Kill X or more Objectives vs. Creatureless

Steeme

Any creatureless deck built with no token generators (including loyalty) cannot possibly play/cast/summon any creatures to the field.

I also cannot give/spawn my opponent creatures.

Is there any way to achieve kill X or more creature objectives?

Running into a surprising amount of decks running only Drake Haven which the AI will not cycle with.  Where we would typically see the Vizier in those decks to remove disable, he has disappeared.  Not sure why the meta would shift in those decks unless it was, obviously, a competitive strategy to tank opponent scores.

Seems like this type of objective makes your performance in the event dependent on the matchmaker.

Ohboy

The entire game uses rng. This isn't really new. 

As always, what matters is that the rng is fair so the great players win more than the good ones over the long run. 

Tilwin90

You can also go creatureless with Ob and given all the new toys it can end up being surprisingly powerful. Similarly you can do a Tezz2 creatureless build even though it's not as reliable due to the absence of Tamiyo's Journal. I guess doing that in such an event is a ****-y, troll-y, but completely "legal" approach

Ohboy

You can go creatureless in I think all 4 nodes if you're up to it. As always you sacrifice some safety to plant the traps for your opponent.  

Red is not advisable unless you want to lose your own objectives. 

The bottom node would also be hard because you're limited to spells. 

Tilwin90

For bottom node you can do it with only a *few* supports. If I use tezz for it I always include Cruel Reality as you don't need to cast too many copies of it to be effective. 
Red node can work I guess if you come up with some sort of Ajani burn deck combined with support creature removal and disable, though I'm not sure how effective that is. I rely on Saheeli here as I don't have Ajani and I usually include only skysovereign and baral with her.
Green node is naturally creatureless so you can rely on Kiora's ultimate if you want to play risky against creature removal decks and other token generators (like Zendikar's Roil).
No idea what else but Dovin cycling you could do for top node to avoid playing creatures... I guess you can try going Elspeth/Gideon3 since they generate creature tokens, or Gideon2 with Procession... don't have him so I don't know how reliable that strategy is.

Steeme

The problem I have is that, regardless of skill, there is the potential for dropping points.

I am by no means the best, and learn from my mistakes.  But I'm a firm believer that if you've invested the time and effort to design decks for perfect scores, and make no mistakes of your own, that your final score should reflect your performance.

It would be clear that, if we do see perfect scores in this event, those players did not face any creatureless opponents on the two nodes requiring Kill X+ objectives.  I'm not against their perfect score, in fact I always commend that achievement, but it doesn't really sit well that RNG has an influence on the leaderboard.

Tilwin90

On the other hand you will see this problem in the original magic game. It's a game that has a lot of strategy in it, but still that random factor.
Sure, you can minimize chance by tweaking your deck (and there is a huge difference between tweaking 10 distinct cards to a total of 10x4 deck or tweaking any 60 cards as you see fit). There is also mulligans. But in the end, you will end up with those super unlucky situations where you start with 5 lands, or you start with a land and your most expensive cards in hand. It happens

I am just as upset when it's clear I am losing to an opponent and the situation keeps getting worse and worse and I keep getting bad matches while they get powerful cascades.

I did start to keep an eye on those though and it seems to be when my opponent uses more gem changers. Certain planeswalkers look like they might need them less (especially Saheeli), but if my opponent is full green white for instance and transforms everything into green and white, they will gain an advantage on me and incrementally get me "out of the board". It's how I lost a Saheeli match against a really badly tuned deck that got "lucky".

So all in all, I get the pain, I am on the same side of the barricade, the next question I am trying to answer now is "how can I minimize that by improving my deckbuilding skills"?

Steeme

In this case there is no way to improve your deck, since you cannot possibly kill 3 or more creatures if they never appear.

Tilwin90

Steeme said:

In this case there is no way to improve your deck, since you cannot possibly kill 3 or more creatures if they never appear.

Yeah that's just stupid. It's like asking in a paper magic match "destroy 3 or more lands your opponent controls" against a dredge decks. Or actually the same objective against a control deck running one gearhulk and 4xElspeth Sun's Champion as wincons.

Ohboy

The only way to make things super fair in this approach is for everyone to meet the exact same deck, with a predetermined deck order and gem order. 

And everyone must play the same decks. 

Any deviation from this is simply a debate on how much Variance you want to add to the game, and not on its fairness. 

speakupaskanswer

Clearly not the "only" way. One possible way would be what was (I think) promised ones, that the decks are more fitted to the events that they are entered in. So, if the objective is to kill creatures, decks without creatures or token generators should simply not be put into the pool. That wouldn't be unfair at all but allow us to actually clear the objectives. I want to say that it couldn't be very hard to implement this, but I know everything is in this game.

Tilwin90

speakupaskanswer said:

Clearly not the "only" way. One possible way would be what was (I think) promised ones, that the decks are more fitted to the events that they are entered in. So, if the objective is to kill creatures, decks without creatures or token generators should simply not be put into the pool. That wouldn't be unfair at all but allow us to actually clear the objectives. I want to say that it couldn't be very hard to implement this, but I know everything is in this game.

*grins* but Drake Haven is a token generator, what are you talking about? 

Ohboy

speakupaskanswer said:

Clearly not the "only" way. One possible way would be what was (I think) promised ones, that the decks are more fitted to the events that they are entered in. So, if the objective is to kill creatures, decks without creatures or token generators should simply not be put into the pool. That wouldn't be unfair at all but allow us to actually clear the objectives. I want to say that it couldn't be very hard to implement this, but I know everything is in this game.

That's not completely "fair" (only skill matters) , just further down the scale of the Variance meter and at a point where you're comfortable. 

It's equally as fair as the current system. It just reduces Variance in exchange for flexibility. 

TheDragonHermit

Ohboy said:

The only way to make things super fair in this approach is for everyone to meet the exact same deck, with a predetermined deck order and gem order. 

And everyone must play the same decks. 

Any deviation from this is simply a debate on how much Variance you want to add to the game, and not on its fairness. 

Another way is to abandon or partially abandon objectives in favor of deckbuilding challenges. Assignment of requirements for a deck to have in order for a deck to be valid for a node, like have no creatures in your deck or have four vehicles in your deck, make winning worth five ribbons and maybe have an objective for us to complain about worth two ribbons.

Ohboy

That's also just sliding up the Variance scale to a point you're comfortable with. 

Do we also ban chandra 1 in nodes with <x damage? Gideon 2 in nodes with kill < x creatures? 

Tilwin90

I am all for interesting objectives. They give much more variance than the optimized decks that then appear everywhere. But these objectives need to encourage variance and lead to good plays, not awfully boring or disgusting self-damaging luck-based-wins builds like "win with 10 or less life... in PVP... what?!"

I experimented the last FIRF by ignoring the vehicles objectives as I imagined it should shake things up and also maybe end up with a decent number of points. Boy was I wrong... I lost the equivalent of 10 full matches (about 70 points) plus it was not even an interesting challenge, facing vehicle-based underpowered decks.

Not that I care about FIRF rewards but it did feel disappointing and it was a great encouragement for me personally to focus on the objectives. 

Ohboy

Oddly enough win with less than x hp objectives are the greatest test of your skill in this game. 

It doesn't take a lot of skill to build a deck to trash the horrible ai. It does take a certain measure of skill to build and pilot a deck that successfully controls your hp total reliably and fend off all possible surprises. 

Steeme

Ohboy said:

That's also just sliding up the Variance scale to a point you're comfortable with. 

Do we also ban chandra 1 in nodes with <x damage? Gideon 2 in nodes with kill < x creatures? 

Chandra and Gideon 2 have solutions, so they are dependent on your PW and deck to prevent X damage or prevent killing creatures.

There needs to be a solution other than "hope your opponent can spawn a creature and keep frogging it" in order to get full points.

hawkyh1

they could pool each refresh node and allow players
to match each opponent? eg 1st refresh is kiora,
kiora, chandra, gideon. I then match nodes white and
blue(no kill creatures) with the two kiora(maybe
creatureless cycling decks). I'll then match chandra1
on the green node with the resulting gideon matched
against my red node. (a bit of bad luck if c1 turns out
to be creatureless)

it just means players have to create many more anti
objectives decks for it to actually be effective.

HH

Ohboy

Steeme said:

Ohboy said:

That's also just sliding up the Variance scale to a point you're comfortable with. 

Do we also ban chandra 1 in nodes with <x damage? Gideon 2 in nodes with kill < x creatures? 

Chandra and Gideon 2 have solutions, so they are dependent on your PW and deck to prevent X damage or prevent killing creatures.

There needs to be a solution other than "hope your opponent can spawn a creature and keep frogging it" in order to get full points.

Chandra damage is unpreventable. 

Gideon 2 creature death is also unpreventable(without Exile) . 

You cannot avoid taking damage/killing those creatures. 

hawkyh1

Ohboy said:

Steeme said:

Ohboy said:

That's also just sliding up the Variance scale to a point you're comfortable with. 

Do we also ban chandra 1 in nodes with <x damage? Gideon 2 in nodes with kill < x creatures? 

Chandra and Gideon 2 have solutions, so they are dependent on your PW and deck to prevent X damage or prevent killing creatures.

There needs to be a solution other than "hope your opponent can spawn a creature and keep frogging it" in order to get full points.

Chandra damage is unpreventable. 

Gideon 2 creature death is also unpreventable(without Exile) . 

You cannot avoid taking damage/killing those creatures. 

you can still try disabling gideon's token blockers
for the duration of the battle. (enrage helps here)

direct damage in an enraged environment whilst
trying to not take damage is just nasty.

HH