Review: Shadowverse (Japanese Hearthstone)

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 3:33 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Someone really needs to update the skeletons meme pic to include Luna.

I can't contribute to the conversation at all, but shitty image edits? That I can do.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 5:48 pm

Yeah, I went ham on liquidating cards I wasn't using--I have basically jack shit for animated stuff now--to craft some Cerberuses to go with the Eachtar, Orthrus and Reapers I pulled and have no regrets. Shadow can grind and shadow has reach.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 7:42 pm

I did not really expect Soul Dealer to become a thing, simply because it fit so poorly into either of the existing deck archetypes, but then the meta went and exploded. I do suspect Soul Dealer is the weakest part of the deck. While the second and third Belphegors are free, the second and third Soul Dealers are basically suicide, and even the first is if you draw him after you've played Belphegor. At that point, Bloody Mary and going lethal with Laura are pretty much the only safe way to put him on the table. It's an unwieldy card with a lot of the same problems as Blood Moon (you want the thing he does badly enough to run three of him, but you almost never want to draw that second copy), except it's on a 6/4 ward so playing it on curve doesn't really cost you any tempo.

I actually wonder if there isn't a viable aggro vengeance deck that only runs one Soul Dealer and then runs Baphomets as what are essentially extra copies. Take this deck, for example. It's one of the new aggro blood decks that's floating around. Bat shenanigans are out, vengeance shenanigans are in. It's looking to T4 Belphegor/Soul Dealer into T5 Dark Airjammer, and on T7 it can do 6 damage from hand to face with Soul Dealer + Laura. It runs three Soul Dealers, zero Bloody Maries, and exactly 6 points of lifegain. That second Soul Dealer fucking hurts. So why have it? The only thing with 5 attack in the entire deck is Soul Dealer, so drop 2 copies of it, swap Lyrial for Baphomet, and voila. Now you are running 4 copies of Soul Dealer yet will only ever see one of them, and you've freed up two slots in the deck for more storm followers (Imp Lancer, Soul Dominator, or maybe even a third Laura).

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 12:50 am

FrankTrollman wrote: I was tired of losing with Shadow so I crafted three Reapers and started running Goblin Princess and so far things look good. I really expected Goblin Princess to be a cornerstone card of Pendant Dragon, but it turns out that who really cares about a bunch of disposable bodies and a guaranteed future play is Luna.

Valkyrie Spear then Goblin Princess is an almost-viable neutralcraft threat. But only almost - paying five instead of two for that is definitely subpar. My budget-ish pendant dragon cares most about pendant boosting Earthshock Ogre and Enhanced Grimnar.

******************

But my crazy idea of the moment are about Runecraft's new tutor cards:

Enchanted Library spends two turns pulling spells. Dirt Rune can cover just about all bases with Earth Sigil Amulets and Earth Rite followers, meaning you could run a deck with three copies of only two "spells" and be guarantted to grab them with the library. On the downside, Mutagenic Bolt is NOT a reliable win condition -- so what spell would be here?
Likewise, Freshman Lou grabs a card with Spellboost - so you could try a deck where D-shift or something was your sole spellboost card and all your other spells were non boostable. On the downside, Daria pretty much demands you run a mess of other spellboost stuff, so she can't work here.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Fri Apr 14, 2017 3:02 am

I'm not sure how you could possibly play D-shift without a bunch of other spellboosty stuff. Fate's Hand, Fiery Embrace, and Flame Destroyer seem like pretty important components of the combo. After all, you're not always going to be able to get the cost of D-shift itself down to 0, so having the option to play D-shift for 7 and then two Flame Destroyers with whatever you have left over and still hit for 14+ is nice.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 3:08 pm

High b/low A has gotten so goddamn slow that I've been running 3478 Nep and getting winstreaks.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Apr 15, 2017 5:01 pm

So I just pulled a 4th!! Dark Jeanne.....grrr. Is it even possible to get the other Tempest legendaries from packs.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sun Apr 16, 2017 10:35 pm

It's really kinda amazing how many games there are where swordcraft totally has me on the ropes and then they play Pepe and everything is all right.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 6:03 am

So it needs some refinement yet, and I've only been playing it in unranked, but Penguin Blade seems to be workable. It runs Chimeras, Blade Mages, and a bunch of relevant 2/2 bears then a bunch of direct damage and spellboost cardflow/ mass removal. It can win on chip damage, Levi blasting or with hilariously huge penguins.

Here's a rough list

Spells
3x Insight
3x Magic Missile
3x Conjure Golem
3x Piercing Rune
3x Fate's Hand
2 or 3 x Enchanted Sword
Some number of Kaledescopic Glow, Enchanted Library and/or Angelic Snipes
Mass Removal: currently running one each of Mutagenic Bolt, Fire Chain, Secrets of Erasmus
3x Penguin Wizard
3x Blade Mage
3x Overplayed Mage Levi
3x Chimera
Some number of Craig / Clarke / Freshman Lou / Rune Blade Summoner / Oglers

I dunno, is this basically "tempo Daria" but without the Daria?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 7:59 am

I love playing against Soul Dealer, tension ramps up and win or lose the game is ending in the next three turns.

I have the least fun playing...
* Daria/D-Shift
* Aegis

I know it's a race for me to murder them before their death combo comes out but it just... feels non-interactive as they play their follower-kills for 8 turns.

The Dragoncraft Phoenix Rider has been a really fun card to play, in a ramp dragon mirror match I was slowly losing to a guy who basically had my deck but with more bahamuts and other legendaries (I only got 1 bahamut, 1 dark angel olivia and so on), the Phoenix uplifted me from the ashes to deal the last 6 or so damage needed to win.

Burn Earthcraft has also been doing alright for me, I love the feelingof earthrite but don't have any legendaries that interact with it and only 1-of Juno's Lab, Professor of Taboos. Now I'm torn between opening tempest packs for the chance of that legendary earthrite golem, or back to Bahamut packs to get another SKY KNIGHTS ASSEMBLE

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 10:25 pm

That looks almost exactly like tempo Daria without Daria, yes. My actual Daria deck right now is

3x Insight
3x Magic Missile
3x Conjure Golem
2x Wind Blast
2x Piercing Rune
3x Fate's Hand
1x Enchanted Sword
2x Kaleidoscopic Glow

3x Craig
3x Levi
3x Clarke
3x Emmylou
3x Ogler
3x Blade Mage
2x Daria
1x Chimera

There's probably room in there for Mutagenic Bolt and Angelic Snipe, I doubt Emmylou is that crucial to my success, but at A0 I haven't found the need for them. I just clear the board with Levis and Wind Blasts and probably lose outright to swarm Shadow.

Dropping Daria for Penguin Wizard doesn't sound like a great plan.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sun Apr 23, 2017 9:54 pm

For the record I've officially become one of Those Assholes and have been running Thane->Eachtar midrange shadow.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Mon Apr 24, 2017 12:01 am

If I have neither Cerberus nor Eachtar, can I put together a decent midrangey Shadow deck? Should I just craft Eachtar?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Apr 24, 2017 1:10 am

Trying to run midrange Shadowcraft without either of Shadowcraft's two big midgame cards is probably not a great idea.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Apr 24, 2017 3:23 am

Go full shaggro if you don't have either of them but realize that even no Cerberus budget shaggro really wants 3 Shadow Reapers super bad. Without Cerberus as backup I'd prioritize Reapers even over Phantom Howl. Howl is infamous, sure, but a big reason it is so nasty is that a turn 6 Howl is a fast outlet for the Coco buff you get from a turn 5 Cerberus. The ghosts and puppies combo threatens 9 to 11 storm speed damage from an empty board. Without that extra oomph it becomes way more defensible to run Demonic Strike or Dance of Death instead--less raw power, obviously, but they're cheaper to craft and don't care if your board is full.

[Edit]
Here's the midrange I've been playing:

3xGobbos
3xSkull Beasts
2xSkeleton Fighter
3xLyrial
2xSpartoi Sargeant
3xDark Conjurer
3xShadow Reaper
2xLittle Soulsquasher
2xAttendant
3xPrince Catacomb
3xOrthrus
2xPhantom Howl
3xCerberus
2xDeath's Breath
2xEachtar
2xImmortal Thane

I'm a firm believer in running a buttload of 1 drops even if you've got a solid plan for murdering people on turn 8. I bring this up because I've seen a fair number of people pimping greedy decks that get cute and stop at a trio of 1 drops and that's just half-assed bullshit. I mean, how in the fuck are you supposed to handle mulligans when you've only got 3 Skull Beasts in your deck? Dump the expensive shit so you end up with... more expensive shit? That kind of derpitude is probably why I keep seeing dumb assholes playing their Shadow Reapers on turn 2 just so I can eat their 1/1 asses with whatever spare bullshit creature I happen to have lying around. By contrast, my mulligan picture is way cleaner: if I don't have 1 drops, I mulligan, and then I get some gobbos and people die.

Biggest thing I'm torn about is Attendants versus Grimnir. Sometimes I would like to have wards, but also sometimes I like to crash Attendants into wards and then beat people to death with liches. Decisions are hard.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Apr 24, 2017 6:50 pm

John Magnum wrote:If I have neither Cerberus nor Eachtar, can I put together a decent midrangey Shadow deck? Should I just craft Eachtar?

Pretty much if you're running a non-Neph shadow deck in ranked at the high B's or better both of those are must-crafts.

Unranked / Mid B's and below, Orthus is an acceptable budget Cerebrus and Immortal Thane is an acceptable budget Eachtar.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Tue Apr 25, 2017 9:02 pm

I got to the low As with Daria and Ramp Dragon, but I do a lot of unranked stuff for quests and whatnot. I'm trying out a budget Aggro Shadow deck, since I happened to already have 3x Reaper and 3x Orthrus. So far it seems Pretty Good.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Thu May 11, 2017 4:55 am

New Analytics finally are out:

https://shadowverse.gamepress.gg/meta-d ... pril-24-30

Not a whole lot of shift. More than half the decks played are either varieties of Ramp Dragon or MidAggroShadow, and those continue to post notably positive win rates.

The interesting bits are in the minor details -- apparently Tyrant Shadow is winning fractionally more %s than other shadow varieties and Purgatory has the highest win percentage within Runecraft decks. And for anycraft you've at least got a fighting chance running Aggro -- it doesn't list at worse than 45% anywhere. (although it's not listed for some crafts, which seems odd to me)

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu May 11, 2017 10:16 pm

There a list out there of Japanese names directly translated into English? Just read that swordcraft is called 'royalcraft' in the JP version as it's symbol is a crown, also explains the ninjas as the sort of shadow assassins lords would use.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 12, 2017 6:14 am

I'm not sure how much the analytics are showing that translations weren't super accurate when they did the English localization and how much it's that Google Translate is kinda shit. Storm Blood comes out as "Sparrow Vampire" but Storm Haven comes out as "Running Bishop." I have no idea.

Anyway, the biggest problem of discussing such things is that no one knows what the different Dragon decks even are. I mean sure, we know Face Dragon and Pendant Dragon. The former doesn't use much in the way of Ramp and goes straight for the lost cost aggro followers with Aina and Forte as the top end. The latter uses a bunch of Neutralcraft nonsense and go-wide followers with the Dragon Pendant to do a shit tonne of damage - with a Grimnir-Pendant finishing move if needed. But neither of those are large parts of the meta.

The majority of Dragon players are playing 9-12 cards from the Ramp package and then.... something something. All of that gets called "ramp" or "stormramp" with no clear concept of what the other 28 cards in the deck actually are. Sahaquiel Ramp seems like a pretty obviously different deck than Face/Ramp hybrid with Mushussu, but the divisions are not made when shadowlog or gamepress tries to define the meta. Dragon is just a big blob that has an overall barely positive winrate, which means it probably contains a lot of different good and bad decks.

-Username17

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Fri May 12, 2017 6:45 am

I gave up following the game through the analytics pretty early on; however that shit gets classified leaves a lot to be desired and I'm not sure it's really useful. I do follow what's going on in the tournie scene a bit, which isn't necessarily a perfect indicator of what the meta is in ranked, what with tournie decks being built on far more resources and far less memes than even the tip-top of ranked matchmaking. But in the age of netdecking, it's probably a better approximation than trying to divine what someone thinks is the line between aggro blood and sparrow blood. Particularly once you realize that the difference indicated by such a line could very well be more noise than signal.

LeadPal · Post by **LeadPal** » Fri May 12, 2017 7:22 am

The Japanese class names are Elf, Royal, Witch, Dragon, Necromancy, Vampire, Bishop, and Neutral, transliterated from English.

Storm would be better translated as "Sprint." "Sparrow" is Google Translate fucking with you. Banish is more like "Extinction." Other deck terms and keywords look pretty accurate.

Based on a sample of around fifty cards, the translations are more accurate than I expected. The only notable differences I saw were that "Featherwyrm's Descent" has a more nuanced title in Japanese, something like "Chant: White Dragon's Divine Descent," and that "Vagabond Frog" is actually a portmanteau.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 12, 2017 7:18 pm

DSMatticus wrote:I gave up following the game through the analytics pretty early on; however that shit gets classified leaves a lot to be desired and I'm not sure it's really useful. I do follow what's going on in the tournie scene a bit, which isn't necessarily a perfect indicator of what the meta is in ranked, what with tournie decks being built on far more resources and far less memes than even the tip-top of ranked matchmaking. But in the age of netdecking, it's probably a better approximation than trying to divine what someone thinks is the line between aggro blood and sparrow blood. Particularly once you realize that the difference indicated by such a line could very well be more noise than signal.

The classification is indeed pretty bad in a lot of key ways. It's enough to tell us that there are in fact at least three (!) S-Rank Shadow decks at the moment (Basically Eachtar, Cerberus, and Minty), and it's enough to tell us that there is probably one or two S-Rank Dragon decks (very likely some variant of Storm Ramp and quite possibly one of the more controlling Ramp Dragons or Pendant Dragon). But it's not enough to tell us which Nephthys or Ledger decks are good - there might actually be a fourth S-Rank Shadow deck based on tutoring Last Words creatures. And it's not enough to tell us which Dragon variants are not bad, let alone actually identify which are the S-Rank decks.

But we can tell that you basically can't make a good Runecraft deck at the moment. And that the best Haven and Forest decks you can make are Tier 2.

-Username17

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon May 15, 2017 1:34 am

Had a game against D-Shift Daria, was about to super-die to a horde of blade mages when my opponent decided to mill himself for 21

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri May 19, 2017 6:01 am

Neutral is at least minimally viable now. I use it for missions for everything except Runecraft (when I want to win, anyway). I wouldn't call it good, but it is easy to play and fills every craft.

The core of it looks like 3x Goblin, Hamsa, Sektor, Valkyrie's Spear, Khaiza, Strix, Goblin Princess, and Feena. Maybe some Wise Mermen, depending what your *craft options are. Toss in whatever neutral gold/rainbow junk you have lying around. If you don't have much junk, Gilgamesh is a fine finisher. Fill it out with the best cards from whatever craft you're hosting it with plus any particular favorite neutrals of yours (bellringer angel or minotaur aren't bad choices, but neither really adds much either). You do want to have over 30 neutral here because that keeps Strix beastly and plays well with the spear, so keep the number of *craft cards low. 6-7 seems to be the sweet spot, but YMMV. (examples: heavencraft is 3x sacred plea and blackened scripture, dragoncraft is 3x Oracle, 2x Emmisary and Aiela, 1x Bahamut).

There isn't a lot of strategy; it's a race to face every time. Feena (evolved), Goblin Princess, and Khaiza all let you play more cards than you can depend on drawing, Hamsa + spear is a middle finger to big beasties, Sektor and Strix punch above their cost-class. Generally, redraw Sektor and anything which costs more than 4. One spear out is good, two is iffy, three is bad.

Nominally, that core set costs 3000 vials, but you probably have most of it just by accident. It goes a bit better than 50-50 in unranked, modulo host *craft.

I've also spent a while playing with path to purgatory decks. That's a lot of fun, but it mostly dies like a chump. It stops being fun right at the end for everyone except Shadowcraft, because you get to play a fun minigame, "did I count the shadows right?" (spoiler: no).