Let's be real here; this card will always see play. It doesn't matter its viability. Its a yogg card.
As for whether its any good...Well, its not trash. In most cases this card would just destroy the targeted minion, or be benign enough that you wouldn't outright lose the game.
But this card hardly needs an endorsement. If youre playing this you probably care less about winning than just spinning the wheel.
Can only really review this after the set is released, because at the current time of writing its best fit is obviously into big pally.
Bringing back kangor by itself is backbreaking enough.
And yet, because of its obvious anti-synergy with kangor, I think team5 has an exact group of cards they expect this card to work well with, that hasn't been revealed yet. Bearing in mind that it can only revive pally minions, so its potential is slightly less than what we would expect from similar resurrect cards.
Its good, but not sure if its going to be a whole deck itself.
The combo potential in wild is practically moot. You'll never last 8 turns realistically in wild and hunter doesn't need it to win anyway.
In standard however, there's only really 1 charge card and that's Freebird, a dead card in hand until this is played and the joke is you dont even immediately win with it. So what are we left with? Playing Wisps?
Its the 31st card in the deck. Only XL decks would play it, because unless the new set introduces more cards that specifically do well with this one, I'd rather just play Lor'themar Theron, a card that's 1 mana cheaper and infinitely more powerful.
There really isn't any need to discuss this card's viability. All three selections are more than capable of turning the tide, and druid isn't exactly lacking win cons.
Basically if you dont win by the time druid plays this card you might as well concede.
I truly hope druid remains on the tier 3 list next expansion because I wouldn't want to be tortured by this card's existence.
There are ways to set this up so it can possibly survive past its first turn. 0 mana secret + ancient knowledge on 6 probably forces your opponent into gambling an answer out. Then the second turn you can choose unlimited potential to make it to the final point of doing 20 damage to face.
Overall, there's just no way around it. This card is just solid no matter what deck its played in, solely because your opponent will always be required to either win outright from there or kill it, because if for whatever reason this stays alive then you'll likely just win from there.
Only way this card doesn't see play is if the whole class simply doesn't see play.
- Titan cards will likely be similar to hero cards in that they are very powerful, easy to fit into any deck, and will likely be in contention in every deck from their introduction.
- Its likely you cant discover titan cards, similar to colossus minions but getting one out of random effects (like evolve) will likely tilt the game. Looking forward to titan cards eventually being impossible to obtain outside of deck inclusion
- A bit worried of titan cards in general. Because the gameplay patterns looks like 'play titan first and win'. Moreover it also forces every deck to need an answer to it. You cant realistically allow these things to stay on board past their first turn. Even aggro decks cant do it without losing.
- Forge as a keyword is a bit of a weird one. Its either going to break the meta or remain neverplayed. On one hand, skip an early turn for a later big payoff (Cyclopian Crusher is a good example of this. Imagine turn 3 6/5 rush) and on the other hand is being completely destroyed by aggro.
- That rogue card is scary precisely because its so bad. Looks like yet more tribal trash, an indication of how the next expansion will go for rogue? Well, that class will always somehow get top play rates in legend regardless
Not sure if they ever promised that classic was expanding. There were talks of adding more expansions to it, but I only ever remember talks of adding naxx, not more than that.
While I truly sympathize with your situation, its unsurprising that no one got anything back from classic being removed. Its simply impossible or untenable to refund entire sets (and classic being the biggest one) and since classic has been here for ages, that essentially means everyone before 2021 would likely get a sizable amount of dust, probably enough to buy off entire expansion sets.
So I watched the stream and its fun times seeing all these old favorites come back.
Here's some comments from myself;
- Stormwind and alterac absolutely dominated the deck choices Ive seen. No surprises here. Quest and hero cards are simply one step above most other cards.
- Not having neutral cards is actually limiting the variety, but more importantly, virtually guarantee that tech cards arent going to be a thing. So no weapon destructions, only two classes have silences, etc.
- Havent seen an aggro deck around, but that's hardly surprising. Most classes cant do it without neutral cards
So is it a mode Im looking forward to? Well...likely no. And the reason is because the stormwind quests are back (and in many cases unnerfed) and I simply dont want to go through all that again. Which brings me to the question of balancing, is team5 going to balance things at all in this mode? Or are they planning a twist every 2 months so balance is technically unnecessary?
Like all the other classes there's some element of RNG involved because ETC clearly has the better hp and deck.
The key is to mulligan hard for the early hp cards and just go from there. Beaten him on 2nd try (first try he just deleted my hp cards). Once you have about 4-5 attack you should be well on your way to run him out of options. Unfortunately, as mentioned, that layer of RNG can still save him.
That druid deck is not good. But from my experience so far its probably the most consistent of the bunch. If youre wondering how bad the other classes are, play dhunter. I only won because the ETC skipped 4 early turns, probably just out of pity because I was absolutely raging at the end.
Yes, unfortunately I had to go through that cycle myself, hit a brick wall then had no choice but to keep headbutting until it cracked because no way in hell I was going to go through 8 bosses again.
Best advice I can give others is actually to win the first match then have a good look at your bs deck, because all of them bar none is filled with tripe cards that will otherwise never be played.
To put some examples. DK deathrattle deck. What's the deathrattle? Is it eggs, is it anything that spits out other minions? Is it at least Cage Head? Nope. Its Invincible. Deck filled with shit like Mosh Pit, Cool Ghoul, deathrattle enablers, etc. But not a single good deathrattle in it.
Seriously. Who the fuck made this brawl and what is he smoking. What a missed opportunity to create something great along the lines of rumble run.
That's halveria and her Abyssal Bassist. Not a bad outcast deck to be fair. Really dangerous, because she has initiative for days and her deck isn't filled with shit like magnifying glaive. She actually has felerin too, just to thumb her nose at your bs dhunter deck.
If ETC fizzles out against you, then you probably got lucky. Not trying to be disrespectful, but that deck has four powerful reload cards, playing an optimized deck, and your deck is more often than not filled with at least 6 useless cards. Of the many retries Ive made, ETC only fizzled out once, and I still only won because he drew like shit.
Pretty nice brawl this. I can confirm that if you lose you dont restart, you can go again, and good thing too, because these decks aren't all that great and Rin is absolutely a monster to fight against.
Edit:
For anyone wondering, the last boss is against ETC playing a really strong warrior menagerie deck.
Oh, and dhunter deck absolutely suck on this one. I dont think they could have built a worse outcast deck even if they tried. Snakebite? Well thats not good but not that bad. Magnifying Glaive though? Like thats taking the piss
Just one more edit:
If you dont want to waste your time to get past this brawl, try druid. HP druid at least has consistency as long as you dont get screwed. A good example of how team5 waters down the power level of your deck: it actually has Amplified Elekk in it. Just so you cant consistently pull out your hp cards with Peaceful Piper. Oh and there's Blood Treant too, a card that absolutely doesn't belong anywhere near this deck. Probably that's why its in it.
Its still a big ask to pay for something that may not even last more than 2 months before rotation happened. But we dont have the details yet, so for now Im just concerned.
To be honest, if you dont have a good collection now, its better to just quit the game. Hearthstone is fun, but its rather expensive and fairly hard to keep up with. Even most aggro decks nowadays need legendaries.
The only class you might be able to enjoy standard with is DK, but you'll likely still need some extra cards.
Or you can dabble with arena, just about the only mode that doesn't require a collection to have fun.
- Its basically a larger tavern brawl, which is useful to team5 for experimentation and to collect data. Perhaps if this was in before renathal was introduced, it might have allowed them to see the impact of what this card would have.
- Im not sure if this mode would be successful, because anyone interested in the old sets would probably just play wild, and lets be frank and say that this doesn't help new players, or casual players at all because most of them would simply not have the cards for it. The idea that players would start flooding blizz with money buying old packs is probably a non-starter, especially when an 8 year old expansion pack remains at the same price.
- The changing nature of this new mode makes crafting cards very unattractive. Imagine crafting a legendary, and then finding out its unusable a few weeks/months later. In other words, if Im railroaded into crafting something just to play this mode, I think I'll just not play it.
- It'll likely replicate classic. A briefly popular mode which at later stages gets filled with bots because no one's interested in playing it.
- The only positive thing about this mode is that sometimes, it might be easier to complete the standard achievements with this than using wild. For example, if youre missing Saxophone Soloist and dont want to craft em. Well, here's a mode that makes it easier to discover that card because most of the murlocs are not in it.
- Probably the most significant change for all players, whether new or old. Prior to this change, for new players to collect the classic set can be and often is a nightmare. Imagine this, to play face hunter in 2016, you'd still need 60% of classic cards available. And whenever an epic card is required, there's when you know you're screwed. Took me nigh on 2 years before I had most of the rares in classic, imagine what its like for a starting player.
Also, core set changes means we'll get to see old cards come back to standard, which is always nice.
No dupes from packs.
- Another big one in history. Prior to the changes, it wasn't unusual to collect 5 copies of useless epic cards every expansion. It wasn't all that uncommon to not have all the rares either, from 80 packs. Thankfully, those are all things of the past
Quests changing from 'Wins' to 'Play'/ allowing quests to be completed with friends
- I kid you not. There was a time when hearthstone simply roadblocked you from completing quests, because certain classes were simply unrepresented in the meta. Today, we have tons of choices, even with poor classes. Back then, there were like 2 tier 1 decks and everything below that is trash. Mercifully you can complete quests in casual mode, which is where I did most of mine.
Rush keyword
- Yes, the best and most influential keyword is not discover, its rush. Aggro games back then used to be fairly insurmountable, because most classes simply dont have initiative. Hence why Fiery War Axe was once the best card in the game.
Today, rush is printed on just about everything. Its often taken for granted that its literally introduced only in 2018
And last but not least
The reward track
- The sheer amount of controversy generated by this topic alone would suffice it a high seat in hearthstone's history, but it also marked the beginning of an era.
Hearthstone monetization boomed hard after this was introduced. I cannot easily point out when hearthstone started decaying, but if I had to pinpoint an area, it would start around this time, culminating in a more noticeable decay around the sunken city expansion.
Could it be that hearthstone has pushed so far into the 'live service' area where you're expected to commit long hours to the game to keep up? Maybe. All I can say, is that hearthstone used to be a game I play to chill. Its no longer the case after the introduction of the reward track.
- Paladin still remains good, but I wouldn't be surprised if pure just gets dropped. Maul wasn't just good because of the buffs its also practically the only early initiative card paladin's got. Now if they start turn 2 they're practically sitting ducks to impact 1 drops like Arms Dealer. There's likely a non-pure aggro-burn paladin somewhere.
- Nerfing Hope of Quel'Thalas is practically a joke. Not that Im asking for hunter to get nerfed, but what is the point of reducing 1 attack off a weapon that rarely gets played, of which its attack damage is never the reason to play it? Free 1600 dust is what this is.
- When I opined that pozzik is OP, and team5 making the right decision to nerf him, I wasn't exactly expecting this slight tap on the wrist. Nerfing attack by 1 is decent, but seriously, that's not what makes pozzik an OP card. Team5 is right in saying that the card is criminally underplayed, because this card can literally be played in any deck and still make a positive impact.
- Stheno is dead. Unfortunately, Predation paid for her sins.
- Rhythmdancer Risa remains a poor card to me. Spending 4 mana to deal 3 damage in todays hearthstone is practically conceding.
- And Im not altogether convinced team5 knows what to do with duels. Seems they're just nerfing all the good treasures/passives, banning cards, so the whole game mode gets mellowed down to who can amass the least shittiest deck at the end. Bring back the original buckets can help a bunch, because Im getting sick of having half my deck being counter productive to what I wanted it to do.
Its funny because all those which you pointed out are valid arguments on the problems with RTS and yet it is precisely what makes the genre compelling to its fans.
C&C4 tiberium twilight famously attempted to reduce or remove this problem by essentially removing much of the macro aspect of the game and it got riddled with negative reviews, citing amongst many other issues, the fact that it simply doesnt feel like playing an RTS game.
I think blizz actually had a mod that automated much of the macro for those interested. But ultimately I think RTS is simply no longer in the imaginations of most gamers nowadays. Its more exciting to be part of the battle than simply looking over it.
This is a big gamble, and not because its an indie studio making their first move, but because the RTS genre is virtually dead and has been for quite some time
Put simply, the genre was good back in the day when we're not expecting over the top, full open world, where 3d characters dont look like a three year old's attempt at origami. Far as I know, the last good one is indeed starcraft 2, and even then I wouldn't call it anywhere near as engaging as the many games available nowadays.
C&C is dead, and held at ransom by EA. The age of empire series recently came back but to my knowledge not making much despite astoundingly good reviews, cant actually even remember the last indie RTS title. I think its literally grey goo, 8 years back in 2015, which flopped despite my great hopes.
Hopefully this game fares better, but to me RTS is something I simply cant get back into despite loving the living hell out of it back in the 90s. I think the last RTS I still think fondly of would be wings of liberty. Everything else after that is largely forgettable.
Let's be real here; this card will always see play. It doesn't matter its viability. Its a yogg card.
As for whether its any good...Well, its not trash. In most cases this card would just destroy the targeted minion, or be benign enough that you wouldn't outright lose the game.
But this card hardly needs an endorsement. If youre playing this you probably care less about winning than just spinning the wheel.
Can only really review this after the set is released, because at the current time of writing its best fit is obviously into big pally.
Bringing back kangor by itself is backbreaking enough.
And yet, because of its obvious anti-synergy with kangor, I think team5 has an exact group of cards they expect this card to work well with, that hasn't been revealed yet. Bearing in mind that it can only revive pally minions, so its potential is slightly less than what we would expect from similar resurrect cards.
Its good, but not sure if its going to be a whole deck itself.
The combo potential in wild is practically moot. You'll never last 8 turns realistically in wild and hunter doesn't need it to win anyway.
In standard however, there's only really 1 charge card and that's Freebird, a dead card in hand until this is played and the joke is you dont even immediately win with it. So what are we left with? Playing Wisps?
Its the 31st card in the deck. Only XL decks would play it, because unless the new set introduces more cards that specifically do well with this one, I'd rather just play Lor'themar Theron, a card that's 1 mana cheaper and infinitely more powerful.
There really isn't any need to discuss this card's viability. All three selections are more than capable of turning the tide, and druid isn't exactly lacking win cons.
Basically if you dont win by the time druid plays this card you might as well concede.
I truly hope druid remains on the tier 3 list next expansion because I wouldn't want to be tortured by this card's existence.
There are ways to set this up so it can possibly survive past its first turn. 0 mana secret + ancient knowledge on 6 probably forces your opponent into gambling an answer out. Then the second turn you can choose unlimited potential to make it to the final point of doing 20 damage to face.
Overall, there's just no way around it. This card is just solid no matter what deck its played in, solely because your opponent will always be required to either win outright from there or kill it, because if for whatever reason this stays alive then you'll likely just win from there.
Only way this card doesn't see play is if the whole class simply doesn't see play.
My comments on the expansion and cards;
- Titan cards will likely be similar to hero cards in that they are very powerful, easy to fit into any deck, and will likely be in contention in every deck from their introduction.
- Its likely you cant discover titan cards, similar to colossus minions but getting one out of random effects (like evolve) will likely tilt the game. Looking forward to titan cards eventually being impossible to obtain outside of deck inclusion
- A bit worried of titan cards in general. Because the gameplay patterns looks like 'play titan first and win'. Moreover it also forces every deck to need an answer to it. You cant realistically allow these things to stay on board past their first turn. Even aggro decks cant do it without losing.
- Forge as a keyword is a bit of a weird one. Its either going to break the meta or remain neverplayed. On one hand, skip an early turn for a later big payoff (Cyclopian Crusher is a good example of this. Imagine turn 3 6/5 rush) and on the other hand is being completely destroyed by aggro.
- That rogue card is scary precisely because its so bad. Looks like yet more tribal trash, an indication of how the next expansion will go for rogue? Well, that class will always somehow get top play rates in legend regardless
Isn't sargeras technically a titan as well? A fitting choice for warlock I'd say
Not sure if they ever promised that classic was expanding. There were talks of adding more expansions to it, but I only ever remember talks of adding naxx, not more than that.
While I truly sympathize with your situation, its unsurprising that no one got anything back from classic being removed. Its simply impossible or untenable to refund entire sets (and classic being the biggest one) and since classic has been here for ages, that essentially means everyone before 2021 would likely get a sizable amount of dust, probably enough to buy off entire expansion sets.
So I watched the stream and its fun times seeing all these old favorites come back.
Here's some comments from myself;
- Stormwind and alterac absolutely dominated the deck choices Ive seen. No surprises here. Quest and hero cards are simply one step above most other cards.
- Not having neutral cards is actually limiting the variety, but more importantly, virtually guarantee that tech cards arent going to be a thing. So no weapon destructions, only two classes have silences, etc.
- Havent seen an aggro deck around, but that's hardly surprising. Most classes cant do it without neutral cards
So is it a mode Im looking forward to? Well...likely no. And the reason is because the stormwind quests are back (and in many cases unnerfed) and I simply dont want to go through all that again. Which brings me to the question of balancing, is team5 going to balance things at all in this mode? Or are they planning a twist every 2 months so balance is technically unnecessary?
Like all the other classes there's some element of RNG involved because ETC clearly has the better hp and deck.
The key is to mulligan hard for the early hp cards and just go from there. Beaten him on 2nd try (first try he just deleted my hp cards). Once you have about 4-5 attack you should be well on your way to run him out of options. Unfortunately, as mentioned, that layer of RNG can still save him.
That druid deck is not good. But from my experience so far its probably the most consistent of the bunch. If youre wondering how bad the other classes are, play dhunter. I only won because the ETC skipped 4 early turns, probably just out of pity because I was absolutely raging at the end.
Yes, unfortunately I had to go through that cycle myself, hit a brick wall then had no choice but to keep headbutting until it cracked because no way in hell I was going to go through 8 bosses again.
Best advice I can give others is actually to win the first match then have a good look at your bs deck, because all of them bar none is filled with tripe cards that will otherwise never be played.
To put some examples. DK deathrattle deck. What's the deathrattle? Is it eggs, is it anything that spits out other minions? Is it at least Cage Head? Nope. Its Invincible. Deck filled with shit like Mosh Pit, Cool Ghoul, deathrattle enablers, etc. But not a single good deathrattle in it.
Seriously. Who the fuck made this brawl and what is he smoking. What a missed opportunity to create something great along the lines of rumble run.
That's halveria and her Abyssal Bassist. Not a bad outcast deck to be fair. Really dangerous, because she has initiative for days and her deck isn't filled with shit like magnifying glaive. She actually has felerin too, just to thumb her nose at your bs dhunter deck.
If ETC fizzles out against you, then you probably got lucky. Not trying to be disrespectful, but that deck has four powerful reload cards, playing an optimized deck, and your deck is more often than not filled with at least 6 useless cards. Of the many retries Ive made, ETC only fizzled out once, and I still only won because he drew like shit.
Pretty nice brawl this. I can confirm that if you lose you dont restart, you can go again, and good thing too, because these decks aren't all that great and Rin is absolutely a monster to fight against.
Edit:
For anyone wondering, the last boss is against ETC playing a really strong warrior menagerie deck.
Oh, and dhunter deck absolutely suck on this one. I dont think they could have built a worse outcast deck even if they tried. Snakebite? Well thats not good but not that bad. Magnifying Glaive though? Like thats taking the piss
Just one more edit:
If you dont want to waste your time to get past this brawl, try druid. HP druid at least has consistency as long as you dont get screwed. A good example of how team5 waters down the power level of your deck: it actually has Amplified Elekk in it. Just so you cant consistently pull out your hp cards with Peaceful Piper. Oh and there's Blood Treant too, a card that absolutely doesn't belong anywhere near this deck. Probably that's why its in it.
Have they announced the prices of those decks?
Its still a big ask to pay for something that may not even last more than 2 months before rotation happened. But we dont have the details yet, so for now Im just concerned.
To be honest, if you dont have a good collection now, its better to just quit the game. Hearthstone is fun, but its rather expensive and fairly hard to keep up with. Even most aggro decks nowadays need legendaries.
The only class you might be able to enjoy standard with is DK, but you'll likely still need some extra cards.
Or you can dabble with arena, just about the only mode that doesn't require a collection to have fun.
Brief comments on the new mode;
- Its basically a larger tavern brawl, which is useful to team5 for experimentation and to collect data. Perhaps if this was in before renathal was introduced, it might have allowed them to see the impact of what this card would have.
- Im not sure if this mode would be successful, because anyone interested in the old sets would probably just play wild, and lets be frank and say that this doesn't help new players, or casual players at all because most of them would simply not have the cards for it. The idea that players would start flooding blizz with money buying old packs is probably a non-starter, especially when an 8 year old expansion pack remains at the same price.
- The changing nature of this new mode makes crafting cards very unattractive. Imagine crafting a legendary, and then finding out its unusable a few weeks/months later. In other words, if Im railroaded into crafting something just to play this mode, I think I'll just not play it.
- It'll likely replicate classic. A briefly popular mode which at later stages gets filled with bots because no one's interested in playing it.
- The only positive thing about this mode is that sometimes, it might be easier to complete the standard achievements with this than using wild. For example, if youre missing Saxophone Soloist and dont want to craft em. Well, here's a mode that makes it easier to discover that card because most of the murlocs are not in it.
Well, let's review some history then;
Core set release
- Probably the most significant change for all players, whether new or old. Prior to this change, for new players to collect the classic set can be and often is a nightmare. Imagine this, to play face hunter in 2016, you'd still need 60% of classic cards available. And whenever an epic card is required, there's when you know you're screwed. Took me nigh on 2 years before I had most of the rares in classic, imagine what its like for a starting player.
Also, core set changes means we'll get to see old cards come back to standard, which is always nice.
No dupes from packs.
- Another big one in history. Prior to the changes, it wasn't unusual to collect 5 copies of useless epic cards every expansion. It wasn't all that uncommon to not have all the rares either, from 80 packs. Thankfully, those are all things of the past
Quests changing from 'Wins' to 'Play'/ allowing quests to be completed with friends
- I kid you not. There was a time when hearthstone simply roadblocked you from completing quests, because certain classes were simply unrepresented in the meta. Today, we have tons of choices, even with poor classes. Back then, there were like 2 tier 1 decks and everything below that is trash. Mercifully you can complete quests in casual mode, which is where I did most of mine.
Rush keyword
- Yes, the best and most influential keyword is not discover, its rush. Aggro games back then used to be fairly insurmountable, because most classes simply dont have initiative. Hence why Fiery War Axe was once the best card in the game.
Today, rush is printed on just about everything. Its often taken for granted that its literally introduced only in 2018
And last but not least
The reward track
- The sheer amount of controversy generated by this topic alone would suffice it a high seat in hearthstone's history, but it also marked the beginning of an era.
Hearthstone monetization boomed hard after this was introduced. I cannot easily point out when hearthstone started decaying, but if I had to pinpoint an area, it would start around this time, culminating in a more noticeable decay around the sunken city expansion.
Could it be that hearthstone has pushed so far into the 'live service' area where you're expected to commit long hours to the game to keep up? Maybe. All I can say, is that hearthstone used to be a game I play to chill. Its no longer the case after the introduction of the reward track.
Just some short comments;
- Paladin still remains good, but I wouldn't be surprised if pure just gets dropped. Maul wasn't just good because of the buffs its also practically the only early initiative card paladin's got. Now if they start turn 2 they're practically sitting ducks to impact 1 drops like Arms Dealer. There's likely a non-pure aggro-burn paladin somewhere.
- Nerfing Hope of Quel'Thalas is practically a joke. Not that Im asking for hunter to get nerfed, but what is the point of reducing 1 attack off a weapon that rarely gets played, of which its attack damage is never the reason to play it? Free 1600 dust is what this is.
- When I opined that pozzik is OP, and team5 making the right decision to nerf him, I wasn't exactly expecting this slight tap on the wrist. Nerfing attack by 1 is decent, but seriously, that's not what makes pozzik an OP card. Team5 is right in saying that the card is criminally underplayed, because this card can literally be played in any deck and still make a positive impact.
- Stheno is dead. Unfortunately, Predation paid for her sins.
- Rhythmdancer Risa remains a poor card to me. Spending 4 mana to deal 3 damage in todays hearthstone is practically conceding.
- And Im not altogether convinced team5 knows what to do with duels. Seems they're just nerfing all the good treasures/passives, banning cards, so the whole game mode gets mellowed down to who can amass the least shittiest deck at the end. Bring back the original buckets can help a bunch, because Im getting sick of having half my deck being counter productive to what I wanted it to do.
Its funny because all those which you pointed out are valid arguments on the problems with RTS and yet it is precisely what makes the genre compelling to its fans.
C&C4 tiberium twilight famously attempted to reduce or remove this problem by essentially removing much of the macro aspect of the game and it got riddled with negative reviews, citing amongst many other issues, the fact that it simply doesnt feel like playing an RTS game.
I think blizz actually had a mod that automated much of the macro for those interested. But ultimately I think RTS is simply no longer in the imaginations of most gamers nowadays. Its more exciting to be part of the battle than simply looking over it.
This is a big gamble, and not because its an indie studio making their first move, but because the RTS genre is virtually dead and has been for quite some time
Put simply, the genre was good back in the day when we're not expecting over the top, full open world, where 3d characters dont look like a three year old's attempt at origami. Far as I know, the last good one is indeed starcraft 2, and even then I wouldn't call it anywhere near as engaging as the many games available nowadays.
C&C is dead, and held at ransom by EA. The age of empire series recently came back but to my knowledge not making much despite astoundingly good reviews, cant actually even remember the last indie RTS title. I think its literally grey goo, 8 years back in 2015, which flopped despite my great hopes.
Hopefully this game fares better, but to me RTS is something I simply cant get back into despite loving the living hell out of it back in the 90s. I think the last RTS I still think fondly of would be wings of liberty. Everything else after that is largely forgettable.