Is this FUN?

MDsupa

Is this what D3 consider "Hard Mode"?

The platinum level is what I never wanted.  The rewards doesn't warrant the cheating AI & extreme decks you have to play against.  I've tried to kept myself from getting to this level, but there's no way to stop it.

The ridiculous amount of AI "Cheating" when it comes to cascade is just unbelievable.  AI vomit his whole hands on 2nd turn is waaay too common.  I've seen several times where the skyfall cascade consists of 6+ gems of the same color, ensuring that the AI will get another turn.  This sometimes happens in more than 2-3 times in a single game.

How do you deal with 3 creatures that just came out on 2nd turn?   Especially now that Standard is enforced and you're limited to available fewer removal cards.  Especially Green.

On top of that you're still working on removing those threats and more keep coming in and Enrage Double Damage Timer is in only 3 more turns.  

You're still getting 3-6 mana per turn.  (None of the good Mana Ramp cards qualify for Standard and your cheapest removal is atleast 7 mana)


Then we have servers issues, card claiming problem, bugs, crashes, freezes.  QA/Testing is very lacking from what we've seen.


Am I the only one experiencing this?  How are you guys coping with this?  How many of you broke your phone because of this game?

Delnai

I agree the amount of bugs/crashes can be rage-inducing, but I have never felt that the AI is cheating. Obv when you're in platinum and people are playing better cards, the effects of a big cascade are larger. But I've never felt like my
opp gets more cascades than me. 

shteev

Make us a video of the AI cascading like crazy, and tell us how many games it took to make it.

MDsupa

https://youtu.be/3ECXyMPV1tU

Here you go.. for the skeptics.  I had to find out how to record the game.  This is the very 1st Game.

Remember this is a Green Node and I had to find a deck that atleast is decent to compete (remember green doesn't really have direct Creature Removal... nevermind the Cycle extra requirement)

1st turn AI turn.  he got extra swap.  and look at the cascade that gave him extra match to finish vomiting out his whole hand.

at 5:00, the beginning of 5th turn.  I managed to get rid of two of his creatures. and then this "Random" gem conversion from his Chrome Mox, gave him 5 match.

at 5:24, the turn right after, I manage to get good match and cascade (although I have no cards to benefit that).  Look at what cascade down after that waiting for AI to do next turn.  Extra Swap match..

this is a very typical matches.  I'd say every 2-3 games I will run into this.  On a better deck like Nahiri, I can sometime catch up (if I don't draw like same 3 cards of Supports for 10 turns)  but Green and Blue nodes are some of the worse.

You can see how many creatures keep coming out in those 6-7 turns.

Ohboy

Is this a underpowered deck you threw together to make your point, or are you really playing this deck? 

Because I didn't see a cheating ai, just a deck that's outclassed. Pretty straightforward. 

AresOmega

Ohboy said:

Is this a underpowered deck you threw together to make your point, or are you really playing this deck? 

Because I didn't see a cheating ai, just a deck that's outclassed. Pretty straightforward. 

As well as some simple but glaring gameplay issues on the OP's side, such as not taking the 3 green match at the bottom of the board, that would have dropped down another green match at about the 3 minute mark. Took the upper green match, and let the AI take the left side of the one he should have taken from the right, cascading into the white match that gave the AI its Angel of Invention. The AI got at least 2 cascades handed to it by the player in this manner.

shteev

Hey, thanks for posting the video! I kinda wasn't expecting it, it's not easy opening yourself up to potential criticism like that. If I may, I'd like to offer some critique...

We'll start with the AI's huge turn 1. I paused your video before you made your first turn, and the move I decided on was the same as yours. This was a mistake. It's not easy to see that it's a mistake, but it's a mistake nonetheless; it sets up your opponent into a match3 red + match3 white cascading into a match5. All those gems are already on the board. A really canny player could have spotted that, made a different move, and not given away 7+7+4 guaranteed mana, plus additional mana from cascades (since the move guaranteed destroying 11 gems, the chances of an extra cascades happening were not minute). You set the AI up for his big turn 1, all the gems were there, you could have prevented it from happening; the AI did not cheat. As I say, I'd have missed the correct play first time around too

Let's skip forwards to the next turn, you bring up, turn 5. The AI plays a Chrome Mox. Chrome Mox is an extraordinarily powerful card. It's going to cause cascades. It's going to cause a lot more cascades over the long term, than, say, your Attune with Aether, which is a terrible card. If you're feeling hard done by because you've noticed that your Attune with Aether doesn't cause nearly as many cascades as you'd like, then it's time to stop playing with Attune with Aether. I do understand that you're playing Attune for synergy with Willbreaker rather than a more powerful card like Nissa's Pilgrimage, but that then brings me onto my next point:

Willbreaker combo is not a great deck. It's ok, and I'm sure you've had some success with it in the past, but as a full on combo deck which relies on an expensive 2/3 creature, it's inconsistent and vulnerable to a relatively small amount bad luck. Congratulations for building a fun combo deck, but unfortunately part of moving forwards in the game is realising your combo deck is now outclassed. No amount of synergy with Willbreaker is going to turn Attune with Aether into a good card; It costs 4 mana, and most of the time you won't get that mana back. Reclaim has it's problems, personally I generally consider it too bad to play with, although I'm sure other top players would disagree with me on that one, but in this deck it's definitely the last and least powerful card of a three card combo. Appetite for the Unnatural is just a straight up bad card. It's way too expensive for what it does, and chances are when you really need it to hit a specific support it will hit the wrong one. Also, notice how in order to trigger Willbreaker with certain cards, you had to play them suboptimally... gaining 0 mana with Animist's Awakening, and using Appetite to kill a Battlefield Forge.

MDsupa

AresOmega said:

Ohboy said:

Is this a underpowered deck you threw together to make your point, or are you really playing this deck? 

Because I didn't see a cheating ai, just a deck that's outclassed. Pretty straightforward. 

As well as some simple but glaring gameplay issues on the OP's side, such as not taking the 3 green match at the bottom of the board, that would have dropped down another green match at about the 3 minute mark. Took the upper green match, and let the AI take the left side of the one he should have taken from the right, cascading into the white match that gave the AI its Angel of Invention. The AI got at least 2 cascades handed to it by the player in this manner.

reply to OhBoy:  

NO, this is not an Under powered deck.. but like I said with the limitation of Standard, creating a good Green deck is hard to do with your limited cards.

Doesn't help that my draw and my 2nd ability did not pull the right creature out form the deck.

Creature:

Will Breaker
Baral

Spell:
Animist Awakening
Talent of the Telepath
Turn to Frog
Baral's Expertise
Reclaim
Gather the Pack
Attune with Aether
Apepetite for the Unnatural


When this deck combo works, I can remove a whole board of creatures on the opponent side.  Baral allow for spells draw, and Attune, Animist, Talent, Baral's Expertise (not ideal..but nothing else come) fuel the power to keep casting them.  Reclaim to get rid of the creature you take over.  You can take all 2 of their creatures even if you have 3 of your own with Will Breaker.    

In the vid,  I used Kiora 2nd ability twice and did not draw Baral who i need this engine to work.  Turn to Frog is my only creature killer.  Baral's Expetirse doesn't work some times.  but I did bounce once.  but she came right back next turn anyway.  What other creature removal would you recommend then?



Reply to AresOmega:


Yes, there's time when you made bad decision on matches.  not like the very first game you play in the morning would be your best.  Hindsight is 20/20.  

Go back and look at the 3min mark again.  I match the green on the right because it would cascade to red match.  I needed 8+ mana to cast Appetite for the Unnatural so I can use Will Breaker ability to steal the monster so I can Reclaim it.  Yes I didn't see the Bottom Green match that would have been better.  But top right matches  didn't exactly show that AI would get the extra WHITE match.

And if you notice that WHITE gem wasn't in the picture until after the SKyfall that drop right into AI getting the Green match on the left that let the WHITE Matches happen.



The point of this vid is to show how cascade seems to always fall in AI favor.  

hawkyh1

could try replacing gather the pack with tezzerets
ambition? my reasoning, gather the pack destroys
creatures making it much less likely to draw them.
also animists awakening, reclaim, attune with the
aether, baral's expertise all benefit from having
more cards in hand to hold onto the mana
generated. part of the problem is you're wasting a
lot of your freebie matches/cascades.

(in this case I think your opponent has the better
deck)

HH

julianus

MDsupa said:

AresOmega said:

Ohboy said:

Is this a underpowered deck you threw together to make your point, or are you really playing this deck? 

Because I didn't see a cheating ai, just a deck that's outclassed. Pretty straightforward. 

As well as some simple but glaring gameplay issues on the OP's side, such as not taking the 3 green match at the bottom of the board, that would have dropped down another green match at about the 3 minute mark. Took the upper green match, and let the AI take the left side of the one he should have taken from the right, cascading into the white match that gave the AI its Angel of Invention. The AI got at least 2 cascades handed to it by the player in this manner.

reply to OhBoy:  

NO, this is not an Under powered deck.. but like I said with the limitation of Standard, creating a good Green deck is hard to do with your limited cards.

Doesn't help that my draw and my 2nd ability did not pull the right creature out form the deck.

I have been exactly where you are. When RATC was a competitive event, I had a very similar combo deck that I used with Kiora to reliably beat Tezzeret in Node 3.3. It worked without fail for 3 events, then in the last one I lost against him 5 out of 6 times, and badly in those 5 matches, not even getting close to winning.

I was convinced they'd changed their algorithms. But the reality is most likely that I had a run of bad luck, and maybe played poorly a few times. I think it's the same case here.

Watching the video, you played an aggressive deck stuffed with mythic and masterpiece cards that didn't depend on subtlety or combinations. Comparatively, your deck did seem underpowered. Random chance will go against you as often as it goes in your favor, and maybe even more often when there's an imbalance in other competitive factors (like the inherent power of the cards in the opposing deck).

It might seem like cascades always fall in the AI's favor, but you'd need to a lot of data to make a compelling case for that.

MDsupa

shteev said:

Hey, thanks for posting the video! I kinda wasn't expecting it, it's not easy opening yourself up to potential criticism like that. If I may, I'd like to offer some critique...

We'll start with the AI's huge turn 1. I paused your video before you made your first turn, and the move I decided on was the same as yours. This was a mistake. It's not easy to see that it's a mistake, but it's a mistake nonetheless; it sets up your opponent into a match3 red + match3 white cascading into a match5. All those gems are already on the board. A really canny player could have spotted that, made a different move, and not given away 7+7+4 guaranteed mana, plus additional mana from cascades (since the move guaranteed destroying 11 gems, the chances of an extra cascades happening were not minute). You set the AI up for his big turn 1, all the gems were there, you could have prevented it from happening; the AI did not cheat. As I say, I'd have missed the correct play first time around too

Let's skip forwards to the next turn, you bring up, turn 5. The AI plays a Chrome Mox. Chrome Mox is an extraordinarily powerful card. It's going to cause cascades. It's going to cause a lot more cascades over the long term, than, say, your Attune with Aether, which is a terrible card. If you're feeling hard done by because you've noticed that your Attune with Aether doesn't cause nearly as many cascades as you'd like, then it's time to stop playing with Attune with Aether. I do understand that you're playing Attune for synergy with Willbreaker rather than a more powerful card like Nissa's Pilgrimage, but that then brings me onto my next point:

Willbreaker combo is not a great deck. It's ok, and I'm sure you've had some success with it in the past, but as a full on combo deck which relies on an expensive 2/3 creature, it's inconsistent and vulnerable to a relatively small amount bad luck. Congratulations for building a fun combo deck, but unfortunately part of moving forwards in the game is realising your combo deck is now outclassed. No amount of synergy with Willbreaker is going to turn Attune with Aether into a good card; It costs 4 mana, and most of the time you won't get that mana back. Reclaim has it's problems, personally I generally consider it too bad to play with, although I'm sure other top players would disagree with me on that one, but in this deck it's definitely the last and least powerful card of a three card combo. Appetite for the Unnatural is just a straight up bad card. It's way too expensive for what it does, and chances are when you really need it to hit a specific support it will hit the wrong one. Also, notice how in order to trigger Willbreaker with certain cards, you had to play them suboptimally... gaining 0 mana with Animist's Awakening, and using Appetite to kill a Battlefield Forge.

Thanks for the review.

No I didn't see that move on the first time.  the fact the he got the red and white matches was just bad.. but the fact that the Black matches 5 is worse.  Like I said, this was my first game of the day, and I was trying not to take too long as it's recorded.  My concern at the time was I need to match blue or green and the fact that I would get Loyalty would help me get to Kiora 2nd ability faster to get my combo going.  

That doesn't diminish the fact that after AI got his 2nd Swap, he matches Green and get White to match, and then the Skyfall matches another White AND Black for him at the top.  That's my point.

Read the above post to how this deck works.  

Yes this is NOT an optimal deck by any mean.  With limitation of Green Nodes and even less viable Green decks I have, this was the Best.  I know sad.  I can choose for this node.  Pure Green is out of the question with no real creature removals.  Arlinn with no Werewolf (not that I have the cards I need anyway).  my Ajani W/G is not leveled yet.  it comes down to Kiora.

I put in Appetite of Unnatural because we have to deal w/ Supports now.  I was debating between the 8Mana version vs 10 mana version.  with Baral out, it's not that much different and atleast I gain some life.  I don't like the card, for non standard deck I'd have Root Out.  Soo much better.


This is a STANDARD version of my Baral deck.  


Non-Standard works much better.. 

Creature:
Baral
Niblis of Frost

Spell:
Imprisoned in the Moon
Talent of the Telepath
Animist's Awakening
Root Out
Swell of Growth
Attune with Aether
Seek the Wilds
Natural connection



Both of them concentrate on getting many cascade and fueled by Baral to get to Kiora 3rd abiliity.  Nibilis get big and also Disabled one creature.  with Imprisoned occupy another slot.  this limit AI to one creature slot.  Many times I can get Kiora 3rd ability activation by 3rd turn.


The Standard version is alot worse since you don't get as many Green Gem Converter.  Gather The Pack is much worse than Seek the WIlds.  Seek the Wilds insure that you keep getting spells since it moves all the creatures to the bottom.


Also the deck was created for those "Cast No support" objectives.



but I'll have to try to record another one.  

MDsupa

hawkyh1 said:

could try replacing gather the pack with tezzerets
ambition? my reasoning, gather the pack destroys
creatures making it much less likely to draw them.
also animists awakening, reclaim, attune with the
aether, baral's expertise all benefit from having
more cards in hand to hold onto the mana
generated. part of the problem is you're wasting a
lot of your freebie matches/cascades.

(in this case I think your opponent has the better
deck)

HH

Yes, It's obvious he has better deck.  He has Nihiri.  I'm stuck w/ a Green deck for this node.  

The reason for Gather the Pack is to draw the creature I need and put the rest out of the way.  Kiora 2nd abilty was the other way to get the creature I need.  this was suppose to have Baral cycle all the spells and get cascades and get to Kiora 3rd Ability.  you can read my other reply on how this deck suppose to work..  Gather the Pack & 2nd Ability keep drawing the wrong creature (and there's only 2 in the deck).  

With better deck you would still be dealing w/ those big creatures with very limited creature removal since this is a Green Node.

babar3355

@MDsupa Ok, so I honestly had to laugh out loud when I saw this video.  Not at you or your play or your deck, but at the fact that I have lived moments like that plenty of times in my day. 

To be fair, you had some big turns and cascades as well, which left you drawing off the top for much of the game.

I would say that a combo deck like this is far more likely to fail than a more balanced deck.  Nahiri's deck was certainly very strong and seemingly not tuned to Trial of Ambitions.  But she didn't really NEED any of her pieces. Its nice to get chrome mox out early, but if not you can draw an AOI, or an OP sword, or scab clan berserker.

Your deck was totally dependent on getting willbreaker and baral out and stable on the board.  Your only draw is gather the pack. This type of deck requires that you get established and maintain board control and is absolutely prone to good early starts by the AI. You would be way better off using stuff like disperse or anchor to the aether than animist awakening and attune with aether in this deck.  

My only other critique is that you seem to be 100% focused on your plan.  At about 2 minutes in you had 13 loyalty with a match 5 starting at you and willbreaker/reclaim ready to go. But that leaves your hand empty of spells after you combo into willbreaker and reclaim.  So you know that you are losing your WB the next turn.  So perhaps you could draw a baral, and maybe you would draw more cards when you hit your combo.  But what if you filled up the other cards first with the match 5 and saw if you could get close to an octopus.  32/32 octopi could have changed this game.

Anyway, if you want to discuss some ideas on re-drawing the deck I am happy to do that.  You are welcome to come to our slack channel and if you are looking for a coalition we can help you with that as well.  I commend you for posting a video as most of us make mistakes all the time (I probably also would have made the first swap mistake), but its very helpful to improve if you review your mistakes and get constructive feedback from other players.

Anyway, PM me if you want an invite to our chat channel or are interested in joining a coalition that shares ideas and can help with deck building.

Your deck reminds me of a Gideon first strike deck that I used as my first legitimate deck.  I basically had to get a big flying blocking first striker in the air and pray it didn't get hit by removal .  Yours actually seems much better than that.

madwren

Great thread, guys!

One of the tenets of successful play is limiting variance/facilitating consistency.  Including Willbreaker in the deck means that you dilute both Kiora's second ability or Gather the Pack. Not drawing/fetching a Baral isn't isn't something that can be blamed on the AI. It's simply a suboptimal result of your card choices, which will unfortunately occur. Saying that is isn't an underpowered deck is all well and good...but it is.  Standard weakens a lot of decks, and not everything is translatable. That's neither good nor bad; it simply is.

I'd focus on getting rid of the weaker spell selections in favor of more card draw, which will help smooth things out. For example, I'd drop these:

Baral's Expertise
Attune with Aether
Apepetite for the Unnatural


And replace with any of these uncommons or commons, just off the top of my head. There may be some I'm missing:

Anchor to the Aether - better than Baral's Expertise, and draws
Winds of Rebuke - doesn't draw, but cheap bounce
Artificer's Epiphany or Hieroglyphic Illumination - simple draw spell that replaces itself cheaply
Dissenter's Deliverance - artifact removal and cycling
Floodwaters - stall card, cycles when you don't need it

That'd leave you with something like:
Willbreaker
Baral
Animist's Awakening
Turn to Frog
Reclaim
Gather the Pack
Anchor to the Aether
Dissenter's Deliverance
Hieroglyphic Illumination
Floodwaters

MDsupa

madwren said:

Great thread, guys!

One of the tenets of successful play is limiting variance/facilitating consistency.  Including Willbreaker in the deck means that you dilute both Kiora's second ability or Gather the Pack. Not drawing/fetching a Baral isn't isn't something that can be blamed on the AI. It's simply a suboptimal result of your card choices, which will unfortunately occur. Saying that is isn't an underpowered deck is all well and good...but it is.  Standard weakens a lot of decks, and not everything is translatable. That's neither good nor bad; it simply is.

I'd focus on getting rid of the weaker spell selections in favor of more card draw, which will help smooth things out. For example, I'd drop these:

Baral's Expertise
Attune with Aether
Apepetite for the Unnatural


And replace with any of these uncommons or commons, just off the top of my head. There may be some I'm missing:

Anchor to the Aether - better than Baral's Expertise, and draws
Winds of Rebuke - doesn't draw, but cheap bounce
Artificer's Epiphany or Hieroglyphic Illumination - simple draw spell that replaces itself cheaply
Dissenter's Deliverance - artifact removal and cycling
Floodwaters - stall card, cycles when you don't need it

That'd leave you with something like:
Willbreaker
Baral
Animist's Awakening
Turn to Frog
Reclaim
Gather the Pack
Anchor to the Aether
Dissenter's Deliverance
Hieroglyphic Illumination
Floodwaters

Thanks for the suggestions.  with the amount of AMK boosters I open.. I still don't have that Common card "Dissenter's Deliverance"  nevermind all the dupes....

That deck relies too much on Baral and  one Removal of him and it's dead anyway.

going back to more generic deck and hope for the best.

Creature:
Harbinger of the Tides
Oviya Pashiri

Spell:
Talent of the Telepath
Turn to Frog
Displacement Wave
Anchor to the Aether
Creeping Mold

Support:

Nissa's Pilgrimage
Scattered Groves
Thopter Spy Network

Sirchombli

Bad beats happen. You'll get used to it. If you really think the ai cheats, remember all the timed it casts cast out with no targets, or activates on nix's first ability with a full hand. Pvp events in platinum involve good cards. It takes a lot of work to get to this level. Just like silver was an adjustment, then gold, so is platinum. After a week or two you won't even notice anymore. Though you may need to step up your game. If there were a hard mode, it would be platinum. But remember when you had the same complaints about gold. Cheating ai, crazy mythics. You'll get better 

Froggy

Not much more to say other than - true. I think a lot of us have gone through the "AI chats" moment. At least I admittedly have gone through that. Sometimes a killer deck does not mean you need 100 mythics available. I have some some pretty solid decks using just commons, uncommons and 1-2 rares. As hinted, it takes some getting used to and the best is to always ask coalition members for advice and pore through the pages... cards... to see how to create something that has great synergy. It takes some getting used to. Platinum is highly competitive. If you work at it, one day a newcomer will post the same thread and the video will be against a killer deck you put together. But great post and thread otherwise.

Phase

I think it's cool the OP posted the video (props) but are we really going to analyze AI cascades in a game in which they play Chrome Mox, one of the best static gem converters in the game? If you want to call Chrome Mox OP that's fine but everything that happens after that is basically unusable data.

MDsupa

@Froggy  Thanks for the feedback.   You make it sound like i'm some newbie who never play MTG before.  I started on Paper version back during the LEGEND expansion.  stop playing few years after because it costing too much money and time.  I started Puzzle Quest version 6 months after it was release.. was trying not to be a repeat of the paper version.  

@Tile Toppler

If you read all of my replies I point out where the computer get favorable cascades in many spots and ones where they had nothing to do with Chrome Mox.


I just had one at training ground where AI spit out Olivia, Heart of Kuran, and Metalwork Colossus, all in one turn.   but that was a Koth deck and no point in recording that.

Obviously, i'm not convincing you.  this is just one of many.  I'm just pointing out the bias cascade and trying to see if others are experiencing the same thing.

Ohboy

I think it might be helpful to keep an open mind when more experienced platinum players tell you this isn't unusual or evidence of ai cheating. 

You're just playing a fun combo deck against a more efficient one. 

Really, if you think this is cheating... Eventually you'll get to a game where chandra1 or ob gets a lucky cascade and one turn ko you with skill 3 in enraged mode. That will really blow your mind. 

MDsupa

Ohboy said:

I think it might be helpful to keep an open mind when more experienced platinum players tell you this isn't unusual or evidence of ai cheating. 

You're just playing a fun combo deck against a more efficient one. 

Really, if you think this is cheating... Eventually you'll get to a game where chandra1 or ob gets a lucky cascade and one turn ko you with skill 3 in enraged mode. That will really blow your mind. 

LOL, that already happen in Gold.

OB  skill 3 and two cast of Lost Legacy in one turn with the "Nice" Cascades.  and usually AI doesn't save up Loyalty to use SKill 3.  he cascade into that and then cast it.  My recording is mild compare to what I've experience.  You do see stuffs like that. that's why I used "Cheating" in quote.