This post is probably biased, since Time was in the top 3 all War (fair warning!) but there was an observation I had that I wanted to address, and a possible solution, and I wanted to see what people thought.
Looking at the standings after round 9 (all finished except fire/water match) all of the teams are even (1 deck in round 10) except light, who can field 2 decks, but will only have to field one due to a bye. Essentially, Light is now winning war and there is an 8-way tie for 2nd place.
Anyway, it seems to me a bit unfair that teams who were leading War the entire time were punished for doing so by being required to make more decks, while teams that were losing from the start got to field less decks. This has had the result of bringing all teams into a dead heat at the end, regardless of win/loss ratio, and it's going to be pure luck who wins War, because we all have basically one deck to play now (maybe two if the vault allows) and whether we are countered or not will depend purely on the luck of the draw on which opponent we get, rather than any kind of deckbuilding or play skill.
For example, in round 9, Time beat Aether and lost to Entropy and Light. If Time gets Entropy or Light next round, we've already lost the decks that we felt had the best chance against them, and will probably lose if we get one of those teams as an opponent, unless we underestimated one of our remaining decks or get lucky. Conversely, some of the other teams (which for strategic reasons I won't name) have vaults that we know we can beat if we face them.
It seems to me that some of the teams that had a lot of losses early (but not too many to be eliminated by this point) were actually at an advantage, because they weren't required to field as many decks afterwards. If you look at the win/loss records, for instance, you will see that Light and Darkness are in 1st and 2nd, even though Light was about in the middle of the pack all war and darkness was in the bottom half of the standings. They have exactly a .500 W/L ratio. Aether, with a better win/loss ratio, has been eliminated. Time, entropy, and earth were the top 3 teams in the first 8 rounds (varying from round to round) and are now 4th, 5th, and 7th. Fire, which I think was in last place all war, is now 6th, and with a 10-17 record, is ahead of earth with a 33-22 record.
So, I was thinking, in future Wars, why not have a fixed number of decks that -everyone- has to use each round across the board? For example, in rounds 1-2, everyone must field 8 decks, in rounds 3-4 seven decks, in round 5 six decks, in round 6 five decks, and so on? (numbers definitely subject to real planning and not asspulling, but you get the idea) If you cannot field the required number of decks at any point, you're out; i.e. if you have 149 cards in the vault and need to build 5 decks, you are eliminated. Teams would adjust their team orders so people would still get to play in most rounds, but we'd all have to sit out once or twice.
As it stands, the earlier rounds of War ended up counting for almost nothing, beyond eliminating a few teams early like Life and Underworld. The earliest rounds are the ones where the most skill is required, because all teams have a large vault to choose from, and there are more deckbuilding decisions to make. The later rounds are mostly luck; as I've mentioned, the round 10 pairings are going to determine who wins this War. Even before round 10 has started, we all know what deck everyone else is going to use in round 10 (within a few cards variation) before we've even seen which team is coming. (well, except earth, due to their suicide :p But even there, we know what they had the round before)
Unless the next event card is something that somehow alters what is contained in our vaults, there will be virtually no skill involved in round 10. A card like that one event in round 8, where we could convert cards to any cards of our element, would make round 10 have skill again by adding mystery to the vaults and therefore actual decision making, so I'm really hoping for an event that will make the last round meaningful and not a toss of the dice.
