How do you feel about B4T?

uthread

Too long!

Gun Bunny

The only objectives I take issue with:

4.1 should have some other kill spell besides slaughter the strong. It's inevitably cast to the AI's detriment, hosing your objective.

3.2 Tishana can get huge creatures on the board ridiculously fast, making the take 15 or less damage objective a **** shoot at best.

5.1 Playing chicken with an opponent that can, again, get huge creatures into play very quickly, is not pleasant. It's like the Persistent Nightmare encounter in Avacyn's Madness. I never even tried for the spells objective, because the excellent supports we've gotten since then weren't available.

In addition, having a kill <4 objective when the AI has a card in the deck that kills two of it's own creatures (golden guardian's token) by design is likewise stupid.

4.3 Lose 4 or more creatures is always an asinine objective, moreso with riddleform rotated out of standard. The only end-of-turn self-killing creature left now is a masterpiece, for crying out loud. Having to pack a sacrifice spell that you wouldn't normally need is stupid.

Gunmix25

I loved the event and hated it at the same time. I am adult enough to recognize that the rewards given in this event should require some bit of effort though. I don't think easier and shorter events should ever carry such rewards like BoFT does. You want 'em? Earn 'em. That is fair enough for me. That said though, I like grinding, but BoFT tips the scales at how much I would like to grind, and that event is a ton of grinding.

I don't mind events being recycled after a standard rotation occurs. I think it is healthy for the game to break up old builds and try new and different tactics. The game would ruin it for me if the Devs encouraged players to be lazy and keep old builds; because the next logical and inevitable complaint will be how the game is stagnant because we are using the same builds in the same events over and over. *cough cough* The Great Stagnation period of Aug 2017-Jan 2018 *cough cough* But the Devs do need to find a way to cater to both those that aren't big on making new builds and those that love to keep the game alive with new builds every event.

Gunmix25

The rewards reflect the grind.

That said, I am burnt out. But I love the rewards, so I have that going for me.

Likely if everyone is so inclined to not see another event like this, that would also mean the level of rewards in return. Kind of a bummer but it is fair. To ask otherwise to keep the rewards for less effort would be a bit too greedy IMHO.

I personally would like to grind slightly less... not a whole lot less... Because that gave us AWR.. which I hate because it is a slow, slow, slow and agonizing wait for recharges.

FindingHeart8

Gunmix25 said:

The rewards reflect the grind.

That said, I am burnt out. But I love the rewards, so I have that going for me.

Likely if everyone is so inclined to not see another event like this, that would also mean the level of rewards in return. Kind of a bummer but it is fair. To ask otherwise to keep the rewards for less effort would be a bit too greedy IMHO.

I get what you're saying.

I would have recommended (instead of the tediousness of hours after hours of grinding), instead an increase in boss difficulty for the harder nodes, but we already have a super broken Azor's Gateway boss so I don't feel as guilty about being greedy lol.

NinjaE

I'm okay with it. There are definitely worse events out there, and the rewards are decent.

Brakkis

A number of things about the event should have been, and still should be, changed.

1.3 - Summon 6 or more pirates should be changed to 4.
 - This isn't a hard fight. This doesn't make the fight harder or easier. It makes it less tedious as I wait to draw 6 pirates before finishing things.

3.2 - Change the Take 15 or less damage objective to something else.
 - A 15 or less damage objective on a node where the AI has a 6 loyalty ability to give their first creature +6/+6 is obnoxious.

4.1 - Change the "Slaughter the Strong" card to "Legion's Judgment"
 - Give the AI a targeted white single target kill spell as opposed to a possible board wipe that actively ruins the kill 2 or less creatures objective by killing his own creatures.

4.3 - Increase the cost of Elenda's loyalty abilities.
 - Far too cheap and too spammable

5.1 - Change "Golden Demise" to something else.
 - Again, giving the AI a way to kill its own creatures while having an objective to not kill creatures is asinine.
 - I personally think the "Win with 20 or less HP" objective needs to go as well.

5.2 - First, change all of it's bounce/destroy spells to temporary disable spells. Second, either prevent treasures from triggering City's Blessing or give it supports that don't generate treasures. One or the other. When it can hit you for 999 damage on it's 3rd turn because it generated a bunch of treasures, that's not okay. That's nigh impossible to prevent.
 - Additionally, with it's ability to keep your board clear of creatures for well over 20 turns due to all the removal/bounce it has, the "Win the fight within 10 rounds" objective needs to go.

Enygma6

Aeroplane said:

This event is horrible for beginners. After the first level , my son is in Bronze just got mana ramped and utterly destroyed in 4 rounds in Blood Sun. I've never seen molten vortex do so much damage with red sky fall in one round. Basically, non-magic beginners will not have any fun in this game. Well, he tried again and died in 7 rounds with another crazy sky fall pulling out 3 dragons.

It's not just brutal to beginners if Greg gets lucky.  I've been playing for over a year, and actively compete at high-end Platinum, and I too got my tinykitty handed to me by Blood Sun in one fight.  
My level 60 Kiora was destroyed by turn 16, all I could do was sit back and watch, and only got a single Turn to Frog out on one of his Avaricious Dragons.  He never got less than 14 mana per turn, and I could barely get any.
Admiral Becket Brass also got a lucky win over me as well this time around, due to obscenely lucky perfectly-timed cascades.  These were the first times I've ever lost those two fights.  
Fortunately the other fights on those matches went much more favorably to me. 

Thuran said:
Many nodes are now just horrible to play, as rotation has taken away the right tools, without proper replacements. 4.2 is made a lot worse when your strongest burn deals 10 DMG...on a node that gains life all the time!!!
Wth  are they expecting us to do once ixl rotates and takes merfolk and dinosaurs with it?!

There are still 7 Merfolk and 3 Dinosaurs in post-XLN/RIX Standard.  Pirates will be the tricky one, as there's only Departed Deckhand.  

Otherwise we'll have to use the new copy stuff from M19: Metamorphic Alteration and Mirror Image.  

I like the challenge of trying to adapt a new Standard to old Events and objectives like this, but this event in particular is extremely time consuming and tedious.  I would like to see it either split into two (nodes 1-3, then nodes 4-5) like Oath of the Gatewatch which has a pt.1 & 2.  Or else converted to non-Coalition ladder-format, so that I could repeat a specific node repeatedly to find a working strategy without having to worry about node charges and coalition scores.  

When this event first debuted, most of my builds were very XLN/RIX heavy, so I haven't had to make many adjustments to them as Standard has shifted this last couple playthroughs, but there were always a few matches that require a rethink every time.  

Losing cycling when AKH left meant I switched to Doom loopers for a couple fights.  Now without HOU, I'm back to creatureless Ob on 4.2 (Angrath works as well, just a bit slower), and had to find a new damage combo that I could loop in 5.2.  I did once manage to hit both objectives on 5.2, but it's much more tricky and my deck relies on several contingencies to try to either keep him in line or keep myself from getting killed while doing setup for my combo (Alpine Moon, Haphazard Bombardment, Lich's Mastery, Immortal Sun).

My old Huatli2 dinosaur grindfest deck for Azor still worked with only a minor change (no more Hour of Promise), but in the interest of rethinking things to get it under 100 turns for a win, I came up with a new Teferi control deck to turn the tables and lock him down for a change, and incorporated a couple shiny new Angels (and Angel-generating MPs).  Making giant Angel token stacks is fun, but it's just my opinion that matches shouldn't take so long that I'm able to assemble a 273/273 creature over the course of many turns (doing that used to be much faster with AKH).  It got to the point that Luminarch Ascension was putting out 17 reinforcements for each activation - that means a minimum of 15 turns in which I didn't get hit, and I got hit a fair bit in that fight.  15 turns during which not much was happening as I occasionally whittled down Azor's HP total.  I know that match in particular is meant to challenge the player's ability to fight under severe constraints that change each round, but to give the boss 500HP on top of that just drags it out so much longer than necessary.  

It's just a war of attrition at that point.  Which pretty much sums up the whole event.  How many more times will the player base have the patience and tolerance for excessive grinds like this?

Mark_Tedin

This event was created for a powerful environment (HOU, AMK, cycling, HuF, ID).
After the rotation we have no cards for a good replacement.
The matches are endless (this greatly increases the chance of bugs).
One solution would be to reduce big boss HP .

wereotter

Enygma6 said:

My old Huatli2 dinosaur grindfest deck for Azor still worked with only a minor change (no more Hour of Promise), but in the interest of rethinking things to get it under 100 turns for a win, I came up with a new Teferi control deck to turn the tables and lock him down for a change, and incorporated a couple shiny new Angels (and Angel-generating MPs).  Making giant Angel token stacks is fun, but it's just my opinion that matches shouldn't take so long that I'm able to assemble a 273/273 creature over the course of many turns (doing that used to be much faster with AKH).  It got to the point that Luminarch Ascension was putting out 17 reinforcements for each activation - that means a minimum of 15 turns in which I didn't get hit, and I got hit a fair bit in that fight.  15 turns during which not much was happening as I occasionally whittled down Azor's HP total.  I know that match in particular is meant to challenge the player's ability to fight under severe constraints that change each round, but to give the boss 500HP on top of that just drags it out so much longer than necessary.  

However, if you happen to NOT have Luminarch Ascension, here's a strategy that was pretty solid against Azor for me, however it still requires a couple higher rarity cards, though at least one was directly purchasable. Nice thing is that eventually the deck will play itself, which is helpful.

Using Saheeli:
Mishra's Self-Replicator
Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage
Jaya's Immolating Inferno
Alchemist's Vial
Time of Ice
Storm the Vault

Gilded Lotus
Mox Amber

Than Temporal Gateway

Every single card in this deck will cause Mishra's Self Replicator to duplicate itself, and a couple are low enough mana cost that between Raff and Jhoira, you'll be able to cast them for free, and draw a replacement card, which you again may be able to cast for free. Additionally Storm the Vault will make sure that pretty much every card in your hand gets cast every turn (except for cards Azor has refused to allow that round) both from the sheer mana generation, as well as triggering your Mox Amber activated gems for even more mana generation.

Down side is this deck does have a high number of mythic rare cards, which might make it just as unlikely a strategy as some other decks, but the core of Mishra's Self Replicaor, Jhoira, and Raff can make most historic decks hum.

Brigby

*Merged similar feedback threads about Battle of Four Tribes

Stormcrow

Honestly, the decks which can cascade into a sudden, abrupt, lucky win don't irritate me nearly as much as the decks which have a zillion hit points, a ton of stuff to troll the player by slowing the game down to a slog, and absolutely no actual way to realistically kill a reasonably prepared player. 5.3 and most of the vampire nodes come to mind. Those are slow with no way around how slow they are, whereas a lot of the other fights can go fast if you just choose to ignore the optional objectives. (Which, since they're mostly variants of "play badly" or "get lucky", I usually do.) I just don't have the time in my life to spend on Battle of the Four Trolls.

The bugs are driving me nuts lately, too. Aside from the Vraska's-1st-ability-bug, I also hit a bug with Ixalan's Binding increasing the cost of every card Etali gave me by 2 (whether it was a creature or not!) and just so many other stupid, fluky things that didn't seem to be working like they were supposed to. I like the theory of the indestructible supports with crazy effects but in practice I'm not sure this game has ever been bug-free enough for something like that to be a good idea. Given the current state of bugs in the game it's just sort of like throwing gasoline on a fire. And given the length of the matches, anything that can bug out, will bug out.

Enygma6

wereotter said:

However, if you happen to NOT have Luminarch Ascension, here's a strategy that was pretty solid against Azor for me, however it still requires a couple higher rarity cards, though at least one was directly purchasable. Nice thing is that eventually the deck will play itself, which is helpful.

Using Saheeli:
Mishra's Self-Replicator
Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage
Jaya's Immolating Inferno
Alchemist's Vial
Time of Ice
Storm the Vault

Gilded Lotus
Mox Amber

Than Temporal Gateway

Every single card in this deck will cause Mishra's Self Replicator to duplicate itself, and a couple are low enough mana cost that between Raff and Jhoira, you'll be able to cast them for free, and draw a replacement card, which you again may be able to cast for free. Additionally Storm the Vault will make sure that pretty much every card in your hand gets cast every turn (except for cards Azor has refused to allow that round) both from the sheer mana generation, as well as triggering your Mox Amber activated gems for even more mana generation.

Down side is this deck does have a high number of mythic rare cards, which might make it just as unlikely a strategy as some other decks, but the core of Mishra's Self Replicaor, Jhoira, and Raff can make most historic decks hum.

I like it.  Not sure how much faster it would be than mine was, and doesn't focus as heavily on completely locking out Azor, but I have been trying to make some use of Mishra's Self-Replicator as I only recently acquired it.  
Still takes 4 Mythics for your build, mine was 3 Mythics and 2 MPs (Lyra, Nyx, Spyglass, Luminarch, and Decree).  

There's just no real efficient way to deal with a 500hp boss without making huge stacks of something.  And then hoping he doesn't exile or bounce them before you can strike.  
Originally we could use Drake Haven and Vizier of Many Faces.  Or some crazy Pony stacks from the Sunmare.
Then it was Uncaged Ghalta stacks.  
I suppose the "budget friendly" version would be Slimefoot and Saproling spam.  Resplendent Angel can grow on her own without tokens if you have enough other lifegain.  Lathliss is decent, but dragons are expensive, even in token form.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

FindingHeart8

Teysa said:

I'd agree that Slaughter the Strong is a bad choice for 4.1's deck. It is, however, possible to build around. Both Karn and Teferi are now capable of packing an solid amount of exile effects, so it's possible to keep your opponent from having any creatures on the board, *without* ticking up the 'kill <X creatures' objective. Losing the objective is still possible, but no more so than taking 30 damage on 2.3 from a run of bad luck. Mind you, when I started playing this event, my strategy was based around bounce (with IBC for vampire tokens), and I got 2 freezes doing that thanks to the by now rather antiquainted bounce bug. That thing needs fixing, badly.

5.1 became very manageable playing the exile strategy. I found it easy this weekend. My deck had a lot of moving parts - I think I'd compare the level to Tezzeret on RatC, which seemed impossible to some at first, but turned out to be achievable with the right deck. Of course, the right deck has BSZ in it, so, good luck if you don't have that. Casting BSZ every turn is a gas, gas, gas. Thanks, Muldrotha.

In fact, the exile strategy is so good, that I decided to try it on 2.2 with Ob, and the results were peachy. Ob doesn't have quite so many exile effects, so I had to supplement the deck with -X-X debuff effects. It worked just fine.

5.3 I just don't think is well designed. The objectives doesn't actually constrict your deckbuilding in any way. and neither does the node ability, it just slows you down, making the level an interminable grind.

The speed objectives on 3.2 and 5.2 are also a problem. It turns out there *IS* a dull combo deck that you can beat them with; no need to play the game with any amount of interaction, just assemble the right cards in your hand, tap on the screen for about half an hour, and bob's your uncle, you've won on turn 5 and are very, very bored. I'm not sure pure combo cards should be printed in MTGPQ (by which I mean, cards which are useless except as part of a combo deck, like Squee or Torgaar, rather than cards which can be used in or out of combo decks, like Sarkhan's Unsealing). Combo is a part of MTG that many players seem to like, but paper MTG differs from MTGPQ in a number of important respects, two of them being 1) your opponent never has 200 life, and 2) When you demonstrate your combo loop to your IRL opponent, he'll generally scoop, and they'll be no need for you to actually play the game out.

3.3 just needs to be dismantled entirely and rebuilt from scratch. A level which gives you crates full of extra cards and mana is hardly a challenge.

cycling 2.0

Sarahschmara

I think it’s really interesting that different people struggle with different things.

Whether it’s a lack of necessary cards or just differing play styles, it’s a good reminder that not everyone experiences things the same way. 

Rhasget

5.1 comes up alot but I see no issue with it. You need to control the board but there are many options for it.

If you fill his creature slots with other creatures, you can control how much damage he deals each turn without being able to reinforce them and surprise you.

A combo with Dowsing Dagger, Turn to Frog and Switcheroo makes him unable to get out any creatures.
Just use flyers to avoid the plant token.
Deep Freeze will reduce his damage dealers to zero power when you are set.

[Deleted User]

Brakkis said:

A number of things about the event should have been, and still should be, changed.

1.3 - Summon 6 or more pirates should be changed to 4.
 - This isn't a hard fight. This doesn't make the fight harder or easier. It makes it less tedious as I wait to draw 6 pirates before finishing things.

3.2 - Change the Take 15 or less damage objective to something else.
 - A 15 or less damage objective on a node where the AI has a 6 loyalty ability to give their first creature +6/+6 is obnoxious.

4.1 - Change the "Slaughter the Strong" card to "Legion's Judgment"
 - Give the AI a targeted white single target kill spell as opposed to a possible board wipe that actively ruins the kill 2 or less creatures objective by killing his own creatures.

4.3 - Increase the cost of Elenda's loyalty abilities.
 - Far too cheap and too spammable

5.1 - Change "Golden Demise" to something else.
 - Again, giving the AI a way to kill its own creatures while having an objective to not kill creatures is asinine.
 - I personally think the "Win with 20 or less HP" objective needs to go as well.

5.2 - First, change all of it's bounce/destroy spells to temporary disable spells. Second, either prevent treasures from triggering City's Blessing or give it supports that don't generate treasures. One or the other. When it can hit you for 999 damage on it's 3rd turn because it generated a bunch of treasures, that's not okay. That's nigh impossible to prevent.
 - Additionally, with it's ability to keep your board clear of creatures for well over 20 turns due to all the removal/bounce it has, the "Win the fight within 10 rounds" objective needs to go.

1.3: I agree

3.2: I dont think it needs to be removed. 30 damage could adequate as opposed to 15. 

4.1: I don't think it needs to be changed. Counterintuitive at times yes but still achieveable. 

4.3: not sure about this one. But i can definitely see that. 

5.1: i dont think it needs to be changed (see 4.1). Still achievable and its rare to get cast (and even rarer to get double cast on the same turn) and its relatively rare that it kills his creatures. The defender golem giving support with an activate ability has a higher chance but still completely counterable (i forget name). 

There are a good number of ways to achieve the 20 or less life. I don't see why this has to go? 

5.2 Very challenging but still achievable for the objectives. I believe this and 3.2 are end game content so having these two nodes is fine - its not every node. I actually like that this exists to split the leaderboards instead of having everything super easy with too many perfect scores (this is more frustrating). 

Also the node is completely beatable without getting the objectives (the speed one); thus, feel less of a need to change this node. 

I can see a need to the whole change to disable and it still technically fits to delay until the big payout for 999 damage; thus i dont think it is necessary but open to the change. 

ElfNeedsFood

Too many nodes. Too much work. This event actually made several people in my league outright leave the game.

Bil

   There's too much grinding all over the event. Early nodes generally force you to restrain your power to clear secundaries ... That's boring as hell. Then you get to node 4 and realize that you spend most of you time awaiting for animations to end. On node 5 you already know the event will be a burden to carry.
    However, since cycle is long gone, finding a way to deal with both 5.2 secundaries was fun.