So I've noticed that Arena's metagame isn't as diverse as it seems
Easy to agree or disagree with such a vague statement.
I'll do some interpreting and judging by the 3 people who posted already they did interpret this statement as the following:
There isn't enough diversity in MW and all the decks are far too similar. That appear to be what we are arguing about here.
If that is the intended statement I do not agree with it at all. And the sentiment that too many sbps might be the reason for that is inexplicable.
I think what Sailor Vulcan would like to see are beastmasters who use the lair to get a Wychwood Houndswarm? Instead of always doing the same like every beastmaster: falcon swarm.
Or use the lair to get a timberwolf "swarm" out, happens all the time.
Or maybe they use the lair to get some small creatures likes asps and then 1-2 big grizzlies?
Now that I think about it, the last games I played against beastmaster they did not use their lair at all. Some used a battleforge with a pet, mostly a timberwolf and then they went meele. I played a beastmaster who is useing a pet and elemental wand plus some falcons. And I have also seen beastmaster who use fellella and go heavy enchantment with wychwood faerie.
When you play against juli you'll see that you can even play him successfully without a spawnpoint alltogether. Using the crocodile to grapple. Other players don't use fellella, bf or the lair either and they bring some lvl 1 animals whom you can quickcast and try to rush you.
Hope you get the point. But somehow I think all those different strategies and playing-styles are "the same" for you because 60-90% of the cards in the deck are the same. And of course the 120 sbp's are at fault because if you only had 100 sbp's you would on purpose suddenly start to include inefficient cards!
(hope my sarcasm isn't lost on you and neither are the implications)
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You are "bored" that always "the same cards" are being used. But it's neither the fault of the 120 spbs nor is it the lack of imagination.
Did you ever see a Razortusk in MW? EVER? Why is that, because are haven't seen the value? Because we have no imagination? Because we "haven't figured out how to use the card"?
No, because if you pay 1 more mana you get a timberwolf who has the exact same stats with 3 more life (behind 2 armor). And everyone who compares those 2 cards comes to the same conclusion, that this one mana is worth spending. (Bull endurance costs 5 mana and gives a creature 4 more life)
My point is that you can divide every single card into 3 categories - same with the mages.
Powerlevel above average
Average powerlevel
Powerlevel below average
So this card pool is not nearly as big as you think it is because when you play "competitively" you'll always go for the strongest cards, and you will not on purpose take a weaker card if there is a stronger card available. And you will not change that by reducing the available spellpoints, of the contrary. That'll lead to even fewer "experiments" and you'll see even fewer average-powerlevel cards.
For example who has points for "combat tricks" like stumble if you have to cut 20 points from your books. If you want more variety you have to increase the sbp limit so that we can include more than the bare minimum of "core cards". Because those core-cards are the best cards you can get, but there aren't that many available.. but they are obviously the first ones to include.
I wasn't saying that there was no diversity in mage wars, just not as much as would be ideal or as much as you'd expect given the size of the card pool and the extreme amount of customizability. I didn't say I was completely bored, but I do get a little bit bored of Arena sometimes because of not facing a wide enough variety of decks. I didn't think any of what I said was vague, but hopefully this clarifies what I meant.
Also, I HIGHLY DOUBT that changing the starting spell points would help. You're putting words in my mouth there dude.
Maybe at least some of the problem comes down to the number of players you encounter.
Most individuals lean towards one style over another, even across different mage types (see SirJasonCrage's recent thread about his base card catalogue that he basically does not change, ever, as an example of what I mean). When you combine this with a low number of players encountered on octgn, then it would not be surprising to see similar things over and over again.
And then of course there is the group-think effect. I am part of a group of 4, and when no.4 first joined all of a sudden the three older players suddenly encountered new things that we had not thought of.
So: there is a massive variety in this game, it just needs 1) individual players to try more things and 2) infusions of fresh blood to shake up local metas.
This is a very interesting point. So then the next question would be how big would a local playgroup or the online community have to be to increase the strategic variety to the point where people start talking about tiers for deck archetypes rather than just mage classes?
Then again, now I'm wondering if that whole "mage class tiers instead of deck archetype tiers" thing might be because there are so many possible deck archetypes that no one is ever sure whether a new one could still pop out of the woodwork and change the meta without adding any new cards, so deck archetype tiers would be even harder to identify than mage class tiers...
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