Please excuse my very long post, but I wanted to answer a number of people at once. If you think it's tl;dr ... then don't read it
Xinef, you're wrong on that last sentence -- you can't play a Brimstone Eater first turn, because your Mark hasn't generated any Quanta yet.
I meant playing it early, but not necessarily on the first turn (a pest played on third turn is still better than sundial or holy flash, a supernova even better).
@Seravy
I do agree with some of your points, but not all.
I do think there should be more cards in each element that have a great synergy only within that element, though there should also be cards that make synergies with other elements.
Also elements should have more cards available so that mono decks can be more versatile, even if they never should be as versatile as rainbow. If every element is at least as versatile as
or
(I guess these are the most versatile right now, in that order), it would be nice.
As for giving every kind of ability to each element, I've been thinking about it and I guess it's a hard topic - obviously some abilities should be specific to a single element, though some other elements should have at least a partial access to these (eg. poison - mainly
but
has access to it, immortality - mainly
but
has access through anubis). Maybe there should be more cards of this kind (eg. some non-time creatures with a card-drawing ability costing
?) this seems quite common in elements right now, so why not to develop it further? (after strengthening mono decks though)
Anyway I think every element should be capable of either permanent control or a way to work good without it. Right now I can hardly imagine a good
deck without permanents and this makes any mono-time deck very vulnerable to permanent control for example... maybe a deck with golden nymphs instead of hourglasses could work, but I guess you see the point.
The same goes for creature control - every element should be either able to protect it's creatures somehow, or to work well without creatures, or maybe able to spam creatures so fast that they are hard to control (this could be loosely called a way to protect your creatures).
As for the FG... I do like the idea of making them differ in stats, though it would probably require a bit of coding and a lot of balancing. Though I guess they need to draw 2 cards each turn, or they could be too easily locked with eternity-creature-denial (though fixing AI might solve this problem)
As far as I know the problem with FG right now is that they were made so difficult to make up for the poor AI... now that AI is slowly being improved and FG gained more permanent control it adds up to increased difficulty, so I guess it might make sense to nerf FG a bit, though I am not sure if it is the best solution.
I am pretty confident though, that FG should only be defeatable (with reasonable percentage) with control decks. Why? Because if they can be defeated with quick aggressive decks, you could grind FG like you grind AI3, 2 minutes a fight and you get much more spins per time spent than a control deck, is that right? I don't think so.
Maybe some elements might be bad at control because it does not fit their theme, so that would make them unable to defeat FG... but I guess with some effort (and new cards) they can always duo with a control based element.
[...]
( http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,3939.msg43160#msg43160 )
If making it immaterial is OP, how about having it make itself reappear in your deck if your opponent destroys it?
I've been already thinking about it and it seems pretty obvious they should work that way (unless someone finds a way to abuse it), but still I am not sure how balanced my idea is...
thanks for your comment though, I was wondering if anyone will ever comment on that idea.
Sorry Seravy, but I completely disagree on a few points. False Gods are supposed to be ridiculously powerful, and I think they are fine right where they are. Not all strategies will work, nor should they.
The problem is, right now only a few ideas do work, and most of them are very similar variants of rainbow... this is the main problem here and we are trying to find a solution. Not all the ideas in this thread are good, but I've seen a number of good ones, so I hope Zanz does something about it.
to resume we need to stop nerfing cards to recycle the fg, and start thinking of a way to make something fresh.
Your post only reminds me of one thing - fixing PvP would solve the problem with rainbows popularity... if PvP was an equally good source of electrum as FG are, desync bug was fixed and some better way of choosing opponents was added, people would probably use mono/duo PvP decks much more than rainbows and there is much more variety.
@PhantomFox
Great idea - this could be made a quest, or something... maybe after defeating all the FG you could choose some rare card as a reward? Or you would be rewarded with a special spin (like a normal spin, but instead of being based on a deck it would be based on a list of all the rares - including nymphs, shards... maybe marks?) It would still be hard to win anything (because it's like a deck with only a single instance of each card)...
