Gonzo wrote:

Nexx wrote:

tigerswiftly wrote:

Why is this good, Nexx? I trust your opinions on competitive games 'cos even though you're not hot when it comes to strategy you do talk a good game. Skimmed through that vid and it seemed quite interesting. How much room is there to customise your deck?

Because like all the truly great games it has a holy trinity at its foundation: I guess the appeal of this to me is that the gameplay mechanics are quite mechanically simple on the surface but there's a lot of depth hidden underneath.  The simplicity is great because it means that a lot of the game is influenced by game theory and out thinking your opponent rather than being so mechanically complex that its impossible to predict what your opponent could do like in some card games. I'd agree with some of the comments above that some of the meta has become incredible predictable.  There are obviously some deck archtypes that are better than others which for me limits the appeal of the full constructed mode (where you get to completely customize your deck).  Where the game comes into its own is in the Arena mode though.  You basically construct a deck of 30 cards by selecting from 1 of 3 semi-random cards 30 times.  As you can't predict the cards that will come up its becomes much more about making the best of the situation rather than constructing an uber optimised deck.  Keeps the games fresh and interesting imo.  Yes theres some randomness from game to game but over the long term you'll definitely see that good players consistently outperform poor ones due to a better understanding of the game.

I dunno nowt about this game, but it sounds like a weird manifestation of my perfect game mechanic: one where life and offensive capacity (bullets, guns) are governed by one and the same "bar"; finding the right formula (not as extreme a gradient as the c squared means in terms of turning mass into energy). In most games, like gears, your real choice is between fight or flight, am I winning this email exchange or should I flee to get back on level terms? It would be great for mechanic to deal with that.