Almalexia deck

Snowy_Wyndra_Karn

plus buff to NPCs...

this is the deck that changes everything.

I love it!

rbfrgsp

It's okay.

Positives: it introduces a whole new game flow and with it a new way to play and to think about the game.

Negatives: a deck which enables you to swap/cycle/draw new cards to your hand in both directions (IE: from the draw pile and the cooldown pile) should not also have a plain old "draw a card" action on a combo. It should only get to draw from its donate action, and from synergising with a separate deck.

Second, every card with Confine must be a taunt in a future update. This is so counterplay can be tactical. Otherwise, the synergy with Pellin or Rajhin is too great. You have to attack the other tank pieces before you can get any of your cards back. The potential to take literally ALL your opponent's power cards and hide them behind an agent is strong. Then hiding that agent behind two or three taunt contracts itself is obscene.

I get that Lexi has to be OP for a few months to sell the chapter, but this change would improve the quality of tactical choices in the game.

Necrotech_Master

i just unlocked the deck last night so i havent had time to personally use it yet

but from what ive read, i would agree that the confine action could potentially be OP, especially if each confine agent also can confine an unlimited amount of cards

SeaGtGruff

I've only used the new deck once, when the Expert NPC I was playing against chose it as one of their two patrons. I never got a chance to use, or see in action, the new Confine ability, as none of those cards showed up in the Tavern before I won.

rbfrgsp

It's early days but I've got to say it: people don't really like playing this deck at the moment.

Since unlocking it, I've been queueing games in unranked and playing Lexi each time to give myself practice with it and to allow players who've not unlocked it a chance to try the deck without risking rank.

The card movements on Donate are really stretching turn times, regularly hitting the hourglass countdown from midgame onwards.

Confine is a total fun killer, as suspected. Once two or three of your high-value cards have been taken, players are not really motivated to play seriously. I had one player yesterday who to his credit kept playing but had hit endgame with nothing but treasury cards and bewilderments left in his deck.

Maybe everyone gets used to it. Maybe everyone agrees it's a nofun deck and just chooses not to select it (as they did with orgnum for a long time). Maybe it needs reworking to retain the basic idea but limit its potential to ruin all the fun in a game.

I'd suggest every confine card having a confine ranking so that they can only hold X amount of cards, and all having their hit points reduced.

Snowy_Wyndra_Karn

rbfrgsp wrote: »

It's early days but I've got to say it: people don't really like playing this deck at the moment.

Since unlocking it, I've been queueing games in unranked and playing Lexi each time to give myself practice with it and to allow players who've not unlocked it a chance to try the deck without risking rank.

The card movements on Donate are really stretching turn times, regularly hitting the hourglass countdown from midgame onwards.

Confine is a total fun killer, as suspected. Once two or three of your high-value cards have been taken, players are not really motivated to play seriously. I had one player yesterday who to his credit kept playing but had hit endgame with nothing but treasury cards and bewilderments left in his deck.

Maybe everyone gets used to it. Maybe everyone agrees it's a nofun deck and just chooses not to select it (as they did with orgnum for a long time). Maybe it needs reworking to retain the basic idea but limit its potential to ruin all the fun in a game.

I'd suggest every confine card having a confine ranking so that they can only hold X amount of cards, and all having their hit points reduced.

Ok, I must admit that I have only played NPCs since the new update. Usually, I only play NPCs when a deck is released, just until I can get a handle on things. But I must admit that I did think that this deck would take much more time per turn... and it has. I just wasn't sure whether it was because I was just so unfamiliar with it.

I can understand everything you are saying... confine would be a total fun killer if it was being used against you consistently, and I get why players just want to leave if that's what is happening.

I am enjoying the deck, but like I said, it's only with NPCs (and I'm enjoying their buff).

Maybe I'll just stick with this for a while.

Thanks for your input.

tsaescishoeshiner

I'm trying to be positive and stay in a good mood, but I sorta dread Almalexia games. They take a very, very long time and tend to snowball very quickly where one player suddenly starts getting enormous point payoffs. I think there's too much draw in the deck. The lengthen games out because of the drawing and the constant decision-making.

Even when I win Almalexia games, I wish we could have had a quicker game. Rajhin games can be made quicker by picking the right patrons and playing greedier cards, at least.

Myrnhiel

I played against an expert NPC a couple of days ago. They chose Almalexia as one of the patrons. As I didn't know this deck and had no idea what it is doing, I always bought the cards, when I had the chance, just to see how it works.

The game ended with me winning and the NPC not having a single card on their hands for the last several turns.

Snowy_Wyndra_Karn

Myrnhiel wrote: »

I played against an expert NPC a couple of days ago. They chose Almalexia as one of the patrons. As I didn't know this deck and had no idea what it is doing, I always bought the cards, when I had the chance, just to see how it works.

The game ended with me winning and the NPC not having a single card on their hands for the last several turns.

Lol that’s awesome.

Similar thing happened with me but not to the point where I took all their cards.

Haha that’s great!!

Myrnhiel

In my defense I have to say that I still don't know what I was doing. I was just playing without any strategies (as I usually am) and it took me a moment to realize that the NPC had lost all their cards. And then I felt really bad for the poor guy.

After this game I thought: ok, if you play against someone who really knows what they are doing, you'll not stand a chance.

Largomets

So here's my thoughts on this:

On PTS, I was VERY concerned about how over tuned this deck potentially was. I found a TON of ways to play it that just absolutely obliterated opposition, and it definitely needs tuning.

On live however, I'm actually enjoying it more than I thought I would for a few reasons. It's actually not AS broken as I thought it was, because skilled players actually have a fairly even shake at using the deck which equalizes it a bit. It's not as RNG focused as other decks, and it does require quite a bit of thought/planning/skill to use effectively, making it a really great deck for ranked competitive imo.

Pros: - really flexible. There are now MANY ways to play this game when this deck is in play, instead of the pigeon hole you can find yourself in with other decks (with crow, must buy all crow cards, with pellin must rush power cards etc... no longer a thing FINALLY).
- Requires thoughtful play and planning, making it a good deck to "cut through" the RNG farm of other decks like crow and orgnum
- Allows you to cut down your opponents draw RNG somewhat with the patron, so them getting an "OP" card early while you have nothing can now be somewhat countered vs. before where you were at a massive disadvantage
- pairs nicely with most decks, so you have tons of gameplay options with it
- drastically reduces the difference of player 1 and 2 in early game, a nice equalizer

cons - still not strong enough to totally negate Druid. Druid really needs to be nerfed. It's just unacceptable how overtuned that deck is and how it was never nerfed. This new deck can take on crow, orgnum, pelin etc. but you're still in an RNG race with druid sadly.
- long hands, sometimes even longer than crow hands
- a few cards are over-tuned unreasonably (a card that lets you use an extra patron should not be an agent, much less an agent with taunt. That's a bit broken. Also confine can be devastating as it currently exists, especially in early game)
- the patron only costing 1 gold when unfavored is a bit too over tuned. Should probably cost 2 or 3 gold.
- the draw priority doesn't always make sense in the "turn order," and it can even bug out if you try to check on your cards/deck before continuing play.

Over all, while over-tuned (we expected that), it's not NEARLY as overtuned as Druid (seriously though, stupid that Druid hasn't been nerfed yet despite being the most powerful deck by a landslide), it's nice to finally have a meaningful counter to the RNG farmers in ranked, and will make the more skill-based matches in ranked a lot more competitive and interesting. As someone who only plays ranked, and as someone who hates losing to someone who got RNG carried, this is a massive win for me and players like me who prefer thought/skill to RNG farms.

Necrotech_Master

after giving this deck a few tries against the npcs, the donate ability seems very similar to crows, you discard a card to draw a new card

this can also easily daisy chain as long as you have cards you want to keep discarding, keep getting a card you dont like in the draw? re-donate it to draw a new one

it can almost entirely eliminate the need to even use the treasury to get rid of gold coin cards because they can be used for donations

confine i could see definitely also being an issue, if you had taunt agents on the field, or the opponent had no real way to destroy the agent confining cards, it does act almost like a rahjin bewilderment when your effectively blocking use of a good card instead of bloating their deck with useless cards