Sigil screwed? Read this

[aardvarkpepper]

Sigil Screws I'm Addressing With This Post:

1. Drew Nothing But Sigils
2. Didn't Draw Enough Sigils
3. Didn't Draw the Right Type of SIgil

==

Now yeah I'm not a mathematician, I'm not good at explaining stuff, and I do go on at length. But I'm writing this because maybe someone will find it useful. Then maybe Santa Claus will see I Did The Right Thing and give me coal which I can burn to keep warm because I'm cold and don't want to turn up the heat because it's cheaper just to use a blanket. OK jokes aside (I really do use a blanket though) -

If you're just starting off you don't have all the nice draw-cards or whatever that help even out your deck. But remember even if another player has more than you, probably someone has more than *them* too. So you really just do the best you can with what you have and try to have fun.

That said -

1. Drew Nothing But Sigils? Use Some Draw Cards! If you draw nothing but sigils, maybe you need to put stuff into your deck that helps you draw cards. Suppose there's a card that draws sigils. Don't want it for your deck? But maybe you do after all, because if you draw a sigil, you get better odds that your next card *isn't* a sigil. Doesn't change your chances astronomically, but if you build a LOT of card draw into your deck, eventually you're going to get out of that mana pocket.

2. Didn't Draw Enough Sigils? Build Your Deck To Have an Early Game! Or let's say you didn't draw enough sigils. For whatever reason, this game lets you automatically draw a minimum of two sigils on the mulligan, which I think is amazingly generous. Well there's a load of 1 and 2 drops out there, and you can pretty much guarantee 2 mana so - there you go. Build an early core that revolves around *only* having 2 mana, build in some draw in those 1-2 drops, and you ought to be able to draw into some sigils. Don't just load your deck down with expensive 3 and 4 drops, or even 6-7-8 drops. Sure those cards are really cool, but while you're waiting to cast them, you're getting wrecked. So build your deck to have an early game.

3. Didn't Draw the Right Type of Sigil? So you built your deck to be 50% Fire and 50% Shadow and you're always getting the Fire sigils when you have Shadow cards, and of course to balance that out you only get Shadow sigils when you have Fire cards. OMG.

Imagine you have a coin. It has heads (H) and tails (T). Now let's say you have TWO coins. If you don't actually have coins because you're poor, just try to imagine you have a couple different coins (say a penny and a quarter). Now if you flip both coins in the air, you can get four results. 1) penny heads quarter heads, 2) penny heads quarter tails, 3) penny tails quarter heads, 4) penny tails quarter tails.

Well that's like the shadow and fire balance. If you get both heads then you got fire sigils and fire cards. If you got both tails then you got shadow sigils and shadow cards. If you got a head then a tail you got fire sigils but shadow cards; if you got a tail then a head you got shadow sigils but fire cards.

So how do you fix that? Assuming you have a limited budget &c.

Well - instead of using a 50/50 mix, use a 66/33 mix, or a 80/20 mix. Say, have 80% of your deck's sigils as shadow, and 80% of your deck's cards as shadow. Then you'll have a lot less dead draws. Imagine that your coins are weighted so they land heads up most of the time. Maybe you can't get double tails to come up much at all, but you have a much better chance of getting double heads - *especially since you have a mulligan*

So let's say your deck has 80% of its sigils as shadows. Now let's say that your deck's entire early game in the 1-4 drop range uses exclusively only 1 shadow sigil requirements. Suddenly you don't *need* fire sigils because you don't plan on casting fire cards until the 5+ drop range which is quite late in the game. You can survive quite comfortably on shadow because that's what your deck is *built* to do. Then you can come out with a splash of fire, and use that fire to handle the stuff your shadow couldn't.

With such a deck, all you really need is 1 shadow sigil in your opening hand to make things comfrotable. Then if you draw fire sigils, it really doesn't matter, because 80% of your deck runs on shadow, so you can use that 1 shadow you do have to cast your cards. Maybe some of your cards have a two-shadow or three-shadow requirement. Hopefully not TOO many of your low-drop cards because that means you're relying on getting a lot of shadow early, which pushes the safety limits. But with 80% shadow, can you be pretty assured of having the 3-shadow requirement on a card by the time you reach 8 power? Yeah, especially if you put in some mana fixers - like that 2-drop shadow cards that does 1 damage lifesteal that lets you draw a shadow sigil, or that 1-drop generic card that lets you get a sigil of your choice.

So if you're building a multicolor deck remember - don't use a 50/50 mix, use like 67/33 or 80/20, and try to keep the sigil requirements of the off color very low. You don't want to really run an 80/20 deck and have a 3-sigil requirement in your off color for a 5-drop. You're almost certainly not going to have that unless you run a load of sigil draw or sigil fixers (i.e. cards that ensure you can get the color sigil you want. But you CAN run those . . .)

==

Next up: What Happens If You Put In Too Many Sigil Fixers And Spend All Your Power Drawing Cards and Not Controlling the Board . . . >.> (lol)

Basically you don't want to spend ALL your power and use a load of cards trying to fix your sigil color / sigil amount requirements. Otherwise your opponent can just drop some low-drop cards on the board and hit you a bunch of times then you lose, because you were spending your time and energy and cards just trying to get more energy or different energy or whatever. You need board control too.

Ideally you have a high-powered deck that doesn't need *any* sigil color / sigil amount fixers because all the fixing is built into the deck. Like imagine you have loads of sigils that produce multiple colors, or you're using a load of Strangers that produce sigil colors for you &c. If your sigil color or sigil amount issues are pretty much taken care of by incidental effects on cards in the deck, you don't need to spend time and energy and cards on effects that are *dedicated* to doing *nothing but fixing* (like that 1-drop that draws a sigil to your hand - seems great but you do use up 1 energy casting that card, and drawing it means you didn't draw something that might have saved you or killed your opponent on a crucial turn.)

Advice is free.

Well-edited and considered advice with cute diagrams and things . . . that's costly

[romengan]

nice post
i personally use 28 lands plus 4 draws
but most games come down to topdecking tiebreaker cards

its funny though when you draw all lands or no lands though
and not too many decks can support massive draws other than seek power which i highly recommend

[Name Lips]

We know how to build decks dude. Nobody's playing this game who hasn't been playing CCGs for ages. We know what card draw is and how to implement it in a deck, how to balance cards of different costs, etc.

Eternal just feels uncanny in the bad luck department. I know there's no logical way to argue that. If 1/3 of my deck is sigils, I should be getting sigils about 1/3 of the time. My initial draws should tend towards 2 or 3 sigils in each hand.

Maybe I should start writing things down to see if it's just confirmation bias.

But it seems like an uncannily large percentage of the time, I'll have cards that cost 3 or 4, and be stuck on 1 or 2 sigils. For the entire game. Until I'm dead. Sure, I might be able to toss out a couple low-end critters, but once they're dead I'm just sitting there hitting next turn, hoping the RNG will bless me with enough power to cast something.

I think that's what upsets people -- the feeling that when this happens, there's nothing they can do. They're powerless. Death is inevitable, they might as well concede and move on to the next game.

Maybe we've all been playing too much Hearthstone and we're spoiled by getting a free mana every turn. At least in Hearthstone, we know if we survive 4 turns we WILL be able to play that 4-cost card we drew.

[aardvarkpepper]

Originally posted by Name Lips:

We know how to build decks dude.

Originally posted by Name Lips:

Eternal just feels uncanny in the bad luck department. I know there's no logical way to argue that. If 1/3 of my deck is sigils, I should be getting sigils about 1/3 of the time. My initial draws should tend towards 2 or 3 sigils in each hand.

I believe it was Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) that wrote "Everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it."

Well what happens when someone DOES show up and want to do things about things?

They get dirty looks. Because doing things involves work, and admitting that someone was maybe doing things a little wrong in the first place. Or maybe there are some more charitable reasons that someone could think of. Regardless, it is what it is.

Oh well, I'll keep on keeping on, and you can keep on keeping on. just have fun.

[CANADIANEH]

Originally posted by Name Lips:

We know how to build decks dude. Nobody's playing this game who hasn't been playing CCGs for ages. We know what card draw is and how to implement it in a deck, how to balance cards of different costs, etc.

Eternal just feels uncanny in the bad luck department. I know there's no logical way to argue that. If 1/3 of my deck is sigils, I should be getting sigils about 1/3 of the time. My initial draws should tend towards 2 or 3 sigils in each hand.

Maybe I should start writing things down to see if it's just confirmation bias.

But it seems like an uncannily large percentage of the time, I'll have cards that cost 3 or 4, and be stuck on 1 or 2 sigils. For the entire game. Until I'm dead. Sure, I might be able to toss out a couple low-end critters, but once they're dead I'm just sitting there hitting next turn, hoping the RNG will bless me with enough power to cast something.

Yup always to many or to few but never what it should be when you put the math to it. I lose 75% of my games because of the dealing. Like you said, when you have 1/3 or I've even tried 40-35 split with units and sigils and still come up with the same result, just seems pretty screwy. I cant count the times I've had only 25 sigils and still have 4 or more sigils come out in a row, then follow that up with 3-4 times in one game like come on that's total BS and don't mean brown sugar lol.

[CANADIANEH]

The worst thing about this game is we purely have a love hate relationship, I love her but she hates the cr#p out of me lol. If someone knows of someone with a good video tutorial on deck building so we could fix this problem, we would truly appreciate it thanks. Please, hit me up with a name or video, I really need to resolve this love hate relationship her and I have going on here.

[Etherium]

1. Drew Nothing But Sigils
2. Didn't Draw Enough Sigils
3. Didn't Draw the Right Type of SIgil

The issue is all of these things can happen randomly to the same deck. How do you balance not getting enough power and getting to much in the SAME DECK without losing effectiveness? Overall, you can't fix this type of broken.

1) Draw cards make sense for some type of decks but not what I play. My deck is strained as it is I can't afford to slap in some draw 2's for 3 power. I'm struggling to keep up at turns 2,3,4,5, using what I am dealt that I don't have time to be playing draw cards. Your likely to only get 1 of 4 in your deck (if you do even draw it early) so that means you ended up with 1 extra card overall on a draw 2. If I've got 4 power ahead of me(and that is the complaint we see) then a single draw card is not going to help.
2) Having early game units for me has become important realization. That includes power 2 units. The issue I hate seeing is getting your 2 power and then not seeing another for 4 cards down the line. Even worse is when you don't have any low level units that hand, you are truly screwed getting pecked to death with half your health gone before drawing another power. The problem can occur with having 3 power. You've played your 2 and 3 right on schedule. Then you are locked out of the game because you can't play any of your 4 or 5 power cards for 4 turns. I'm not going to over stuff my deck with low units to avoid this. I have an appropriate amount that works fine most of the time as a buffer against this. Beyond that it just seriously bites sitting there.
3) Not getting the right color for me isn't to much of an issue though it does happen. At least in this area we can mitigate the odds without sacrificing our decks by using multi power cards. I also like the draw any power of your choice. Eventually this will crop up which again, sucks. We shouldn't have to endure losing games to chance. It should be due to game play. You talk about choosing the right amount per color. That is common sense that even the game auto adjusts the ratio on it's own.It's not like we are setting our decks up incorrectly therefore this issue exists. I have a green blue deck with 1 blue power card because it only uses 4 blue cards all costing 1. I use the draw any power of your choice (4 chances) to get that 1 card and I am good, else I always pick green since I have a lot of cards that get better the more green I have. Or I can draw anywhere from 4-8 multi power cards as well. That's anywhere from 9-13 I have devoted to draw that 1 blue as early as possible and it works well, but not always. If not, I am stuck with cards I can't use. So it's not like we are all doing things wrong. Chance is chance.

Thanks for the tips. I can tell you really tried to provide solution. In practice, it's not quite working out.

[lobotomix]

i completely agree. something that should be an outlier is a common situation in eternal. more often than not i am in a situation that either i draw only sigils, or i do not draw them at all. if the rule is 1/3 of the deck should be sigils, than something like that should happen rarely. try that with physical deck, and see the outcome. i played a lot of mtg, both digital and physical, and something like that really is an outlier situation. there should be some algorithm that prevents those situations. and it's not about deck building, cause it happens with every deck i have, and i see that my opponents are struggling with that. i love this game, but it sure is frustrating sometimes.

[kkemick]

Originally posted by Name Lips:

Maybe we've all been playing too much Hearthstone and we're spoiled by getting a free mana every turn. At least in Hearthstone, we know if we survive 4 turns we WILL be able to play that 4-cost card we drew.

Free mana every turn sounds awesome. I may have to give Hearthstone a try. I think Eternal would be much better if it implented that. Losing by turn 4 is totally accetable as long as I had a chance to do something.

[raythr]

its the game system problem and not a deckbuilding/playing one

[Kenedori]

Originally posted by raythr:

its the game system problem and not a deckbuilding/playing one

The more cards you have the more power screw there is. New game same old RNG rants.

[raythr]

Originally posted by Kenedori:

Originally posted by raythr:

its the game system problem and not a deckbuilding/playing one

The more cards you have the more power screw there is. New game same old RNG rants.

oh gosh, maybe reducing the deck size would fix that ?

[Kenedori]

Originally posted by raythr:

Originally posted by Kenedori:

The more cards you have the more power screw there is. New game same old RNG rants.

oh gosh, maybe reducing the deck size would fix that ?

Yes it would. MtG started with a 40 card deck. To make the game play longer thay extended the deck size. The larger the sample size the greater the chance of geting runs of the same card.

[dracul]

The game seems rigged to go through periodic phases where it will either refuse to give you more than 2 lands, or it matches you up with the perfect counter to whatever you're running, and draws them in perfect tempo order.

For example, lets say you've had about 8-10 games with deck A where you've been drawing on curve and the deck is effective - after X games or X time, suddenly you cant draw more than 2 lands while the AI is on 7+ lands. Oh, and if you restart, the first game will be another hose and/or another perfect counter match up.

Its like you have to periodically go away from the gauntlet and do something else while the god-mode algorithm works itself through.

[Blackcompany]

Mana Flooded? Mana Screwed?

Just go play a game whose foundational systems were invented in the past 20 years, by someone other than a mathmetician who was bored between D&D sessions. There are plenty of games to play now that care more about fun than geek cred...dont fall into this antiquated clone-trap.

Go play something fun.

[Blackcompany]

Originally posted by lobotomix:

i completely agree. something that should be an outlier is a common situation in eternal. more often than not i am in a situation that either i draw only sigils, or i do not draw them at all. if the rule is 1/3 of the deck should be sigils, than something like that should happen rarely. try that with physical deck, and see the outcome. i played a lot of mtg, both digital and physical, and something like that really is an outlier situation. there should be some algorithm that prevents those situations. and it's not about deck building, cause it happens with every deck i have, and i see that my opponents are struggling with that. i love this game, but it sure is frustrating sometimes.

I gave the game a second try recently, on mobile. It lasted six games. Why?

Mana screw. Mana flood. Mana Screw. Mana Flood. Playable Hand. Mana screw/flood repeat.

Uninstalled.

Its frankly absurd that five out of six games, my opener was unplayable both before AND after the mulligan. And before someone cries about a newbie and deck building, these were the Story decks for the tutorial. Something is wrong with this game. Bad wrong.