Elements "metagame" transforming in the future?

[Riojah foeth Giugh]

Bear with me for a moment, a small anecdote makes things much clearer in the end.
Early in the life of the game of Magic: The Gathering, a player named Brain Wiessman created "The Deck." If you are unfamiliar with his creation, the strategy was this: He used removal, such as swords to plowshares, to destroy early threats, stabilizing. He then used cards such as ancestral recall to gain card advantage. This allowed him to finish his opponent with a serra angel or fireball. While this may not seem complicated, it was a revolutionary concept. Brain had successfully created a control build, one that would change Magic forever. The deck had such a strong impact because of one simple insight: noncreature spells were better than creatures.
Now, years later, Magic has changed greatly. The current metagame is dominated by midrange decks such as Jund, Naya, and others. This change has occurred for one reason. Creatures are getting stronger. The power creep seen in Shards of Alara, for example, has allowed for creature based decks, going against the great theory of The Deck. The entire metagame has shifted.

Now you are probably wondering what this has to do with Elements. Elements is a budding card game, with very few cards. However, the metagame is the opposite of Magic's beginnings. The creatures of Elements dominate the game. Removal is absolutely pitiful, only able to 1-for-1 with creatures that are hardly threats. Gravity pull is only plausible in creature based decks, and simple removal such as Lightning is far too inefficient to deal with the sheer number of creatures that a simple deck can produce. Cards such as fractal give creatures even more card advantage than non-creature spells. Others, like firefly queen can produce creatures far faster than any control deck can handle them. Traditional control builds are just not viable.

My ultimate question is this: when does the metagame of Elements shift, just as Magic did? When do we see “Destroy all creatures”, or even “Destroy target creature”? When do we see “Draw two cards”? Will control ever be viable, or will creatures dominate forever?

P.S. I understand that Elements is not Magic, and does not intend to copy Magic, I simply used it as an example because of familiarity. What I have described is a transformation that not only Magic has gone through.

[bojengles77]

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No creatures, and the strongest PvP Deck I currently use - 'nuff said.

Creatures do dominate most decks, but control decks are completely viable.

[Retribution]

There's obviously a solution to creature control.
You've probably not used AoE spells that haven't effected the whole field, like rain of fire, thunderstorm, unstable gas, and plague.

[sSethia]

Creatures are the fastest way to win. If you look at this popular deck (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,3807.0.html) you'll see that it actually has 0 creatures, but it still wins in PVP.

[Terroking]

Another noteworthy control card is the Otyugh and, while it is a creature, it will almost always be able to destroy more other creatures, and when combined with cards like Quintessence or Heavy Armor, it essentially becomes "Kill target creature". Very few creatures have more than 10 health, and those that do aren't much of a threat.

Yes, that Fire Stall deck in the above post is the best and most effective deck I've ever seen in PvP, and is only really counterable by using Fractal to spam so many creatures that it is overwhelmed (Chargers work best for this due to their momentum).

But the nature of Elements is that Creatures are the main element (Excuse my pun) of the game. They are the best and most available damage dealers, and, although they are similar to permanents in this aspect, have abilities, or re-usable spells. This makes some of them very valuable to have in a deck.

On a finishing note, the classic Rainbow False God killer (Or SG's "ULTIMATE" deck while it still worked) is basically just a huge jumble of card drawing, 2 cards for damage, and control.

[Riojah foeth Giugh]

@bojengles77
That's a deck I need to try.
I just wish there was more of this, and less endless swarms of creatures running into shields until somebody wins, without all that much strategy involved.

@Retrubution
Yeah, my point is that none of those cards are really strong enough so stop powerful creatures. Rain of Fire doesn't kill the big threats, and neither does thunderstorm. Unstable Gas doesn't kill threats either. Plague does eventually, but is still pretty slow.

@Terroking
Right, the idea of creature or permanent based removal, rather than spell based removal is more effective, because it's re-usable. I do not think that this should be the case. Why should Otyugh be able to destroy a creature every turn, when lightning is only able to do this once, and not deal damage? This just goes along with my original post, creatures dominating the game. If Golden Hourglass exists, why can't a simple, one-use draw X card exist? It would push the game away from being completely permanent dominated.

[coinich]

I don't want to see largescale spells buffed however.  Doing so would completely wreck the creature focus without having much to replace it.  Honestly, the only non-creature viable decks are Bolt and Speed Poison decks.  I personally want to see quanta and draw options increased; I think that would do a large part in expanding deck sizes and thus viable decks.

[karthikking]

MrSexingtons Ragequit deck is one of personal favorites. Not one creature.

[Riojah foeth Giugh]

Doing so would completely wreck the creature focus without having much to replace it.

If these spells were to be expanded, it would allow for new decks to replace old ones.

I personally want to see quanta and draw options increased; I think that would do a large part in expanding deck sizes and thus viable decks.

Off-topic, but agreed.

[Amilir]

The problem isn't that creature control sucks, it's quite powerful.  You can kill everything an opponent puts out just fine.  The problems are A:  You can hardly win without creatures.  A couple weapons, UG, lances, deckout, and poison are your options.  B:  Elements is a primarily single player game.  Fast decks are much quicker at earning stuff from the AI.  That makes people avoid a couple types.

There isn't much expensive CC yet.  Antimatter is your two for one card though.  Even if there was more expensive CC, you might well not use it.  Quanta builds up over time.  What you use this turn counts against you later.  Really, 1 for 1 is more than fair when you remember that lightning costs two versus the dragon it killed at ten.

There isn't a two for one draw card.  Among the usual balancing issues, with 30 card minimum and six of any card, it would be rather easy to go through your entire deck in no time.

So when will we see the game changing to mostly control decks?  Hopefully never!  The direction most of us want to go is to keep all deck types viable, not just a few. 

[Riojah foeth Giugh]

I'm not trying to say that I want control to dominate, I'm just wondering why we haven't seen cards that would allow for a more traditional control build, rather than the shield dominated stall builds that I see so very often. The last thing anyone wants is to limit deck building ideas, I feel that this could open more design space, maybe a card that destroys one's own shield in the process of destroying creatures.
Maybe I'm just ranting, but I think that some of the terrible vanilla cards could have been replaced with more deckbuilding options than just aggro.

[bojengles77]

If Golden Hourglass exists, why can't a simple, one-use draw X card exist? It would push the game away from being completely permanent dominated.

Precognition - allows for decks to be "24 cards" in essence.

Sundial also to a lesser extent, since it is only a perm for one turn and allows a card to be drawn.