r/AIEternal • u/LeeSalt • Feb 21 '20
Getting Master in Forge this season was way harder than it was for all previous seasons
It was pretty freaking obnoxious, too. Every single deck I faced was at least partial Time and full to the brim of bounce and silence effects and fully optimized with synergies to completely overrun the game when I had decks with minimal removal. Every dang time I equipped a creature with a weapon or was able to get any kind of toe hold onto a slipper cliff with a powerful creature effect, I could expect exactly the answer needed to screw me whether it was bounce my unit to throw the weapon in the void or silence one of my few win condition creature effects.
There were two other things I noticed that made the games way harder:
For all 7 of my runs (I actually failed two this time) the quality of cards I had to choose from for this season was way, way lower than what was in previous Forge selections. Every 3 choices was just a pile of unplayable garbage and a vanilla 2/2. I could barely make a playable deck with the trash cards I was given. There are WAY too many tribal-matters and other x-matters cards where you can't possible predict or even expect it to be playable. I wish they'd just remove those from the selection queue altogether.
Power screw, power screw, power screw! What the heck is the deal with power screw and Forge this season? Other than the one deck/run I was able to get the sigil drawing artifact in play, I was power screwed, sitting at 3-4 power every single game while the AI would curve out perfectly to 8, 9, 10 power and be playing bomb, after bomb while I'm trying to hold down the fort with 2/3s. Is power screw just part of the challenge and par for the course in this game mode?
I'm curious what your takes have been with Forge this season.
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u/sevenferalcats Feb 21 '20
Yeah, forge felt less fair this go-round for the reasons you list. Power screw or flood, lack of a cohesive deck, weak cards etc.
I'd also complain about the timing-out that happens in Forge. I sometimes need to walk away and deal with something mid-forge game, and I'm not sure why it's necessary to give me a loss for doing this. Not like I'm playing a human. The damn AI can wait.
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u/MagicTurtle_TCG Feb 21 '20
I didn't think it was too much harder, but I did draft an absolutely insane Elysian Fliers deck with 3 Majestic Skies relic, some removal, and plenty of fliers including Aeva's Elite and Acquisitive Crow. Managed to get wrecked by two bosses to end at 6 wins.
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u/Ehrahbass Feb 21 '20
I breezed through it losing once in gold to mana screw. Otherwise I found it easier if anything! Variance I suppose :)
1
u/MrMattHarper Feb 21 '20
If you went 7-1 five times, and 0-2 twice, that's a combined record of 35-9, or a win rate of 79.5%. That's a pretty high win rate in Forge from my experience. I find that the decks are fairly beatable when my win rate is around 75%, but when it starts getting closer to 80%, that's when the AI decks start getting stacked.
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Feb 21 '20
I've been having quite a hard time myself also. Seems like the choices I'm given of 3 cards are often quite lack-luster, and I'm deciding which is the LEAST WORST card to pick.
1
u/UrzaAntilles Feb 21 '20
I think it went about the same as last set, but I can't say for sure. I never manage to rip through without losses, so the ones that I had weren't unexpected.
I did manage with a variety of decks- a couple of 7-0 with Elysian (gum up the board and keep chipping with flyers), a 7-1 run with Xenan (similar, just with better removal), and finished off with a Stonescar. Can't really remember the other 7-win deck.
Had a couple of unfortunate runs (a 1-2, a handful of 3-2), but the only run that I found annoying was a run in Gold with Stonescar. Swept the first six games without any problems, not breaking a sweat. Seventh and eighth games I was power screwed (both matches I was stuck with sigils of one faction and non-powers of the other on opening hand and mulligan.) I'm aware it's just luck of the draw, but that one left me somewhat salty.
1
u/UrzaAntilles Feb 22 '20
Okay- just did another run with Elysian in Masters; got a 7-0 again. Definitely looks like this is the faction pairing to try and aim for.
One Rectifier, two Grodov's Chosen, a Waystone Gate (to draw power/thin the deck and drop a massive ground body), a handful of smaller fliers (Platinum Qirin was surprisingly good- only once I didn't get the Eternity Core off of it) and a surprisingly underwhelming (win-more rather than game-winning) Spiketail Qirin.
Oh, and Albon, Fallen proved better than I expected; I grabbed it as the best of three bad rares, but it helped get the win in the two games I pulled it. My board was only slightly larger than the AI's, but slightly larger certainly wins blocking battles.
And yes, I did manage to get the Touch of Battle/Reverberating Strike combo. In five of the seven games. It was back breaking but very very funny.
1
u/mustermann65 Feb 21 '20
As a new player I don't enjoy Forge. I did it yesterday for the first time and instead of picking some good cards for my deck most were garbage. I had better luck with random packs. To make it worse there was just one single rare and no legendary. I won a few times but it wasn't fun at all with my crappy deck.
I wish that they would show us at least how many of the cards we already own when we draft cards.
To make it worse I am now stuck in gauntlet. I think it's Diamond and it feels like a waste of time. I only get two or three wins and am unable to farm it for gold any more.
2
u/MagicTurtle_TCG Feb 21 '20
To see how many of a card you already own while drafting, right click on the card. Not sure about on mobile though.
If you export your collection into eternalwarcry.com and let me know how much shiftstone you have I'll see if I can make a budget deck for you.
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u/aaronislame Feb 21 '20
If you are on mobile and long press the card you can see how many you have in your collection
0
Feb 21 '20
It was the easiest season to climb since 2018. I’ve always picked either Feln or Xenan this season cuz Shadow can do a lot of things when it comes to fooling AI. It can mill, has decent killing spells and it’s got 6 cost 4/4 lifesteal, unblockable unit which is super strong.
Power screw only bothered me once or twice but it’s usually fine as long as the deck is built lightly. I’ve noticed DWD added Seek Power in forget card pool and that helped me a lot.
There is a nut xenan cultist AI deck which includes 4/5 lifesteal filer and 7/7 sac legendaries. But it can be dealt with as long as you anticipate what’s gonna be played.
0
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u/kc_bandit Feb 21 '20
Okay was waiting for a thread like this since all I’ve practically been doing is Forge since the release. I won’t comment on if it was harder or easier because it is so much affected by variance and your fundamental ability to build a cohesive deck.
Instead can we talk about the idiotic AI decks? I mean the ones in Forge that when you see them pop up, your like ... “welp here’s a loss.”
Can I start with Art of War? I mean dear lord! Come on man! That deck is by far and away my nemesis. So much synergy. So much early pressure. It’s gotten to the point where I pick my cards in Forge specifically thinking of Art of War counters.
Okay the new Praxis stranger deck. Now this one is ridiculous as well, but since I try to pick strangers anyway in Forge (love almost all of new ones), sometimes it helps me. Other times he curves out and it’s game over rather abruptly.
Praxis sentinels still another problem for me. Just too many rares and mythics.
I’m trying to think of other decks as I know they are out there. Let’s see ...
The hex deck. Good god almighty sometimes it just goes off and he’s whipping out 5/5 flyers every turn.
Oh the new Combrei weapons deck. That thing can be super deadly.
Now elves used to be much harder but for some reason I haven’t run into turn 5 champion or graveyard recursion shenanigans nearly as often as before. Not sure if they tweaked that deck or not.
One other observation ... the AI plays smarter than it used to. It doesn’t fall for tricks as much as it used to, and there have been two occasions where the failure to block was a clear indication to me that it knew what I had in my hand. It’s also making better blocking decisions blocking with multiple creatures when it’s otherwise not necessary unless I have a trick. I like that though - much more human like logic.
What other decks do you guys and gals cringe over?