This game needs more denial elements!

[jmdt]

The basic dynamic of this game is that:

rush > denial >stall > rush

We have tons of rushing card in this game: nova, immo, adrenaline, graboid are notable cards, but even dragons can be used to rush with a proper deck set up.  Almost any creature can rush in the right deck.

We also have lots of stalling options: miracle, bone wall, rage pot, steal, fire lance, sanctuary.  We have many types of ways to stall from healing through damage, to killing the damage sources, to bolting your way to oblivion.

When it comes to denial options we are a bit more limited though.  We have earthquake and trident, discord, black hole, devourers, nightmare and silence.  Denial is the natural weakness to stalls, but its options are few and many are weak.  Earthquake and trident kill pillars, but trident is too slow and both were nerfed when pendulums were introduced.  discord is a decent card, but in the long game versus a stall, its effect eventually wears off, it only buys you a few turns.  Devourers are good denial when pared with fractal.  black hole is one of those situationally useful cards that really needs to be paired with discord for effective denial.  Nightmare has the no draw effect which can really turn a game around, Sadly its limited to a one time use card that is better for its secondary effect of damage/healing.  Nightmare is very nice when paired with ghost, but that is a different story.  Silence on paper is great but IMO is a weak card again do to being a one use card.


So...what I'd like to see

1.) Another way to prevent draws, especially without filling up the hand.  Maybe a permanent that prevents draws for 2. 
2.) Speaking of the hand, I'd also like to see a card that made the opponent discard 1 card.  What I'd really love is the effect of the old dune scorpion back.  A 0 attack creature that causes discard on attack.
3.) This I'd like to see the most: milling.  Milling basically destroys cards in the opponents deck.  My idea is for a permanent that destroys the top card in the opponents deck 1 per turn for 3 turns.  The ultimate effect of such a card would be give much more prominence to a rarely used deck type: deckers.
4.) To go along with 2. and 3., I'd also like to see a card that forces the opponent to draw a card if they are able to.

In summary, we have pillar and quanta denial currently with some draw and play denial.  I'd really like to see denial expand to more hand and deck control.  Allowing milling or removal of cards from the hand would really give nice counters to decks like the fire stall while have little to no impace on the rush game.


Discuss

[Antagon]

signed

[TakoMan02]

By "more denial elements", are you suggesting we add a new element, or make changes to current elements?

[jmdt]

By "more denial elements", are you suggesting we add a new element, or make changes to current elements?

Add cards to current elements to introduce more denial into the game.

[Sevs]

I was just thinking about this last night. I would fully support this

[Contrary]

I kind of wish the game would move away from rock paper scissors between those three archetypes into more of a control/combo type of game.

The denial in this game is pretty varied and well denial in general is pretty un fun to face.

If more denial is going to be added to the game I'd prefer something more along the lines of long term pressure rather than the kind of hard denial we see today. Most of the denial is exponentially more effective the earlier its done; 2 turn Discord is oh you lose now, late game its not a big deal. A couple Devourers out early is worth a rage quit, but a couple turns in they don't even matter.

Maybe some card that takes a fairly large amount of quanta (7-8) but prevents a couple turns of drawing or quanta production.

Something that's powerful but doesn't completely end the other guy's strategy if you get it out.

[jmdt]

I kind of wish the game would move away from rock paper scissors between those three archetypes into more of a control/combo type of game.

The denial in this game is pretty varied and well denial in general is pretty un fun to face.

If more denial is going to be added to the game I'd prefer something more along the lines of long term pressure rather than the kind of hard denial we see today. Most of the denial is exponentially more effective the earlier its done; 2 turn Discord is oh you lose now, late game its not a big deal. A couple Devourers out early is worth a rage quit, but a couple turns in they don't even matter.

Maybe some card that takes a fairly large amount of quanta (7-8) but prevents a couple turns of drawing or quanta production.

Something that's powerful but doesn't completely end the other guy's strategy if you get it out.

What do you have in mind?

[RootRanger]

The basic dynamic of this game is that:

rush > denial >stall > rush

Perhaps this was true pre-1.27, but Sanctuary has completely changed the game.
For example, let's say our Rush is Immogolems, our Denial is Devtal, and our Stall is Miracle/SS with Sancs. The Rush beats the Stall, and the Stall beats the denial. Or let's say our rush is Adrenafrogs, our Denial is Discord Mono Entropy, and our stall is Sanc Firestall. The Stall beats the Denial and the Denial beats the Rush.

I find the metagame much more complex than just rushes, stalls, and denials. And you can't forget about CC-based Domin decks, which are a better answer to Rushes than Stalls. A very fast Rush can often beat a Stall, but a CC Domin has the CC to slow down the Rush and its own damage to outspeed it. CC Domins generally lose to stalls, but what if the CC in the Domin is also effective against Stalls, such as Fire Bolt? There are a lot of different combinations and a good deckbuilder can design a deck to counter any two-deck combo, which is not the case in a game of Rock Paper Scissors. Denial isn't really a key part of the metagame.

Perhaps we could use more Denial cards, but I currently find Sanctuary Firestall far too strong ever since Sanctuary came out. There just aren't enough counters to it; other decks have a lot more answers. If you want new cards added into the game, I really wouldn't recommend making them weak against Sanc Firestall. That would hardly improve the metagame. Although there are not as many denial cards as CC and rush cards, I feel like this metagame wouldn't improve unless the new cards are effective against the overpowered decks.

[Contrary]

Like I said, for example something that has a high cost (5-8 quanta) but does something meaningful, like stalls quanta production for a turn or two. Late game soft denial, ideally.

Denial is a form of control in a way and like control it's more interesting in shades of grey. For example instakill cards are boring, but something like the Iridum Warden's guard ability is interesting. Acceleration is interesting control. Freeze is interesting control. These soft control cards let you do cool things like adrenaline an accelerated creature, or freeze a poison one. It gives you choices like Iridium Warden makes you have to choose between targets. It even becomes more interesting for those on the receiving end. For example if a Procrastination is up you can fight against it by playing creatures out of the delay rhythm of the other creatures, allowing you to use abilities every turn.

Those are just examples I can think of off the top of my head in a game of little soft control- but I think you catch my drift.

[jmdt]

The basic dynamic of this game is that:

rush > denial >stall > rush

Perhaps this was true pre-1.27, but Sanctuary has completely changed the game.
For example, let's say our Rush is Immogolems, our Denial is Devtal, and our Stall is Miracle/SS with Sancs. The Rush beats the Stall, and the Stall beats the denial. Or let's say our rush is Adrenafrogs, our Denial is Discord Mono Entropy, and our stall is Sanc Firestall. The Stall beats the Denial and the Denial beats the Rush.

I find the metagame much more complex than just rushes, stalls, and denials. And you can't forget about CC-based Domin decks, which are a better answer to Rushes than Stalls. A very fast Rush can often beat a Stall, but a CC Domin has the CC to slow down the Rush and its own damage to outspeed it. CC Domins generally lose to stalls, but what if the CC in the Domin is also effective against Stalls, such as Fire Bolt? There are a lot of different combinations and a good deckbuilder can design a deck to counter any two-deck combo, which is not the case in a game of Rock Paper Scissors. Denial isn't really a key part of the metagame.

Perhaps we could use more Denial cards, but I currently find Sanctuary Firestall far too strong ever since Sanctuary came out. There just aren't enough counters to it; other decks have a lot more answers. If you want new cards added into the game, I really wouldn't recommend making them weak against Sanc Firestall. That would hardly improve the metagame. Although there are not as many denial cards as CC and rush cards, I feel like this metagame wouldn't improve unless the new cards are effective against the overpowered decks.

That is the point of this denial discussion though.  Denial beats stall and you say sanctuary fire stall is currently the strongest deck.   With cards to prevent draw, cause deckout, discard the sanctuary fire stall would take a major nerf stick with combinations of these and current cards.  killing cards in the hand would make holding bolts, PC and CC all a huge risk and would be the best solution to the fire stall as it would never be able to set up the cards needed to get going.  Same idea if they can't draw hard to get a bolt win if every turn you have the same cards and no more are coming.  Milling would give another defeat condition as they would both lose valuable cards and you would have the ability to win by deckout if craftily played.  Every idea I produced directly counters the sanctuary fire stall.  The best way to nerf the sanctuary fire stall is not weakening it, but adding hard counters i.e. denial cards.

As to denial not being a key part of the game 1.) the genre isn't really developed enough for such to be the case.  You really don't have the cards to base a whole deck on denial yet and 2.) many of the denial cards we have now are weak or at least weak versus the top of the meta. 

To take that further, nightmare's no draw effect would be decent to bad versus a fire stall currently, but if you add milling along with nightmare to the draw denial, you really put a hamper on a fire stalls plans for a number of turns.

[Jen-i]

In my understanding denial falls into far broader categories than quanta denial - however in EtG's card base quanta denial is the primary form of denial available.

Denial is effectively the denial of resources to the enemy:

• Creature Denial - both hard and soft CC (of which we have plenty
• Permanent Denial - of which we have some - but could use a more diverse collection
• Quanta Denial - between Devourer, Discord, BH and others we have the basis of some decks here
• Hand Denial - this can be done by forcing a discard, by negating a card type (i.e. no spells for 3 turns), or transforming (all creatures in hand become dragons)
• Deck Denial - (like the MtG classic Millstone) the idea of deck denial is that you denial the opponent cards from their deck - either by discard or by blocking draws
• Tempo Denial - this is the hardest to manage and the hardest to explain - Tempo denial affects the pace of the game - poison is a form of tempo denial - it forces the opponent to win within a time limit - Silence, Sundial, Earthquake and Rewind all represent weak forms of Tempo Denial.

I like jimmy's suggestion - we could use more varied forms of denial in the game.

[jmdt]

Let me take this discussion a step further

What elements would be good for denial?

The elements that come to mind first is especially since many of these ideas are hand/deck.  Time did have the original hand discard scorpion before zanz changed it and a similar effect would make sense here.

After time it becomes somewhat more unclear.  seems like a good choice, but it would have to be different enough from silence to be viable.  also seems like a decent choice for denial.  It has quanta denial in black hole, but hand or deck disruption would definitely fit with the theme.  is a strong candidate for one card if multiples are released since it fits its destruction theme.  would also be an intriguing choice.

idk.  What do you folk think