Spy Cards tournament could use some improvements

[WebBowser]

So I love the spy cards quest. Exploring around, finding the masters, seeing their cool decks, even getting trounced every now and then, it was all a ton of fun. Then I hit the spy card tournament and went 3-0 with no resistance. I figured it was a fluke, so I tried again, then I tried with another deck, and another, and pretty much no matter what I did, I simply did not lose in the spy tournament. As far as I can tell, your opponents use decks that are randomly generated, and more to the point, poorly randomly generated. So instead of the tournament feeling like a big challenge against 3 skilled opponents, it instead feels like I'm just walking through some tutorials on how to play spy cards. I would see things like Heavy Drone B-33 in a deck with zero robots, or Zasp in a deck that doesn't contain Mothiva. In a game so heavily focused on tribal synergies, this is just insulting, especially when compared to the masters they have supposedly beaten in order to enter the tournament in the first place, who did have well designed and thought out decks.

The easiest way to fix this is instead of trying to randomly generate decks on the fly (this is really hard to do), make a set of 10 or so pre-built decks and have each opponent pick one out. That way, each opponent is guaranteed to have a functioning deck. You can even have the decks be thematic and tell stories, which is something you don't get with auto-generated decks.

Here's a few sample decks:

Heart of the Cards

Boss: Spider
Miniboss 1: Mothiva
Miniboss 2: Zasp

Jellyshroom * 2
Inchias * 2
Numbnail * 2
Underling * 2
Wasp Trooper * 3
Golden Seedling * 1

I wanted to make at least 1 deck entirely out of cards the player was practically guaranteed to have when they unlocked the spy cards quest, a "starter deck" if you will. This low to the ground deck doesn't have a ton of synergy, but the random golden seedling can definitely catch some players off guard and make for some memorable moments.


Tech Card Palooza

Boss: Devourer
Miniboss 1: Riz
Miniboss 2: Primal Weevil

Weevil * 4
Numbnail * 3
Flowerling * 1
Warden * 2
Mimic Spider * 2

After multiple tournament playthroughs, I noticed that Devourer is a very common card in the tournament. It's also just a really good card. So I would be remiss not to build at least one deck featuring the devourer, as well as a bunch of other "tech cards" that I found interesting.


Oh No, Wasps!

Boss: Wasp King
Miniboss 1: General Ultimax
Miniboss 2: Monsier Scarlet

Wasp Scout * 5
Wasp Trooper * 3
Wasp Bomber * 2
Wasp Driller * 2

Considering the sheer number of wasp cards in the game, and the role they play in the story, it'd feel more than a little weird not to have a dedicated wasp deck represented at the tournament. The only drawback is that having Ultimax and Wasp King in their might be a little spoilery, but Wasp King is such an obvious antagonist that I personally think having them here is fine.



But yeah, making decks is pretty easy. Way easier then trying to randomly generate decks, and it'll both improve the player experience by making the tournament battles more memorable while also upping the difficulty in a disappointing "final challenge". Obviously some AI improvements would be welcome, but not at all necessary because a well built deck is also easier to pilot, even for an AI.

[Songbird]

I mean, for all the claims about synergies, I don't think you can actually make a deck with all these fancy effect cards that actually beats a deck that literally just curves out with 2-4 cost cards that do damage equal to their cost, with Mothira + Zasp and a very straightforward boss card. It's not a particularly deep system.

The thematic decks are definitely a cool idea, though.

[WebBowser]

Originally posted by Songbird:

I mean, for all the claims about synergies, I don't think you can actually make a deck with all these fancy effect cards that actually beats a deck that literally just curves out with 2-4 cost cards that do damage equal to their cost, with Mothira + Zasp and a very straightforward boss card. It's not a particularly deep system.

The thematic decks are definitely a cool idea, though.

Sure, and you really don't need to. You just need decks that function on a basic level. A deck that runs Heavy Drone B-33 with no robots is a bad deck, because that card basically does nothing without bots.

As for your post, numbnail can actually mess up a lot of vanilla "play on curve" decks. If you really wanna break the game, run any amount of life gain with cards like Kali and Scarlet. But as I said earlier, the point here isn't to make the decks great or even competitive, it's to make them memorable. The master's decks were memorable because they had a theme and were designed with intent. The tournament decks are not memorable because they weren't designed with anything resembling intent.

[Archmage MC]

With the new card, you just really need a deck that stays on curve, but doesn't have anything above a 5 or 6 to deal with numb cards. Once your boss card pops up, play it and win a free round. its kinda funny.