Okay, there's a lot here that I feel needs improvement.
At the beginning of War each team is responsible for preparing for 6 matches on the main team. The next couple of rounds don't really change much because it's unlikely that every single team will have their ~2 attackers charge into battle against everyone else. However the later rounds become nearly intolerable. Over the past few Wars it has been incredibly evident that Teams lose quite a bit of willpower and interest in War as it continues to play out and decks continue to be lost with each new round. War itself compensated for this in the past by requiring teams to prepare less and less with each new round which in turn caused teams to devote less time to an event that was becoming uninteresting to them. However, support team battles will cause teams to spend essentially the same amount of time on preparations in the later rounds as they had in the beginning, depending on how many attackers they face. In turn, it makes the deckbuilding phase more intolerable and frustrating for losing teams than I think is desired. Also, having to build decks and schedule matches during the same ~3 days (especially when there are quite a few teammates on the support team) is a bit too much.
Deckbuilding restrictions may need a bit of rework as well, though I'm really not sure what needs to be done. Life had its fair share of successes and failures when attacking so I can't really say if the deckbuilding rules are slanted against anyone's favor. Sure from the outside it looks as if attacking teams have a severe disadvantage against defenders, but performances don't exactly reflect that very well. I'd say that the deckbuilding ruleset causes Elements with particularly big weaknesses to be placed at a disadvantage, but again, that's not exactly War's problem as much as a balancing issue that needs to be resolved within the game itself. I enjoyed the deckbuilding quite a bit though; this kind of restrictive deckbuilding that's not bound by the numerical limitations of a vault allow for plenty fun to be had in testing, and with each new round that passes in the main team of War that's not really observed. Also, as I've advocated a desire for my team to really get to know the Element
during War, this really allows for that desire to become a reality more easily especially when the ones developing most of the ideas are someone other than the Master/General of the team.
I personally believe that teams should be limited to 2 or 3 members acting on a support team at a time. This both takes away time required to prepare for the matches during the deckbuilding phase as War progresses and weakens the power of the team's defense slightly.
Miscellaneous thoughts:
-The rule allowing opposing teams to purchase someone off of your support team needs to be terminated and never return again. I never allowed a single support team member into my team's chatroom for the simple reason that if another team somehow found a way to bribe them into joining their side then we'd be completely screwed. And while I'd like to think this would never happen, I have no choice but to take these precautions. As a result, support team members become completely dissociated from the actions of the main team which causes severe confusion because that member has no idea what to do for that round until instructed to do so. In addition, this allow for an exploit of rule 8.2 and the "no sharing of vault secrets" rule if someone does not take the precautions I had.
-Generals being unable to sub for attacking support team members while the Lt. is freely able to do so doesn't make sense to me. Generals being unable to post support team actions while the Lt. is freely able to do so doesn't make sense to me. As far as I'm concerned the General should have the ability to do nearly everything else that their subordinates can given that they possess the highest power of their team and that they were the ones who basically gave that subordinate that power in the first place.
-Not posting each individual match-up during the later rounds was confusing considering there was no announcement indicating how things would work from that point forward. Arranging matches became increasingly difficult as well, causing nearly all matches to be done at the last minute as everyone went crazy trying to find an opponent to face.
-Having to decide what players to send again which team before the end of the duel phase was fine except for the fact that some duels might not take place even an hour before the round ends, at which time a team's Lt. may or may not be online to observe what cards were used.
