14:50 Really, for Sokka/Ayame/Grodd, I think errata would be better than banning, though at this point I can understand the position that they've missed the window for that for Sokka I do think it feels really bad that this card is no longer available to any other builds that would have wanted to use it normally (in particular, I've heard that there aren't a lot of good blue cards for the 4-color deck), which is why I think it would have been better to have some sort of choice list (Sokka + 2/2 Azula + 3/2 Azula is what I heard suggested; could replace 3/2 Azula with the standby if you want to eliminate almost all options to abuse Sokka with minimal collateral damage, I think)
I'm a bit surprised you guys didn't call out the ridiculous reasoning they initially gave for the Luna/Mio restriction. They had only slightly adjusted the reasoning in the last couple days. 8SB HOL hit got shoehorned in with the Gura restriction. Notice that all other restrictions came with statistics for their respective decks. And like you guys mentioned, OVL/TSK had more tops than all 8SB HOL variants combined. After playing both formats, the Luna/Mio restriction feels WAY worse than JP's 4c1 restriction. Where JP removes a lot of power from the deck, EN deletes most of the consistency.
I am testing Aki without the level 0 himeno combo and putting in the level zero Aki that allows me to mill 4 get a level 1 or higher card. I haven’t decided on my level 1 combo yet. Testing the pants level 1 Aki adding another level 3 red power and then two off finishers.
I disagree that Sokka needed to be banned with the current ATLA lists. I think you could use a choice to hit Azula without hitting the other ATLA decks which are T3 at best already. You're right they dont get much worse (only because they cant go much lower), but we still shouldn't be nerfing bad decks. The collateral was way too big there. That being said, if they are thinking an ATLA set 2 or Korra set, the sokka ban makes sense. It is very limiting to the design space, and every single card would have to be designed with Sokka in mind.
Hi it's Zabuton/Ken I've played a little with post ban CSM and I don't like it but I think it's still functional, and much more threatening than Sokka-less ATLA. I think the focus of the deck has to shift towards the 2-turn-kill play pattern because you can't triple though.
Also a little surprised they decided to hit 8 standby HOL right now in EN. That said, I think their approach is kinda smart; Mio is the engine of that deck, it just does way too much, so this restriction forces players to innovate in order to replace that engine.
9:26 Huh, I'd say Aki is in much the same boat of reduced consistency but still plenty playable (though Aki to 2 is definitely more impactful than Gura to 2) Strong disagree with moving off stocksoul; I don't think the event bond is that important. You're probably not getting 4 easy revenges but that's fine; 2-3 still gets you a large portion of the benefit That said I was already having doubts about Aki at full power, so I think there's a good chance that the deck dies simply because CSM has better options for the topend. I don't think the issue is the ceiling, though, in the sense that 2 Akis can still highroll someone into dying from mid lv2 if enough cxs are on the bottom. It's more just the average result, that on balance there are more games where you fail to kill.
The thing that always gets me about Aki's ceiling is that it requires CXs on the bottom, which is a position basically every other top end benefits from as well. If an opponent is six out of 25 and they've got four CXs in the bottom 10 cards, it wouldn't really matter which top end you played. Any conventional top end can take advantage of that clean damage at the top that with similar damage output. - Colton
The difference I suppose is that those cxs on the bottom give Aki more burns, which then have the potential to ping off cxs on the top; there's also the case where the deck is small enough that other topends would run into those cxs on the bottom as cancels (though the thing there is that more often than not, there's some decompression tool that other topends can use to deal with it if necessary) Though my point there was just that the ceiling doesn't change too much with 2 Akis instead of 3, since there's already a high amount of variance in whether the cxs are burns or cancels; 2 Akis just means there's less chance of the former, but not hugely so. Though I'm also not entirely sure if we mean the same thing by "ceiling"; I'm thinking it's something like "how much damage you can do when things go well and you highroll, within reason"; maybe something like the most damage you'd expect to do over the course of a tournament or two
As much as a I hate unique promos.... if bushi is going to complete gut a deck... I think we should get peomos to help fill the void, by either helping other strategies or printing something generic... like a sokka aqua profile or something to get us a clock plus back into the set...
Figured CSM was coming, I got enough play with it at locals that I’m good with building something new with all the other cards I ignored, but I’ve been on my Bocchi grind anyway so CSM is shelved for now.
14:50 Really, for Sokka/Ayame/Grodd, I think errata would be better than banning, though at this point I can understand the position that they've missed the window for that for Sokka
I do think it feels really bad that this card is no longer available to any other builds that would have wanted to use it normally (in particular, I've heard that there aren't a lot of good blue cards for the 4-color deck), which is why I think it would have been better to have some sort of choice list (Sokka + 2/2 Azula + 3/2 Azula is what I heard suggested; could replace 3/2 Azula with the standby if you want to eliminate almost all options to abuse Sokka with minimal collateral damage, I think)
I'm a bit surprised you guys didn't call out the ridiculous reasoning they initially gave for the Luna/Mio restriction. They had only slightly adjusted the reasoning in the last couple days.
8SB HOL hit got shoehorned in with the Gura restriction. Notice that all other restrictions came with statistics for their respective decks. And like you guys mentioned, OVL/TSK had more tops than all 8SB HOL variants combined.
After playing both formats, the Luna/Mio restriction feels WAY worse than JP's 4c1 restriction. Where JP removes a lot of power from the deck, EN deletes most of the consistency.
I am testing Aki without the level 0 himeno combo and putting in the level zero Aki that allows me to mill 4 get a level 1 or higher card. I haven’t decided on my level 1 combo yet. Testing the pants level 1 Aki adding another level 3 red power and then two off finishers.
I disagree that Sokka needed to be banned with the current ATLA lists. I think you could use a choice to hit Azula without hitting the other ATLA decks which are T3 at best already. You're right they dont get much worse (only because they cant go much lower), but we still shouldn't be nerfing bad decks. The collateral was way too big there.
That being said, if they are thinking an ATLA set 2 or Korra set, the sokka ban makes sense. It is very limiting to the design space, and every single card would have to be designed with Sokka in mind.
Hi it's Zabuton/Ken
I've played a little with post ban CSM and I don't like it but I think it's still functional, and much more threatening than Sokka-less ATLA. I think the focus of the deck has to shift towards the 2-turn-kill play pattern because you can't triple though.
Also a little surprised they decided to hit 8 standby HOL right now in EN. That said, I think their approach is kinda smart; Mio is the engine of that deck, it just does way too much, so this restriction forces players to innovate in order to replace that engine.
9:26 Huh, I'd say Aki is in much the same boat of reduced consistency but still plenty playable (though Aki to 2 is definitely more impactful than Gura to 2)
Strong disagree with moving off stocksoul; I don't think the event bond is that important. You're probably not getting 4 easy revenges but that's fine; 2-3 still gets you a large portion of the benefit
That said I was already having doubts about Aki at full power, so I think there's a good chance that the deck dies simply because CSM has better options for the topend.
I don't think the issue is the ceiling, though, in the sense that 2 Akis can still highroll someone into dying from mid lv2 if enough cxs are on the bottom. It's more just the average result, that on balance there are more games where you fail to kill.
The thing that always gets me about Aki's ceiling is that it requires CXs on the bottom, which is a position basically every other top end benefits from as well. If an opponent is six out of 25 and they've got four CXs in the bottom 10 cards, it wouldn't really matter which top end you played. Any conventional top end can take advantage of that clean damage at the top that with similar damage output. - Colton
The difference I suppose is that those cxs on the bottom give Aki more burns, which then have the potential to ping off cxs on the top; there's also the case where the deck is small enough that other topends would run into those cxs on the bottom as cancels (though the thing there is that more often than not, there's some decompression tool that other topends can use to deal with it if necessary)
Though my point there was just that the ceiling doesn't change too much with 2 Akis instead of 3, since there's already a high amount of variance in whether the cxs are burns or cancels; 2 Akis just means there's less chance of the former, but not hugely so. Though I'm also not entirely sure if we mean the same thing by "ceiling"; I'm thinking it's something like "how much damage you can do when things go well and you highroll, within reason"; maybe something like the most damage you'd expect to do over the course of a tournament or two
28:35 "if I subscribed to all of you I would have 10 tote bags"
that's going to be me at the end of BCS season lol (ok maybe not quite 10)
As much as a I hate unique promos.... if bushi is going to complete gut a deck... I think we should get peomos to help fill the void, by either helping other strategies or printing something generic... like a sokka aqua profile or something to get us a clock plus back into the set...
Standby/Bar Aki incoming
24:00 2/1 Alice to 2x really makes zero sense. 2/1 Alice is just worse than Mjurran. 1/0 Alice is the problem. We should have the JP restriction here.
sokka shoulda just been locked away from being used with standby/azula. so choose either sokka or standby/azula cards. not both.
woulda at least let atla have a okay riki.
Figured CSM was coming, I got enough play with it at locals that I’m good with building something new with all the other cards I ignored, but I’ve been on my Bocchi grind anyway so CSM is shelved for now.