, and even then they might just have rekindler or mists call. It's about the same hope as "maybe they don't have enough cheap spells" in Karma/Ezreal. What you gain in the short window of time at the end you lose because they're running grasps, withering wail, and innkeepers so your odds of killing them before they get online are pretty low when it's trivial to gain an additional 50% of your starting life total while also clearing the board of threats.
Last patch was really good! I think Runeterra has basically always done a good job of being a fairer magic and making it more based around the board and combat. It has a lot of those good feelings of when you just started and Shivan Dragon or Serra Angel was an amazing card.
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It's really not that bad imo. You don't need to board wipe Anivia. You can't do that 99% of the time anyway. You just need to kill them off before they can get the 1 or 2 swings into you they need to win the game. And during that time they are likely not doing much healing since getting your 2-3 Anivias up and running is likely chewing up a turn or two worth of mana. It's still strong but there's more room to maneuver then with the old Karma/Ezreal style.
Deep always feels to me like it's not Tier 1 or anything but it's frequently a tough game against a lot of the better decks. I feel like it's one of those matchups you have to be on your game with or they will suddenly be snowballing you.
Outside of the group of players that just want the most efficient deck possible - the ladder structure also pushes players to play the most efficient deck - which is often the one the other player doesn't get a chance to interact with.
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No, Heimer Vi feels like it at least plays the game (to me). If you can kill Heimer, he does indeed stay dead. You can put pressure on him because he doesn't have access to good healing, so even if he does go off you can still finish him off if you dealt the damage early. Heimer Vi passes my "is this fine?" test because it's possible to be able to knock him off his game. Oh shit, I wanted to bank spell mana into turn 5 but I need to not die, I better play this creature. Oh shit, he culled my Heimer, so even though I got two or three elusives, that's all I have right now. Oh no, he wiped my board of weak X/1s. Heimer Vi can also lose in the end game, he doesn't have inevitability. He can be Ruinated, he can lose to an Ezreal going off, all manner of things.
Contrast this to Anivia/Braum...what would you even do to knock them off their game plan? All of the cards are either 1) don't die or 2) abuse Anivia. Even if you kill all three of their Anivias, it's not over. There's Rekindler, and Chronicler onto Rekindler, some decks run Harrowing. Anivia seems binary on a lot of levels. Do you have bounce or the ability to shuffle or obliterate her? Do you just curve out amazing, or they don't find enough healing?
Other control decks (CorVIna, Karma/Ezreal, Karma/Lux) felt like they had counterplay and that their deckbuilding had tradeoffs between removal, healing, and damage potential/inevitability. Karma/Ezreal? High removal, low healing, high burst damage potential. Corvina, great removal and healing, low inevitability (Ledros can be very slow). Karma/Lux had worse removal and burst damage potential but high inevitability and strong healing to get there. Anivia has access to probably the best damage/healing package out of SI while at the same time being effectively more unstoppable than unyielding Lux because you could at least kill Lux before she became invulnerable. There are basically nine copies of Anivia in the deck and you have to kill all of them twice.
You need the right cards in hand to start multiplying Anivia. It's not super hard with a Shadow Isles addition but it's still chewing up some mana and getting the draw. And the only time killing Anivia is a bad idea is when they don't have the ability to do that themselves, in which case 1 Anivia is not that scary most of the time and if you can't beat there ass down before it gets you, you were probably in a terrible position regardless. Killing off Anivia's is difficult but generally a good idea actually. Especially one they put out early cause the egg just chews up board space and as long as you kill it before 10 it's all good. Plus the Egg means they can't drop Ruination.
And man, Heimer/Vi is like the opposite of playing the game. It's a deck that is all elusives and removal. It's entire plan is to stall you out by killing your units and/or going face with elusives and then dropping Heimer to beat your ass down with endless elusives. With just a splash of Vi for taking out big targets and/or the alternate win condition. It's way more of a "No, you don't get to play the game" deck.
I suspect there is no way around them needing to take a bat to the skull of Elusives in some fashion. The entire meta right now is elusives, different kind of elusives, even more elusives and 6 Anivias.