I generally use the classification system: "easy", "hard", and "eh how long do i feel like fighting it out".
While I appreciate the previous work on this. I feel like enough cards have been added that we can start making more classifications. so here is what im going to throw out there for discussion.
When im playing I generally seperate out the following general categories (and identify parts of the game by which category dominates):
Damage (focus is on killing you opponent)
Stall (focus is on preventing your opponent from killing you)
Denial (focus is on keeping your opponent from playing cards)
When looking at
damage decks I believe you can categorize using combinations of the following descriptions:
burst: most of the potential is developed in 1 or 2 turns. (examples would be something like cremations plus destroyers, or fractal, or buff+parallel universe, etc)
Ramp: potential is built over a few turns. you can classify these by speed, slow versus fast ramps. (example would be growth, mitosis, poison, simply playing multiple creatures, etc)
when looking at
stalls we have a couple types that I can identify:
Damage prevention stall: of which there are two sub categories:
Shield Stall (little to no healing, relies on a strong shield like dimensional shield) and
CC stall (lots of creature controlling spells and effects). side note* shields like fire buckler and thorn carapace straddle these sub categories
Ramp healing stall: stalls with cards that indivually do a minor amount of healing but as the game goes on they play more and the healing gets more and more powerful. (examples would be decks high on shards of gratitude, sanctuaries, and purify[for non posion healing])
burst Healing stall: Stalls that dont really prevent damage but instead rely on powerful healing spells to regain most or all of their health in one go. (examples include miracle, stone skin, shard of divinity, Shard of sacrifice, etc)
When looking at
denial decks I identify the following:
Quanta denial: prevents your opponent from having access to the quanta they need. these can be described by
burst (black hole or discord), or
ramp (devourers)
Card denial: decks that keep the opponent from using their cards by
preventing play (silence) or
preventing draw (nightmare or reverse time)
So in identifying decks i note the part of the game and dominating attribute:
ghostmare: full game card denial/slow ramp damage
Deckout: full game Combo stall types + self card denial (rewinding your own photon)
cremation rush: early game burst + mid late game slow ramp
Instosis: early game stall + late game burst
pestal: early game ramp denial + mid game burst denial/minor burst damage
Splat: full game ramp damage + burst healing stall
