I was referring to the team hidden within the “show details” tag (click the arrow) in my post. Though you probably shouldn’t have taken that loop team versus mab, since it stops functioning well if they get basically any match 4.
I linked the post for this bit, specifically, which refers to the reliability of being able to loop over, and over and over with just spawners:
And in a later post, this:
I’m saying before we get that far, we need to look at why this is happening, because it wasn’t really a problem before. The code that makes spawners miss more often after five extra turns, for one, appears to be not functioning at all. I’m starting to wonder if “five” really meant “zero” in the previous Adobe Air code. Simply changing the amount of gems created also changes the amount of mana they generate along with how often they get an extra turn, and with this engine, I think we are going to be hard pressed to find a sweet spot.
The thing is, single color spawners seem way more reliable as well. This may have something to do with the claims of “streakier” RNG on console. Things like Kraken even seem to cluster up way more. Queen Aurora, which I had tested for a while prepatch as decidedly mediocre because of her fairly big miss rate is now able to self loop 2 or 3 times for me before getting a board rich enough in the color I want to fill the entire team in one big blob. I’m not seeing the amount of critical fail misses that I have before… the games I’ve lost are 99% to taking stupid teams loop teams that shouldn’t work at all and failing to charge them or trying to force my way through through freeze - and if I get that first cast before they freeze me, I win anyways.
Basically, its like I’m playing a completely different game. I’m perfectly fine with converter looping (I highly prefer partial fixed loops like Alch/Terrax, Hellcat/Sekhma) because you have to examine the board, get alignment, and occasionally look a couple turns ahead to make sure you won’t put yourself in a bad position and if you do happen to screw up and paint yourself into a corner with a checkerboard pattern you don’t have converters for you have to work to dig your way out of it. Spawn looping has none of that, you fill one troop, cast without priming and hope for your extra turn (fairly high incidence at that), then just spam spells without having to think until one side disappears. Mab has potential to stop it, of course, and we will likely be seeing more of her… but the team in question also functions off spawn loop mechanics.
I know we still don’t have the AI patch and the AI patch will make players lose more, but it will do so by making this type of thing easier for the AI to do. Having a higher loss rate due to having more unwinnable situations doesn’t necessarily confer “challenge” in my book, in order to have real “challenge” in this type of game you need to have the ability to make a number of consecutive good decisions/less bad ones in any given situation in order to have a favorable outcome and/or make the “good decision” less obvious. Loop teams that use a fixed color converter instead of two universal ones, for example, are more “challenging” to use in that regard, converter + remover chains are another. You can keep these going, but you have to examine each situation separately and make good decisions - a bad decision can easily cost you the game because you feed a ton of mana, or back you into a corner and cause you to waste several turns. Starting Board does not favor you > you get looped to death by gem spawners occasionally is not really additional “challenge” because you are largely removing player decision making from the table. I’d much rather we keep player decision making at the center of gameplay.