Hindsight is A Bitch

Ladies and Gentleman it turns out I didn’t have what it takes to be a major player after all. After finding out I barely qualified for fighting in the second round I had to fight an additional fight beforehand to see if I could even play in the real round two. Though I managed to win against Ed the Man (board handle Killtrend) backed by Gravebone but I lost to a Majiya deck in the next fight. Do I think Majiya is busted because of this? No, but I do believe my deck building and card choices leave a lot to be desired. Some people on the Shadow Era forum were interested in what I had used to make it as far as I did. Now, I’ll show them and you, readers. After I show this list I’ll break it down my analysis into three parts. The logic behind my choices, why it got me as far as it did and most importantly, why it failed.

Deck Name: Ice Queen

Hero: Majiya

Allies: 10

4. Brutalis

4. Infernal Gargoyle

2. Plasma Behemoth

Abilities: 22

4. Fireball

4. Lightning Strike

3. Research

4. Supernova

4. Rain Delay

3. Shriek of Vengeance

Armor: 4

4. Snow Sapphire

Weapons: 4

4. Voice of Winter

The Logic: I wanted to try to burn out the opponent as quickly as possible while minimizing weaknesses from enemy Allies rushing down to make my life Hell. I chose Snow Sapphire to deal with Allies that have already entered play, while Voice of Winter would slap the brakes on anything which enters play (even if it means my Allies get frozen too). Brutails was a suggestion I took along with not inserting Fire Snake (I wish I hadn’t listen to that, but more on that later) on the grounds that Brutails had more HP and since I wasn’t going to be attacking mostly with units, it seemed like a good idea especially since once I got Voice of Winter in play my Allies couldn’t rush my opponent down immediately.

Futher reinforcing my paranoia would be Rain Delay. You know, rain out the battle, fling in a spell or two, or drop the small amount of allies or buy myself time to equip Voice of Winder or Snow Sapphire before my opponent pours his/her Allies down my throat. Shriek of Vengeance would be for those odd cases which might come up.

Why it worked in the qualifying round: The competition I faced was fairly to very Ally dependent to gain board control which played right into Voice of Winter and Snow Sapphire nicely. With those in play, and combining them with Majiya’s draw power, I had a fairly easy climb since it seemed like I read the response of the Metagame correctly. HOWEVER…

Why it failed when it was time for the main event: …the one thing my deck couldn’t cope with well was a mirror match. In the qualifying round I was beaten 2-0 by another Majiya deck. While I had addressed one issue, it turned out that it couldn’t fight another Majiya deck well. They were more concerned about just getting their damage off ASAP while I tried to deal the damage while slowing the opponent’s progression through my Life.

What kind of person doesn’t build their deck to take a mirror match into account? Apparently me. What made things worse (besides losing once to someone running a LOGAN deck in the qualifier) is that when it came to that matchup the deck could not pull off both tactics at once VS. Majiya. I found myself loaded up with 5 and 6 cost cards and more situations than I care to remember when I had to place Supernova into the Resource area.

Overall, I feel I just got flat out lucky. Had I faced more than one Majiya in the qualifying round I would have been stopped dead cold. My success in making it passed the one extra game I had to play was attributed mainly due to the way the game seems to give an advantage to the first player, but that’s another time.

This deck will vanish into obscurity outside of this post. I just made it to the second round, I didn’t come in second or win so it probably won’t be made high profile. I so wanted to win. Use the money to get a better router, the rest to my mom, and get my sister that iPad (if I made it to worlds). I could have been Champ…but I’m a chump. Maybe next time…maybe next time.

Shadow Era Card of the Day – U.S. Nationals Week: Majiya

This is it. The day where I break down a card that has just as many haters as she does admirers. Controversy surrounds her to this day. They want her nerfed to Hell and back. Could the reason be that she’s broken, or simply because she’s powerful AND lacks a penis (well, she’s a Mage, so she could probably grow one for…purposes)? Now, let’s show the lady for those at home not in the know.

Behold, the Hero who is occupying 5 out of 10 spots in the finals. I am one of those. She’s been given the nickname “Maj the Vag” by her detractors, such is the plight of any woman who is beautiful, smart AND powerful. Her ability is a simple one, drawing a card for 2 Shadow Energy. This simple ability has made a lot of people cry foul. While the drawing itself is not in of itself an issue for players who don’t like her it’s what she can draw into that freaks people out. Combining her ability with that of Research and she can draw 2 cards every other turn.

While some might go “two cards, big deal” we must also take into account that this gives more viability to another tactic a good deal of people hate because unlike Allies you can’t just swing at it to render it a non-issue. Burn. Currently, there is no armor in the game you can slap onto your Hero to reduce the damage of effects. You can rain down Fireball, after Fireball after Fireball. Following up with the likes of Lightning Strike and polish it off with a Supernova or two and you got yourself a nice recipe for Rage Cake.

Because of the fact that she draws cards and can burn, you got a bunch of people saying she’s over powered. I honestly don’t think so.  Sure, you can burn away the opponent but only a fool wouldn’t pack in Allies in such a deck (besides, we need more burn cards before you could think to go PURE burn and win). Supernova puts her over the top but you can defuse this by wearing down her Life to the point where it will hurt the opponent more than help them since it hurts both players. But it’s not seen that way since players seem to hate ANYTHING that cannot be dealt with in the conventional way.

She has also earned the name “Noob Tube” since it seems to them that even a rookie can beat an experienced player with it. If that held ANY truth to it I would not have lost my first two matches using her, so there is a bit of a learning curb. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t want to flip through a large manual to know how to use something (in a GAME of all things) properly. Makes it highly unattractive and elitist which I hate. So what if you get beat by a new player with Maj? Doesn’t mean she’s busted. For all you know that person might have been experienced in other games like this before hand so it probably became second nature, or perhaps your deck just wasn’t built to take her head on…oh, wait, you’re perfect and elite so there must be something horribly wrong with the card, right? It can’t be that you just flat out suck, right? You want horribly broken gameplay, senseless nerf and buffs which create a great divide and uber elites getting the better of people and no one willing to address the REAL problems of the game? Go play Alteil. I got away from it for that very reason, but I’ll tear that apart another time.

Overall, I feel that she is not the standard of how broken cards are judge, but how ALL Heroes should be. She wasn’t the first female who was under consideration. Before I found this game it was the card I covered first this week, Eldawen Frostmire used to rock from what I heard and now we get this sad excuse of an effect. And wonder of wonders, she doesn’t have a penis. The developers might be thinking “SHE’S STRONG AND NOT A MAN! MUST BE NERFED TO PROTECT MANLYNESS!!” Sandra Trueblade  used to kill a resource when she entered play…now, she can only kill a resource if the opponent has more than you…and you know what? Yep, lacks a penis. Rather than making others better, people seem to side on making the game retarded. Want me to play Heroes like Boris Skullcrusher, Zhanna Mist (though not having a penis, she might not get better), Victor Heartstrike and Banebow? MAKE THEM NOT SUCK, DON’T CRIPPLE MORE HEROES! PUMP MORE CARDS INTO THE GAME! But what do I know, I only want the game to grow and for the players and developers to stop being scared of anything that has a vagina.

Will I have what it takes to win and go to the big show? Tomorrow, we’ll find out. As for those who still hate Majiya and can’t see the issue lies with the rest of the cards and also in the tournament, I can only wish that Maj takes you out, HARD! But seriously, good luck to everyone playing tomorrow. Now excuse me, I’m going to les out with Maj and make babies with her.

Shadow Era Card of the Day – U.S. Nationals Week: Gravebone

Undeads are awesome. Mages are awesome. So by that logic an undead Mage is mind-blowingly awesome. Behold, the forth Hero making his way to the second round of the tournament this Saturday.

Gravebone, or rather GraveBONED if you face a solid build. We have two such builds moving onto the Finals (sadly their names escape me at this time). I haven’t had a chance to face them then, but I hope I get to fight at least one of them before all is said and done.

He has this killer ability where he can bring back Allies from your Graveyard to your hand for the cost of 2 Shadow Energy. This is a big deal though it’s handled by it being limited to the topmost Ally in there so a bright opponent can kill your Plasma Behemoth first and your Fire Snake second forcing you to take the snake when you really want the Plasma Behemoth.

Belladonna makes SWEET LOVE to Gravebone. Bring a Ally back from the dead and draw a card? Yes, please! Things can really get awesome once you start thinking with PORTALS! Well, Portal to be exact. With Belldonna handing you more cards and Portal allowing those Allies to attack right away and all the other Mage goodies like Fireball and of course the devastating Supernova, Gravebone can create quite a bit of pressure if you can be a threat on both those fronts.

Overall, I think Gravebone is awesome. Shame more of him didn’t make it to the big show, but what can I say? I look forward to seeing them in action and possibly facing one before it’s all over. I might get my wish and regret it though. Tomorrow, I cover the Hero I will be using that is draped in controversy.

Shadow Era Card of the Day – U.S. Nationals Week: Eladwen Frostmire

Welcome to my first card of the week segment on this blog. Well, I should say card of the work week since these will be done Monday through Friday.  On last Saturday I entered in the first official Shadow Era tournament and managed to qualify for the top 8, which means I’ll be heading back next week to see if I can hack it to become United States Champion and play in the World Championship. It’s because of this I decided I this is the week to start on this game.

I based the order of review off of the least amount of copies of a particular hero to the most copies (some had only one so I picked based on what struck me as oddest). So enough with the senseless chatter and onto business.

For our first review we got Eladwen Frostmire, Kathalar’s weapon of choice (congrats man/woman for making top 10 with her). She’s got a heart of ice and turns it into a weapon to make the Shadow aligned people into nice yummytastic frost pops. Interestingly enough it’s said in the single player campaign that she knows their weakness. Though she wields ice and could possibly bring them to an end is she REALLY a badass or a faux? Let’s break her down.

As you see she’s got 26 Life which happens to be the current average for anything that uses magic. It could stand to maybe be 2 more considering her ability of dealing 4 damage with an Ice shard at the cost of 4 Shadow Energy. At this point in the game’s development the fact that it is Ice damage is meaningless (outside of story flavor) until we acquire cards where it matters that the damage is a certain kind.

Her ability takes at least 4 turns to get off at which you can select a single target and deal 4 damage to it. For me, waiting 4 turns to deal 4 damage to ONE enemy is a long time to wait so I can’t just spam this ability if I hope to get any use out of it. Unlike Nishaven who has to wait a turn longer but can nail all allies (even your own) in one go can play board control Eladwen is a surgical tool. With that in mind it’s not fair to compare the two. One’s a bomb and the other a bullet, think rocket launcher vs. sniper rifle.

Elad (I’m referring to Eldawen as this for the remainder of the review) can compensate for this since as a member of the Mage family she has access to cards like Research to help draw into something more. Say your opponent has a Plasma Behemoth he’s about ready to go crazy on Elad with on the next turn and you got the required amount of Shadow energy to use Elda’s ability to deal four to him and follow up with Lightning Strike so you can place the final nail in its coffin and still smack the opponent for a little damage and if not, you’ll just bring him down to 1 life and then eat 7 damage.

YES, the fact that she can’t kill the likes of Behemoth or Aeon Stormcaller in one hit is problematic but remember…she’s a human, and has access to Retreat to help pick up the slack. The ability is also helpful in cases like Elda vs. Majiya in who could deal with a beefy ally better. Majiya would on average need to use two cards to take care of the issue while Elad only needs one and her effect saving those other cards to jack up your opponents. Sadly, the like of Gravebone simply laughs this off cause he can just get the ally back at a later time.

To help Elda along I would strongly recommend Snow Sapphire to buy her some time against ally heavy foes. Keeps them affixed in a block of ice so it takes some pressure off a little while and conduct some Research to fix the problem.

Overall I would say she’s not useless, but she does require some help to stay in the game and maxing out her ability. Depending on her ability is a death sentence. Like I said earlier, it takes too long to get off and only hits a single unit. Being a Mage helps her case but even then…well, only time will tell if Kathalar will force feed the detractors some humble pie.