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Post by kyleess on Sept 30, 2012 15:21:42 GMT -5
An ability that gives players 2 for the price of one on boosters (particularly in the new, slower income game) is just silly. And the genius behind packing most of the cards with this ability in the 2 colors with the easiest boosting...I just don't understand how it never came up in meetings to temper that.
"My deceptive agent rushes are only winning 90% in testing, OMG! Someone figured out they could stall them with Heathen Follower!"
"I know! Let's introduce a card that makes them unblockable!"
"What about Cunning?"
"Screw it! Let's start stripping Cunning from the agents that have it!"
The only way I can see it being worse would be if they nerfed the cards that could counter them. Oh...wait.
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Post by Altaem on Sept 30, 2012 17:56:07 GMT -5
I think deceptive was one of their best ideas.
Combining it with unblockable not so much.
Income reduction was a horrible idea.
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Post by Tuism on Sept 30, 2012 18:00:09 GMT -5
The only reason Deceptive is a problem is really Magnetic Personality. Without that combo many deceptive decks can fail easily due to having too many eggs in a single basket.
Sure it is the easiest rush to run right now, but I doubt it's completely awesome and broken. Any decent removal should eat deceptive for breakfast, so it's hardly a one-trick-beat-all.
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Post by kyleess on Sept 30, 2012 20:28:28 GMT -5
But it isn't really having too many eggs in one basket. It is having twice as many eggs in the same basket as anyone else. Deceptive decks get 50 cards. Not 25. They get a credit every day. Not .5 credits. Every deck suffers from the need to specialize. Only one ability gives you twice as many points per upgrade. And it isn't as though deceptive cards are so much more expensive that you can only get two down and hope for the best. They come out almost as fast as anything else. Plus, they demand attention, forcing you to use your agent removals up faster. Agent removal isnt particularly inexpensive, either. Thieves are probably the best at it. I dont think scholar has any at all except for the 5 cost Lassitude which isn't even a full removal. So an agent removal strategy isn't crushing them any faster than any other agent based deck. You just see double the points from the ones that get through.
It's simple math. One card. Two scores. Two cards. Four scores. Etc. That's why everybody is using them. It's half price.
Stopping a deceptive rush can certainly be done. What I don't like is that a deck designed to handle them is super vulnerable to other strategies, which I don't find to be the case with other defensive scenarios. And you have to play defense on them because you aren't going to outrun them with any consistency unless you are also playing deceptive rush or getting wildly fortunate with draw. In that case, we are back to the old "who can get to their counters first" situation.
I'm venting here, but I just don't understand the rationale behind creating an ability that drastically alters the cost per point, which is what deceptive does. It isn't the scoring in two regions that irritates me. It's the fact that locking up regions takes either half the time or half the credits. The way I would have approached Deceptive would have been to split the points between the regions rather than score the maximum in both.
I mean, think about the word "deceptive." It means "you think I'm going here, but I'm really going here." Not "I'm twice as strong as you and you effectively have half as much money."
I agree that MP is the worst case, but really, any action or site/agent that grants bonus power to agents is essentially doubling its points per credit. It distorts the economy of a match in a big, unignorable way. If they can score twice as many points in the same amount of time as a non-deceptive agent rush, you have to pack twice as much agent removal as you would for a non-deceptive rush to make sure you get it in the opening. Maybe a little less if you can count on tutoring removal cards, which sucks because the best tutoring cards are green which happens to have the crappiest agent removal. That severely limits one's ability to deal with being wrong about the nature of one's opponents strategy. I find that it's a lot more difficult to hedge now. You either prep a bunch of agent removal for deceptive rush and lose when your opponent plays a bunch of sites or you lay down and roll over when they drop their first deceptive agent.
Again, just venting.
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Post by Rob (Roebidoebi) on Oct 1, 2012 2:59:45 GMT -5
"My deceptive agent rushes are only winning 90% in testing, OMG! Someone figured out they could stall them with Heathen Follower!" "I know! Let's introduce a card that makes them unblockable!" "What about Cunning?" "Screw it! Let's start stripping Cunning from the agents that have it!" The only way I can see it being worse would be if they nerfed the cards that could counter them. Oh...wait. LOL! Imagine inspector Clouseau (Pink Panther remember?) saying the above with a heavy French accent (that how I imagine the Canadians at Ubisoft talk  ) ;D |
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Post by lurifaxb on Oct 1, 2012 3:41:34 GMT -5
I dislike deceptive too, but not by design but by the current implementation. If they made the cards more expensive AND only score half at other locations, I would be happy. Either would also please me a bit.
It is so easy to set up a fast win when you just need to campaign or deploy sites at one location.
Deceptive site rushes are overlooked IMHO. Faith/scholar has many ways of buffing the influence of sites. Really hard to stop in time if done well. Especially if you sit with anti agent cards since you expect agent deceptive rush...
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Post by thest4lker on Oct 1, 2012 4:07:15 GMT -5
IMO deceptive site is stronger than deceptive agents. Unless deceptive agents get 2 magnetic personality very early, or are packing loads of anti site and draw it all, I don't loose to them with my deceptive site deck.
Incidently, my deceptive site deck often doesn't use deception... The most overlooked win strategy in this game IMO is two lair of romulus/san gimignano...
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Post by Rob (Roebidoebi) on Oct 1, 2012 6:00:55 GMT -5
Incidently, my deceptive site deck often doesn't use deception... The most overlooked win strategy in this game IMO is two lair of romulus/san gimignano... Man, that sounds like the very first reliable site-rush deck I build a million years ago. I abandoned it in favor of more powerful decks, but the recent nerfs may have put it back on the map again... |
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Post by ironcladtrash on Oct 1, 2012 16:46:57 GMT -5
Being on the other side of this argument I just don't see this as an issue any more after having had more time to play since the recent update.
I loved my deceptive rush deck before the update. But the long overdue nerf to Political Patronage slowed it down for me too much. I barely play it anymore. I used to be able to consistently win in one day. I could play all my agents, sites, and play the tutors to get the Magnetic Personalities and Advanced Training if I didn't already have them. Now it went from “OMG WTF was that!?” to just a decent rush deck.
For the most part all you have to do is just slow it down which is really easy to do now. And even without agent removal I have also lost to others playing with cheap cost defender or dominate cards. Since I have to score in both regions equally, just taking points away from one kills deceptive.
I get that it can be annoying if you are constantly playing against it. That is exactly how I felt before vs counter decks. I am hoping the recent fix for the connection issues will allow everyone to try new and different decks.
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Post by Blind_Angel_(Juelette) on Oct 2, 2012 9:01:00 GMT -5
without deceptive we will return to counter era. deceptive is awesome rush! it depends on starting hand, and it is good. It is classical rush, and we must have such type of decs. Sorry, but deceptive was a very good idea  |
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Post by lurifaxb on Oct 2, 2012 9:36:20 GMT -5
There where rushes before deceptive and there are rushes without deceptive still. Deceptive being there has nothing to do with counters sliding in the background. The cost increase hurt counter decks.
Deceptive rush just gives too much of an edge for the price as you just need to score at one site.
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Post by kyleess on Oct 2, 2012 11:00:37 GMT -5
I agree with lurifaxb. I would say that, if anything, Deceptive is pushing people to force the relatively unaffordable counters into their decks because the best way to keep them under control is to prevent them from resolving. Agent removal is too slow and too expensive when Magnetic Personality means scoring 5 points in 2 regions before the target is neutralized and can be accomplished once a day with minimal income. That means people are wasting precious resources putting out counters and wasting cards on income building to pay for them rather than developing interesting synergy strategies just to keep from being pounded by day 2. I'm amazed that there is still a counter presence given their cost and I attribute it primarily to Deceptive control.
I think the people who play Deceptive rushes aren't really playing a "strategy" so much as discount shopping in a resource poor environment. Deceptive rush is a strategy probably even less sophisticated than the Borgia Tower and Lanz rushes that were all the rage among the people who didn't want to get very creative when the game first came out. Drop a Deceptive card, set about boosting. You don't even need to pay attention to what your opponent is doing. My cat could pull it off.
You could put an average Deceptive rush deck in the hands of a novice who had never even seen the deck list before the match and they would fare pretty well against any deck that isn't specifically designed to stop it.
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Post by lurifaxb on Oct 2, 2012 12:23:08 GMT -5
+1. Totally agree. Deceptive rush is for the less creative and/or people who care more about winning than having a fun match and more about grinding fast.
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Post by kackman73 on Oct 2, 2012 14:48:20 GMT -5
As was said earlier, I think that deceptive site rush is being underestimated/overlooked here.
The Sacred Vault discard (usually with 2 Sacred Vaults) topped off with a cheap deceptive site like Romani Camp is even easier to pull off than an agent rush, and harder to stop unless you happen to carry 5 Faux Pas in your deck and are willing to use them on the discard cards.
Seeing an opponent get a single site up to 7 or more with deceptive and still have 6 or less income is kind of silly.
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Post by Pete on Oct 3, 2012 0:55:35 GMT -5
As was said earlier, I think that deceptive site rush is being underestimated/overlooked here. The Sacred Vault discard (usually with 2 Sacred Vaults) topped off with a cheap deceptive site like Romani Camp is even easier to pull off than an agent rush, and harder to stop unless you happen to carry 5 Faux Pas in your deck and are willing to use them on the discard cards. Seeing an opponent get a single site up to 7 or more with deceptive and still have 6 or less income is kind of silly. Deceptive does suck. Why else do we have so many threads complaining about it this meta? It's dull, NPE, and stops many creative decks. I hate it and all you losers who play it are on my hit list. |
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