All people do in this game is spam Constructs

[[MOSS]-BurningUp]

I noticed the only strategy people do in this game is buy Constructs over and over again and spam their abilities

This game doesn't really take as much skill as I used to think it does. It's basically just a game about who can get the most Constructs first.


People don't even seem to really care about killing monsters and getting honor points they just rely on Construct spam and getting end game points off of having a lot of Constructs in play.

Is there a certain set with cards that evens this out and can combat this strategy?

[sPLOOSH]

There are so many different aspects to the game, it is easy to write off one specific aspect as "overpowered."

First and foremost, you have to react to what is on the field and what cards your opponent gets. If you know your opponent is massing constructs, you should prioritize buying those cards that will synergize with theirs. Also, if you simply can't afford any of the constructs that come up, perhaps you have too many junk cards in your deck (i.e. The average rune/attack power of all your cards combined is low because of all the apprentices, militia, and 1-cost cards clogging up your deck). Prioritizing "banish" cards is a staple of any deck building game, so you can get rid of dead weight.

Here are some things to consider when your opponent is rushing constructs.

-Perhaps you have already lost the game because you do not understand how the early game (first 2 shuffles) affects the rest of the match. Certain cards are just better than others at the beginning, and if you fall behind here it's very hard to recover. Just off the top of my head, make sure you have at least one mystic/heavy depending on the field, always buy early "banish from hand/discard" cards or better yeah "Banish and replace with heavy/mystic", and in Dawn of Champions the void and enlightened champions are great buy-ins because of their "banish" abilities.

-Prioritize cards that will banish cards from the field. If you see a high-priority construct, banish it. Field-control is so good in this game.

-Make sure your deck isn't full of junk, make sure you have some of those cards with "banish from hand/discard" effects. Oftentimes I will end my turn before buying Mechana initiate cards. Note that "draw" cards do not count towards clogging effect and "draw 2/3" cards actually reverse it.

-If your opponent is really good, copy his strategy and learn from it.

[Option]

Unfortunately Sploosh, none of your suggestions really address OP's issue. You can prioritize banish all you want, constructs are simply worth more honor points and are much harder to remove from the field. A strategy of banishing your own cards (and drawing more for that matter) can't change the luck of who buys constructs first.

I agree with OP. No matter how many honor points ahead of my opponent I am, if he has three or four high HP constructs, he wins every time. Prioritizing the purchase of constructs is all well and good, but if that's the ONLY thing needed to win then why bother having any other kind of card in the set?

[[MOSS]-BurningUp]

Originally posted by Option:

Unfortunately Sploosh, none of your suggestions really address OP's issue. You can prioritize banish all you want, constructs are simply worth more honor points and are much harder to remove from the field. A strategy of banishing your own cards (and drawing more for that matter) can't change the luck of who buys constructs first.

I agree with OP. No matter how many honor points ahead of my opponent I am, if he has three or four high HP constructs, he wins every time. Prioritizing the purchase of constructs is all well and good, but if that's the ONLY thing needed to win then why bother having any other kind of card in the set?

Yeah that is my main problem with them I fail to understand why they are worth so many honor points.

People just use them as a way to win without really having any sort of strategy on how to use them. They just use them for the honor points. Constructs are supposed to have some sort of strategy behind them as far as I can tell.

Why spend the time to build up your regular combat points and kill monsters when all you have to do is spam constructs to win the game?

It just seems like a design flaw to me

[Option]

Originally posted by MOSS-BurningUp:

Constructs are supposed to have some sort of strategy behind them as far as I can tell.

Why spend the time to build up your regular combat points and kill monsters when all you have to do is spam constructs to win the game?

It just seems like a design flaw to me

Worse is that WHO gets to buy constructs is inherently random. I can draw every card in my deck twice but if the last card I purchase drops down a great construct and my opponent purchases it first... GG I guess?

Also, some constructs don't seem to do a whole lot while others are a HUGE boon to resources gained each turn. I have seen games turned vastly around because my opponent got a great construct first (for whatever reason) and they never have a problem purchasing cards FOR THE REST OF THE GAME. No matter what hand they draw, the resources from their constructs outweigh anything I'm able to draw and they swoop up the board every turn.

I understand some element of the game is random- of course- but when you have cards that swing the whole game so effortlessly (and are incredibly hard to counter apart from random, marginal luck) it takes most of the fun out of it. And, as you say, it makes all game strategy one dimensional.

Having played other physical deck building games I thought I had an idea of what to expect but I didn't expect this.

[Cryptomancer]

There's another essential point that's missing from this debate. The greatest thing about constructs is not the honor points they give, but once you play them they're removed from your deck. This deck thinning strategy synergizes perfectly with Banish allowing you to cycle through your other good cards faster. Constructs are essentially free points once you play them.

[Aquillion]

Having played other physical deck building games I thought I had an idea of what to expect but I didn't expect this.

Part of the issue is that Ascension was a relatively early deckbuilding game; the other games you played may have copied the parts of it that worked while fixing the parts that didn't. In particular, most games with things similar to constructs now provides easy, reliable ways for opponents to destroy them.

That said, construct decks are susceptible to being blown out by mass construct-destruction effects, even if that's a bit luck based.

Why spend the time to build up your regular combat points and kill monsters when all you have to do is spam constructs to win the game?

IMHO the real problem here is that monsters are unreliable - sometimes you just don't see any in the center row (and the best anti-monster support cards tend to rely on killing stuff in the center row specifically.)

Originally posted by Sploosh:

First and foremost, you have to react to what is on the field and what cards your opponent gets. If you know your opponent is massing constructs, you should prioritize buying those cards that will synergize with theirs.

This is one of those things that seems good in theory but is actually, most of the time, a terrible idea in practice. You're going to be doing more damage to your deck than you do to theirs (they're still going to have a workable deck with a solid theme, just minus a few cards you sniped; you're going to have a jumble of unworkable jank.) The only time you should buy cards deliberately to prevent an enemy from getting them is if they also fit your deck. If you want to deny cards to your opponent, get effects that banish them instead.

I agree with OP. No matter how many honor points ahead of my opponent I am, if he has three or four high HP constructs, he wins every time. Prioritizing the purchase of constructs is all well and good, but if that's the ONLY thing needed to win then why bother having any other kind of card in the set?

If your opponent has "three or four high HP constructs", that means he also had a powerful rune generation engine to buy all of them. And he couldn't actually have gotten there without investing in other stuff. The constructs aren't the reason he won - the cards that bought him those constructs were what won him the game.