Discard

[gamemaestro]

What's the current thought on discard? Mine wins a lot although some decks are a tough matchup.

I did just have an epic opening hand, though. PP+PP+Doomsday off the bat, Mysterious Strangers at the middle of days 2,3 and 5 with an Answered Prayers at the middle of day 4. He actually waited until I had the Strangers necessary to win attacking before quitting. He got out a single cost 1 site before Doomsday hit.

[Tuism]

I think currently discard is pretty strong, but not overpowered like counters were - it's not one size fit all at all.

There are two types of discard in my view, type one tries for the doomsday + pp combo and has other stuff like ritual sacrifice for support (less reliable, bigger payout) while type 2 is a more steady and dedicated discard deck that goes for a discard lock (more reliable, smaller payout). Personally I think it's not efficient to go for both as if you start by singular discards you've wasted the potential of your doomsday to come, and dedicating PPs and cheap discards to me feels like the deck loses out on the more expensive game winners.

Anyway discard can still easily fall to fast enough decks, including other PP decks. Borgia tower/art gallery decks are also incredibly good right now and can easily outpace an average starting draw discard deck, in my experience.

My thoughts on the current discard environment

[gamemaestro]

I need to play more top decks most likely. I'm at 90 or so percent but some of those are the standard rush order decks. A couple of my losses were because I wasn't paying attention and played the wrong card. I only pack one game winner in my discard deck (Juno) but typically beat down other decks with their own cards. For example, I just won with sites although I don't have a single site in the deck. I am all about the lock down, and have no problem using a Doomsday to eliminate one card just as it's drawn.

I have no problem first day Doomsdaying someone if it pops in my initial hand (I've got it 4 times so far) but the deck is really about the complete lock down.

[Tuism]

Oh ok interesting, so you run the all out discard. And with stuff already on the table, you rely on your opponent's card to get rid of them? It's kinda hard to judge the success of decks now if you're mostly fighting basic order rushes - that means you're good against order rushes

[UnCL0NED]

^^ That's the only thing I could measure my decks to lately.
That's also why I haven't posted any new deck ideas lately ;-)

I thought I had a winner deck based on San Gimignano, Pilfer Supplies and Borgia Cardinal, picking them out with Tutor cards! With a standard hand I had the combo out at 8 income... Easy wins last couple of days (about 90% order rushes), until I met a few veterans in a row last evening, who kicked my ass one after the other, making me realise the deck just depends too much on the combo :-P

It's fun to have a combo in your deck, like PP and Doomsday, but you should indeed have a bigger, overall deck concept. Discard in general is a nice concept (in most CCGs), I notice I can most of the time outrun them, though.

[Tuism]

eeeexactly, can't rely on combos but it's great when it does go off. But the rest of the deck needs to cater for when it doesn't go off.

And San Gimignano is strong enough on its own without comboing... It's a massive game winner for me, even more than Ezio di Firenze, I think. sure there's BIG drawback, but that keeps the card interesting

Hmmmm just thought of a combo all gold deck Damnit combos are not right

[gamemaestro]

My deck is fairly full-out discard but definitely not reliant upon combos. I just have happened to get a first day Doomsday a few times. I have found that the true key to the deck is a combination of good timing and being able to quickly take the right cards from their hands and from the archive. It's all about bending and not breaking.

[gamemaestro]

I played around with a few more variants of my discard deck including adding Ezio, Buried Catacombs and Artist's Gallery (not all at once). Ezio was fun but had the lowest win percentage (around 80% I'd guess) due to losing some board/hand control and not being a rush deck. Buried catacombs did well but not necessarily due to that card. I think that the Artists Gallery strays from my winning formula but the deck won the 3-4 times I played it.

I wanted Ezio to work but that's just not the right deck. I lost a couple games because I had pulled a useful card from my opponent but couldn't play it.

[gamemaestro]

Also, although I've played 40-50% order rushes I've had some variety at times. Still get some Lanz rushes and beat a few other discard decks (those have been interesting) as well as some site rush decks. Media rush opponents can be pretty fun as well. I wish it wa easier to set up a game with some of you here to get in some quality competition. I have beat a couple guys from the top 10 of the leaderboard but don't know of they were playing trial decks.

[rl]

Why are there no "surprise" discards? Would that just be overkill? my trouble with discard is usually when they throw out surprise counters.

[gamemaestro]

That would be overkill. As of now you can at least cast the card you'd lose most of the time.

[Tuism]

I really don't like the way discard works right now, it's unreliable and feels like dice throwing. I've not been playing discard in a long time cos of the seemingly random chance of getting a discard to work. Surprise discard would be totally overkill.

[Blind_Angel_(Juelette)]

is it better with surprise discard to do discard lock ? now you have half day before action release and card draw begins. if you have surprise action, in what moment you should play it? i hate discard lock, if surprise discard will brake it, when i wote to surprise. even if it be overkill all over time.

[Tuism]

Not sure what you mean, but if a surprise discard is created, we will certainly work out when it should be played to reliably discard a draw. It will just be bad, and IMO an unfair advantage to discard strategy.

[gamemaestro]

I've played discard against someone who dropped montereggioni and it threw off my timing but I'm sure that if playing discards as a surprise was more common I'd figure out quickly where to play my memories. The advantage of not worrying about any memories being countered etc would be too great.