Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Well, we are entering the 6th month of RoA's release now, so I suppose it's discussion time. WHat have you seen? Any odd observations? Here are mine.

1) Garden Tomb is very prevelant. This promotes a slower paced game, and makes sitelock much more viable IMO.

2) Speed has skyrocketed in use. For some reason, it appears like Speed is the new favorite deck, much like Zerubbabel's Temple did last year. Almost eveyone I have played mroe than once or twice used a speed deck at some point. RoA was supposed to counter this. Odd, but hey, whatever.

3) Genesis is huge now. Thanks to Tim, Genesis has been made extremely popular. It is nearly as rampant as speed. This is causing the Genesis strategy to be less effective, as people are more prepared to handle it.

4) White is massively popular. Between Musicians and it being the basis brigade for the Garden Tomb, White has jumped up in use.


Prediction for the future: The Garden Tomb is going to turn into this year's Z Temple; complained about often, but does a magic trick and disappears for Nationals.

Oh, yes, I agree with that. I was talking in the sense of, the best way to beat a Garden Tomb deck is to wait out the game, Don't rescue any souls early, and make sure to place your characters on the table before you start your offensive strategy. As such, a sitelock really is aided by playing against the Garden Tomb, as it plans to do most of this anyway.

Because I hate the idea of a bandwagon jumper and shudder at the thought of being labeled one.
   I was playing Genesis prior to ROA...I just gave the deck to my wife at Nats so she would have some fun in the big tourney.  Turns out, the deck was more devastating in my hands during Ironman.  (I'm not a band wagon jumper when I play my traditional Genesis/Egyptians with RoA additions for everyones info.)

Second, I have observed only certain people build decks from the various tins.  The popularity is coming from others who are getting beat badly from the experimenters and then making one of their own.  Of course, my judges seat deck hasn't done enough to damage warrant copying....then again, that may be because I rarely try it out on RTS.      what a noob I am.

Third, my observation is that sites and a variety of fortresses are becoming used more often with the intro. of RoA.  Before, it was a sporadic use of fortresses, now there are a few in every deck.

Good point. Deck discard has a very nice niche now.

and make sure to place your characters on the table before you start your offensive strategy.

When playing against a Garden Tomb deck you HAVE to find a way to protect your evil characters or you'll be toast. Every Garden Tomb deck always has stuff to deal with the opponent's evil characters that are down with cards like holy grail, Jephthah, women as snares, etc... It's extremely hard to combat, and I have a feeling everybody and their mom is playing it right now, except me.

I'm actually really bored with TGT. I tried it a few times and didn't enjoy the gameplay, because it's all ignores. I don't mind playing against it, since I have to get creative and strategic to beat it, but actually using it is just dry.

Quote

and make sure to place your characters on the table before you start your offensive strategy.

When playing against a Garden Tomb deck you HAVE to find a way to protect your evil characters or you'll be toast. Every Garden Tomb deck always has stuff to deal with the opponent's evil characters that are down with cards like holy grail, Jephthah, women as snares, etc.

You know what works super-duper against TGT - Assyrians. Assyrian Camp protects from all those things mentioned, and Assyrians are never sparse either. But if you're playing against TGT and you have no way to protect yourself, I would say hold a heap of EC's in your hand until you have at least like six to lay down. That way, when your opponent uses Jephthah, Holy Grail, and AotL on you, you'll still have something to block with, and when you do, make it hurt as much as possible.

That could really rock some socks.