Mr. Saucy (and everyone else advocating for Samara Tree builds), just what advantage do you think Samara Tree has over Vine Tree? I'm honestly curious, since the only reason I would use a Samara is if I wanted to shoot myself in the foot.
1) If you don't use a vine marker during a round it is doing nothing (other than allowing you to reach further with your spreading vines ability). But if you don't use a seedling pod during a round it continues to channel and becomes more powerful as the game goes on. I can give an example. There was a game where I had a seedling pod in a zone but later the action moved away from that zone. I thought the seedling pod was useless. But then that pod reached 6 mana and I realized I could spend just 1 mana from my supply to deploy Etherian Lifetree (I was playing against a Necromancer so this ended up being a good idea).
Vine markers do more than give you more reach with Spreading Vines if you don't use them in a turn.
They hinder enemy creatures (even if they are Elusive), and most importantly, give you tactical options (if your opponent thinks you might use them that turn, they're very useful as bluffs). The tactical options they give you should not be understated.
2) Seedling pods work well if you want to go heavier on conjurations than normal, especially cheap conjurations like bloodspine wall, tanglevine, mana flower, etc. If you aren't big on conjurations and want to focus on creatures, which a lot of players understandably choose, then stick with vine tree.
The list of conjurations that are plants but not also vines are as follows:
Mana Flower
Mohktari
Etherian Lifetree
Samara Tree
Vine Tree
Wall of Thorns
I will grant that being unable to cast Wall of Thorns with a Vine Tree does suck a little bit, but the strategy of WoT + Force Push/Jet Stream has so many well-known and easy counters to it that the lack of this card doesn't really negatively affect the Druid. I don't even put WoT in most of my books anymore since I never have the opportunity to cast it.
4 of them are trees (one being irrelevant to this conversation), but I don't see how casting any of these off of a Seedling Pod would be good in most circumstances, since you'd have to either devote a Seedling Pod to it entirely or cast it after the Seedling Pod is no longer valuable for tactical purposes.
Casting a Mana Flower from a Seedling Pod is a terrible, terrible thing to do. Whenever you do this you are essentially throwing away 3 mana for no good reason.
Mana Flower from Mage:
1: -5 (cost of Mana Flower)
2: -4
3: -3
4: -2
5: -1
6: 0 (Mana Flower breaks even)
7: 1 (Mana Flower makes a profit)
1: -3 mana (cost of Seedling Pod)
2: -3 (pod = 1)
3: -3 (pod = 2)
4: -3 (pod = 3) -> pod destroyed to cast Mana Flower -> -5 (cost of Flower -3 on Pod)
5: -4
6: -3
7: -2
8: -1
9: 0 (Mana Flower breaks even)
10: 1 (Mana Flower makes a profit)
Even if you consider the 1 mana from Samara Tree to be "free" (and you really shouldn't), you're still losing 2 mana on this.
For the other conjurations (the ones both plant AND vine), Vine Tree is the better option as you'll have more options on where to cast them on any given turn.
The only argument you could make would be for a Tree-heavy build that extensively utilizes Wall of Thorns...but I really don't see it.
3) Seedling pods can lead to "big" turns. For example, say a pod deploys a bloodspine wall (0-1 mana from your supply) while an adjacent pod spawns a thornlasher (0-4 mana from your supply) and then you use your QC to cast rouse the beast on the thornlasher. And after all of this action you still have your main action marker to perhaps meditate with meditation amulet, move into a better zone, summon a creature, stuff like that. Vine Tree doesn't offer "big" turns. Instead it offers consistency and speed.
4) As the earlier example demonstrates, seedling pods are excellent at saving actions. And there is plenty of evidence that actions are just as important a resource as mana.
These two are essentially the same point.
While what you said is true, it's not limited to Samara Tree builds. Vine Tree builds could easily have one or two Seedling Pods if the player wanted to bank an action for later.
5) Seedling pods maximize your aggregate channeling (your tree channels, your pods channel, and you channel).
While the amount you channel on a given turn is higher, your expenses are as well. It only gives you a profit over Vine Tree if you wait longer than 3 turns to pop a pod. And then it looks a tempting target to your opponent, especially if there wasn't much else the creature could do (for example, a hindered creature moving one zone toward your mage/tree and attacking the pod in the new zone). That hurts a lot more than losing a Vine Marker in the same situation.
6) This is the weakest argument but I think samara treed and seedling pods are "more fun" than vine tree, especially if you don't have to win to enjoy the game. Samara Tree and the pods really embrace the druid's themes, and if you are anything like me you enjoy playing thematically... maybe even when you realize it may not necessarily be optimal.
On the contrary, I think this is the
best argument for using Samara Tree.
If you think it's fun, go for it. What I object to is saying that a Samara build is on par with or better than a Vine build when it gives you so many huge drawbacks for so few minor benefits.
