I guess I don't get the power curve - seems like people with a decent deck are playing cards and powering up every hand whereas I am always stuck unless I play mono; think my one armory deck that I've focused on is decent but still feels slow, especially compared to some of these decks where people are constantly drawing and bringing units back from the void.

Being slow doesn't mean your opponent is bad. In fact, the slowest people I've encountered have consistently been top 100 players.

I've done maybe ten drafts, got 7 wins in most of them, and now half my matches are against guys ranked in the top 25.

Drafting a bad deck and then queueing into the #1 player, and then losing and queuing into the #7 player is some serious feelsbad.

Wish they just paired up according to record in the draft like Hearthstone

its the first day of the season, everyone is back in gold

matching by mmr is far better than arena imo

If you were running hot, it will even out to match you up correctly. If getting 7 wins in most drafts is reflective of your skill, then these are the guys you should be playing against.

MMR is the best system possible. Some people will complain about anything.

Well, I guess that settles it, cassette.

Ranked ladder is really fun right now, super competitive and a wide variety of decks

Can you say more about your complaint? It seems like you're both annoyed by playing against equally skilled players and better players. My comment was rather glib but I've never heard anyone complain about MMR before.

if you are really getting 7 wins "most" of the time then I dont see the problem with playing against better players

yeah we'd all like to farm 5K gold a pop against bronzes but obv you shouldn't do that forever

Despite swearing off playing anything outside of daily challenges and draft, I ran a few matches this morning in the new ladder and actually did have fun because I wasn't getting run out of each game by turn 4. Won a couple with mono time for the daily then switched to my aggro armory deck and that matched up well against what I was seeing. Someone had a paladin oathbook/order of the spire combo that totally wrecked me though - 256/256 and no vanquish in sight for me...

I don't really want to win 50% of my matches for all of eternity. The appeal of a competitive card game to me is to try hard to make the best decisions so I can win more often.

i'm playing purple blue haunted memes

I suspect this is not the game for you, then. Or, you'll have to work to be better than pretty much everyone so that your decisions lead to more wins, regardless of who you play.

But yeah, it's not like MtG where you could end up in a draft with terrible players, or like poker where you can choose to sit with novices at a lower stakes game.

Budget Deck #3: Sacrifice (3300 dust)






The first deck was about going wide with small idiots, the second was about abusing Infiltrate with Haunting Screams. This one is about sacrificing creatures - yours or your opponents - for value.

There are a handful of cards that require you to sacrifice a creature to gain an effect. Usually the effect is pretty nice since it requires you to use up two of your cards to do it (the card itself and the creature you sacrifice). Combust destroys any creature you want, Devour draws you two cards and gains you two life, Ravenous Thornbeast becomes a 3 mana 5/5, and Burn Out deals 5 damage to any target.

The goal here is to mitigate the cost of sacrificing a creature by playing creatures that give us an additional effect on the game other than itself. Grenadin Drone creates two 1/1s, so you can sac one of them and still have a 1/1. Slumbering Stone WANTS to die, as its a 0/2 normally but puts a 2/2 flyer into play when it dies. Ticking Grenadin deals 3 damage to the opponent when it dies while Dark Wisp draws a card when it does. Finally, Assembly Line makes 3 1/1s for one card, so sacrificing a creature hurts a lot less.

The truly fun part comes when you include Madness in these sacrifice effects. With Madness, you can steal an opponents creature, attack with it, then sacrifice it to kill another creature, or draw 2 cards and gain 2 life, or deal 5 damage, or pump up your Thornbeast. It can really swing a game around!


As always, this is an entirely budget version of a deck that can be upgraded as you play more. It's just a method to show off different ways to approach a game in Eternal instead of just curving out and attacking for a lot. The hope is that someone on the fence decides it looks fun and hops in. If you do, hope you enjoy it!

I also might do a non budget version of some wacky brews sometime soon if there's any interest. I've been playing a clockroach/crown of possibilities nonsense deck that isn't very good but is a ton of fun. 8/8 and 9/9 clockroaches with destiny, lifesteal, killer, flying, and charge is good times lol

I want to play that deck but crown is legendary

it cant ever win a game against the good decks lol. im dead before turn 5 half the time, but oh when i get into a control matchup things get really fun


im also working on a creatureless deck with channel the tempest as the main kill spell, but running into the same issues

Thanks Jim, I'll have to review your last deck because my haunting scream one doesn't seem to work quite right- good against the AI but pretty sure I went winless against opponents.

Having a fun draft right now- got handed an accelerated evolution in my first pack and then no one wanted time so I loaded up on Elysian, then pulled a copper conduit as one of my rares. First match guy had a similar deck and was going toe to toe until I dropped a 9/9 conduit. Everyone must have gone super hard on red because I barely saw any

Edit: yeah I went with a similar idea but building to champions of cunning and umbren reapers as end game cards. There's gotta be some fat I can trim somewhere to make it work faster, and maybe the desperadoes are a good idea.

Keep in mind the things I'm posting are more for AI than opponents that have most of the rares/some legendaries etc. It's more of a "here's a way to approach the game with a basic list, if it's interesting go explore it". I make no promises that the decks are actually good for ranked etc.

haunting scream is fun. my version is basically tons of removal, gorgon fanatic, the 3 mana 2/5, and champions + stewards + impending doom. good enough to rank up at diamond early season at least.

so far my favorite play has been to haunting scream a steward into a lightning storm to prevent 10 damage from those ridiculous 5/1 purple flyers

Yeah Jiggy, the one thing to always keep in mind imo is that the more stuff you add that's outside what your main plan is, the less efficient it is. Some decks are fine just being GW GOOD CARDS, but some other things need to be really efficient when half the cards are kind of just poop in isolation like sporefolk/screams/etc.

Madness + a sacrifice is such a satisfying combo. I've definitely lost games just waiting for the opportunity to pull it off, but it's always worth it.

might try to get to masters later tonight, got up to crystal 2 last night in a few hours

I've been playing unstable feln lately, which is great if you love your amazingness with a splash of viability

So far my aggressive armory deck seems to work best (copied largely from Eternal Nexus with my own touches). The hands almost always play well except the rare cases where I can't pull a second Justice sigil. First turn inspire, second either red/green champion, Rakano artisan, or the paladin with the aegis, third turn Valkyrie enforcer, then throw some weapons on them, maybe a relic weapon...pretty nice.

Had a draft game where my opponent managed to sabotage my lightning storm and then dropped bladekin apprentices on consecutive turns. Pretty nice as I could never get out a big enough unit to stand up to it. Managed to turn 2 of my gold chests into diamond so that was pretty nice - still seeking my first 7 win.