1) 100% certainty = no skill.
Firstly, 100% certainty is rare. Usually reserved for the very last round of war. Sometimes it will not appear at all. However, this is not the moment when you show no skill. On the contrary, this is the only moment, when you are not blindly guessing what will happen. As for the rock-paper-scissors situation you mentioned, the fact that you made the best possible deck versus a team and still lost, and that put you into a auto-lose position versus them, is FAIR. That gives our duels meaning. Allows for long-term planning. I had a leading team back in war 2. I remember specifically planning out which team will become a farm and which is treated as an unknown. That allowed as to obtain a stable source of salvage and built our position through the entire war. Ask your general about this. The more certain the vaults, the more skill there is required. Another point against you would be that you can brake the auto-lose situation with salvage. This is a problem of this war. After the event card that gave you a chance to convert your vault, there was none of that. Normally, you could adapt with each victory and have a hope to change your fate.
Agreed with this part
Well, I can certainly agree with the part about long term planning; this is definitely a measure of skill, and should not be overlooked. I didn't mention it, but it is definitely true. I think you may have overlooked the planning in building the initial vault and designing strong general purpose decks to be able to handle most of what you expect to face, given the element of your opponent.
Now, when you say that there is skill in the final rounds, there is, but what I am saying is that because everything is known, the type of skill involved becomes different. Instead of being about creativity, it's more about simply avoiding mistakes. For instance, Time is against team Gravity in round 10. We know they used a gravity/air duo last round that won, and therefore we know 90% of their vault. They also probably know about that percentage of ours. Certainly they know the 36 cards from our poison deck, and they are likely able to derive more from previous rounds. (but I won't help them do this! :p) While it does take skill to utilize this knowledge, it's a different kind; the skill of hard mathematics, rather than the type of skill involved in, say, writing a creative novel. (or building a creative deck!)
For example, there was one recent round, (I think 8?) where Time was against team Darkness. Based on vaults, we knew that they had a Ghostmare and a Monodark left in their vault. Now, using ghostmare against time is completely stupid (hi, thanks for the free attackers) so obviously they are going to use monodark for us and ghostmare for the other team. Darkness's other opponent also knows this, and must therefore prepare for ghostmare. If darkness draws another team who can also easily beat ghostmare, then they are guaranteed a loss through no fault of their own. In theory, it does require skill for darkness to choose not to use ghostmare against time, but really, how hard of a decision is that? In my mind, that kind of decision requires no skill.
Suppose that there were three teams left, and each has a 30 card deck remaining. Darkness has a ghostmare, and the other two teams are team Time, with, say, a monotime rush, and team Aether with a fractal spider deck. If team dark draws team time, they are going to lose, because their main win condition is nullified. If team dark draws team aether, they are going to win, because nightmare will destroy fractal. In this case, team Dark's fate depends on luck, not skill.
2) Smaller = better.
This is simply silly. The bigger your vault, the more options you have. The more options you have, the more likely you are to make a deck that defeats a vast majority of your opponents decks. That means, that you have a higher expected winrate overall. If it's your first war, you have no comparison at all. Well. Look at vault for round 10. Look at your options for round 10. Do they look bad? Well, it was like that for us since round 6. Teams
and
did not come at the top because they had less fights. They did it, because they won. You see a team that had 50% winrate overall. I see a team with 100% winrate in late war.
I do however disagree with your point here. Unless you actually take part in a team leading war, I guess it is hard to convey. I didn't realize what aether had to go through last war until this war to a lesser point. I have always thought that bigger = better but that simply isn't true for various reasons. When you have to field 6-8 decks cose to the cut off. The vault is pretty strained and it is hard to find the resources to convert and still make decent decks for all 6-8. Other issues is you might have the cards to fully counter a team but you must settle for a lesser counter because those cards are better used somewhere else against a stronger team. With 2-3 decks left, you are in a strong posistion because you have the variation in the 2-3 decks you have left and the ability to greatly change decks as event cards and salvages come in. (Round 8 for example gave everyone the ability to switch 24 cards. for team earth at least we would have liked to change more but converting was limited by having to convert pillars and pends because we field so many decks. whereas smaller teams do not have that same limiting factor. also with 100 cards left that is 24% of your vault that is now unknown while someone who has 250 cards left only changes ~10% much different.) I would say that being left with a couple strong decks is for the most part much better than having a huge vault.
There are valid points here on both sides. A larger vault is a handicap in some respects; being required to field more decks and being strained in that manner is a disadvantage. However, as you say, having more cards to choose from is definitely an advantage. You mention I see a team with a 50% winrate in war, and you see one with 100% in late war. This is true. The argument could also be made that some teams simply got better matchup luck and this contributed to having more wins in late war. Earlier in war, because we all had more freedom to design decks, the luck involved in which teams you got drawn against meant far less than it does now.
For example, had Time been drawn against Light in round 10, we would lose. Instead, we were lucky and got drawn against Gravity, who we should be able to beat easily, not because they're poor players (they aren't) but because we know all but 4 cards in their vault, and so I know we can counter them, whereas Light would have fielded the same RoL/Hope deck they used against us in round 9 and countered us.
3) Your idea will reduce luck.
No it won't. The winners of early rounds are the lucky players. They get a bonus simply for being lucky. That bonus allows them to win more and more, thus giving them more and more bonus. Avalanche effect. Now that is a meaningless coin toss event.
Current situation: teams that gained advantage over other teams are more likely to win.
Your proposition: teams that randomly won initial rounds gain an advantage that is nearly impossible to overcome.
I am kinda against this one too. The wins early on are not all luck. That is like saying that all tourney winners are lucky because they were lucky enough to bring the right decks. I for one do not think earth started strong because of luck. There was a great deal of thought that went into those early rounds and it paid off. I am not for dragon's suggestion though. but i do think something possibly should be changed maybe scale the cards/deck a little more in favor of the bigger vaults. not a lot just a little.
This one goes both ways, too. My suggestion gives the earlier rounds more weight. The current situation gives the later rounds more weight. And to the point specifically about Earth, I would say that team Earth has had the most creative decks this round, and has probably been the best team. However, going into round 10, they have no advantage at all for their creativity. (beyond making it to round 10 at all) Earth does have the advantage over (non-Light) teams in round 10, but not because they were skilled in rounds 1-8; they made the decision to suicide round 9 and thereby keep their round 10 vault more of a mystery. All of their skill displayed in rounds 1-8 is meaningless for the final round.
Some kind of middle ground would be ideal. The current situation weighs the late rounds too heavily; my proposal does, as you point out, weighs the early rounds too heavily. We need a solution that is less drastic than mine. The Scouting round in round 1 was actually a really good idea in hindsight; perhaps if we slowly eased into war, having the first two or three rounds be scouting rounds of sorts (maybe 2 decks, then 3, then 4 decks, or two then three, or two then four, then normal war) where we weren't all trying to field 8 decks against unknown vaults. This way, if you lose early games due to luck or lack of skill, you are still at a disadvantage, as you should be, but teams who do very well in the early rounds won't win by the 'avalanche' effect you describe, though they will still have a better position, which they will have earned.
