Partially agree, but not really. You say it punishes a player in control. Yes it does. Bot so does every other board clear. In this respect Zeph is pretty much just another Brawl. If you play around Brawl or Shadow Word: Ruin or Wild Pyromancer + Libram of Justice in Warrior, Paladin and Priest match-ups, I don't see how it is any different in case of Highlander. I mean playing vs Priest you know you can't overextend, because you will get punished. How is Highlander any different?
Zeph gives mainly 3 types of cards:
removal
heal
direct damage for lethal
Control decks already run these and you have to play around them. Highlander decks are either control or controlish. You play around these things in control match-ups, so why is a board clear received from Zeph worse than a board clear you have already in your deck, if both are to be expected?
If you think the problem with Genn/Baku was they forced a deck to be built around a gimmick... yikes.
The problem with Genn/Baku was that the kind of hero-power focused gameplay they encouraged was boring and repetitive. The odd/even restriction was good, actually. There were a tonne of cards which came out of the woodwork and saw play for the first time in essentially ever. Raid Leader? Seriously? That's great! What wasn't great was Button. Button. Button. Button. Button. This made all the games against odd Paladin, odd Warrior, and so forth feel the same. All they do is make dudes and that's enough. All they do is gain armor, and that's enough. The contents of the deck becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is that hero power, and that's bad.
Highlander restrictions don't do that. The consistency of the decks go down, the contents of the decks vary more with a lot more room for tech choices, and games *don't* all feel the same. It's pretty much the exact opposite of how Genn/Baku played out. Zephrys being a swiss-army-knife to do anything you need does restore *some* consistency, but he's one card out of 30.
I, for one, don't dislike the hero power stuff. I agree, odd/even went out of blizzards hands, but I feel like, it was the community that disliked the mechanic and not a broken power level. Hall of Faming those cards still was the easy and bad way to drop an otherwise interesting mechanic. I loved using cards that were okay-ish in regular decks but suddenly excelled in odd/even decks (looking at stuff like Raid Leader or Argent Commander.
And that is the essence why highlander also is great. You actually see and play cards that do not have a top tier power level but still manage to work out because it is balanced by other cards/mechanics. Remember: OG Reno singlehandedly made highlander viable for a year up until MSoG.
Don't get me wrong, I loved playing Tank Up Warrior and two-dudes Paladin. I also wish I'd gotten into Even Hunter sooner--that deck was sweet. But I also knew that playing them *for another year* would have been too much.
And yeah, I think the power level mattered a lot. Broken is a high bar to clear, but they were very strong. If they weren't strong, no one would care about the Odd/Even mechanics, they'd just play different decks. But Genn/Baku *were* very strong (and very boring), so folks felt they had to run these decks in order to compete.
For example, no one was mad that highlander decks existed between when Reno left the game and Raza/Anduin Priest dominated, because it wasn't strong enough to make anyone feel like they had to do it. It was a wacky meme style of deck, and folks were fine with that. If Odd/Even came back as essentially a wacky meme format, I don't think folks would care.
What a bad pile of crappie voting options. The only one that disagrees with the card itself also implies that there should be more of them... That’s suboptimal misleading, and manipulated.
This would be like I would ask if people think aggro decks are the worst archetype in the game and if they agree with me. .. And the only option to vote towards a positive agreement on an aggressive archetype would be:
Yes i want more aggro and i would welcome a 5 mana Pyroblast for Hunter.
The problem isn't with Zeph itself, it's that highlander decks as a whole don't have the drawbacks they used to, particularly in Wild. This is an expected outcome as the card pool grows. Another factor is the sheer amount of mechanics like discover which sort of end-around the highlander limitations.
I personally hate Zeph, and I do sorta think that WAY too much designspace effort went into a single card, but singularly the issue isn't the card itself but that highlander in general has so few weaknesses.
I also agree that if we're talking about single cards, DQ Alex is far more problematic.
ummm... I think there is still some differences :P~~~ this topic is super and so many can be discussed constructively. there are at least 3 view points about this Wildcard.
form the player POV, the guessing process on oppo's hand is the main fun + satisfaction, and doing it good is the main skill to win + getting rank. e.g. for a normal AOE reversal, whether my oppo has the AOE card, I can use some clues to find out, e.g. from oppo's hand size, play history, past responses, and even visual clues. now the problem is, the existence of a wildcard tempered this guessing process. this wildcard has a 1/4 to 1/3 chance of running into my oppo's hand. and there is no much counter to it. here, you cannot guess is it there or not, and you cannot situationally plan for the wildcard. You can only plan for an additional 2nd wind in your deck, when this wildcard-reversal happens. here, no skill can help a good player in game. you cannot assume it is there, otherwise you can play nothing. So this wildcard becomes a natural risk to take, and you can only rely on your 2nd wind deck design. So you will have a difficult time to design your deck. you need to plan for at least 1 MORE reversal against you during game, in addition to normal reversals from some super AOEs. In a 30-card deck, this is a strict requirement. This removes many (so many! from my POV) candidate designs. i.e. from the POVs of play-guessing and crafting deck, the player will be quite bored in some sense. I believe this is part of what OP is expressing.
From the audience POV, the happening of reversals is of course SUPER FUN !! reversals will make the matches fun to watch. this is very straight forward. A one-sided game is not much fun to spectate. In fact, we can safely say a reversal is what the audience looks for in matches, and the "Wow" moment is what makes them discuss crazy. However, why reversals are fun to watch ?? it is because of the wits involved. We naturally admire a witty + super lucky player. "How is it even possible?" :P~~~ Compared to the vanilla-time HS, where reversal requires many many lucks and skills, these elements does not exist in a wildcard reversal. you simple just need to have the card. i.e. audience welcomes a wildcard, which bring reversals and fun matches, but the elements to be appreciated in matches are now of lesser. "Wow it reversed !! .... Hey it is nothing special, the player just has Zephy for it."
From the Dev POV, the existence of wildcard is a very good + clever try. in many traditional card games, we have the wildcard to bring fun, this is a historically proven experience and worth a try. "why cant HS have wildcard?!" this must be what the dev thinking, and I do not doubt the dev WANTS more reversals in game (reason see above). But the design of a wildcard in a complex card game will require care and boldness, so that it carries the true "wildcard" effects. Moreover, when the wildcard is a merchandise goods, everyone will want it and this is also good for the Dev. i.e. from game design, match broad management, and profit POVs, the wildcard qualifies hundreds of hours of dev support, but care has to be taken to control the quality of reversals, which I think is the essence of a good match.
IMO zephrys is a really interesting card, because prmote highlander decks, giving the opportunity to different cards in a deck. It also needs strategy because you have to know when to play it or not and how to play it. If you don't like HL decks I think DQ is worse, because the result is random and less predictable.
The problem are highlander decks themselves.. there's almost no downside to them now. I have 16 Wild decks and I can only think of about 3 of them that probably wouldn't actually be -improved- if I converted them to some highlander variant.
When the theme was first introduced all those years ago, with the original Reno, Kazakus and the like, they were intentionally powerful because of how much of a handicap going highlander was. Now with such a large card pool, its real easy to just replace a would-be duplicate with a different but similar card, and as I previously mentioned, there are so many workarounds to highlander's previous weaknesses thanks to mechanics like discover and reborn.
I'm thinking what is going to have to eventually happen are specifically counter-highlander techs ("If your opponent's deck has no duplicates...") or something similar.
I like Zeph, but there sure is a lot of silence right now. The result is that deathrattles and buffs are pretty hard to use. Libram Pally can buff stuff well, but it just gets silenced. If you play Teron, you better have a way to pop him.
Mage has two commonly played silences (Polymorph, Reno)
I like Zeph, but there sure is a lot of silence right now. The result is that deathrattles and buffs are pretty hard to use. Libram Pally can buff stuff well, but it just gets silenced. If you play Teron, you better have a way to pop him.
Mage has two commonly played silences (Polymorph, Reno)
Rogue has two (Sap, Sapper)
DH has one
Shaman has one (Hex)
Priest has one (Plague)
And every class has Zephrys for a silence.
I think actually there isn't as much silence as there was previously. It used to be everyone ran ironbeak owl (when it cost 2 mana) or spellbreaker (when it was still allowed). Not many people play shaman anyway. Rogue doesn't usually run sap and stunner but they are temporarily effective vs deathrattles. Mage also doesn't usually run poly, unless they discover it somewhere. Plague and Reno are two big board clears though so you're right that it's been unusual in the past to have board clears which also silence. Twisting nether just destroys.
I like Zeph, but there sure is a lot of silence right now. The result is that deathrattles and buffs are pretty hard to use. Libram Pally can buff stuff well, but it just gets silenced. If you play Teron, you better have a way to pop him.
Mage has two commonly played silences (Polymorph, Reno)
Rogue has two (Sap, Sapper)
DH has one
Shaman has one (Hex)
Priest has one (Plague)
And every class has Zephrys for a silence.
DHs don't play their one, Mage plays only Reno, Shaman barely plays Hex too, Priest does play Plague but only in Rez, Galakrond does not, Rogue runs only Stunner.
DHs don't play their one, Mage plays only Reno, Shaman barely plays Hex too, Priest does play Plague but only in Rez, Galakrond does not, Rogue runs only Stunner.
Per hsreplay:
Sap: 4.7% of decks
Stunner: 7%
Reno: 7.5%
Polymorph: 4.6%
Hex: 1.9%
Plague: 8.1%
Comsume Magic: 3%
Zephrys: 24.6%
So, yeah, they are fairly common. I think the prevalence of silence in this meta is at least part of the reason buffs and deathrattles are not very common.
If you think the problem with Genn/Baku was they forced a deck to be built around a gimmick... yikes.
The problem with Genn/Baku was that the kind of hero-power focused gameplay they encouraged was boring and repetitive. The odd/even restriction was good, actually. There were a tonne of cards which came out of the woodwork and saw play for the first time in essentially ever. Raid Leader? Seriously? That's great! What wasn't great was Button. Button. Button. Button. Button. This made all the games against odd Paladin, odd Warrior, and so forth feel the same. All they do is make dudes and that's enough. All they do is gain armor, and that's enough. The contents of the deck becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is that hero power, and that's bad.
Highlander restrictions don't do that. The consistency of the decks go down, the contents of the decks vary more with a lot more room for tech choices, and games *don't* all feel the same. It's pretty much the exact opposite of how Genn/Baku played out. Zephrys being a swiss-army-knife to do anything you need does restore *some* consistency, but he's one card out of 30.
I, for one, don't dislike the hero power stuff. I agree, odd/even went out of blizzards hands, but I feel like, it was the community that disliked the mechanic and not a broken power level. Hall of Faming those cards still was the easy and bad way to drop an otherwise interesting mechanic. I loved using cards that were okay-ish in regular decks but suddenly excelled in odd/even decks (looking at stuff like Raid Leader or Argent Commander.
And that is the essence why highlander also is great. You actually see and play cards that do not have a top tier power level but still manage to work out because it is balanced by other cards/mechanics. Remember: OG Reno singlehandedly made highlander viable for a year up until MSoG.
I think the whole Odd/Even as a mechanic was not the problem. I mean, those decks were quite imaginative... except the whole thing it all depended on Baku and Genn, who were kind of the least interesting of the whole archetype.
Imagine what would have been like if those cards had flashy effects that made them interesting to play, instead of just hoarding them and let their hero power decide. Zephrys does that, Dragonqueen, Dinotamer Brann, both Reno Jacksons (standard and wild) do that, even Finley tries to do that. Meanwhile, you don't actually want to play Baku or Genn, but when anything else is done and there's nothing better to do. Still you get their value from not being played at all, wich is bad, because it means you can barely counter it at all (including unpopular ones, like Albatross or Hecklebot), unlike battlecry minions, wich can be pulled or delayed, and reno effects, wich can be nullified via bombs and albatrosses.
The awkward thing about Even/Odd is that they probably don't function without hero power manipulation.
It can't just be one splashy late-game effect, since you'd never get there. There would be too many gaps in a good curve if you've cut out half the mana pool, so there kind of needs to be something to balance that out. So folks get stronger HPs. But they're now too strong, and so HP-based decks become the norm. Once these are the new normal, deck contents start to not matter all that much, and game-to-game things get really repetitive. So early HOF just to avoid a second year of tedium was a great idea.
I'm not a very good player myself, but I think Zephyrs usually translates in the same cards so you can definitely play around it:
-Earth shock
-Wild growth
-Mass dispell
-Bloodlust
-Twisting nether
I probably miss a lot of other main uses, but that's what I encountered the most. Somebody is at higher ranks would probably be able to use Zeph in more sutuations, but the other player should be able to prevent more situations aswell.
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no it's not
another cry child about a losing card admin or mods comeone i keep reporting this but you dont do anything plz men
Zeph is an absolute asshole. Losing to Zeph just sucks... Terrible card and not in the spirit of the game.
We need some more good shuffle cards.
Partially agree, but not really. You say it punishes a player in control. Yes it does. Bot so does every other board clear. In this respect Zeph is pretty much just another Brawl. If you play around Brawl or Shadow Word: Ruin or Wild Pyromancer + Libram of Justice in Warrior, Paladin and Priest match-ups, I don't see how it is any different in case of Highlander. I mean playing vs Priest you know you can't overextend, because you will get punished. How is Highlander any different?
Zeph gives mainly 3 types of cards:
Control decks already run these and you have to play around them. Highlander decks are either control or controlish. You play around these things in control match-ups, so why is a board clear received from Zeph worse than a board clear you have already in your deck, if both are to be expected?
Don't get me wrong, I loved playing Tank Up Warrior and two-dudes Paladin. I also wish I'd gotten into Even Hunter sooner--that deck was sweet. But I also knew that playing them *for another year* would have been too much.
And yeah, I think the power level mattered a lot. Broken is a high bar to clear, but they were very strong. If they weren't strong, no one would care about the Odd/Even mechanics, they'd just play different decks. But Genn/Baku *were* very strong (and very boring), so folks felt they had to run these decks in order to compete.
For example, no one was mad that highlander decks existed between when Reno left the game and Raza/Anduin Priest dominated, because it wasn't strong enough to make anyone feel like they had to do it. It was a wacky meme style of deck, and folks were fine with that. If Odd/Even came back as essentially a wacky meme format, I don't think folks would care.
What a bad pile of crappie voting options. The only one that disagrees with the card itself also implies that there should be more of them... That’s suboptimal misleading, and manipulated.
This would be like I would ask if people think aggro decks are the worst archetype in the game and if they agree with me. .. And the only option to vote towards a positive agreement on an aggressive archetype would be:
Yes i want more aggro and i would welcome a 5 mana Pyroblast for Hunter.
I see that the Murloc Paladin has been spotted.
The problem isn't with Zeph itself, it's that highlander decks as a whole don't have the drawbacks they used to, particularly in Wild. This is an expected outcome as the card pool grows. Another factor is the sheer amount of mechanics like discover which sort of end-around the highlander limitations.
I personally hate Zeph, and I do sorta think that WAY too much designspace effort went into a single card, but singularly the issue isn't the card itself but that highlander in general has so few weaknesses.
I also agree that if we're talking about single cards, DQ Alex is far more problematic.
I like the card. I'd like to see priest get a similar card that uses logic to give you a copy of the 'best' card in their deck given the game state.
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ummm... I think there is still some differences :P~~~
this topic is super and so many can be discussed constructively.
there are at least 3 view points about this Wildcard.
form the player POV,
the guessing process on oppo's hand is the main fun + satisfaction,
and doing it good is the main skill to win + getting rank.
e.g. for a normal AOE reversal, whether my oppo has the AOE card,
I can use some clues to find out, e.g. from oppo's hand size, play history, past responses, and even visual clues.
now the problem is, the existence of a wildcard tempered this guessing process.
this wildcard has a 1/4 to 1/3 chance of running into my oppo's hand.
and there is no much counter to it.
here, you cannot guess is it there or not,
and you cannot situationally plan for the wildcard.
You can only plan for an additional 2nd wind in your deck,
when this wildcard-reversal happens.
here, no skill can help a good player in game.
you cannot assume it is there, otherwise you can play nothing.
So this wildcard becomes a natural risk to take,
and you can only rely on your 2nd wind deck design.
So you will have a difficult time to design your deck.
you need to plan for at least 1 MORE reversal against you during game,
in addition to normal reversals from some super AOEs.
In a 30-card deck, this is a strict requirement.
This removes many (so many! from my POV) candidate designs.
i.e. from the POVs of play-guessing and crafting deck, the player will be quite bored in some sense.
I believe this is part of what OP is expressing.
From the audience POV,
the happening of reversals is of course SUPER FUN !!
reversals will make the matches fun to watch. this is very straight forward.
A one-sided game is not much fun to spectate.
In fact, we can safely say a reversal is what the audience looks for in matches,
and the "Wow" moment is what makes them discuss crazy.
However, why reversals are fun to watch ?? it is because of the wits involved.
We naturally admire a witty + super lucky player. "How is it even possible?" :P~~~
Compared to the vanilla-time HS, where reversal requires many many lucks and skills,
these elements does not exist in a wildcard reversal. you simple just need to have the card.
i.e. audience welcomes a wildcard, which bring reversals and fun matches,
but the elements to be appreciated in matches are now of lesser.
"Wow it reversed !! .... Hey it is nothing special, the player just has Zephy for it."
From the Dev POV,
the existence of wildcard is a very good + clever try.
in many traditional card games, we have the wildcard to bring fun,
this is a historically proven experience and worth a try.
"why cant HS have wildcard?!" this must be what the dev thinking,
and I do not doubt the dev WANTS more reversals in game (reason see above).
But the design of a wildcard in a complex card game will require care and boldness,
so that it carries the true "wildcard" effects.
Moreover, when the wildcard is a merchandise goods,
everyone will want it and this is also good for the Dev.
i.e. from game design, match broad management, and profit POVs,
the wildcard qualifies hundreds of hours of dev support,
but care has to be taken to control the quality of reversals,
which I think is the essence of a good match.
:P~~~
IMO zephrys is a really interesting card, because prmote highlander decks, giving the opportunity to different cards in a deck. It also needs strategy because you have to know when to play it or not and how to play it. If you don't like HL decks I think DQ is worse, because the result is random and less predictable.
The problem are highlander decks themselves.. there's almost no downside to them now. I have 16 Wild decks and I can only think of about 3 of them that probably wouldn't actually be -improved- if I converted them to some highlander variant.
When the theme was first introduced all those years ago, with the original Reno, Kazakus and the like, they were intentionally powerful because of how much of a handicap going highlander was. Now with such a large card pool, its real easy to just replace a would-be duplicate with a different but similar card, and as I previously mentioned, there are so many workarounds to highlander's previous weaknesses thanks to mechanics like discover and reborn.
I'm thinking what is going to have to eventually happen are specifically counter-highlander techs ("If your opponent's deck has no duplicates...") or something similar.
I like Zeph, but there sure is a lot of silence right now. The result is that deathrattles and buffs are pretty hard to use. Libram Pally can buff stuff well, but it just gets silenced. If you play Teron, you better have a way to pop him.
Mage has two commonly played silences (Polymorph, Reno)
Rogue has two (Sap, Sapper)
DH has one
Shaman has one (Hex)
Priest has one (Plague)
And every class has Zephrys for a silence.
I think actually there isn't as much silence as there was previously. It used to be everyone ran ironbeak owl (when it cost 2 mana) or spellbreaker (when it was still allowed). Not many people play shaman anyway. Rogue doesn't usually run sap and stunner but they are temporarily effective vs deathrattles. Mage also doesn't usually run poly, unless they discover it somewhere. Plague and Reno are two big board clears though so you're right that it's been unusual in the past to have board clears which also silence. Twisting nether just destroys.
DHs don't play their one, Mage plays only Reno, Shaman barely plays Hex too, Priest does play Plague but only in Rez, Galakrond does not, Rogue runs only Stunner.
Per hsreplay:
Sap: 4.7% of decks
Stunner: 7%
Reno: 7.5%
Polymorph: 4.6%
Hex: 1.9%
Plague: 8.1%
Comsume Magic: 3%
Zephrys: 24.6%
So, yeah, they are fairly common. I think the prevalence of silence in this meta is at least part of the reason buffs and deathrattles are not very common.
I think the whole Odd/Even as a mechanic was not the problem. I mean, those decks were quite imaginative... except the whole thing it all depended on Baku and Genn, who were kind of the least interesting of the whole archetype.
Imagine what would have been like if those cards had flashy effects that made them interesting to play, instead of just hoarding them and let their hero power decide. Zephrys does that, Dragonqueen, Dinotamer Brann, both Reno Jacksons (standard and wild) do that, even Finley tries to do that. Meanwhile, you don't actually want to play Baku or Genn, but when anything else is done and there's nothing better to do. Still you get their value from not being played at all, wich is bad, because it means you can barely counter it at all (including unpopular ones, like Albatross or Hecklebot), unlike battlecry minions, wich can be pulled or delayed, and reno effects, wich can be nullified via bombs and albatrosses.
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The awkward thing about Even/Odd is that they probably don't function without hero power manipulation.
It can't just be one splashy late-game effect, since you'd never get there. There would be too many gaps in a good curve if you've cut out half the mana pool, so there kind of needs to be something to balance that out. So folks get stronger HPs. But they're now too strong, and so HP-based decks become the norm. Once these are the new normal, deck contents start to not matter all that much, and game-to-game things get really repetitive. So early HOF just to avoid a second year of tedium was a great idea.
I'm not a very good player myself, but I think Zephyrs usually translates in the same cards so you can definitely play around it:
-Earth shock
-Wild growth
-Mass dispell
-Bloodlust
-Twisting nether
I probably miss a lot of other main uses, but that's what I encountered the most. Somebody is at higher ranks would probably be able to use Zeph in more sutuations, but the other player should be able to prevent more situations aswell.