@fredchuckdave: Hm, I must have had some good luck when it came to buying new decks. I haven't spent a real dollar on the game and have only been playing for two days, but I've got a killer bunch of cards, particularly a pair of Grimgaunts and Savants. I didn't realize they were overpowered. I've been using a combination of the generals that give attack bonuses, defenders, those battle technicians that give bonuses when they're in the center, and jet packs. I'm brand new to this sort of game (I never got into CCG games, as noted above), but I seem to be doing all right, considering this is only the second deck I've ever made.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Yeah if you get lucky (it's even possible to get a super rare pack off the log in daily) you could theoretically have a good deck in short order. On the other hand if you get unlucky you could wind up spending a fair amount of money on the game with only middling results. TCGs are and always have been gambling for kids after all.

@fredchuckdave: I said all that and then I go and get my ass thoroughly handed to me by someone with a stunning deck. I don't even know what the heck they were doing, but by the six or seventh round, all their cards had ridiculously high attack numbers while I struggled just to keep a card on the line. Wow.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Yeah your luck will have to continue for like a week or so; then if you have 6 savants, 3 good grimgaunts, and a bunch of level boosting cards you'll be set.

I have a question that I can't find an answer to anywhere. Your player 'rank' goes up every four turns, and allows you to play Level 2 cards after Level 2 and Level 3 cards after Level 3, but what significance does your player 'rank' play after Level 3?

Just got a couple more savants today and destroyed some poor bastards; I now feel like a dirty traitor for playing with a broken deck.

@fredchuckdave: Yeah I finally got 2 darkshaper savants and a few other lucky cards from some packs and now I feel like I can actually hold my own. I've been using an Alloyin/Nekrium deck that revolves around using lots of spells to keep the other person's creatures damage in check and buffing my creatures with armor.

@strangestories: @fredchuckdave: @sparky_buzzsaw: Savants are pretty buff, but my mono-Alloyin deck does pretty well against them unless I get terrible draws. When I play myself using my own Savants deck, Savants almost always wins, but that deck is more complete than my Alloyin deck. I'm guessing that once I fill out the 3 missing Legendaries in that deck, it will be more of an even fight. That said, I've also started working on a metagame deck trying to hard counter Savants. It's solid enough to win most games against other decks, but I haven't come up against a solid Savants player online yet while using it.

Long story short, Savants are buff but don't get too comfortable. I think it's great that you only need a handful of Rares to get to an almost top-tier competitive deck, but SBE might decide they're too dominant and nerf them. At the very least, I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so that Flameshapers could only target creatures, not players. I managed to do 58 damage to the other player on turn 7 despite a fairly even board state using my Tempys/Uterra Savants deck.

Your rank actually has nothing to do with the level of cards you can play. Every four turns, when you reshuffle all of your leveled-up cards back into your deck, you are essentially becoming stronger. That is what the rank-up signifies. While it's true that 99.9% of decks will never draw a card higher than level 2 while they're rank 2, there is a specific set of cards that, when used in conjunction, would allow you to potentially draw a level 3 card while still rank 2. In that case, you would be able to play the card.

@starvinggamer: I think the game will be served well by the addition of more cards and ways to play after it leaves beta. Glad they got the stability issues on the iPad. It's way easier to see the cards on it.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Yeah, I was at the hospital over the weekend trying to play games on my iPad and it was a huge bummer until they pushed out the update last night. I ended up staying up until like 4AM when I really should have been trying to get sleep instead. They're planning on releasing new sets every 3 months, but I'm not sure if it's 3 months since the start of the open beta or 3 months from when they add tournaments or 3 months from full release or what.

Although actually I believe they said they were going to release a smaller set of new cards at some point during the open beta.

@starvinggamer: There's like a 5% or less chance of running into someone who can beat a halfway decent savant deck (w/o savants themselves), unless of course they're on your friend's list. Meanwhile it's still possible to draw poorly with a ghetto savant deck and lose, like 10% of the time. If a match isn't going well (i.e. the opposing deck doesn't suck) and I draw shit on the first level 2 turn then I almost always concede to speed things up. Your argument about the Grimgaunt not being overpowered was a bit silly though, a 9/7 card that can potentially become a 36/34 card before the other player gets a turn (comparitively the Spring Dryad can only become 21/21 at best, dryad is relatively balanced by comparison though still an I-Win-All-by-myself card)?

Heart Tree yet another I win by myself card.

@fredchuckdave: Nah. I ain't afraid of no Grimgaunts. Yes, it can become ridiculously huge very quickly if you have a perfect board-state, but most of the time it's going to be entering the battlefield as no more than a 15/13 or 18/16. That's actually relatively fragile as far as big level 3 bombs go, and there are so many things that can kill it outright, or stall it until you draw something to kill it. And if by any chance you're on the back-foot and need to recover, it is completely worthless when played defensively.

I see a lot of Grimgaunt Devourers, but I couldn't tell you the last time I died to one. Grimgaunt Predator is way more scary to me because it almost always comes in as a 20/20.

...and I'm back to getting my ass handed to me in multiplayer. Glad to see the universe has reached equilibrium.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Believe in the heart of the cards!

@starvinggamer: Grimgaunts are only moderately broken so I guess that's something, still an absurdly ridiculous card as things go. I remember Magic having a haste angel that was pretty amazing but easy enough to stop; but a good card in magic is like 1/20th as good as a good card in this game. Card discard/levelling cards are probably the most broken non savant group considering how much they boost your chance of success relative to your opponent not having them.

It's cool having a slightly broken card (Delver), moderately broken card (Spring Dryad), and completely fucking broken card (Lifeshaper Savant) on the field at the same time.

I dunno, you look at cards like Thragtusk and suddenly every deck in standard has to A) use them B) make sure to include answers to them C) use them and include answers to them.

@starvinggamer: Well I'm talking more early 1990s Magic, no clue how stupid the people making it are now. Also it does require resources to play and the deck is finite.

Managed to unluck my way to losing a match I was winning 80 to 20 while simultaneously winning a match I was losing 60 to 30; hurray.

I'm running about half of this guy's deck at present: https://solforgegame.com/forum/strategy-discussion/idiot-savants-an-undefeated-deck/

Went about 20-4 today in random matches; all 4 losses against other Savant decks. Roughly 10 of the cards in my deck are junk due to scarcity.

@fredchuckdave: Haven't gotten any Lifeshapers yet. I had one very lucky night where I got three normal booster packs while the past two nights I've only been getting basic booster packs. Got my Darkshapers on the lucky night. Just hoping it happens again soon.

@strangestories: I've gotten about 10 bucks of packs via luck over the past 2 sets of dailies; no savants. I've yet to find a legendary either; and seems like the only decks that can beat savants without savants are legendary stacked.

When will the campaign be available?

When will the campaign be available?

@none_braver: By the end of the year, no details beyond that.

EDIT: They just changed that to early next year, so, yeah.

For anyone still paying attention to this game and maybe thinking about spending real money, you can use the code SOL20 to get 20% off of Gold at https://solforgegame.com/shop/

Next update will be matchmaking and drafting along with a min-release of 20 new cards. Done when it's done but they're hoping late September/early October. Gifting and crafting will be next, followed by trading and auction houses they hope by December.

F2P players will be able to earn draft tickets as part of their daily rewards at an average rate of 1/week. If you're good enough it will be possible to "go infinite" by winning additional free drafts.

Other things they're working on include additional ways to spend Silver, more deck slots, animated cards, chat, more resolutions on PC, and additional tournament formats.

Also the game's matchmaking system won't use ELO (which starts players in the middle) because they don't want newer/less experienced players to have to lose their way down first before winning their way up.

Hey, I never got that you replied back to me, thanks though. The bug finally stopped thank god. I'm really enjoying the game, though I noticed people in this forum are saying savants are broken, yet I never really have trouble with them. I also never really have trouble with the devourers, they seem to be pretty easy to kill, I think the predators are better. I have way more trouble with Epidemic and Everflame Phoenix. I feel like cards that drop cards when they die or replace themselves (like Zimus) are way more powerful than anything else, along with cards that effect all creatures. Also some cards just seem ridiculous like Chrogias even though he isn't a good card early on. Do you know if they have been patching the cards or if they have mentioned they are looking into changing any cards specifically?

Also do you know anything about how the draft system is going to work? I'm pretty excited for that.

Yeah, I don't think they're that bad. They do have extremely high combo-potential, however, and also help mitigate some of the RNG-ness of the game. I also find I have much more trouble with the Predators than the Devourers. I've actually only seen like two Phoenixes in the wild, though, and never beyond level 1. Epidemic is pretty good, way better than Sonic Pulse and Firestorm by comparison. But yeah, Zimus is pretty amazing. His combo potential is astronomical.

They haven't been changing any cards yet, nor have they announced any plans to. It's just an option they've talked about here and there in the past. In a game like SolForge where buying and selling is going to be a thing, you really don't want to rebalance things unless you absolutely have to. Honestly, though, I think the game's in a pretty good place. The only thing I would change would be to make it so that Flameshapers can't target players.

The first release of drafts will be asynchronous Swiss drafting. Keep in mind this is all stuff gleaned from their Gen Con showing and could easily change. When you start a draft, your first pack will be four cards, one from each faction, with a minimum rarity of Heroic IIRC. You pick two of those cards which, from that point, lock you in to those two factions. From that point on I believe you're shown 14 more packs, each with 4(?) cards from only those two factions. You pick two from each of those packs until you have 30 cards and that's your deck. At that point you queue up for your draft matches and you will be matched Swiss style against people with the same record of you. So your first match will be against another person who just started drafting and is currently 0-0. If you go 1-0 you'll then be matched against another player who went 1-0 etc etc etc.

At the end of I don't know how many matches, you'll be given a prize based on your record. I don't know what the prizes will be, presumably you'll be earning packs. If you do well enough, you'll also be able to earn additional draft tickets which means skilled players could potentially "go infinite" after their first draft. Also draft tickets will be doled out as part of your daily rewards randomly, but with an average rate of ~1 per week.

EDIT: Current plan is for each asynchronous draft to be three best-of-1 matches.

5 days since I drew a savant, still no legendaries. Did get a Mossbeard Patriarch which seems kind of amazing in the first few rounds when coupled with a growing card like a Dryad or Delver + enrage/ferocious roar. This game is fun but boy does it look vastly inferior to Hearthstone in every way imaginable.

game mostly looks like pay to win to me ... since there is no ressource management there is no point in putting weak cards into your deck. So the player with the biggest cards will almost certainly always win. And the biggest cards go to the players that are willing to pay money (well faster, you might be able to grind them out but you will have a bad time while doing that).

@2headedninja: You also get 2 of the best/rarest cards in the game for being a kickstarter backer. It's either pay to win or play a lot longer than anyone else + get lucky and win. Assuming you'll be able to buy rarer cards individually in the future that will negate the randomness element on the paying side. I will be interested in drafts and my deck is big enough to make playing against the hard comp random vs random interesting. It's also pretty obvious if someone's deck is going to be not fun to play against and you can have 3-4 matches going on at once; simple enough to bail out of the one you have no chance in hell versus.

Do you know when they are going to fix account creation? I've tried multiple times a day since I watched the QL to create an account on the iPad with no luck. It always says that something went wrong in the process. Thanks.

A deck with cards across all rarities and cohesion will always do better than a deck packed with the biggest and baddest Legendaries. Of the winning decks from the last 2 constructed tournaments, one used five Legendaries and the other one merely two.

That sucks. I have no idea, but I'd recommend creating your account at solforgegame.com instead.

I really don't like Hearthstone. I appreciate the production values and all that, it's a really slick package, but I don't enjoy their "attacker's advantage" philosophy of design. It's the same reason I can't get into Might & Magic Duels of Champions.

I saw this post in my feed, and mistook Hearthstone for Hearthfire, AKA the Skyrim expansion. I was thoroughly confused until I saw the thread title.

@starvinggamer: In general Hearthstone seems much less random and there is at least some degree of variance on what cards to play and the order to play them; in Solforge you have a chance of making a mistake like once every 15-20 moves; in Hearthstone it is more like once every 3-5 or so. Apart from everything else Drafts already exist and technical issues are much less limited; quests and levelling are much better carrots than just a set of fixed dailies that take 20 minutes. In summation: Hearthstone has more variety, a shitload more playstyles, better production values, more interesting strategy, and much more varied optimal decks. Solforge is open and you can play several people at once, those are about the only edges it has.

From the all knowing Solforge forums:

Devourer Decks (with a splash of Tempys or Uterra depending on preference)

Savant Decks (Either high powered level I creatures or Spell based, using Master of Elements + Static Shock)

Robot Decks (these require a LOT of legendary cards and aren't seen much)

Uterra Swarm Decks (Echowisp + Packmaster, sometimes with Urboris, that 100/101 dragon thrown in with life gain cards)

So 4 playstyles basically are viable; Devourer is a one card autowin if used effectively which just doesn't exist in Hearthstone outside of very lategame legendaries. There's other decks to be made if you have a ludicrous number of legendaries I suppose; but they're probably not universally viable. Hearthstone has at minimum 9 playstyles no matter what and each one has various early-game, mid-game, and late-game builds with different amounts of viability. Solforge has very little variance deck to deck in terms of building a deck to win in the first X number of turns; you basically just have a deck that works well at all times and probably works better in the mid to late game than it does early game.

@fredchuckdave: You clearly haven't seen what most of the cards do in SolForge. Decisions I make most turns:

• What cards do I play
• What order do I play them in
• Where do I play them
• Do I play them before or after combat
• Which activated abilities do I use
• When do I use them

Yes drafts are in now, but I really don't like the fact that you don't get to keep the cards you draft. Quests and leveling are much better carrots for people that want to grind out games, but other than unlocking your class cards from 1-10 the rate of acquisition feels incredibly slow. Those carrots weren't coming often enough to keep me interested.

As far as playstyles:

• Alloyin draw/stall decks
• Alloyin Highlander spell control
• Alloyin robots (Legendary intensive, it's true)
• Nekrium Grimgaunt aggro
• Nekrium zombies (also Legendary intensive)
• Tempys aggro
• Uterra aggro
• Alloyin + Nekrium spell control
• Alloyin + Tempys spell control
• Tempys + Nekrium/Uterra Savants

And that's just what I can come up with off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more styles out there. Some of them try to kill you before level 3. Some of them just try to survive until level 4+ so they can "go off". Devourer is in no way an autowin, it is actually one of the easiest bombs to deal with.

@starvinggamer: Again in Solforge every deck basically has the same function which is win in about 10-15 turns (very occasionally going further); in Hearthstone there's just so much more variety to the wins even if you're using the same deck. Watching someone playing Solforge would be incredibly dull (because they'd be doing the same thing over and over), watching someone play Hearthstone is always pretty interesting and varied (because each class plays much differently. There's at least 27 deck strategies in Solforge by default, probably somewhere closer to 60-70, you named 10 to counter this. You also suggested Solforge wouldn't balance cards but Blizzard will balance everything no matter what; no balance is just fuck-off boring until there's a new deck introduced.

• What cards do I play ~ Generally obvious or decision between two nearly equal strategies
• What order do I play them in ~ Always obvious
• Where do I play them ~ Always obvious
• Do I play them before or after combat ~ Mildly interesting, not always relevant
• Which activated abilities do I use ~ Always obvious
• When do I use them ~ Redundant with 1, 2, and 4 ("when do I play them" actually doesn't matter at all outside of 1 turn in Solforge since you don't keep your hand, the order you want to level your cards is almost always obvious); if you mean when you use activated abilities that is almost always obvious and very rarely interesting.

Hearthstone has so many more functions than your 5. You keep your hand so the order you play cards is important throughout the entire game. There is resource management, as opposed to "level everything" management with most good decks or "level my handful of ridiculously overpowered cards." There's very strong spells but barely any gamebreaking type creatures, the closest I'd say is Ysera but Ysera is unreliable and can only be played very lategame and you can only have 1 in your deck. Spells are equally as viable as creatures as opposed to a means to an end. Class abilities are a huge, huge step up in the game's complexity; it's basically another resource to manage entirely. More significant card abilities, period. And I'm just starting out here; there's a shitload more to deal with such as the opposing class and the abilities they're likely to use and have at any given point. A mage could sit on a flamestrike for most of the game and just the illusion of having one is enough to threaten the opponent into playing fundamentally worse. Card management and board management are both fundamental and limitless resources; whereas board management in Solforge is limited only to lanes and can only be altered by "Lane movement" type of cards which are somewhat uncommon; so maybe 5-10% of viable cards will act as well as every single monster does in Hearthstone. Not going to continue this argument considering how absurdly obvious this is; I realize you have a lot of time invested in Solforge but that doesn't make it better or even close. Hearthstone is by far the best fake TCG I have ever seen; Solforge is middle of the road (somewhere along the line of "this looks like magic and is free, what the hell"); technically Solforge is much easier to learn and should likely be more appealing to a mass audience but it isn't made by Blizzard so you won't have a legion of followers instantly and that production value gap is going to overcome the simplicity appeal and then some.

Incidentally if you're not playing it anymore and have a beta key can I use it? Please don't charge me 250 bucks.

I don't see why you are complaining about there only being a certain amount of viable deck types. That's all standard in Magic ever is, about 4-5 different decks actually work and probably in most TCGs because it is impossible to balance everything so all cards are viable. Also there are only 180 cards, it would never be possible for there to be 25 different decks that work well. Not to mention, just like in Magic, certain cards will be far more viable in draft than they are in standard play, opening up more options for different cards and strategies.

Like I said, if this is honestly what you think, then you clearly haven't seen what most cards do. Or the different ways they can interact. Yes, you can sit on cards in Hearthstone, but eventually you've played out your hand and at that point, it's just "fingers crossed" play whatever you top-deck and hope it's strong enough to give you an advantage and not a 2/1 Murloc. In SolForge the fact that you're always drawing 5 fresh cards means that there's meaningful choices to be made every turn, whether it's turn 2 or turn 25. One of my main decks right now tries to win (and generally does) sometime around turns 6-8. My other main deck generally can't win until turns 15-16, as you suggested, unless I draw extremely well. Of course depending on the matchup sometimes we go until turn 25+ and sometimes I win (or lose) around turn 5.

I'm suspicious that you're overestimating the variation in Hearthstone since all nine classes draw from the same pool of creatures (outside of a few exceptions), but I won't speak out of turn since I haven't played it enough to know for sure. Clearly you haven't played nearly enough SolForge to have any idea what top-level play is like, but it doesn't seem like I'm going to be able to convince you otherwise so I'll just say have fun playing Hearthstone and I'll keep having fun playing SolForge. Like I said, I still think Hearthstone is a really well put-together game, I just don't enjoy their attacker's advantage design philosophy.

Oh and I never said they would never balance cards, just that they wouldn't pull the trigger prematurely because these things have real value associated with them. Maybe you want a game where balance changes are thrown around haphazardly to see what sticks, but I'd rather every potential change be weighed very carefully. They're currently looking at a number of cards that aren't working out the way they had intended but they aren't being explicit about which ones, not that it would be a meaningful distinction to you since the cards you seem to think are the most broken are actually pretty low on the totem pole of cards to worry about.

@starvinggamer: I think it's just that SolForge really doesn't do that good a job of surfacing its depth relatively early. Should you decide to hold off on putting money in immeditely and be content with daily rewards your first couple of days end up really boring, frustrating and discouraging. The game kept me going past that because I found its irreverant pissing on most CCG conventions delightful. But it's sort of crazy how much the playing experience improves once you get some basic synergies going (that or I lucked out because I got some freeloader Savants and an Echo Wisp from a reward normal booster early on). And if you don't experience that it's easy to stereotype the game as being dumb and luck-based instead of the streamlined, tactically fascinating twist on conventions it actually seems to be.

The shock of playing those poorly constructed starter decks (not only the obvious and neccessary lack of power but the complete lack of interesting plays) when you come up against even middling advanced decks like Zombies + the faux-Deathtouch guy is massive. Of course they want you to crave more cards, that's fair and obvious, but they limit newbies to the point where they don't actually manage to show off their game well enough. Even a time-limited, stronger deck might be better than what they've got right now. That being said, the game's actually pretty damn cool. No more pay to win than Magic the Gathering, not less interesting except the unavoidable lack of a decent card pool.

@baal_sagoth: Yeah, I think the biggest problem comes from the fact that there is no matchmaking system in the game yet so you have new players getting thrown into the grinder against the maniacs like me that have thrown a decent chunk of change into the game. Hopefully that next update will hit some time in September before the more casual players burn out on the game. That said, I've managed to make a few Unheroic decks (only Common and Rare cards) that allow me to outplay some of the mid-tier decks that players with a handful of Legendaries have managed to slap together.

@starvinggamer: Ah yes, matchmaking. Good point. I was wondering if there was any in place already. It's so hard to tell initially if you're just that late to the party (and your opponents are as "weak" as it gets) or if it's just random. On the upside I get matches the instant I search for them which is not too shabby. But the depth to mock expensive but tactically not too sound decks certainly seems to be there. Good to hear you've had that experience! Another, final, slight concern might be the lack of timed turns. It's cool to have timed matches (I'd never play anything else) but sometimes opponents really take too damn long. Having to concede or wait 30 minutes in the worst cases isn't perfect. Minor nitpick though. Very interesting game - I'm excited to see where it'll be able to go.

Honestly, I like Solforge because it's so different, whereas Hearthstone looks like Magic with a few tweaks. I'll give Hearthstone a shot when (if?) I get into the beta, but for now, I see Solforge as my second-tier card game behind Magic.

Oh, also, @starvinggamer, from what I can tell through the wiki, it looks like they have buffed/nerfed some cards previously. Lifeshaper Savant, for example, seems to have been changed three times already.

Jeeze, I need to get into this game. Reading your posts has me pretty pumped for it. I just wasn't sure how much depth there would end up being. I was a backer for it back in the day since I love card games, but I've been too busy working on my own to play it.

I'm glad to see the Giant Bomb guys cover these. HearthStone looked good too.

Let me know what you think of the game I'm working on since it's seemingly in your wheel house, though I plan for it to have a Living Card Game style of DLC rather than booster packs.
http://www.youtube.com/2ndwindgames

Yeah, the fact that the starter decks are so horribly underpowered is kind of killing me right now. I've tried to incorporate a couple of the good cards I've received from the basic boosters and daily rewards I've gotten, but until you get some solid Heroics and Legendaries, you have no chance of winning any online matches.

Also, are pingers (the red guys that have an activated ability that can target damage at any creature) completely useless or is it just me? In Magic, you could keep them around because you don't have to attack or block with them, so you could purposely leave them out of combat, and they'd only die if your opponent targeted them specifically with a spell or ability. In SolForge, pingers just seem to die immediately since they're obviously annoying, so your opponent can just put a strong creature across from your pinger and kill it in fairly short order (possibly before you've ever gotten a chance to use its ping ability).

They can spiral out of control reasonably quickly because they have decent synergy with buffers on the board and other red creatures that can give the "aggressive" trait (basically "haste"). Sometimes that means you can throw out a lot of unexpected damage. Also, as with the MtG equivalent, they're solid fodder that lures out removal because you're basically saying: "Hey, opponent, handle this or you're going to be in trouble". I only have the Firefist Uranti (from the starter deck and one I got out of a booster) which are decent because they have that big butt at the price of almost needing buffs to become really vicious. That said, I haven't had a huge amount of success with them honestly. I don't know if it'll ever be meaningful to choose them over Flameshaper Savants, Darkshaper Savants or maybe even the Flamespeakers. The latter being very responsive since they just synergize with spells and don't need to be on the offensive for that.

@baal_sagoth: Yeah, my issue is that your opponent sort of has to be terrible for the pingers to ever spiral out of control (works great in AI games). The Firefist have a bunch of health, but still, if your opponent keeps playing creatures in that lane, every battle that happens on his turn will wear down the Firefist Uranti because you don't get a ping opportunity. Plus, a bunch of basic removal spells (Cull the Weak, that Witch lady, Botanimate, etc.) all just totally wreck the Firefist unless you buff him the same turn you play him.

Any thoughts on whether it's best to play the Firefist with General/Techticians, or just plain ol' buff cards from your hand? Also, you know the Light Brigade (totally not the right name), where if its power reaches a certain level through buffs, it gains armour? Is that card bugged right now, because if buffs from General/Techtician take it to that power level it doesn't get the armour, but if I cast Heavy Artillery or some other permanent spell, they do get the amour.

@baal_sagoth: Yeah, my issue is that your opponent sort of has to be terrible for the pingers to ever spiral out of control (works great in AI games). The Firefist have a bunch of health, but still, if your opponent keeps playing creatures in that lane, every battle that happens on his turn will wear down the Firefist Uranti because you don't get a ping opportunity. Plus, a bunch of basic removal spells (Cull the Weak, that Witch lady, Botanimate, etc.) all just totally wreck the Firefist unless you buff him the same turn you play him.

Any thoughts on whether it's best to play the Firefist with General/Techticians, or just plain ol' buff cards from your hand? Also, you know the Light Brigade (totally not the right name), where if its power reaches a certain level through buffs, it gains armour? Is that card bugged right now, because if buffs from General/Techtician take it to that power level it doesn't get the armour, but if I cast Heavy Artillery or some other permanent spell, they do get the amour.

@bisonhero:

Savants can work against anyone, not just bad players. Not sure if those are what you consider pingers though. If you have 3 Darkshapers for example, you'll have at least one of them up most of the time. I've found that the majority of people either can't deal with that or have a really hard time dealing with it. Savant decks are weak in the early stages of the game and the late stages because of how their abilities work.

Firefist Uranti is sort of crap. I've never had trouble with it.

Current favorite deck includes 3 Darkshapers, 2 Flameshapers, 2 Magma Hounds, Spiritflame Mystic, Flamespeaker, 2 Ashurian Mystics, Riftlasher, Aquatic Embrace, Icebound Fortitude, Epidemic, 2 Contagion Surge, 3 Ghastly Touch, 2 Uranti Bolt, 3 Hungering Strike, and some other stuff.

Got a whole bunch of great alloyin cards yesterday; can't use them at all because I don't have enough Technosmiths or other levelling cards. It is a 0-10 matchup with my other, much less elegant deck.

@bisonhero: Right now I'm tinkering with a red/ black build and use spells because I'm trying to activate multiple abilities simultaneously (Darkshaper, Flamespeaker, Firesfist, sadly haven't gotten a single Flameshaper). It works but inconsistently. If I'm not getting a solid board position early I'm only able to respond without regaining initiative quickly.

My card pool forced my hand though (getting lucky by receiving an Echo Wisp etc.) and thus my most efficient deck is Allyoin/ Utera. So I'm almost forced to play that, even though I don't love it, because that deck has the most answers to threats. But I'm in no position to say anything definitive unfortunately.