Platinum Tier metagame

shteev

I was wondering what forum members thought of the state of the Platinum Tier metagame right now?

Myself, I'm quite enjoying it. Finally, a number of different Tier 1 decks (which are even Tier 1 when the AI plays them) are available to a selection of different planeswalkers, instead of Kiora sitting at the top of the tree by herself. Cards like Behold the Beyond and Harness the Storm might be considered OP, but they are at least creating a varied metagame, so that's a debate for a different thread. Even Runaway Carriage, the terror of players with limited access to rare and mythic cards, is a viable, if not particularly powerful, threat in Platinum Tier.

I do have one issue with the current meta, and it's this: it's viable to build control decks now which contain almost no threats, and therefore games can take very, very, long, as the AI plays to keep control over the board but doesn't not prioritize winning the game. Ob Nixilis is particularly bad for this, as he will constantly draw cards, but almost never build up loyalty for his ultimate ability; but I've seen Harness the Storm decks play out incredibly slowly, as well.

Is it time, perhaps, to revisit the AI in certain areas to make sure this doesn't happen so often? I appreciate that programming complex AI is intensely time consuming, but could easy fixes be tried, such as just programming Ob Nixilis so that he only ever uses his third ability? Some rebalancing of cards and planeswalkers might be necessary for such fixes, or they might not.

Barrelrolla

Well, I hit gold immediately when the mastery system was introduced and I played Nodes of Power against the top tier decks at the time. Drowner of Hope + From Beyond or Thopter Spy Network? Pls no! I had a game with Ajain where I won against that combo thanks to Hixus, but if it was destroyed a 24/24 and a 60+ scion were waiting. Luckily that didn't happen, but when Platinum was introduced I thought "great, all these broken combos will be there and I will not master a single card and stay gold".
Because of the larger pool of players getting Saheeli in the last event I went Platinum. I was not totally prepared.
I thought there will be a lot of broken combos, I thought every Kiora will bounce anything I put on the field and every Sarkhan will have all dragons and whatnot, but in reality most of the decks were built around RC and that was kinda disappointing. I mean, the card is strong, but all you need to stop it is a 4 mana censer (unless there is a Rogue's passage which I saw only in your deck).
Sarkhans were using zombies instead of dragons most of the time, although Diregraff Colossus + Relentless Dead + From Under the Floorboards is very powerful.
Honestly, I don't know if it was because of the optional objectives of the event, but I was expecting a lot stronger decks. I was not prepared 70% of the decks to include RC + censer and that was disappointing, because in my opinion, that might be broken, but there are stronger things, especially when everyone does it and it's easy to prepare for it. I guess when that card gets changed there will be a lot more variety, but currently the whole meta is built around it and that's lame.
I guess during Nodes of Power I will see the full power of Platinum, when there are no objectives and all people want is a win. I will meet the true overpowered and fast decks I thought I will have to fight. My opinion will be more valid then. But from the Saheeli event, I saw a lot more variety in gold.

Fiddler

I was happy with the meta. Typically I just grind away in the events the same way as QP because my decks are pretty strong.
This new event, along with 'terrors' (once I got in) were more fun because I actually lost to some very nice decks others play. Decks I almost never see in QP.

It was fun to check out how effective some strategies were when played with the built in AI limitations.

I would like to craft more decks to be playable by the AI. My Kiora works well at the moment, since her cards are all tactical and require no special strategy. My Nixilus deck on the other hand, is completely strategic, and I assume the comp loses with it every time. The Platinum tiers are giving me ideas on how to reduce that.

Pqmtg-

Barrelrolla wrote:

Well, I hit gold immediately when the mastery system was introduced and I played Nodes of Power against the top tier decks at the time. Drowner of Hope + From Beyond or Thopter Spy Network? Pls no! I had a game with Ajain where I won against that combo thanks to Hixus, but if it was destroyed a 24/24 and a 60+ scion were waiting. Luckily that didn't happen, but when Platinum was introduced I thought "great, all these broken combos will be there and I will not master a single card and stay gold".
Because of the larger pool of players getting Saheeli in the last event I went Platinum. I was not totally prepared.
I thought there will be a lot of broken combos, I thought every Kiora will bounce anything I put on the field and every Sarkhan will have all dragons and whatnot, but in reality most of the decks were built around RC and that was kinda disappointing. I mean, the card is strong, but all you need to stop it is a 4 mana censer (unless there is a Rogue's passage which I saw only in your deck).
Sarkhans were using zombies instead of dragons most of the time, although Diregraff Colossus + Relentless Dead + From Under the Floorboards is very powerful.
Honestly, I don't know if it was because of the optional objectives of the event, but I was expecting a lot stronger decks. I was not prepared 70% of the decks to include RC + censer and that was disappointing, because in my opinion, that might be broken, but there are stronger things, especially when everyone does it and it's easy to prepare for it. I guess when that card gets changed there will be a lot more variety, but currently the whole meta is built around it and that's lame.
I guess during Nodes of Power I will see the full power of Platinum, when there are no objectives and all people want is a win. I will meet the true overpowered and fast decks I thought I will have to fight. My opinion will be more valid then. But from the Saheeli event, I saw a lot more variety in gold.

RC decks are popular not because they overwhelm, but because they don't need to. You can just sit pretty and guarantee a 20 turn win pinging 5 dmg a turn with a backup RC in hand.

majincob

shteev wrote:

Is it time, perhaps, to revisit the AI in certain areas to make sure this doesn't happen so often? I appreciate that programming complex AI is intensely time consuming, but could easy fixes be tried, such as just programming Ob Nixilis so that he only ever uses his third ability? Some rebalancing of cards and planeswalkers might be necessary for such fixes, or they might not.

I have suggested elsewhere low-hanging fruit for making the AI more powerful based on player customization that would not mean writing any AI decision tree code, such as card prioritization based on the order of cards in the deck and having a little checkbox to disable AI from using certain of its Abilities. These two would enable the player to tell the AI player the deck strategy and would probably make playing the AI a nightm... I mean, more challenging.

shteev

Here's a niggle...

A lot of Platinum Tier decks take a lot longer to play than they otherwise would, because of the time it takes to sit through animations. Cards like Part the Waterveil, Zendikar's Roil, and Thopter Spy Network are much stronger than most creature cards, since they can't be dispatched with a single Destroy spell, and there is no way to target support destruction. One of Harness the Storm's strongest spell cards to cast again and again is Devil's Playground, and that has the same problem.

Could this be attended to?