Epic Dark Draft Decisions (6)

Here is the 6th Epic Dark Draft Decisions. For the new readers, here is what I'm doing:

I use a random card generator to generate a hand of 5 cards from a complete singleton set of Epic, which includes the Core, the Tyrants, and new Uprising sets. I will then analyze the hand and decide what I would tend to pick if I were to draw that hand in the Dark Draft format of play. I will decide which card to pick if I got that pack, as well as which 2 cards I'd pick if I got the remaining 4. For the sake of consistency, I will assume this is the first pack I open.

For your information and as a reminder, here are the Dark Draft rules from the official website:

Dark Draft (2 players)

• Shuffle a stack of at least 120 cards. Deal 5 to each player.
• Each player takes 1 card out of their hand of five cards and drafts it, then passes the other 4 to the other (at the same time).
• Each player takes 2 cards out of their new hand of four cards and drafts them, then discards the remaining two cards into a shared face-down discard pile.

Both players now have drafted three cards. Repeat nine times to get to a 30-card deck, shuffle and play.

This is a fun, fast, and skill-testing draft format for two players. Many of our competitive events use this format in the playoff rounds. This format is used in our World Championship. Source: http://www.epiccardgame.com/formats-draft/

So what do we have this week?

 

 


There are some really solid cards in this pack. Final Task can almost always be used in any game, even if it is just for the Draw 2. Grabbing your champions back or even a troublesome opponent's champion back for an attack can be game changing. You can also grab a champion that is Unbreakable on your turn to get them back forever like Juggernaut! Just beware that if you grab an opponent's champion any bounce effects actually go back to the owner's hand! Heck, I like using Final task on stuff that don't usually have Blitz like Knight of Shadows or the game ending Burrowing Wurm, lol.

 

Gold Dragon is a very solid pick in Limited as well. If you manage to have a decent amount of establishing or Ambushing champions or even 0-cost Blitzers and can force your opponent to spend their gold on your turn first, Gold Dragon is amazing. A Blitzing flier can be very hard to block and Righteous is just icing on the cake that can make for incredible health swings during the game.

If Necromancer is allowed to stay being alive, he will win you games. We saw a little of how devastating he can be during the World Championship when players like Will Morgan (2nd place overall) used him to continue to grab champions from the discard pile. He does require loyalty to be effective though.

 Rampaging Wurm has won me a lot of games. If you manage to draft a Rage or Lash it becomes infinitely better, but there are few champions that can more punish an opponent that spends their gold first on your turn. One of my favorite Epic plays ever actually was when I played and attacked with the Rampaging Wurm WITHOUT my opponent playing gold first. In my experience playing a strong champion on the first turn of Limited can really throw an opponent off. They blocked with Crystal Golem and used its ability to draw cards, thinking they were safe. Little did they know I also had Rage in my hand, and that meant 18 damage to the face on the first turn. I won on the next turn and ended up winning the match. It felt amazing.

Shadow Imp is also a very strong card. 0 Cost Blitzing and Ambush AND Unblockable is just ridiculous. Adding onto that an ability to bounce it back to hand when you play a 1-cost Sage card, and you have one of the best life whittlers in the game. Even without a ton of Sage cards it's a solid pick.

Man, this is a tough pack, but I think I'm gonna have to go with Final Task. I have a couple of reasons. For one, it's the only card in the pack that also draws cards, and even though there are a lot of those in Epic, it's nice to grab one early. Second, Final Task works well in Limited because nearly everyone drafts hard hitting or great champions. You will find a target to use during the game. Third, bounce effects are less likely to appear simply because they have to be found AND drafted, so that makes grabbing your opponent's cards safer. Fourthly, it requires no loyalty and can be played on offense or defense, giving it a lot of flexibility. And Fifthly, when I had the pack over to my opponent, taking one of the Evil cards makes Necromancer Lord less of a good pick and doesn't give my opponent a head start in any given color, which can sometimes be a good thing.

I would have to keep in mind all the other cards in the pack though because they are all very good, especially if I have to spend my gold first on their turn. I would definitely be looking for cheap blockers and removal.

If I received the remaining cards, I think I would go with Rampaging Wurm and Gold Dragon. I would be sad to pass up the Imp and the Necromancer Lord, but 2 very hard hitting and solid champions with Blitz is just so nice to have in Limited. They require removal or else they will help you run away during the game. A very solid pack overall though.

I hope you enjoyed today's Dark Draft Decisions, let me know what you think in the comments, and as always, happy gaming!

Epic Card Game Worlds 2016 - Afterthoughts From a Spectator

Well it certainly was an exciting Worlds. Lots to talk about.

I wrote an article about my predictions here: http://amazingspidertank.blogspot.com/2016/11/epic-worlds-predictions.html

For those of you that don't know, this was the format for the weekend:

The World Championship will consist of 7 rounds of Swiss on Sunday, followed by a cut to the top 8 on Monday. Each round is 60 minutes and it is a best of 3 rounds.

The Tournament begins with an Epic Cube Draft with 8 player pods.

Rounds 1 and 2 will be played using decks created in the Cube Draft
Rounds 3 and 4 will be played using the Dark Draft Format
Rounds 5 through 7 will be played using full Construction rules.

The Top 8 will be single elimination, and it will be the best 3 out of 5 games each round.

Games 1 and 2 will be Dark Draft
Games 3 through 5 will be Constructed

Everyone loves giant checks!

There were 12 Last Chance Qualifiers which contributed to the 64 total players in the World Champion Event! 64 players battled it out and the top 8 advanced on to Monday. Several games were streamed and they were a blast to watch. The Dark Draft rounds especially were exciting. So many great plays and epic turn-arounds and come-from-behinds. I was one of like 5 people chatting on the Twitch Channel. At any given time though there were 90 spectators, which seems pretty decent for the first run. If anybody wants to watch or rewatch all the videos are here: https://www.twitch.tv/whitewizardgames/videos/all

While the streams were going on, we chatted about strategy, the future of the game, funny stuff involving the poor Minotaurs, and how WE would have won if we had just qualified, lol. It was lighthearted and good-natured, and was a true testament to the great community that Epic is getting. The play by play analysis was great and enjoyable. They offered some genius insight into the game, spoiled some new information, and even interacted with us lowly spectators!

I am so envious of that swag bag. Every qualifier got this stuff!

My feel good moment of the stream was when I correctly guessed every single one of John Tatian's (the eventual winner of the entire tournament) picks during his Dark Draft in the semi finals. I felt so vindicated. I guess some of my Dark Draft Decision articles are paying off. Now I'll just have to find a way to apply that to the real world, lol.

There were a few snafus when it came to the videos and audio but they were few and far between. It seemed like the majority of the streaming went smoothly.

We got to hear the announcement that an Epic App will be coming soon! This means that we can play our favorite game digitally. WW mentioned online play, some kind of campaign mode, real time and slower tournament play, and that the kickstarter would be coming around January I believe. This is quite exciting. This may even be enough to push me over the edge and get a smart phone. For those of you that don't know, I've been proudly sporting a flip phone all these years, much to the chagrin of my friends and family. I shall go kicking and screaming into the smart phone age, but this app may be enough to do me in.

I got to cheer on my good friend, Josiah Fiscus. He won my local qualifier and represented us here in Pittsburgh very well. I believe he finished 39th. He was sad to start out 3-0 and then drop so many after that, but placing in the 2nd reward bracket is quite the accomplishment so congrats! I also had to cheer on Gabriel Costa-Giomi. I played him at Origins where he beat me soundly. Then he came to my other local qualifier and we played against each other in the final Dark Draft game where he beat me again. Since he finished in the top 8 I feel proud to have contributed in some small way to his greatness lol. Also, that means that Pittsburgh qualifiers put out some serious competition. Both our finalists performed very well, and one made it to the top 8, that is pretty sweet!

Epic App!

When they moved onto the Constructed portion of the tournament, that is where we would see if my predictions would come true or not. Now I don't have the statistics of all the decks that were being played, but we do know of the top 8 decks at least here: http://decks.epiccardgame.com/decklists/tournament

I feel pretty good at my predictions for the tournament. We did indeed see a smattering of Wild/Sage, Evil, and Kark decks. I did not see a Drinker of Blood deck do too well, or at least it didn't make it to the top 8, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given my luck with them at tournaments. The most talked about and controversial decks were of course Kark decks, and that's what I'd like to spend some time on.

When Kark was spoiled tons of people cried out "OP!", and soon after tales of playtesting of the unbeatable Kark deck was making the rounds. I definitely was worried about Kark, but I was hoping it wouldn't ruin the game and would just become another archetype. I think we are still not sure, even though the eventual winner used a Kark deck. One thing, and something White Wizards is quick to point out, is that Constructed is only 1 format that was used to get to the top 8. In order to qualify, you needed to perform well in a variety of situations and a Kark deck would only take you so far. And while that is true, playing a deck that gives you a huge advantage definitely helps. We had 3 Kark decks make it to the top 8. I read somewhere that someone said there was another Kark user in the top 16. Kark was the most used deck in the top 8, and Kark won the championship. You can guarantee that we'll be seeing a lot more Kark in the future. Now is that a good thing?

White Wizards has said they wanted to create Kark in order to give a win condition to control decks. In the past if you wanted to play a slow or controlley deck, the games would last forever and usually go to time. If there was a mirror match, it wasn't fun at all, as both players basically did nothing all game. So Kark was put in to give an alternate win condition that would allow the Control matchup a way to win.

I got to watch several Kark matches as they were streamed. Although Kark wasn't as dominant as some people feared, it still won most of its matches. I don't know if WW planned this, but a lot of the Kark games were mirror matches, which made it a lot worse. We didn't get to see Kark try to beat other types of decks as much, but we did see games of "who draws Kark first?". Those matches weren't very good and it sucks to lose because one player happened to draw a card first. Sure they were exciting as for some reason every Kark vs Kark matchup had all Karks at the bottom half of the decks, so it was quite the race, but it didn't make for very good gameplay. It was very non-interactive. The Kark players would wipe the board or play stuff that gained health, and as long as they kept doing that and managed to draw enough cards it was a race to grab Kark.

In the top 8 we did get to see Kark decks play some other decks, and they finished on top. Kark did not go undefeated, and that must be said. The decks that beat Kark were extremely aggressive and had to continue to wear Kark down. They usually had to attack both the life total as well as the hand of the opponent, to keep them from winning. Since there were 2 rounds of Dark Draft to start out it does throw off some of the statistics, but Kark mainly won.

The original Hateful Eight

In the semi finals there were 2 Kark decks and 2 identical Evil decks. If they had split up and Kark had gone to both matchups, then we could have easily had a Kark vs Kark final, which would have been awful. As it turned out, the Karks played each other and we had an exciting Final game. John Tatian (deck - http://decks.epiccardgame.com/decklist/view/115/kark-john-tatian-1-seed-1.0) and Will Morgan (deck - http://decks.epiccardgame.com/decklist/view/116/evil-thoughts-jonathan-lewis-2-seed-will-morgan-6-seed-1.0) played some of the best Epic I've ever seen. They went 1-1 in Dark Draft, and then went all the way to game 5 where John Tatian finally beat Will down for the win with his Kark deck. Will showed that Kark can be beat, however it was just not enough.

So here are my thoughts about a Kark deck right now:

Kark is undoubtedly very powerful right now. He can win very easily, or at the very least, not lose. Kark won most of his matches in worlds top 8. I would love to see the statistics of Kark decks at Worlds in general, as I would wager they did quite well. We did see Kark lose, but it was always to a very aggressive deck. Does that mean that only aggressive decks and Kark decks can be played? That's a shame. Derek Arnold's 4 color deck that qualified him for Worlds had everyone excited because it was a different type of deck, now that deck is completely nonviable. It is way too slow to beat Kark. I would love to see how long those Kark matches were too. I know that they weren't timed in the top 8, and so players purposelessly played slower to make sure they played correctly, but man did Kark games take a long time. The decks that beat Kark went well over an hour. I fear that anyone playing against a Kark at a timed setting at a tournament, is doomed to either lose, or run out of time and draw. Kark has just way too many ways to gain tons of health. That will make for some pretty annoying games. Now the games that Kark lost were testaments to great play. They were slow, but looking at the strategy as a whole they were very exciting. Great plays and rushes to try and keep that life total and hand size down, and slowly whittling Kark down where they could finish him off. I just don't think most decks can do that in 50 minutes, and if you playing for fun, be ready to play just 2 games in an entire night, lol.

John Tatian, our winner, with the bigwig himself

If Kark wins, he crushes. Even though most people would say that the final games were exciting, but how exciting is it really when you step back and think about it that Will Morgan was nowhere close to winning when John played Kark for the win? In so many other Epic games, it comes down to the wire, where the person with initiative pulls out the win and would have lose had they passed to their opponent? Those are real nailbiter games and are very exciting. We got to see that during the Dark Draft formats. However, with Kark, the only exciting plays a lot of the time were the unique ways Will managed to NOT lose by lowering John's health a bit. When the game ends with the winner at 60+ life, you don't get the feeling that the opponent was close to winning, and I think that really hurts Epic. And when Kark loses, it will most likely take forever. As I said I hope those games can make it in time, but I highly doubt a deck is going to beat Kark 2x in the span of 50 minutes. Unless the Kark player makes some serious mistakes or has some really bad luck, I just don't see it.

Look how epic that is? Also, cool playmat

So what does that mean? We are going to see a lot of Kark decks in the meta in the meantime. I hope we can find some stuff that can really crush Kark so to discourage a ton of people from playing him. I don't mind him being in the meta, as I like variety, but a tournament full of Karks sounds dumb. It's similar to a token swarm deck. A Human token deck can win a game on even the first round if they go second. However, Epic has a lot of counters to that deck (perhaps too many), and so we don't see a ton of them, but I am still excited when I see one attempted. I hope we can get the same thing with Kark. I'm not sure what the fix is. I think some kind of champion that while in play, prevents health gain, might be a decent answer, but I don't know for sure.

However, don't let that get you down. I really enjoyed myself even though I didn't get to participate. It was a lot of fun to watch the streams and continually hit refresh on Facebook to check for updates. I loved going through the posted decklists and trying to figure out what a player's next move was on Twitch. You better believe I will be trying my best to qualify next year.

A side note: I want to commentate on a match next year. Somehow make it happen WW gurus.

But anyway thanks White Wizards for such an awesome Worlds event. I had a ton of fun and I can't wait to see what you have in store for us next year! Thank you for reading and happy gaming!

Rogue Stormers Review

Rogue Stormers is an odd one. I really enjoy the game but it has some issues. Feel free to skip the wall of text until the pro/con list at the bottom :)

It has quite the history. It has it's roots way back in 2007 but through a ton of legal issues and company switches and stuff most of you don't care about it disappeared for a while. It was more recently titled Dieselstormers, but finally got released for Steam as Rogue Stormers in 2014 from Black Forest Games. It did not hit my radar until I saw a preview for it for Xbox. It got released in September and I picked it up pretty quickly.

The game really popped out to me. I really like the art style, and I am a fan of the arcadey games that get released. The game looked like a simple side scrolling action game similar to Metal Slug or Metroid, mixed with the aesthetics of a dieselpunk fantasy world.

The game is described as a run 'n' gun game with roguelike elements. For those of you that don't know, roguelike games are known for procedurally generated levels, simple graphics, and most importantly, permanent death. This means that if you die in the game, you have to start over. If a wave of nostalgia just poured over you, bringing back memories of quarter arcade games and frustrating Nintendo game sessions, then you are in the ballpark. Rogue Stormers also puts in some platforming and RPG elements too, bringing quite the fun mix to the table, or console, or whatever.

In Rogue Stormers you have to try and run 'n' gun through 6 levels. Each level is procedurally generated and finishes with either a miniboss (sphere thingy that's supposed to act as a doorkeeper maybe?), or a big boss. You can play solo, online, or even couch co-op with up to 3 other players.

The best doorknocker in the Universe

Before your game, you get to choose 1 of 5 different characters to be. Each character has their own unique look and background, and each one features a different weapon and special ability that recharges as you play. Everyone starts out with only Brecht, a werewolf with a machine gun whose ability is to use Lunacy, which increases his fire rate and damage. As you succeed in the game you will unlock the other characters. Beating the game is the only way to unlock them all. Each character feels very different. For example, while Brecht is the common soldier everyone can understand when starting out, just shooting everything from afar, Stabbygale is quite the opposite and requires you to be close up to best use her shotgun or her bladesaw which pulls enemies closer. Presto has a flamethrower and a blazing shield, Camille has a rocket launcher and fires even more rockets with her special ability, and El Cazador has a sniper rifle and whose special attack pierces all enemies. All the characters look and play very differently, which is pretty cool. Although I must say it feels as though Brecht is by far the easiest to succeed with, which is nice since he's the first guy you get, but the other characters seem like a challenge mode at times. Each character also starts out with different amounts of health, keys (which can be used in the game to unlock chests with perks), and gold (which can be used in game to buy perks). This game also has a surprisingly large amount of lore to unlock and read, for those of you that like that.

Any game that reminds me of Labyrinth gets bonus points

Throughout your session you will encounter mainly goblin/orc-like (that remind me a lot of Labyrinth) enemies that try and shoot and/or stab you to death. You have a health meter, so at least it isn't a 1-hit KO. You will gather gold that can be used to gamble at the chance for power ups and health packs. There are a ton of power ups available, and they stick with your character as long as you don't die. If you can make it through all the levels you will probably have quite the assortment of stuff that can range from simply increasing your life total, to giving you little shield drones, to even allowing you to fly. You can also purchase/find secondary weapons that also feature a wide variety of abilities from a simple machine gun, to a turret, or even an electric boomerang. Some enemies will drop experience, which is a very odd thing for a roguelike game to have. This is where Black Forest games throws its players a bone.

Add caption

You see every time your session ends in a grisly death, and believe me, it will happen a lot, the experience you randomly gain stays on your character. Whenever you gain enough to level up, you get a slot machine roll at a choice between 2 random perks. These perks stay with your character, and provide very modest boosts like 3% to your fire rate and stuff like that. However, these perks only apply to the character that you leveled with, and each character has 60 levels. And with the infrequency of experience drops, you will have to play a lot to fully upgrade a character. I do like the system though as my lvl 28 Brecht is definitely better than a vanilla Brecht with my starting health having a decent boost of 15 health.

I also really like the procedurally generated levels. Each playthrough feels different and you have to find your path through the various obstacles and traps, trying to find the boss room. The bosses all have a very unique and awesome look to them, and the encounters play out very differently too. They all test your abilities and definitely reward pattern recognition.

Where is a tank trap when you need one?

I love/hate the difficulty. This is a very hard game. This is something a lot of people had issues with when it came to personal reviews. You will die a ton. That is part of the design, as the perk thing with experience is supposed to help you, but it's still very hard. I am definitely not the best video gamer, and I don't have a ton of experience with games like this, but I know I'm probably above average, and it took me a very long time to beat a playthrough with Brecht. Although I know a lot of the time was just goofing around, but I was at hour 17 of playing this game when I finally beat the final boss. Since it is a roguelike you can get to the 2nd to last boss in the game, but if you die, you have to start over from the beginning. The game rewards patience as health can be difficult to get, and the frantic strafing and dodging of 100 goblins hopping about the screen can whittle down your health pretty quickly. I still love the game, but the difficulty may be too much for a lot of people.

I am also very confused at some of the unlockables and achievements. Some of those things require several playthroughs with specific characters. That is quite a grind. Maybe they expect gamers to get really good at this game, but considering how long it took me to beat the game there is no way I'm unlocking all the other stuff. Also, just because you beat it once doesn't mean you'll do it again right away. The game has a lot of luck when it comes to drops. You can fight the first boss and he drops a gold chest, but that chest requires 500 gold, and it's very unlikely you amassed that amount in the first few rooms. So you lose out on an upgrade. Or you just can't get a key to drop from anyone and there are chests everywhere. In order to beat the game I feel like you really need a lot of good perks and that just sometimes doesn't happen. I had a runthrough that started out with 2 very good upgrades that boosted my damage, but lowered my total health. However, I could not find a health upgrade for 2 stages and so my health total was so low that I was killed in only a couple of hits.

Sure, the rent is high, but you can't put a price on smog

The graphics aren't anything too amazing but I was fine with them. I really enjoy looking at the background, from the ramshackled slums at the surface, to the Cthulhu inspired ancient temples below. The music is rather lackluster but I don't play these games for the music. If the visuals, and more importantly, gameplay, are good then I'm fine.

I must say I really enjoy the gameplay. it is fast and frantic but pretty fair I think. There were many times when I took damage and if I had remembered to dash I could have avoided it. There are times the game feels unfair when it comes to random drops, but that's what you get with these types of games. I really like the perk system and the upgrades as you play. Each playthrough can feel very different depending on what you get, and you have to change your tactics accordingly. The gunplay is smooth and the various weapons really let you feel a punch. I especially love dropping grenades on packs of goblins and watching them explode into tiny bits.

Mmmmmm, perks

I do have to talk about some of the bad stuff though. This game is largely marketted as a multiplayer game. Yes, you can play it solo, but it is designed as a couch co op or multiplayer. I have not been able to test the couch co op myself as I am at the age where getting several friends over to play a video game is harder than raising a kid. I have attempted, on many occasions, to play multiplayer, and whew was that a bad experience. I could rarely find any players and when I did, the game was so glitchy it was nigh unplayable. The maps blinked on and off or never updated when you found something, the lag was worse than dialup internet, and it was all around a miserable experience. Granted there were some glitches in the Matrix that caused the game to drastically underperform and fail in a variety of ways when it came to matchmaking, and I have been told by the developers that they put in a patch that should fix that, but still. For a game that is supposed to stand on its multiplayer, this game failed. I still have hopes that I will be able to complete a match online, or even better play with some friends on a couch, but I have a fear that I may be playing this game solo most of the time.

This game is also fairly expensive for what it offers. I feel as though I've gotten my money's worth, but a $20 price tag on what is essentially an old school style game seems a tad high. I know that will be a barrier to many players who already have trouble rationalizing a $60 purchase for a game that has a 10 hour story mode.

However, when all is said and done, I will gladly pick up and play a session of this game. I really enjoy hopping around and killing goblins in a beautiful world.

So, to summarize what I think:

PROS

-Procedurally Generated map and random drops keeps the replayability high

-5 different characters play and feel unique

-Beautiful art style and world design and satisfying animation

-Couch co op!

CONS

-Too difficult for most people and can be a bit grindy at times

-$20 price tag is a tad high for an arcade game

-Random drops and perks combined with permadeath can feel unfair at times

-Currently it is hard to find players online and for people, who rely on that, might be stuck with single player

Final Words

Anyway thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this rather long review. Give the game a try! If anyone wants to play leave me a message.

Epic Worlds Predictions

The 2016 Epic Card Games World Championship is coming this weekend! $100,000 shall be awarded to the players including $25,000 for the eventual winner. I am sorry to report that I will not be attending. I gave it my all in various qualifiers but came up short. I managed to get runner up in one tournament though so that was encouraging, and you better believe I plan on trying my hardest to qualify for next year. But anyway, it shall go on without me and it should be a blast.

They are releasing the newest Epic expansion, Uprising, during the weekend and it will be used for the tournament as well. Check out my reviews of the new cards here:

Kark's Edict: http://amazingspidertank.blogspot.com/2016/11/epic-card-game-uprising-karks-edict.html

Flames of Scarros: http://amazingspidertank.blogspot.com/2016/11/epic-card-game-uprising-flames-of.html

Velden's Wrath: http://amazingspidertank.blogspot.com/2016/11/epic-card-game-uprising-veldens-wrath.html

Will of Zannos: http://amazingspidertank.blogspot.com/2016/11/epic-card-game-uprising-will-of-zannos.html

Players have undoubtedly been practicing with proxies or print and play for the new cards, but nobody has had too much time to play test, so the meta should be quite interesting.

In case people do not know, this is how the tournament will be run:

The World Championship will consist of 7 rounds of Swiss on Sunday, followed by a cut to the top 8 on Monday. Each round is 60 minutes and it is a best of 3 rounds.

The Tournament begins with an Epic Cube Draft with 8 player pods.

Rounds 1 and 2 will be played using decks created in the Cube Draft
Rounds 3 and 4 will be played using the Dark Draft Format
Rounds 5 through 7 will be played using full Construction rules.

The Top 8 will be single elimination, and it will be the best 3 out of 5 games each round.

Games 1 and 2 will be Dark Draft
Games 3 through 5 will be Constructed

That is a lot of playing, lol. I was a little disappointed to see that Limited wasn't going to be featured. It's especially odd since it was 1 of 2 formats used for the qualifiers, and yet it's not to be seen. However, a new format in Cube Draft was added. I love the concept of Cube Draft, but I still found it odd.

I would like to discuss my predictions for the Constructed portion of the event, as that takes up the majority of the games. I will probably be wrong.

We have had quite a variety of decks that have qualified, and I don't think we've ever seen a duplicate deck, which is awesome. That doesn't mean that there haven't been archetypes though. Wild/Sage burn/control decks have been extremely popular due to using the 2 best colors so far in Epic. The ease and consistency of the deck has made it very popular, especially among former magic players. Drinker of Blood combo decks have also been very popular, and Uprising gave even more tools for it to work. Straight burn has probably the biggest showing so far but it tends to suffer in the top 8 at qualifiers. Weird 4 color control decks and smatterings of Good decks have trickled in from time to time, but they have been fairly rare.

I think we will see a lot of the Wild/Sage Burn/Control decks at Worlds. It is just too good of a deck not to be used. Both Wild and Sage got several very good cards that will most likely be added. I expect to especially see Scarros, Hound of Draka, Velden, Fires of Rebellion, and Frantic Digging to be new additions in a lot of those decks.

 

 

 I think we will see a decent amount of Evil decks too. I think Evil got a lot of help from Uprising. I am sure there will be some Drinker of Blood combo decks that will be using the new Zannos, Corpse Lord to help with some direct damage, healing, and zombie token spawnage, and of course the new Plague Zombies.

 

I would also not be surprised to see a general Evil deck, a blitzing 0-cost champions deck, or maybe even a demon token spawning deck. Rift Summoner could be quite potent, as could Winged Death.

 

The biggest change to the meta I think will be Good decks. They haven't been used a ton but I think the release of Chamberlain Kark will turn that around. Kark brings with him a new win condition in life gain. A lot of slower decks might not be used since you will constantly have to bring pressure on a Kark healing deck in order to win. Kark may not win the championship, but he will change the meta and force players to think about how to deal with him. Helping Kark and other Good decks will be the new Angel of the Gate and Silver Dragon.

 

Any way we go about it I'm very excited to hear how the tournament goes, and what works and what doesn't. I wish all the players that qualified and those to attempt the Last Chance Qualifiers good luck! I hope you enjoyed this and happy gaming!

Epic Dark Draft Decisions (5)

Here is the 5th Epic Dark Draft Decisions. For the new readers, here is what I'm doing:

I use a random card generator to generate a hand of 5 cards from a complete singleton set of Epic, which includes the Core, the Tyrants, and new Uprising sets. I will then analyze the hand and decide what I would tend to pick if I were to draw that hand in the Dark Draft format of play. I will decide which card to pick if I got that pack, as well as which 2 cards I'd pick if I got the remaining 4. For the sake of consistency, I will assume this is the first pack I open.

For your information and as a reminder, here are the Dark Draft rules from the official website:

Dark Draft (2 players)

• Shuffle a stack of at least 120 cards. Deal 5 to each player.
• Each player takes 1 card out of their hand of five cards and drafts it, then passes the other 4 to the other (at the same time).
• Each player takes 2 cards out of their new hand of four cards and drafts them, then discards the remaining two cards into a shared face-down discard pile.

Both players now have drafted three cards. Repeat nine times to get to a 30-card deck, shuffle and play.

This is a fun, fast, and skill-testing draft format for two players. Many of our competitive events use this format in the playoff rounds. This format is used in our World Championship. Source: http://www.epiccardgame.com/formats-draft/

Let's open another pack!

 

 

Well my opponent should be pretty happy with whatever I give them. These are some very decent cards for Limited. Drain Essence and Sea Titan are considered to be 2 of the best cards in Limited. Drain Essence gives you that direct removal with some serious life gain, while Sea Titan has the best evasion, a huge body, and a fun decision making Tribute ability that can be used offensively or defensively.

That's not to say that the other cards suck. Bodyguard I think will really show that it's a very strong Good card. It is true that you need to have a lot of Good cards to make it great, but having a little blocker or attacker almost all the time is so great. He's so easy to get back to your hand and so flexible. If you haven't read my take on him I wrote a little on all the new cards in Uprising here: http://amazingspidertank.blogspot.com/2016/11/epic-card-game-uprising-will-of-zannos.html

Cave Troll is an odd one. I think he can be amazing in Limited. You play him and he's a free blocker. If he lasts long enough to attack that is a serious hit and you might draw out your opponent's gold. If he gets killed, as long as you have a lot of Wild in your deck, you can get him back. If you opponent banishes your draw pile, you still made him play it on a 0-cost and not something else, so that can be good. Uprising did give us a lot of discard pile removal though so the Cave Troll does take a hit.

Zealous Necromancer is another oddball. I have heard tales of him completely locking out decks in Limited. If you aren't prepared to remove him from the game, your opponent can amass a lot of zombie tokens and ping you to death. He also has Ambush and draws a replacement card so that is always desirable.

That being said, I think I'm going to have to take Drain Essence. This is one of those cards that I will try to take in every single Constructed deck I make. This makes it very obvious that I will be taking it in Limited as well. It is a huge card that gives you some serious advantages in Epic. That direct removal would be decent enough, but to give you 9 health?! You remove most opponent's entire offensive turn with that card. I have seen this card bring player's back from the brink of death, and catapult them into the lead.

I will be extremely sad to give my opponent a Sea Titan though, and you better believe I will be looking for cards like Lying in Wait or Blind Faith and of course board sweepers that can take care it.

If I received this pack I would be dumbfounded. How could my opponent pass on a Sea Titan in the first pack? Unless they like a specific playstyle that Sea Titan doesn't contribute to I would find it hard to figure out what they took. Nevertheless I would be extremely happy to be passed this pack. Sea Titan is the obvious first pick, and I think I would have to go with Zealous Necromancer. He can do damage simply by being around and he doesn't require any Loyalty or color commitment like the other 2 can. Even though my opponent had to get an amazing card, I would have to say I came out on top with this pack.

Thanks for tuning in and I hope you enjoyed this writeup of Dark Draft Decisions. Until next time, happy gaming!

Epic Dark Draft Decisions (4)

Welcome to the 4th edition of Epic Dark Draft Decisions!

I use a random card generator to generate a hand of 5 cards from a complete singleton set of Epic, which includes the Core, the Tyrants, and new Uprising sets. I will then analyze the hand and decide what I would tend to pick if I were to draw that hand in the Dark Draft format of play. I will decide which card to pick if I got that pack, as well as which 2 cards I'd pick if I got the remaining 4. For the sake of consistency, I will assume this is the first pack I open.

For your information and as a reminder, here are the Dark Draft rules from the official website:

Dark Draft (2 players)

• Shuffle a stack of at least 120 cards. Deal 5 to each player.
• Each player takes 1 card out of their hand of five cards and drafts it, then passes the other 4 to the other (at the same time).
• Each player takes 2 cards out of their new hand of four cards and drafts them, then discards the remaining two cards into a shared face-down discard pile.

Both players now have drafted three cards. Repeat nine times to get to a 30-card deck, shuffle and play.

This is a fun, fast, and skill-testing draft format for two players. Many of our competitive events use this format in the playoff rounds. This format is used in our World Championship. Source: http://www.epiccardgame.com/formats-draft/

Anything good in this pack?

 

 


Well this sucks, lol. That is a lot of good stuff. My opponent is going to be very happy with whatever I pass him/her. Wow, I don't even know where to begin. Djinn is a solid pick, giving you are very large, Blitzing body with which to hit face, or just sit back and draw some cards, all the while not requiring any Loyalty or commitment. Draka is also amazing. You really need that Loyalty trigger, but a flying 9/9 is very hard to get rid of, and he can wipe out an opposing player's weenie blockers.

Frost Giant has quickly become one of my favorite cards to play as it can be such a devastating trick to play against your opponent who thinks they are able to defend you. If you manage to get a Surprise Attack, it can save your life as well. He also doesn't require Loyalty or a commitment. Raging T-Rex is a good card but only if you hit the Loyalty. If you can, he is incredible, and since I personally love going after Wild, it's often not hard to get that Loyalty. Ridiculously, I think The People's Champion is the worst card in this set, but he's not a pushover at all. Requiring no Loyalty (although he is better if you have a lot of Good cards), he is a solid body that puts out some weenie blockers or little attackers that can ping your opponent down.

If I take Draka I can still grab lots of other Wild stuff to make it useful, and I make it less likely that my opponent will take T-Rex without the Loyalty. Although that almost guarantees they will take either Djinn and/or Frost Giant. If I take Frost Giant, I could easily push my opponent into Wild with Draka and T-Rex. Ugh, this is gonna be a hard match.

I think I have to go with Frost Giant. For me it's between Draka and the Forst Giant but I really like removing all my opponent's blockers. I also don't have to worry about hitting Loyalty and I haven't committed to a color that way either. Sage is also incredible so I'm not gonna be hung up on having a Sage card. That's a really tough choice though and my opponent is going to be very happy.

If I got this pack from my opponent I would be very happy and yet very scared of what card they picked over every other one. I think I gotta go Wild and take Draka and the T-Rex. That is just too good a jump into Wild for me to ignore. I have seen far too many little blitzing champions and weenies on my opponent's board to not want a board clear and a flying giant dragon. And having that card draw and a body with T-Rex can be a game changer too. It definitely does force me down a Wild path as I really need to hit those Loyalty triggers, and since my opponent passed me those it's very possible that they will counter draft Wild cards to try and screw me over so maybe that's a bad choice. I dunno. That's the fun with Dark Draft.

Anyway I'm sure people will disagree with my decision and I'd love to hear why. So let me know in the comments, and as always, happy gaming!