Since there is no place to put my thoughts on the game, I'm just going to use this since everyone else is. Hopefully they read these comments, although I won't hold my breath lol.
First of all, I like the game. I do. I just have gripes about it and some blatantly flawed things just frustrate me to wanting to exit the game.
Elusive needs to be fixed. I play against it 75% of the time in ranked because there's no reason not to play it. All of the cards are undercosted and take way too much effort to deal with if the elusive player has half a brain. Even their "solution" to it is flawed: there's a tip in the game that says "You can use challenger cards to take out elusive units" or something like that. Yeah, so you want me to take the damage from their creature, and then have a minimal chance of trading a 1 for 1 in combat when every elusive deck runs a ton of combat tricks? No guys, that's not how you solve the issue lol. I've been playing competitive card games, including magic, for 15+ years and that is NOT a solution at all. Elusive shouldn't even be in the game in my opinion. It creates non-interactive game states where both players just ignore everything and try to race and that's just miserable. That's a big reason I uninstalled hearthstone for this game.
Look, I get it, the game is in "open beta" (which is dev speak for a fully functional and finished game where they can't be blamed for balance issues because of the word "beta"). Some things need balancing. I just hope they don't take too long to get it done because I'm literally already sick of this game. The game itself is designed well for the most part, even though I still think you should be able to double and triple block something, but there's so many unbalanced cards.
Another example is Avalanche. The card is a clunker and a half. I've taken 5-9 damage BEFORE i can even cast the spell to deal with their small creatures (and that's if they dont counter it or pump their team, which happens a lot). Bare minimum the card needs to be 'Fast', I think it needs to deal 3 damage because 2 barely kills anything relevant and at 4 mana it's just too slow.
Freeze mechanics are good and I've turned games around with them, but sometimes I need to play them just to stay alive for 2 turns and it's like just waiting to die. Most of the Fjord spells cost too much. Whoever made the warmothers call is trying to troll everyone lol.
"The Undying" needs a rework. I don't want this card to just get nerfed, I want it either taken out of the game or completely redesigned. The card is completely ridiculous. And not because it can just attack without any downside, that's not what concerns me. It's the way it turns on every other overpowered mechanic of shadow isles. Every card that requires a sacrifice is undercosted and does something very powerful, and cards like The Undying (and other last breath cards) make it so their whole deck is strictly more powerful than anything you are doing against it. Along those lines, Hecarim is insane for a 6 mana creature. Definitely needs a bump up in mana cost.
Overall, what I'm noticing is that Aggro, whether it's hyper or midrange, is basically the way it feels like the developers want people to play. Control decks that are spell heavy are just plain bad. You have to have 20 creatures in your control deck to contend, and then it just feels like a slow midrange value deck and not a control deck. I've tried a lot of different ways of playing the game, and spell-heavy control seems to be the worst thing you can be doing. In order for this to be a healthy game, there needs to be at least a couple VERY good control decks represented in the format, and right now there's none. I understand decks that drag the game out for 25 minutes and don't allow the other player to play the game may seem "miserable", but you have to remember that control strategies are inherently disadvantaged simply due to the fact that they have to have the answers for threats. Any time one deck presents the must-deal-with threats, they are advantaged. Every aggro deck is automatically favored from the start of the game.
I'm not some die hard control player either. I played midrange, ramp, and combo in magic. I rarely played a counterspell. I just don't feel like playing non-stop phone booth fighting matches. I'd like to actually play a game that requires thought and interaction.
