Eternal the Card Game

LiquidDeath said:

I think the real problem this game has is reliable mana fixing. If they could do that better, then the flood/screw would not be such an issue.

I've played enough Hearthstone to know that guaranteed mana turns the game into a tempo shit storm without very, very careful card design and tweaking.

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/boggle - there's tons of fixing.... yellow has boatloads, duals, diplomatic sigil, etc. even the monuments to prevent floods being as painful. And of course Strangers and the universal sigil searcher as well as the color specific ones. (1 pt lifetap, 2 pts armor, 0/2 critter, self aegis, 2 pt DD v player)

I know none of them are particularly "cool or fun" and can lead to some draws that are low value at times, but there's certainly fixing to be had. [And for the record, I only run duals/diplomatic seal/monuments myself]

Vaclav said:

/boggle - there's tons of fixing.... yellow has boatloads, duals, diplomatic sigil, etc. even the monuments to prevent floods being as painful. And of course Strangers and the universal sigil searcher.

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You're right, the fixing is there in principle but lack of card draw and large deck sizes hurt its effectiveness. Besides time, which doesn't have fantastic card drawn, and primal, which has the draw but less fixing, how are the other classes supposed to get to their fixing?

It all comes down to the 75 card deck size paired with only 4 copies of a card. It is too inconsistent to hit the cards you need and the vast majority of classes have no way to peg certain mana types outside of the very generic Seek Power. And since you can only run 4 copies of that card it is still too inconsistent.

Shrug - I personally stick to decks focused on lower CMC stuff to avoid that problem as a rule of thumb - if something is CMC>4 I think long and hard before including it.

The only way I've gotten topheavy decks to work is a control shell and some success using Azindel w/ sacrificial shit.

And Time does has the Vault which is pretty consistent to hit. (Especially in Yellow/Red - but even just pure Time it can be done relatively easy)

Heck, Time has the cantrip + 1 pt heal 1/1 for 1 dudes. But yes, the minimum deck size being larger is always going to push it to a level that's more random than the easy comparison to MTG.

Vaclav said:

Shrug - I personally stick to decks focused on lower CMC stuff to avoid that problem as a rule of thumb - if something is CMC>4 I think long and hard before including it.

The only way I've gotten topheavy decks to work is a control shell and some success using Azindel w/ sacrificial shit.

And Time does has the Vault which is pretty consistent to hit. (Especially in Yellow/Red - but even just pure Time it can be done relatively easy)

Heck, Time has the cantrip + 1 pt heal 1/1 for 1 dudes. But yes, the minimum deck size being larger is always going to push it to a level that's more random than the easy comparison to MTG.

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I get you, but I prefer control most of the time. Aggro is fun, but control is more satisfying. Especially since most of the aggro decks in Eternal are auto-pilot. I like Stonescar Kalis a lot because you have some decisions.

Also, that Time dude is actually 2 mana and has double Time threshold. I play an Aggressive Combrei deck and have been stuck without 2 Time threshold plenty of times.

At the end of the day, though, despite these flaws this is my favorite card game out right now.

I absolutely prefer control myself - but control tools are pretty weak ATM for the mostpart. Closest thing I've seen in the metagame is playing a topheavy purple blue with the ridiculous removal suite. (I guess the weapon + Harsh builds are too, but they've always seemed ineffective to me)

Azindel could open some doors in theory as well - but I couldn't find a way to make decks utilizing him consistent enough. (They were super fun though)

Of course, my current build, probably could be defined as control - wisps/4-1 free rezz on a biggy guy/etc with how it plays, but I don't play big finishers really. 6/6 trample "you're now a pig" guy is the most CMC heavy (besides a lategame conduit obv) card in the deck ATM, I believe.

Getting a wisp to 4/5 or so and recurring it every land or tossing killer on a 4/1 trample rezz guy and then recurring them constantly feels a bit like old school control.

Plus Call the Ancients is something I include in the shell - which are massively controlling vs. anything besides flying/unblockable (latter being rare as hell)

LiquidDeath said:

It all comes down to the 75 card deck size paired with only 4 copies of a card. It is too inconsistent to hit the cards you need and the vast majority of classes have no way to peg certain mana types outside of the very generic Seek Power. And since you can only run 4 copies of that card it is still too inconsistent.

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This is why i quit. I didnt want to get further invested into the game with this glaring design issue that has no real upside. It showed me an underlying problem with their whole design philosophy. They werent trying to improve on MTG, or hearthstone, just make a slightly different version.
When they made the recent mulligan changes, they claimed the 75 card size means more of a variation in how games play out.. but they could have gotten effectively the same thing with 3x copy limit and a 60 card deck, while still minimizing the mana clumps. When you go up to 75 cards, theres a higher chance to get 'clumps' of mana/not mana cards in a row.

They fixed certain problems that MTG and Hearthstone had, but made one of MTG's worst problems (flood/screw draws) even worse.

It really is a shame, because i was enjoying this game for a time during beta. It looked like the perfect substitute for MTG at first, but the number of frustrating, 'pull your hair out' non-interactive games was just a little too often to keep me interested.

I recently picked this up, it scratches that MtG itch pretty well, even through the issues that are mentioned above. I like that it feels a lot more generous than Hearthstone, you get a free pack a day and generally can afford another one within 6-9 wins. The big things are the compstomps you can do and draft, even then the meta seems to be a bit more varied, but there really aren't enough cards yet to fully flesh out all the deck archetypes, I had some luck with mono red burn.

I've been playing this quite a bit, offering my two cents here:

1. It makes good use of the digital format - stuff that wouldn't normally be possible in a traditional cardboard TCG (Warcry is the most notable) is put here to great effect. Even something as simple as being able to search a specific type of card in your deck (weapons in the case of Rise to the Challenge) without having to reveal it to your opponent (which is necessary in cardboard for the sake of fairness) works well here.
2. Massive variety of decks and archetypes. Even before set 2 and the introduction of proper enemy faction colors there were people experimenting with unusual faction decks (Praxis Tokens and Xenan killers) and right now I honestly feel like I can take one of my old decks (Shimmerpack) and still do decent in the ladder.
3. The ability to play anytime is great. I can't stress this enough - in the case of MtG you have a specific day (Friday Night Magic) to meet up with others to play a game, and unless you are in school or someone in your workplace also plays it you can just find yourself itching to play but be unable to. In Eternal's case online matchmaking means I can easily play a match or two in my lunch break.

On the negative side:
1. TOO MUCH VARIANCE. For a 75-deck game I expected more card draw. I don't know if it is good or bad that the best deck in the game up until a few weeks ago (Chalice Control) was the only one you were basically guaranteed to have at least five cards in hand late into the game. Entering topdeck wars is distressingly common here with no good draw engines or deck thinning. Tavrod is stupid strong currently mostly because of this lack of draw.
2. The devs have shown they can influence card draw in mulligan to avoid power screws and floods (your first hand always has one power minimum and six max, and the mulligan narrows it down to 2-5), but after that all bets are off. I hope sometimes the game would slowly guarantee a power draw after X number of non-power draws.
3. I wish the rewards for leveling up factions were better. It is kind disheartening to reach level 28 in a faction and earn 100 gold.

Otherwise, game is great. I just hit Masters for this month and don't plan on stopping anytime soon.

Since the dev team is full of magic pros, I feel like they have been trying to limit the amount of card draw/tutor effects to avoid repeating magic's mistake with how they designed blue. However, they went too far in limiting those options. If they had the same level of draw/tutor as mtg, but with a 75 card deck, it might have helped a lot of the problems I had with the game.

I mean, storm gets an instant speed divination, that's about as good or better as Magic sees these days? Most of the other colors value engines are tried up in cantrip spells/creatures or relic weapons, which seems mostly fine.

It amuses me to no end that I can basically play boggles here and just slam ranked games in ~5 minutes all day at work.

yea, they get ONE that's as good/better then magic. That was the only one (dunno if newest set changed things dramatically) you can really play that's any good, and divination is the benchmark for playable card draw. Worse then divination is bad, better is good, and if there's nothing better available then you MIGHT play divination but you weren't happy about it. But, just having a playset of the one spell in a 75 card deck is equivalent of only playing 3x in a mtg deck.
Most decks that are gonna play real card draw in MTG have more then 4 cards that do it, plus some thinning/shuffle/tutor effects on top of being a smaller deck size. It makes your game plan more consistent.

It also has telling time-ish, that 5 mana relic that gives 5 armor and draws every turn, that big stupid draw a billion cards + deal damage storm thing, etc. There are a ton of options there it seems like to me? Hell eternal chalice alone is a better value engine than most Magic decks have been able to run in years.

Hard control is definitely a thing and it's just as much of a grind-fest to play against as in Magic. I can see mid-range brawls devolving in top topdeck mode pretty often, but I kinda think that's a good thing? Cards like Tavrod are great there and provide some big yet very situational card advantage for those kinds of decks.

ronne said:

It also has telling time-ish, that 5 mana relic that gives 5 armor and draws every turn,

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That is Staff of Stories, which has been nerfed to 4 armor a while ago. The big problem is it only draws at the START of your turn, and taking 4 damage (more if you have armor, but Primal doesn't have armor mechanics and it is usually limited to Justice) destroys the staff, and it takes one turn after the enemy gets an opportunity to answer it to replace itself, and a second turn to turn a profit. For a 5 mana card that essentially needs you to be equal on board to your opponent and for them to not have burn or relic hate of any sort. It used to be played in spite of being so weak BECAUSE of how limited card draw the game has, and has since been phased out.

ronne said:

that big stupid draw a billion cards + deal damage storm thing,

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Channel the Tempest, which is stupidly prohibitive to cast at 8 power plus 3 primal influence to play and NOT used as an early game draw engine, and rather considered a lategame finisher/burn. This card has ALSO been phased out with set 2 release because the only deck that ran it (Chalice Control) recieved attachment hate and many bad matchups in set 2.

ronne said:

etc. There are a ton of options there it seems like to me? Hell eternal chalice alone is a better value engine than most Magic decks have been able to run in years.

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Chalice was the exception, and it had so much ridiculous draw potential it got a lot of hate cards directed at it, which succeeded in phasing the deck out entirely of competitive. The issue was not that it was a draw engine - the issue was it was such a stupid strong draw engine that stalled out games for thirty or so turns and actually allowed players to Harsh Rule (Wrath of God in MtG terms) a board heavily in their favor (5 units vs 2) and flood their board and redraw it and still win. It won because the card draw of every single other deck couldn't catch up to it - which is a testament of how bad it is for anything that isn't Chalice.

ronne said:

Hard control is definitely a thing and it's just as much of a grind-fest to play against as in Magic. I can see mid-range brawls devolving in top topdeck mode pretty often, but I kinda think that's a good thing? Cards like Tavrod are great there and provide some big yet very situational card advantage for those kinds of decks.

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Minor correction but "hard control" exists, but not in MtG terms of "draw go" style of play, which is intentional design of Eternal because those kinds of decks are really not fun to play against (to the point where modern and standard phased it out in MtG last I saw). Otherwise, correct, and again the biggest problem with Tavrod isn't that he draws cards - it is that his draw engine is very strong compared to the draw engine of the other decks. For the most part players want a middle-term between 'extremely weak draw' (Staff of Stories) and 'extremely strong draw' (Chalice).

Considering how the game got more card draw options (Trailblaze, Tavgod) in recent sets I think they are headed in the right direction for now. Set 3 is set to release at the end of the year, and developing cards usually takes many months so I am hopeful for future releases. The devs have had some good ideas going forward and the game is still very healthy in spite of the problems with card draw.

Why you hating on my channel the tempest man, I love that card so much.

But yea it's probably much closer to a finisher, and that's what I mostly use it as in my primal/shadow midrange pile. Man that card does work though. Resolving even one of them generally means I've won the game, and so far primal/shadow seems to have the removal and blockers to be able to get there pretty reliably.

In general though I'm not sure I'd want to see any kind of value/card draw engine on the level of Tavrod in some of the other colors. Certainly not in a fire/rakano pairing or anything of the sort. I guess maybe time could use some help there? But I can't really say too much on that end as I don't think I've ever played a time card in constructed.

I don't hate CTT; hell I find it a balanced, strong lategame finisher, but it is added in decks due to its burn/removal far more than its card draw potential. It used to see play in Feln Control but the rise in Eilyn's Choice caused it to be phased out in favor of Vara Fate-Touched as a lategame bomb. The problem is Primal - the faction with the strongest draw options - is still very weak in that regard. Every other draw in the game is prohibitively expensive (Ancient Lore), is a cantrip (Ornate Katana) or circumstantial (Friendly Wisp).

The main issue is the increase of cards in a deck is coupled with the weakening of card draw/tutoring. I think draw needs to be a smidge better overall I believe, and recent attempts of the devs always included some sort of better draw (Quarry, Divination, Tavrod, etc...) for more consistency in the game.

I'm writing this from the perspective of somebody who hasn't broken into gold yet, but most of my games seem to be resolved in the first ~10 turns anyway. The variance in your opening draw due to 7/75 seems like a much bigger issue that will be a lot harder to adress, unless they come up with some alternative tutors ala MtG Land Grant and so on.

All this discussion of draw and zero mentions of Gorgons and Haunting.... sad...

The issue isn't 'value engines' really, it's library manipulation abilities. I mean, Opt is a staple in mtg and all it is is 1 mana, scry 1 (look at top card, keep on top or put on bottom) then draw 1 at instant speed. Lots of cards in a recent set had cycling, letting you discard them for 1-2 mana (generally) to draw a card. The flexibility to cycle them when not needed, or when you really needed to find a land or something is huge.
Eternal does this to an extent, but there aren't ENOUGH options overall. Comparing the power level of the best one in eternal to mtg isn't the point. If there was another card like seek power for every faction, and 1-2 more cantrips/search spells.. then we'd be getting close to the sweet spot. Also, they need more power cards to have effects so they double as spells if you get flooded. Mtg does this well with their lands. Some turn into creatures, some double as a spell, some can be sacrificed to draw cards, etc.. This way you can run a few more power to reduce mana screw, but also have options if you get flooded. They aren't as efficient as normal spells, but that doesn't matter as its just a way to use your excess mana.

Enzee said:

The issue isn't 'value engines' really, it's library manipulation abilities. I mean, Opt is a staple in mtg and all it is is 1 mana, scry 1 (look at top card, keep on top or put on bottom) then draw 1 at instant speed. Lots of cards in a recent set had cycling, letting you discard them for 1-2 mana (generally) to draw a card. The flexibility to cycle them when not needed, or when you really needed to find a land or something is huge.
Eternal does this to an extent, but there aren't ENOUGH options overall. Comparing the power level of the best one in eternal to mtg isn't the point. If there was another card like seek power for every faction, and 1-2 more cantrips/search spells.. then we'd be getting close to the sweet spot. Also, they need more power cards to have effects so they double as spells if you get flooded. Mtg does this well with their lands. Some turn into creatures, some double as a spell, some can be sacrificed to draw cards, etc.. This way you can run a few more power to reduce mana screw, but also have options if you get flooded. They aren't as efficient as normal spells, but that doesn't matter as its just a way to use your excess mana.

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I'm sure they will continue to build on that, the issue is that even 1-2 cards with those abilities won't fix it, due to the deck size, so any change will come very gradually. On the other hand, the fact that you can get fucked by your deck is powerful tool to keep people playing, since otherwise weaker decks/newer players would have much smaller chance to win, so RNG is here to stay. As long as they don't push it to Hearthstone levels, we should be fine, even if the stranger lego is pushing it.

Vaclav said:

All this discussion of draw and zero mentions of Gorgons and Haunting.... sad...

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Gorgon Fanatic and Haunting Scream falls under "unreliable". Bestcase scenario involves the opponent having zero units in play around turn 4 when Gorgon Fanatic is ready to swing or he has zero answers in hand - at which point Gorgon Fanatic is a fantastic 3/2 draw 3 cards, giving you a net two card advantage. If the enemy has board you need to give the Fanatic some sort of evasion (most commonly Levitate, which itself is a cantrip but a weak one without the synergy) which makes the combo hard to pull off with the 75 card deck. Lastly, if the Fanatic is silenced (which can happen in fast fast speed with Desert Marshal or normally at turn 3 with Valkyrie Enforcer, or even retroactively with Steward of the Past) then the combo is dead in the water. Though admittedly Gorgon Fanatic has incredible potential in draft.

Enzee said:

Also, they need more power cards to have effects so they double as spells if you get flooded.

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Agreed. The devs made it a great selling point that Seek Power is a great deck thinner and source of power (if depleted overall) and that Monuments (power cards that turn into creatures/weapons) can fight flood, but the Monuments are considered weak save for two (Amber, which passes the vanilla test as a 5/5, and Cobalt which doesn't but has flying)

Zaphid said:

I'm sure they will continue to build on that, the issue is that even 1-2 cards with those abilities won't fix it, due to the deck size,

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To their credit they added one card of each faction that counts as a Scry - Trailblaze which is Opt but a little pricier (the one most used), Extract (sees play in Shadow especially as anti-aggro), Pummel (was kind of tried in Fire but ultimately phased out), Escavator (sooooomedtimes seen in Time tokens and Shimmerpack), and the Justice one which is so bad I don't even remember its name.