Suffice to say, the release of the Rebellion set hasn't gone well for me. I am struggling heavily to get any wins, and I am unlikely to make it into C2, let alone into Champion 1. I am probably not the only one having trouble with so many new cards (and mine aren't maxed), but you know - who cares about other people?
For those who are counting how bad my "luck of the draw" is, out of 2300 packs bought in the presale, I got zero gold Mantaroth. Zilch. Upon opening, them all, I ended up with only 9 GFLs, which is under the expected average, which I think is around 12 for that many packs.
Pretty sure my account has been kneecapped.
While the rest of the cards are only about 70% of the way to being at max level, what I do have already is a full set of the Rebellion legendaries. I didn't pull a full set, nor did I buy the missing BCX, I traded some of my extras with a friend so they could complete what they were missing too. I still owe him 3 Legendary's worth of something.
As said though, I am struggling with getting any kind of rhythm with these cards so far, and I feel it is going to take me months to build up some kind of intuition of what goes where and when. There are a huge amount of new abilities and ways to apply them, as well as the summoner options that can completely change the way the game is played. At the moment, I am experimenting where I can, seeing what does what and what might be successful. Success has been few and far between, but I do think that I have used some interesting setups so far.
This might be my favorite perhaps:
A 31 Mana, poison ruleset.
Granted, the lineup it was facing using Lily wasn't the greatest, but it is still an interesting way to "outlast" the opponent on a couple of fronts. Firstly, only my cannonfodder martyr rat is going to get poisoned, which was the intent. It is also going to take the first hit from Deeplurker, or any other opportunity monster, Giving Inevitable a little more grunt, as well as Mad Ogre. But really, one of the interesting things I hadn't considered, was that the Shield Repair would also mean that MerdHampir wouldn't be able to Leech any life out of Inevitable, as it never got a clear hit on it to take any life. And for that matter, Deeplurker didn't get a hit on Mad Ogre either, as Grimbardun kept repairing its shield too.
The only life loss at all, other than the rat, was Blight taking a couple points off Inevitable each round, which didn't matter because it couldn't poison it, or afflict it, and I used Avina (the new dual attribute Life summoner and one of the few I have maxed [bought a few extras]), to give it Healing. So, with no way to gain points, Lily couldn't heal that much, and my immunity monsters just had to ride it out, and then finish off Baakjira. And, even if Baakjira did make it to Fatigue rounds, Inevitable would heal too, and also Triage the backline, so it wouldn't last long.
So that lineup worked.
Score.
Now there are about 476,000,000 more lineups to try and workout, while losing 80% of the games I am playing. It is tempting to try to win more using older lineups, but if I do that, I feel I will soon be far out of the loop with the new monsters and attributes, and have an even wider gap to close. The latest set has made the strategy far more complex and it is going to take time to build the muscles for the new cards, and then try to predict what the opponent will play. There are many more variables, and with Ambush abilities on some monsters and summoners, the game starts before the game starts.
In a low mana round for instance, I used Waka, a card that I have only used a handful of times since I bought it for far too much, with a Scattershot/ Ambush card. I used Rust to remove a layer of shield, and before the round started, Drybone Rawdog Bowdog fired and hit Uraeus with 4 HP on it. This means that the poison dropped before the first round (as it is a round before the start), taking out that card from the game completely. It was a bit of a random usage, but the usecase is solid.
Well, at least this new set breathes some life into the strategy aspect and perhaps if the bots are able to be kept at bay, there will be some new faces appearing on the leaderboards again.
How is your experience Rebelling so far?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
