Hello! This was interesting week for me and it caught me by surprise. You can reference my last post on Hive to understand exactly what I mean.
I don't want to harp on this too much but there's a new battle I'd like to feature here just to show how unfun Modern is. I know a fix is on its way but until all this level bullying can stop I really don't know what's even the point for me to play if every other battle is like this.
I have some ideas on how to spend my time in the game moving forward. I think I'll focus mostly on tournaments and brawls, which are the only formats I can currently enjoy. Ranked will probably not be as much of a priority.
I could also try Wild. Haven't really ever done it, that I can remember.
I'm thinking I can either rent some high level Chaos Legion cards or at least try to compete there with my legacy Silver cards which might just be more enjoyable that fighting in Modern Silver with Bronze cards all the time.. I don't look forward to having to pay 2000 DEC for the pass but it might be an interesting experiment.
Anyway, I participated in three different tournaments this week and although I have many cool battles to share from those I think I'll just choose one that I liked from each tournament and highlight my strategy and thinking.
Here's the first one! It was a Tofu showdown because of the restriction to melee units.
My opponent chose some very valid cards such as Pallus and the buttercup mauler, however it wasn't good enough.
We're getting some very chaotic rulesets these days with the reckless and incendiary effects being added to the pool! Between reckless and the damage from the earthquake this was definetely a chaotic one.
What I'm learning is that sometimes peace is the only option in these battles, meaning it's not necessarily all about agression as much as it is about just stacking health points and surviving.
For this reason I chose a very passive approach with my bigger units being in the back, largely unable to even attack (which has the additional benefit of not triggering the thorns for my opponent).
The earthquake, reckless and thorns damage did most of the work for me and I was able to get a cheeky little win in a difficult match. Not the most "honorable" strategy, but an effective one!
The next one felt almost like a gamble where anything could happen and my strategy largely revolved around the available splinters. I figured my opponent was likely to either choose Tofu or Lorkus.
As you can see, he did indeed went for Lorkus and leaned heavily on the magic damage strategy.
One key aspect here that really spared me a defeat was to put the halfling refugee at the front to soak up some heavy hits in the beginning while strong units such as Venka and the chaos battle mage dished out reliable piercing damage from the safety of the backline.
Mantaroth as a tank wasn't exactly an ideal choice against this magic lineup but I didn't exactly have too many choices and even though it came close to him dying he survived for long enough to start hitting back for some significant damage that my opponent's brittle team just couldn't withstand!
Notably, EMP here was an additional source of piercing damage and since the oncoming damage was mostly magic those nice armored strike hits ended up doing a lot of work too.
A nice win with EMP! I think as we'll get more counters to magic this summoner will be more important in the meta.
Lastly I have a battle from a Wild tournament! I don't think my opposition was too serious here but I'd still like to feature this battle as an highlight because of this card that I really like, Minotaur warlord!
I really enjoy the theme and the art of it and it's a decent card overall, at the Bronze and Novice level. Often overshadowed by the mustang unicorn and other strong frontliners. However its magic reflect definetely put some work here!
I think I've found a very logical and cohesive lineup for this battle, overall.
Sata Toledo and the goblin psychic can keep the tank very healthy, the mushroom seer was the perfect choice to debuff my eager opponent and Makah Hemlig and Kron were great damage dealers to put in the back.
The summoner choice was also good, with the llama providing some crucial extra health.
Of course if it came down to it Kron would have been enough to pick off the stragglers from the enemy team anyway but it was very satisfying to actually watch the battle resolve and see that I didn't suffer any casualties. Very cool match!
As usual, I thank the DAO for funding these fun tournaments which are really one of the things that I look forward every week for in the game, these days. I hope that will change soon, though.
You can find my commentary of these battles on YouTube at this link.
