A new Epic Neutral Minion, Son of Hodir, has been revealed!

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A new Common Rogue Minion, SP-3Y3-D3R, has been revealed!

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A new Legendary Neutral Location, Prison of Yogg-Saron, has been revealed!

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A new Legendary Mage Minion, Norgannon, has been revealed!

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A new Common Paladin Minion, Noble Minibot, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Mage Minion, Inquisitive Creation, has been revealed!

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A new Legendary Hunter Minion, Hodir, Father of Giants, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Warlock Location, Forge of Wills, has been revealed!

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A new Epic Neutral Minion, Fate Splitter, has been revealed!

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A new Legendary Druid Minion, Eonar, the Life-Binder, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Druid Spell, Embrace of Nature, has been revealed!

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A new Common Neutral Minion, Cyclopian Crusher, has been revealed!

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I'm already masters in eternal just like last season with nothing else to prove or do

So let's kill some time by theory crafting a new transform deck that doesn't suck.

So every ambush card can be played as a 2 mana 2/2

Which guarantees that you can play witchdoctor on 3 to buff your flipped transform unit

The big one is obviously butterfly when I transform for 4 mana I summon an additional 4/2 and then if you duplicate with Chamillion you should summon an additional 4/2.

So on mana 4 you should have 1 drop and then 4 4/2s how good is that exactly it certainly is an agressive and fast board state with the attack token

But what can other decks do to stop it literally just 2/1 spam a bunch that would suck

I'm not sold yet I really really want transform to be a thing and not a giant meme but here we are

Thats not even mentioning that if someone  goes for a big transform play can't you just mystic shot the 2/2? Like yes prey boosts your 2/2 to a 4/4 to counter mystic but you won't always draw it, so yeah I don't know if Nadalie goes in transform at all.

I dont know what she goes in, some cards seem like they are just good another deny on a cheap body is gross and it's a burst deny that cant be denied. That's money there obviously no duh

But beyond the burst deny why are you playing ambush, and Natalie herself seems strong but the rest of her kit looks meh?

So I'm one of the only players in the world who has played a decent number of games with old transform (bandle - freijord)

Basically you aim to combo ping bird with sejuani for infinite free lockdown. But the problem was there are no good transform cards in freijord.

So now instead of aiming for a strong champ effect  namely infinite frostbite you just build a beater deck with gnar Natalie?

Very hard to evaluate that on its own merits right now it will all depend in how strong the ambush followers are. Like do you want to buff them by 1/1 and give them impact, do you want to duplicate them with chameleon.

What's their transform effect or are they just beat sticks?

It will all depend but it's cool to see transform get support after gnar a first release champ for bandlewood

Last time we talked about Ionia being broken boo but yeah for those players.

Let's talk about some good stuff

1. Dragon Prince Grinzo - holly molly my little mermaid is gonna turbo so god damn fast. She already uses those bilgewater summon 1 mana creature spells now she attunes each time? Meeeeep

2. Snowy razor claw, I don't care I like this card. Gangplank Sejuani is such a boring deck now you can try to slip in a little late game value if you want. 

3. Neeko - good origin I don't care how strong she is, she let's you build new deck types thats what origins should do

4. Portal scholar - I hate Nora decks but this is exactly what she needed. The deck had a weakness on the 2 mana to 5 mana gap and this fits that perfectly

5. Age of dragons - targon freijord ramp was already my favorite version of ramp and this card is awesome...but Ionia will make it unplayable till nerfs

6. Sump monument - if you give your nexus tough does sump monument make you immortal? Kinda fun to play around with as a meme for highlights

7. Epic scrap traction - you guys know this card is great not much more to say

8. Siren song - 4 mana and now your husks can't be pinged not bad a bit expensive

9. Shiers - please stop giving hallowed support they don't need it it's like the most ubiquitous and powerful archetype in the game as far as keywords go

Overall I'm glad the set isn't just hey let's print the best Ionia cards ever on top of giving them their own tavern keeper last expansion.

At first thats exactly what it will be but when the dust settles we will be able to play a new Zoo archetype.

CIDACBIGAEAQMBQ6AEDAGKICAIBQGBADAEBQEDBIAQBAMFQ2EY5AEAIBAMSQCBYDBYAA

68% winrate in eternal.

Keep in mind that this version unlike mine doesn't even run any new cards at all 

There is zero reason this deck should be performing this well except 1

Bot spam and Jax are average decks...like I said rofl.

We are soooo meme focused in eternal that a bog standard pirate aggro list from 10 years ago win 68% of games in eternal right now.

Plz just run good decks its easy 

It doesnt take a mathematician to see declining viewerships for LOR on YouTube 

Graphlr going from 100k last year to 10k per video this year 

Mogwai going from 300 k to 30k

And I wanted to explore a little why that is.

Part of it is that I think rotation was to blame, and not rotation itself but the general botched handling of eternal ladder.

Having legacy players have to wait 3 months just to play their favorite format online competitively was a dumb move.

Furthermore Having 3/4 of the community tell them eternal isn't a real format and was just a dumb mass hallucination we all were having split the community down the middle in a really bad way.

So yes a 90% decline in long term viewership as a direct result of LOR's poor handling of rotation was likely the cause.

On the plus side if you were patient...like insanely patient you got to play eternal ladder again and it was just as good or better than it was last season

But players aren't patient they'll hop to the next thing in a heartbeat and thats what happened. Sorry guys it doesn't matter if you love standard or eternal the botched transition sundered the community and it will take a long time to recover.

When it comes to card reveals I always like to look at the miscellaneous offerings and see how they impact eternal. Without going over everything let's talk about a few that caught my eye.

1. Scrutinizing Sargent- 5 mana summon two 3/3 bodies sometimes a 4/4 this is very good it does everything elites want at a very cheap price. Could single handedly bring back the archetype in eternal

2. Rejuvenating breeze - okay so Ionia gets an eye of nakaboros. Draw 2 heal 3 health at burst this is now the best draw card in the game and is probably broken and needs to be focus speed. Ryze will be unstopable now so good for Ryze players because he was awful before, but now will be super OP.

3. All seeing oracle - so you now get to counter decimate for 1 mana right? Not sure how that isn't going to single handedly destroy aggro, like I know they were like 60% winrate but jeze they just got shot in the head.

I see Ionia being very very very very strong after this expansion, and unfortunately when Ionia is super strong it generally leads to people leaving the game. So expect post expansion nerfs like a month in.

https://mobalytics.gg/blog/lor-best-eternal-decks/

1. Bot spam - good deck that I'm increasingly less impressed with as time goes by. Song spinner can high roll or low roll on 7, you can level Samara to give bots rally or you can wiff...so basically an average ping heavy combo deck

2. Jax Orn - got one new card otherwise it's just your Archetypal midrange beat stick deck. Easily countered, easily beaten.

3. Timelines - not S tier or even on the tier list. Timelines I still think should be on banablaster, mtg teaches us that having a body that kills on 4 is good and it's no different in LOR

4. Aphelios - gravatum! Pretty sure the deck does other things but I haven't seen it so it's the bide your time and gravatum and ping till everything is dead deck...not A tier I don't think

5. Pirate aggro - putting pirate aggro as the top aggro deck of eternal is correct. But they aren't using my S tier build so it's only A tier.

6. Temo Zoe - love this deck it's very sneaky and counters what's good. Don't forget to open pass till turn 3 and then buff temo Zoe, and play at the same time for the attack.

7. Temo Tristana - has a tiny tiny play rate to the point you won't see it. But atrocity tristana is a deck just not one anyone is playing.

8. Lux - doing very poorly right now

9. Draven - people gave him like a 5 second chance when the new card was released and he immediately plummeted in win rate.

10. Ryze - ryze is doing worse than he ever has in eternal right now, play anything else

So in conclusion I don't believe Majin or Mobalytics are presenting a complete picture of the eternal meta right now.

They mostly bounce between meme lists that are overperforming and then bounce off them when they get countered.

Bot spam isn't a big deal, Jax isn't a big deal, timelines isn't even on the map.

Want to know what's a big deal?

Aggro decks with a 60% climb rate thats right 60% the highest aggro has ever performed in LOR history.

That sounds S tier to me...just maybe idk

That is really a bummer indeed. I wonder if the reason to replace Classic was strictly because the user interface did not allow it or whether it was also motivated by a financial one.

The recipe for making this new mode successful is having enough participating players which have to buy old expansion packs if they do not already own them yet. 

I've always had this problem in LOR

Essentially you climb from stone to masters with your off meta lists and then you're done.

You've proved yourself...you've won.

There is no more counter play, no more I told you so, no more anything

I've done this twice now where I did what people thought couldn't be done and I did it in a way people said shouldn't be done.

So what's next?

What challenge remains for me?

Idk

Seems about time that we have a thread to talk about the random games we've all been playing!

I'll get things started off for June 2023.

I've been dabbling in Path of Exile, aiming to get some more seasonal challenges done while we wait for Exilecon to announce the new season (and more PoE 2 info). I also recently was playing Diablo 4, though didn't really enjoy the experience (it will be better in a couple years certainly).

I've also had an opportunity to check out the new F1 23 game which feels like a solid improvement over F1 22. The new lighting looks fantastic and all the cars look better too. Small UI updates and overall better menu flow makes navigating with a steering wheel better. Regretfully I didn't get to write up a review for the game yet.

I'm hoping to get a chance to login to World of Warcraft Classic over the next couple of weeks since Midsummer Fire Festival is taking place and those achievements will be needed for that sweet Violet Proto-Drake =D

Also that Final Fantasy demo is calling my name. This weekend was absolute chaos though so I didn't get a chance to touch it.

1. Bott spam - it's a deck where you play cheap spells and then you play free 6/6 quick attackers. Wins 55% of games but a lot of that is the misplay and annoyance factor. I don't think it's the top 1% deck of the format more so just the best ping spam deck right now

2. Jax Orn - one of the best midrange decks in the game it does midrange things at 56%

3. Jayce lux - only sporting like a 51% winrate there are better control lists for sure

4. Ryze - down to 47% it is not a 4th place deck anymore it's not even a top 10 deck anymore when you high roll

5. Annie jhin - down to 53% compared to pirate aggro 58% it's bad

6. Elusive Spam- 54% winrate has good tech and good matchups but also big flaws

Honestly, pretty much everything else is down to sub 50% so you're better off playing your own decks for this meta 

Because we aren't in a two deck eternal meta it isn't Jax or ping spam that's stupid

It's Jax, ping spam, elusive spam, aggro spam, and every single actually good deck people have found yet cuz they keep trying to find that next big meme list

Eternal is in a very balanced and strong position right now. Lots of deck, lots of variety and nothing that's screams nerf now. Like what are they gonna do nerf bot? Nerf pings? Nah ping spam ain't going anywhere but there's lots of other actual interesting stuff to play

So mixed climb with elusive spam and Nifty aggro.

Each deck has its merits one deck has very strong burst passes basically allowing you to bank 5/5 stats on your elusives on turn 3 so this devalues pings.

The other deck is just super fast and has good pings to clear 2/1 spam, and a stun for higher value blocks.

So once again the eternal king doing his own thing and winning casually like a lot!

So I dont know I'd you guys want to take this as a sign that I was right Nifty Aggro is a strong and consistent climbing deck or if you want to say I was wrong because I had to climb with one other deck to correct it's weaknesses.

I would say I was right, I very rarely mono climb anyway usually using a 2-3 deck rotation and that works for me. Last season was elites plus my own ramp deck. This season its elusives and my own aggro list.

With Galactus dead, 90% of my opponents are High Evo decks…  So glad the big guy is gone, making the game into a one deck pony.  So much fun!