Shadowverse (ie: Anime Hearthstone)

...Would aggro rune even care about Earth Rites? Earth Rites are a fundamentally slow mechanic. I'd expect aggro rune to go all-in with the follower spellboost synergies, using Daria as a pseudo-finisher that also replenishes their hand.

ER is kinda in a good/bad situation right now because while Dwarf is a wonderful tutor, Guardian Golem spam can now be instantly nullified by Blood's Slumbering Horde. But you have a point, Aggro rune will be more reliant on boosting Oglers, Emmylou, rune blades, dropping piercing runes and levis and that new storm minion, with Daria functioning more as hand replenisher or instant setup to spellboosted oglers.

I don't think ER will care as much about Guardian Golem spam now that Professor of Taboos exists. That is a ridiculous card that, to paraphrase a friend, will either carry the entire Earth Rite deck on its back or be crushed under its weight. Dwarf Alchemist is definitely a great tool to have, but I think any future ER decks will have to revolve around the pure value of the Professor from here on out.

And it's maintenance time, for ten hours. We're getting ten free Bahamut packs to kick the new expansion off, also 1100 gold for New Years'. All hail Cygames.

But it certainly helps to protect the professor with Guardian Golems, staying a huge threat on the field and possibly forcing the opponent to resort to premium kill cards like Execution if they have it.

This is so exciting! Anyone wanna play some rounds once maintenance is over and we get our new cards? By the way, I hope all of ya'll liquified your Homecoming if you weren't intending to use it, because these were the last few hours that you could refund it for the full 800 vial value.

It might take a while to play after it comes out, because I have 5000 gold saved up and plan to make a Nephthys deck come hell or highwater. Also it's difficult to coordinate things from this forum. Discord or something would be nice.

Regarding Guardian Golems, they're obviously good cards but I think it'd be difficult to get them out at the same time as the Professor, just from the specific mana costs and card play order you're likely to use.

edited 28th Dec '16 12:19:19 PM by Clarste

Welp, looks like my discord tag is moekou#6146

I'll also be be buying new cards and updating decks based on what I get though. AAAAH 35 more minutes!!!

Extended by 2 hours. Bummer.

Friend request sent. I kind of got roped into doing a card unpacking gathering with some other friends though, so it might take a while before I can actually play.

So five extra free packs for the maintenance extension, and 20 private match quests for 100 gold each! After going through the packs I get three Darias, which means Aggro rune decks ASAP. It's pretty strong as expected, but it may just be my bad deckbuilding but it's not fast enough against aggro bloods and banner swords. Unless you can pop Darias and Oglers by turn 4 the tempo loss is often too much. This isn't even counting possible bricking situations where you draw two Darias.

I can only hope that we get a billion free packs for ranked and Nephthys being disabled for so long.

I have achieved the dream. The dream I didn't even know existed. I forced my opponent to play a Bahamut on a board with not only Mordecai, but also Khawy. Which killed Bahamut and healed me for 13.

NEEEEEP! I really look forward to her.

I wonder if the long delay is because of key staff being away on New Years break, or if it's because they need to coordinate simultaneous releases across all the platforms. In particular I hear iOS takes 5 days to review anything and give approval.

A surprisingly effective meme turned out to be Hamsa of all things using Cyclone Slash. People are actually phasing out Orihime to use the duck!

edited 3rd Jan '17 7:25:08 AM by Moekou

4 more hours until TOP NEP time!

Duck Blade.

I honestly believe that Otohime is too slow of a card for the current meta. I don't have high hopes for Nep either, for similar reasons except way worse, but at least you can arrange it so that she pretty much always kills a thing and summons Mordecai.

edited 4th Jan '17 4:40:53 PM by Clarste

I don't know when exactly this happened, but I noticed yesterday that they buffed Shadowcraft a bit? Deathbrand no longer costs shadows if you cast it on an enemy at 3 defense or below, even if you have enough to activate its better effect. Not being able to choose when to use Necromancy was always one of the weaknesses of the class, so that's pretty interesting.

Or maybe it was always like that and I'm dumb.

edited 16th Jan '17 10:03:07 AM by Clarste

That's always how Deathbrand worked as it had specific text stating that. It's also how Ghostly Grasp works as well.

In theory that should make it more desirable than Undying Resentment, but realistically I've still seen Undying Resentment run in more copies in deck lists just because you need cheap quick means to deal with Daria/Bat flood, but that just makes it harder to save shadows for Foul Tempest/Death's Breath.

Shadow has way more than enough removal power with the new expansion: Lurching Corpse is very cheap, Necroassassin combos with practically every last word follower, Pact makes Pluto not useless. Voices of Resentment is a double removal at 8 and a multipurpose double ping at 3. Khawy is potentially the most rage-inducing taunt in the game and Balor basically wipes your opponent's board. Path to Mordecai has never been easier.

It really is a shame how badly Nep restricts your deck. Also Shadow Reaper is very underrated. Come lategame it can very well grow into 5/5s by the time its ambush effect wears off.

Well, it certainly has a lot of removal, but I'm not sure all of it is any good. Lurking Corpse is nice when comboed, but I think 9 times out of 10 any random 2/2 on turn 2 is going to be a better way to stay alive, not to mention it actually prevents Khawy from healing you if summoned by Nephthys. Likewise, how often are two ghosts with bane for 8 points going to actually matter? What common board state is that supposed to protect you against? And one that wouldn't be better suited for a Khawy or Deathbrand + anything.

Balor in particular is actually a Bad Card, in my opinion. A big 6 drop that's too slow to actually matter in any situation where you'd want his Last Word effect. He'd be amazing if he had Rush or something, but as it is your opponent is usually better off just ignoring him, and they should. Even if you blow him up next turn with any of your self-sacrifice effects, that's still just a turn 7 AOE that's not even big enough to clear the board sometimes (ie: Daria + Oglers). I mean, compare it to like Themis or Revelation.

Honestly, as cute as it is, I'm not even using Necroassassin in the lastest iteration of my Neph deck, since I'd rather have a reliable early game than load up with hard-to-use followers just in the hopes of a bit more value on turn 8.

edited 17th Jan '17 10:29:47 AM by Clarste

Oh, for the record, my Neph deck is built around having exactly 4 tiers, so she'll always draw both Khawy and Mordecai if there's enough space on the board. Tiers 2 and 4 are just filled with good all-purpose followers like Unica and Playful Necromancer. Also some Spartoi Sergeants because I find having just a few extra shadows on turn 6 can easily make or break the game with Death's Breath.

Have you guys come across any Conjuring Force decks? Kinda amusing since it was discussed in this thread how bad it was, but now that I'm at Masters I'm actually running into snowman decks now and then and they can be shockingly scary sometimes! Once I was at near full health, the opponent was at 7 cost and just played Rimewind last turn, and I summoned Levi to kill two of them, leaving 3. Somehow next turn they played Conjuring and OTK'd me!

edited 19th Jan '17 8:46:52 AM by Moekou

Oh, you're in Master's? Congratulations. I've been stuck at the top of A3 for a while now, although I generally don't play Ranked except to complete daily quests. Well, and I also did a lot of "trial by fire" testing of Nep decks before Nep was available, which probably didn't help. I'm sure the meta's quite different up there (aggro is potentially favored in the lower ranks because people put more value in playing more games faster), but I have seen at least one Conjuring Force deck. Naturally, they won, but it's hard to tell how much of that is just because the other common Runecraft decks all require relatively specific strategies to play against.

edited 19th Jan '17 10:45:01 AM by Clarste

Thanks! Yeah, while Daria is still very common, I feel like Aggro Blood is much rarer, in fact I feel like most of the Blood I fight turn out to be Control. Once again what made these killer snowmen more of a thing is the common culprit, Piercing Rune, that gives them another cheap 1 cost spell that does damage to boost the field with.

First thing I did was try out the infamous "JO Dragon" meme deck with no followers except Satan, based around Dragonclaw Crstal. I'm pretty sure all my victories with it were due to the opponent being good sports and letting me play my Satan combos, since there's no way D Shift decks couldn't kill me much faster. It'll probably be different once there's another set of rewards for the season like the animated Olivias back in December though.

Apparently you can fill out a survey for 3 free packs to be distributed later.

edited 21st Jan '17 8:21:08 AM by Clarste

I made sure to answer that cute anime artwork is one of the draws of the game