And that’s how it ends up the most popular casual game genre on the planet. 
Hi Ogunther,
I am the same rank as you, oddly, 822. I’m in a top 10 guild so my statues are 191. I use a similar team with 2 bombots but I’m using mechanist class so my bombots start half full and I use the deep borer for some potential brown gem matches from the spell.
The issue is that when I was using bombots regularly when they first came out, they were a viable team. But after a week or so of it being out, I stopped getting brown gems. In fact, I wish I had taken pictures because my starting screens started having zero brown gems or sometimes one or two and I ended up playing for 5-10 turns before even seeing a brown gem drop.
I will reiterate that the only way I win with all the mana-screwing happening is that I started putting one guy on my defense and now I get matched to teams I can actually beat because mana screwing me for 10+ turns doesn’t kill me. Like Krudler, I used to be able to get to PvP 1 in around an hour but now it often takes me until Wednesday to get it happening because the game takes way too long to win a match due to the mana not dropping like it used to.
I watch Tacet’s videos and get many of my teams from there. I also follow the ‘fastest team’ threads and find that even the teams that people claim are “fastest” get me matches that often take 7-10 minutes to complete because I’m having to spend 7-15 turns just trying to get my spells ready.
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Thanks for the detailed response, @Ssazix but that smashed all my theories so I’m not going to be much help. Sorry that the game has gotten so frustrating; fingers crossed it works itself out and you get to get back to having fun.
Oh, and I meant to add that I use Mechanist, too. You may already know this, but on the off chance you don’t, if you haven’t tried Bombot w/ a fully traited Princess Elspeth, I do recommend it as most of the time she allows you to overcome the missing brown mana issue (either just use her on your second Bombot or, and this is my preference, use her on your hero with a brown weapon equipped).
I have gone to Princess Elspeth, Bombot, Black Monacles (Mechanist, Bombot - All fully traited.
I usually cast Princess on first turn on my bottom bombot, this usually ends up getting both the bombot and black monacles charged, and usually ends in same turn or 2 turns.
However, there are occasions where the board starts with almost ZERO brown gems, and princess will spawn brown, but make no matches. This match seems to take much longer, usually 2-3 minutes and 10-15 turns. I would say this happens < 5% of the time though.
I do agree with many of the sentiments of previous posters, of how before and after. I do feel the AI is much smarter than it was even a month ago. Call this biased or not, I do have a win streak of over 800 in PvP and over level 900, so I have played this game a ton.
I am a programmer, so my mind works in very analytical ways and usually notice patterns. I have noticed the same starting board many times, but seems the drops from the start are random, as its not usually the same results after the start. So you might be right in that aspect. I think the Devs take a combination of your teams mana vs other teams mana colors/banners, and then chooses a random starting board from there. There might be a random flip of a coin to decide which team to benefit from the start. I typically notice few brown starting gems when I’m up against a team with no brown mana. So I’m thinking the coin flip landed in opponent favor, then starting board matches most of their colors.
I have also noticed the infinite drops, and it happens to both sides, however I feel it shouldn’t happen as often as it does. The random possibility of a continuous drop matching 3, 4, 5 or even more times in a row seems VERY unlikely. Maybe Devs should program against this for both player and opponent, limit it to a 1-2 match drop from top and the 3rd drop will not match no matter what. This might reduce the “Luck”, and put more skill in the game.
Another thing that irritates me is the 1 shot kills, devours etc… this becomes a race to whom eats the other first, all it takes is the AI getting 2, 3, 4 or 5 lucky drops from a single match and boom your guy died. Yes this can happen both ways, however when your wanting to play a game of skill and the skill has been reduced to a coin flip of the drops of mana. You are now playing a different game. I loved the puzzle quests, and really liked Gems of War in the earlier phases of the game.
The power creep/dumb skills that remove the strategy are what is slowly pushing me away from this game. I just want to have fun playing the game. I don’t want 10 minute matches, nothing bothers me more than trying to play a quick match, then kids/wife or another life distraction gets in the way and I must quit/take a loss. So what does that do for me? It makes me play this game less and only when I can afford the 10 minutes+. If we could “pause” these matches and resume them later, it would be great.
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In re: to the updated title (which I’m hoping @KrudlerTheHorse changed otherwise it’s in poor taste), I’d say most of us would have “freaked out” if we ran into that much bad luck.
#I changed the title lol 
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Yeah, this sounds like my experience (PS4) in general since I came back from a small hiatus over the holidays.
The AI basically has what the devs seem to refer to as “super luck” pretty much…constantly. I’m actually at the point now where I can point out how the computer is going to get an unfair advantage and screw me royally. I am constantly in amazement at how often sky drops come in the form of 5 skulls or 5 mana, or how the only moves I have available to me set up the AI to start their turn with a 4 mana go.
Hell, I even recorded this recently - Gems of War "Super Lucky" AI turn - YouTube
It’s, and I shit you not, a MINUTE long turn by an opponent that was down to 2 minions. It started off with a 4 mana go, and one of the minions was a goblin. But still - it’s INSANE how the board goes. And this isn’t just a one off, that’s pretty much how the board ALWAYS goes for the AI on the PS4 these days.
I remember bringing this up on more than one occasion and getting attacked by certain people on this forum for it.
it happens to all of us i think. i did get no good mana in a row a few times too. but most of the time, i get a pretty balanced or good board. it just that bad game stand out more in my brain than average game.
i did notice ai is clever enough to steal transformable mana since i move from exploder to transformer. i hate that. so i go back to exploder.
i think last few weeks i did get ai skydrop super lucky way too much that i stop playing for a while. it happens. i think if you play too much, the bad luck gonna catch you. when board sucks, go do something else, return in an hour. that should teach RNG for messing with you 
Just saw the new title. Accurate.
That is all.
This whole thread reminds me of a great quote from a great series. From Leverage, “The Gold Job”: “The key to a good game is balancing boredom and frustration. If the game’s too easy then the mark - the player - gets bored and walks away. If the game’s too hard, the player gets frustrated and quits in a rage - rage quits.”
I worked in game design for years, and for a brief moment I was offended at describing my complex profession as “balancing boredom and frustration” until a moment later when I realized that it’s absolutely correct. ;p And I worked in Systems Design which makes it even more true.
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Yup, studying game design at the moment and the concept of “Flow” has been used to describe the same thing.
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I ****ing live that show!
I’m playing Far Cry Primal right now and it’s a perfect example. If you play on normal, you soon realize that you’re an indestructible superhuman and only a complete fluke encounter can really hurt you.
If you play on the new survivor mode, it automatically enables permadeath, and those fluke encounters (which happen all the time no matter how careful you are) become game-halting frustrations.
I’ve found that playing with survivor mode on but permadeath off provides me a real sense of awe and danger without having to worry about starting all over because I clipped through a cliff and died.
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Been doing explore for the last few weeks as I trait up the new troop. I’ve noticed three things;
The number of different troops used throughout the kingdoms seems to be very limited.
The number of times I’ve been mana starved - even going to a kingdom that has the colors I use has been much higher than anticipated.
And the number of turns to get two of my troops to full mana has increased. I used to to be able to get my team up (my soul farming team) in 3 turns maybe 4…not I am seeing 6-10.
And the number of cascade falls on the opponents turn has increased.
I was actually keeping a running stat but it just took the fun out of playing collecting data.
Btw, I am on Warlord 2 - and have a full mythic team fully traited.
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How about this for RNG craziness?
I played close to 100 explore the last couple of days to get the 3rd trait on Runesmith, which only requires 3 arcane darks.
I’ve played just enough PVP in that time to get rank 1. Not sure how many matches, maybe 15. And I’ve gotten 3 Arcane stones! One blade, one summer, and one green/red. In fact, I’ve gotten 6 arcanes in PVP since last Friday.
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Sometimes I do feel like we’re at Las Vegas slot machines…
please, for the sake of sciemnce and game improvement, do start another 20 fights (can be explore, and you can forfeit them?) with your boombot deck and provide us 20 screen schots with your starting games without skipping any starting game, and tell us what is your impression of that set of rng - so we could compare it with our own ideas and rng results?
i think that could give some insight on the:
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I do think the perception of luck is very much affected by the team you are using.
If you are playing pure bombots in explore, you just need one brown match. So you are much more likely to notice every board without a brown match to start.
Let’s move on to another team, say Krystenax/Sylv/TDS/Shadow dragon with abyssal. You want a purple match, but a red will do, and even if there are no reds or purples then a 4 match of any colour will do nicely to entangle the enemy. So essentially there are way more opening moves that will be satisfactory for you in the sense that you won’t think “this is a terribly unlucky board” and you’ll feel you are making progress in your strategy.
This is why I prefer the explore team created by @Clark and @MakoSipper of carnex, bombot, steam turret and hero-mechanist-prismatic orb. Can’t fill bombot? Carnex only needs 7 from red or purple, hero only needs 9 from green or blue, and both can then fill bombot. Also, Carnex’s opening skull damage is so high he can one hit kill any opponent on normal difficulty. So there’s a much greater sense of “progress” if no brown match is available.
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