Happy Life
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As a result, the artifact breakdown is simple: put every tutor you have into the deck and hope for the best. It used to be like this too, but simpler—you could take one or two Alterplane Assaults or one or two Hackrabbits from expensive tutors, but now you have to take the full set—three Alterplanes and three new bots. You also need to draw a new augmentation in-game and hold it in your hand until you've tutored a couple of low-cost artifacts just to stay afloat without the Deus effect. On one hand, I like this; it allows for some planning and gameplay choice, but on the other, it doesn't, because essentially it pushes you back toward a high-roll playstyle.
I also had to craft two annoying armors to complete the set, again due to tutoring needs. This was particularly amusing—when I noticed in the last expansion that same-card rotation happened for Icarus, I immediately realized that Nervemail is a pay2play replacement for the Silver Evo-tutor cardboard. 600 vials => 10,500; thanks, where's the checkmark?
Yesterday I even played with three Ancient Apparatuses simply because every available tutor was needed. I still haven't figured out if it's actually strong or not. There's a new robot that adds a new artifact to the pool. I thought the artifact was trash, but it's not that bad and costs exactly three, so in a game that goes well, you can set up Apparatus => Art Squad for this robot and draw only this new artifact; also, for example, you could take Mystics + Analyzing in Mechanization and then deploy a Squadron. The problem is that a naked artifact without an accelerator isn't a very impactful move; the correct way to play it is under an accelerator + augmentation, and several at once, to draw yourself through until the end of the game. Also, it burns through Knight cards quickly, which is nice.
To wrap up the tutoring topic, at first glance, the new 1 pp Mecha and 5 pp Bot seemed like very funny crutches. Especially the bot—it's just a band-aid, a body for mid-game evolution, an accelerator in hand, and oh well, let's throw an artifact on top; it's not like we're wasting anything, these dorks already had their archetype rotated, we won't break the card. Let's even make it Silver.
I considered the small Mecha a crutch-reprint of Fervent, but it provides opportunities that Fervent didn't have, so fine. And let the bot be; crutch or not, at least it's impeccably convenient.
The new 9-cost Legend seemed like absolute trash. Like a bloated Silver, only even more aimless. I'm not joking—every time I could have played her for full price and her effect could have been useful, I couldn't play her because it would be a skipped turn—on my turn, the enemy clears the body and keeps pushing into your face. And her acceleration (which I assume is the main use of the card) requires too much to be effective. You need a board of at least three bodies, plus artifacts, and you can't just go face for +3 with those three units—you have to maintain board control and tempo. If you compare her to Bab Katka, the effect seems stronger, and Katka was even played in mid-ten for a while, but the meta was different then; she gives her body up for use, works with Arcus, and it was much easier to keep a mid-ten board due to last words with skeletons. Here, I actually observed—out of ten times this Legend was in my hand, only once or twice could I maintain enough of a board to justify spending 5 pp on the buff; basically, there are impact problems. She should have been released before rotation, when you consistently had boards of four or five artifacts every turn (and then nerf half the same-card crafts because of Redditor whining).
Gameplay-wise, it's a bit sad. Most people play predictably with Maisha, but I've played her very little. In "Lishnen" its essence is obvious, but in artifacts, I don't like her. Holding the last Evo until ten (when 90% of the time you evolve on the first evo-turn, evolving Enermail for tutoring if possible and likely evolving an accel-bot, as one once did with Deus/Hackrabbit to trade), or until 7+ given a mandatory full combo of accel + augmentation + several artifacts + enough shadows—it doesn't feel like a super strong strategy. You can't really play Radiants anymore like in previous months because without refresh and redraw Deus, you can't properly search for and play them.
I've had the most success so far with an unpolished hybrid from yesterday's screenshots: a standard skeleton for this expansion consisting of Lion, Prototype, the full set of tutors, and artifact spell-lock; plus artifact Squadron (doubtful), one aforementioned Legend (as I said, a weak, useless link), the new Lion-robot, Knight from the last pack (currently very good in the meta), Shin (the new 2-2 ward boy—I wanted this deck to kill with buffs from the board and took the boy for his evo-spelllock, but in the end, he was more useful just being a ward; overall I liked the card, need to play it more). But the win rate sample is not representative because I faced many Dragons who, as it turns out, suck against this deck.
And I also tried playing machines, well, why not play pure machines on every class? It's like we're in a second Wonderland. And thanks to the limited pool of machines, the deck is the same, except I swapped Squadrons for neutral Mecha-Angels and, with some hesitation, added two Cyber-Goblins specifically for synergy with the legendary. At first, I didn't even consider machines on Portal because the machine legendary Lion seemed completely pathetic. How do you play this? Drop it on ten for a board with a couple of tokens that half the deck can spawn at any moment in the game? But surprisingly, in the current meta at the start of the expansion, the Lion seemed decent. It's not a win-con, but it conditionally clears two slots of the enemy board and leaves three slots of your own, even without evolution. Sometimes the enemy can't take down the Lion in one hit, and it manages to spawn another droid, or sometimes they just don't have time to clear the whole board. And here you find out that your 1 pp mecha-tutor is also a machine, and the 2 pp Prototype is too. So, for example, on the next turn you can go straight in with an enhance from the Mecha, cast two more droids, add a goblin or prototype if necessary, and buff them with the Lion's buff. Overall, it feels like value, at least while there are no major AoEs in the meta. For good measure, I threw two Widow-Gilnises into this deck since we're playing tokens. Three months ago, every Shadow I met under Deus just fatigued me to death with Widows, but now thanks to rotation, that shouldn't be a problem ) Now I can enjoy her effect myself in the absence of another draw engine.
Theoretically, you could also throw in _9102_TECHNOLORD_2019_ mix_ and resurrect the Lion, but it will be without the fanfare—just a 4-7 rush body that spawns one droid; not sure if that's particularly effective.
overall, out of generosity after three years, we were allowed to somehow play DE-Sword on minimum settings against non-ramping idiots.
Among other things, I saw a deck online with an Alpha-Amulet, Maishas, and a 3-3 Angel; the idea is that you activate the amulet, it gives you many low-level artifacts, you kill them off quickly, and then one-shot the enemy with Maisha. I think I tried to play like that for a couple of games, but in my opinion, it's somehow UNRELIABLE. How are you going to get them? Clog the pool with a bunch of artifacts, half of which don't cycle themselves, without the Deus effect, digging through them for augmentation for all stages of the game, plus Maisha, and again saving Evo for her. While five-slot boards of Sword-Shadows are rolling over you, well, who knows.
And you could try running it through Desecration Orb, although the giant that deals 12 to the face rotated out, and instead you can only take the new useless Legend with 7 attack, and she doesn't even give the leader a fanfare for damage resistance. It would be too generous for Sugees to give Portal two legends that aren't complete trash.
I also had to craft two annoying armors to complete the set, again due to tutoring needs. This was particularly amusing—when I noticed in the last expansion that same-card rotation happened for Icarus, I immediately realized that Nervemail is a pay2play replacement for the Silver Evo-tutor cardboard. 600 vials => 10,500; thanks, where's the checkmark?
Yesterday I even played with three Ancient Apparatuses simply because every available tutor was needed. I still haven't figured out if it's actually strong or not. There's a new robot that adds a new artifact to the pool. I thought the artifact was trash, but it's not that bad and costs exactly three, so in a game that goes well, you can set up Apparatus => Art Squad for this robot and draw only this new artifact; also, for example, you could take Mystics + Analyzing in Mechanization and then deploy a Squadron. The problem is that a naked artifact without an accelerator isn't a very impactful move; the correct way to play it is under an accelerator + augmentation, and several at once, to draw yourself through until the end of the game. Also, it burns through Knight cards quickly, which is nice.
To wrap up the tutoring topic, at first glance, the new 1 pp Mecha and 5 pp Bot seemed like very funny crutches. Especially the bot—it's just a band-aid, a body for mid-game evolution, an accelerator in hand, and oh well, let's throw an artifact on top; it's not like we're wasting anything, these dorks already had their archetype rotated, we won't break the card. Let's even make it Silver.
I considered the small Mecha a crutch-reprint of Fervent, but it provides opportunities that Fervent didn't have, so fine. And let the bot be; crutch or not, at least it's impeccably convenient.
The new 9-cost Legend seemed like absolute trash. Like a bloated Silver, only even more aimless. I'm not joking—every time I could have played her for full price and her effect could have been useful, I couldn't play her because it would be a skipped turn—on my turn, the enemy clears the body and keeps pushing into your face. And her acceleration (which I assume is the main use of the card) requires too much to be effective. You need a board of at least three bodies, plus artifacts, and you can't just go face for +3 with those three units—you have to maintain board control and tempo. If you compare her to Bab Katka, the effect seems stronger, and Katka was even played in mid-ten for a while, but the meta was different then; she gives her body up for use, works with Arcus, and it was much easier to keep a mid-ten board due to last words with skeletons. Here, I actually observed—out of ten times this Legend was in my hand, only once or twice could I maintain enough of a board to justify spending 5 pp on the buff; basically, there are impact problems. She should have been released before rotation, when you consistently had boards of four or five artifacts every turn (and then nerf half the same-card crafts because of Redditor whining).
Gameplay-wise, it's a bit sad. Most people play predictably with Maisha, but I've played her very little. In "Lishnen" its essence is obvious, but in artifacts, I don't like her. Holding the last Evo until ten (when 90% of the time you evolve on the first evo-turn, evolving Enermail for tutoring if possible and likely evolving an accel-bot, as one once did with Deus/Hackrabbit to trade), or until 7+ given a mandatory full combo of accel + augmentation + several artifacts + enough shadows—it doesn't feel like a super strong strategy. You can't really play Radiants anymore like in previous months because without refresh and redraw Deus, you can't properly search for and play them.
I've had the most success so far with an unpolished hybrid from yesterday's screenshots: a standard skeleton for this expansion consisting of Lion, Prototype, the full set of tutors, and artifact spell-lock; plus artifact Squadron (doubtful), one aforementioned Legend (as I said, a weak, useless link), the new Lion-robot, Knight from the last pack (currently very good in the meta), Shin (the new 2-2 ward boy—I wanted this deck to kill with buffs from the board and took the boy for his evo-spelllock, but in the end, he was more useful just being a ward; overall I liked the card, need to play it more). But the win rate sample is not representative because I faced many Dragons who, as it turns out, suck against this deck.
And I also tried playing machines, well, why not play pure machines on every class? It's like we're in a second Wonderland. And thanks to the limited pool of machines, the deck is the same, except I swapped Squadrons for neutral Mecha-Angels and, with some hesitation, added two Cyber-Goblins specifically for synergy with the legendary. At first, I didn't even consider machines on Portal because the machine legendary Lion seemed completely pathetic. How do you play this? Drop it on ten for a board with a couple of tokens that half the deck can spawn at any moment in the game? But surprisingly, in the current meta at the start of the expansion, the Lion seemed decent. It's not a win-con, but it conditionally clears two slots of the enemy board and leaves three slots of your own, even without evolution. Sometimes the enemy can't take down the Lion in one hit, and it manages to spawn another droid, or sometimes they just don't have time to clear the whole board. And here you find out that your 1 pp mecha-tutor is also a machine, and the 2 pp Prototype is too. So, for example, on the next turn you can go straight in with an enhance from the Mecha, cast two more droids, add a goblin or prototype if necessary, and buff them with the Lion's buff. Overall, it feels like value, at least while there are no major AoEs in the meta. For good measure, I threw two Widow-Gilnises into this deck since we're playing tokens. Three months ago, every Shadow I met under Deus just fatigued me to death with Widows, but now thanks to rotation, that shouldn't be a problem ) Now I can enjoy her effect myself in the absence of another draw engine.
Theoretically, you could also throw in _9102_TECHNOLORD_2019_ mix_ and resurrect the Lion, but it will be without the fanfare—just a 4-7 rush body that spawns one droid; not sure if that's particularly effective.
Among other things, I saw a deck online with an Alpha-Amulet, Maishas, and a 3-3 Angel; the idea is that you activate the amulet, it gives you many low-level artifacts, you kill them off quickly, and then one-shot the enemy with Maisha. I think I tried to play like that for a couple of games, but in my opinion, it's somehow UNRELIABLE. How are you going to get them? Clog the pool with a bunch of artifacts, half of which don't cycle themselves, without the Deus effect, digging through them for augmentation for all stages of the game, plus Maisha, and again saving Evo for her. While five-slot boards of Sword-Shadows are rolling over you, well, who knows.
And you could try running it through Desecration Orb, although the giant that deals 12 to the face rotated out, and instead you can only take the new useless Legend with 7 attack, and she doesn't even give the leader a fanfare for damage resistance. It would be too generous for Sugees to give Portal two legends that aren't complete trash.
My sword, my trusted ally, unphased by my aspect.
