Notable cards leaving SV from CG

The next Shadowverse expansion Steel Rebellion has recently been announced, and when that drops in a few weeks the next Rotation cycle will happen. Chronogenesis will be leaving the Rotation format so I wanted to talk about the cards that I am going to miss and cards that I am not going to miss, just like my previous post for Starforged Legends. Chronogenesis was a landmark expansion for the game. It introduced the 9th class Portalcraft to Shadowverse, which was a very unique craft with a trait based around deck size manipulation and having a Magitek and artificial life aesthetic. CG also introduced the Rotation format which split up the play mode options into Rotation and Unlimited.

Chronogenesis is the only time I can remember when there were actually server issues during expansion launch day. It was really hard to log in and stay there to open packs due to how many people wanted to try the game. It was an exciting time because the game environment was going to look very different from before without cards like Dimension Shift and Rhinoceroach being in the main play format.

The Chronogenesis meta had a very interesting evolution. There were complaints during the first month, but I think people generally enjoyed the meta since it was so different than what we were used to before the format split. Then the nerfs were announced and while people were generally happy with what cards were targeted, most people did not expect how much worse the meta was about to become. Bahamut was one of the most overtuned and complained about cards since RoB, and he was finally changed from a 13/13 to a 9/9 while losing the ability to destroy amulets. People quickly pointed out that while the change was good to allow amulet based decks to thrive, it had a very broken interaction with Tilting at the Windmills, a card widely considered to be a meme from Wonderland Dreams. Daria Rune was found to be relatively strong at the beginning of CG, but was not played much because the archetype had a poor matchup against Dirt Rune. One of the nerfs was to Magic Illusionist(2 health to 1 health) and many people thought it was just a slap on the wrist. But it actually killed the card and the Dirt Rune archetype in general, which allowed Daria Rune to rise up in the meta. The result was a new meta with Neutral Forest, Daria Rune, and Tilting Ramp Dragon at the top.

The final 2 months of Chronogenesis is one of the best examples of how statistics do not tell you everything about how good or healthy a meta is. Let’s take a look at a random Shadowlog report from this era. From the overall class distribution, we can see that the best class is Forest(53.7% winrate) while the worst class is Portal(44.8% winrate), which was expected since Portal was working with a much smaller set of cards in this meta. As for the 3 meta defining decks earlier, Neutral Forest specifically is at 54.3% winrate, Tilting Ramp Dragon is at 48.3%, and Daria Rune is at 51.3%. Compared to a lot of the other metas in Shadowverse, these numbers look amazing.

So this should have been one of the best metas ever, right? Well it turns out that Months 2 and 3 of Chronogenesis were one of the more unpleasant times to play SV. What the numbers do not tell you is that all of these 3 meta defining decks were highroll garbage. The difference between good and bad draws was way too high, and so many matches were determined without much player agency. In essence it was a balanced, but unfun meta because the top decks would often just lose to their own draws. It was also very irritating to see Sahaquiel and Israfil being played in almost every deck. The playerbase numbers took a huge nosedive during this time. I know it is anecdotal, but I consider myself a fairly casual player and generally get between 4-5k master points every season from a mixture of doing dailies and playing meme decks. Months 2 and 3 of Chronogenesis are the only time where I was able to make Top 10k in Master Points on the ladder from my normal play patterns.

Chronogenesis was actually a very low power level expansion, but people did not really notice because of how different the game was due to the format split and the addition of a new class. It had a fair amount of cool cards, so I will start with those first!

Cards that I am going to miss

Mysteria, Magic Founder by Hisakata Soji

• Mysteria, Magic Founder – The Mysteria tribe and archetype was first introduced in Chronogenesis and the founder of the academy itself was the headliner card. She provides a unique permanent leader effect of adding a +1 buff to all spell damage, pushing for a new Rune archetype based on spell damage(in contrast to effect damage, which is what Dirt Rune does). The Mysteria archetype was unfortunately half baked as many of the good burn spells rotated by the time of Chronogenesis, and the other Mysteria followers from this expansion were complete garbage. Not only that but one of the main ways of getting burn spells was through RNG effects from Mysterian Knowledge and Hanna. Can you believe that they introduced this archetype without Mysterian Wyrmist, who would show up in the next expansion? The Mysteria archetype floundered for several metas, and finally became competitive with Omen of the Ten’s mini expansion. However by that time the archetype had transformed into something completely different: the Founder herself was dropped, the deck relied less on burn damage and more on big tempo from cost reduced followers. The original slow burn style of the archetype merged with Earth Rite Rune and became competitive in Altersphere. Who would have expected that Mysteria Magic Founder would get kicked out of her own tribal deck and become Dirt Rune’s savior? I am going to miss her a lot as Dirt is one of my favorite decks to play in the game. One of the better designed leader effect cards since you cannot always afford to play a 5pp 4/4 with no immediate effect. Great art and one rare instance where I prefer the English voice to the Japanese one.
• Arthur, Knight King – This card has gotten a fair amount of complaints in the past, but I really like his design and think he is an exemplar of the Swordcraft class identity. Sword is a class that should be about playing for the board, and Arthur is a single card that creates a board. He is very similar to Otohime, another card that was complained about a lot during the first 2 metas for Shadowverse. But I think Arthur is much much better designed. For one, he comes down one turn later which makes a huge difference in metas where Sword has a consistently strong curve. He also imposes a few deckbuilding restrictions to get the most out of his effect. Arthur Sword decks are less aggressive in general since they are discouraged from playing 1 drops. They are also discouraged from playing 2 drops with strong fanfares, like Oathless Knight who also happens to be a card that would fit in an aggressive Sword deck. Then there is the choice of whether or not the Sword deck should be running exactly 4 different 2 drops to get consistent Arthur pulls, or if it is worth running more for the lower curve at the cost of Arthur consistency. There have certainly been metas where Arthur might have been too strong, but I think he can definitely be unnerfed now.
• Summit Temple – The amulet version of Arch Priestess Laelia. The idea of converting health into attack points has existed since Shadowverse launched but was not competitive because Laelia was expensive at 6pp, and the effect required her to stay alive. Summit was a more reasonably priced version of the effect that made a Midrange version of the archetype competitive, where you would build a board of low attack, high health followers and make them dangerous for just 1pp. There was a reasonable amount of counterplay to it, since forcing trades or lowering health would directly affect how much damage the followers were doing. I am a huge fan of Divine Spirit Inner Fire Combo Priest from Hearthstone and this is the closest thing we have gotten to that style of deck in Shadowverse. Sadly Summit Haven has not been competitive for some time. I would really like to see the archetype get a functional reprint of the same effect because I had way more fun playing it than any other Haven deck in the Altersphere Rotation meta right now.
• Death Dragon Caller – The Burial Rite/Reanimate Shadow mechanics and archetype were formally introduced in Chronogenesis. Unfortunately most of the cards that got printed in SV with this keyword would either be poorly designed or underpowered. Death Dragon Caller is one exception where I feel that the card was at an appropriate power level. She allows Shadow to potentially cheat out a huge follower for less than its original cost, but it happens on Turn 8 which is much more reasonable than an effect like old Ceridwen. The English voice acting for this card is also AMAZING. Casey Mongillo(the voice actress) even made a Reddit thread a while back!
• Hamelin – Really feels like this card should be evergreen. Portal has had many different decks since its introduction in Chronogenesis. But no matter which deck you were playing, you were practically guaranteed to see a few copies of the pied piper. Hamelin provides a very simple but powerful effect: for the cost of playing an understatted 2 drop, you can duplicate any 3pp or cheaper card in your hand. In Artifacts, the best way to use him is to make copies of Analyzing Artifacts for more draw and in Puppets, there were a ton of good targets including puppets themselves and strong puppet generating cards like Flower Doll. Hamelin is an amazing utility card who also embodies the Portalcraft class identity of replication and artificial life. I am going to miss him a lot especially for the fact that having animated Hamelins essentially allows you to animate any other 3 cost or cheaper follower in your deck. One of my greatest accomplishments from Chronogenesis is opening up a full playset of animated Hamelins.
• Icarus – Another card that feels like it should be evergreen. Icarus is a 2 drop who shuffles 2 Ancient Artifacts in your deck. She has a very powerful evo effect of drawing an Artifact from your deck. However there are times where it is best to not play her early because as Artifact Portal, if you are looking to draw a specific card, then putting 2 artifacts that do not cycle themselves into your deck makes it harder to find that card. Out of the initial 4 artifacts, Ancients were the best one for board control purposes. But it turns out that Ancients not being able to replace themselves like the other 3 artifacts was a very real drawback. Icarus has some cute art and I am a huge fan of her English dub voice. The exaggerated valley girl accent is hilarious. I also like how her flavor text and death voice line reference the Icarus from Greek mythology.
• Acceleratium – The glue that holds Artifact Portal together. This archetype has consistently been one of the most affordable competitive decks to play since its introduction in Chronogenesis. It was also a great archetype for new players to learn the game with since it was a board based deck with a high skill floor and skill cap. Giving your artifacts rush to control the board was so important to the deck functioning and also contributed to many Epic Sax moments in the game’s history. There was also a decent amount of counterplay to Acceleratium once Brigade of the Sky hit since Seraphic Blade provided a strong Neutral answer to low cost amulets. Artifact Portal and the class itself is about to experience a huge change once the next Rotation hits. While I doubt that Artifacts will die off completely, the archetype will likely never be the same again without Acceleratium.

Cards that I am glad to see go

Insect Lord by Budi

• Azi Dahaka – One of the biggest disappointments from this expansion for me. Chronogenesis introduced Rotation to the game and we all wanted to see classes do different things. Genesis Dragon rotated… but Azi Dahaka ensured that Dragon was still going to have the exact same endgame of playing big Storm followers. The cost reduction effect of Azi was pretty highrolly: since Oracle can be thought of as a cost reduction card in giving you more mana in later turns, that meant that Azi got its cost reduced twice if it was in hand during the evolution turns. Disgusting card, quite happy to see it go away.
• Insect Lord – A card that has consistently been a core 3-of in every single Forest deck in Rotation. Insect Lord is kind of like a powered up version of Elf Child May. May has the nickname Demon Baby May in the Japanese community which reflects what many people feel about that effect. Insect Lord is a strong, but not overpowered card. In many cases, the RNG of its Fanfare can be mitigated by trading before playing it. However there are lots of other cases where the Forest player has to hope to get lucky, and this kind of RNG that affects the board always creates a negative experience for one player. Looking forward to seeing this go away so that Forest can get some solid non-RNG based removal.
• Aiela, Dragon Sword – Similar to Azi Dahaka, just another gross Dragon card that ensured Dragon would never change. Tempo efficient ramp is a mistake.
• Mysterian Knowledge – Low key one of the most broken Runecraft cards ever. It does not look impressive at first glance, but there is a very good reason why it was the first card in SV to get emergency nerfed(in Unlimited), just a mere 5 days after the 1st scheduled nerf date in the Chronogenesis meta. Golem Assault from Wonderland Dreams was already seeing a lot of play due to providing double spellboost from a 2pp card. Mysterian Knowledge was even better as it gave the same double spellboost for 1pp. And anyone who has played Spellboost Rune knows how strong 1 cost spells are. Later on when the Mysteria archetype fused with Spellboost during Omen of the Ten, this card became even stronger as it performed double duty in that deck. It was the only card to provide both a double spellboost AND a double Mysterian cost reduction for Miranda/Anne, along with adding 2-3 to Anne’s Sorcery damage. Everyone who has played SV during late OotT or Altersphere has experienced the early Mysteria board highroll. The vast majority of the time when that happens, it is because the Rune player drew into multiple Mysterian Knowledges. The RNG of this card is also pretty infuriating sometimes. While both of the spells generated are good, there are absolutely matches where not rolling Missile drastically changes the outcome of the game. Would prefer to see less RNG based cards like this in the future.
• Mech Wing Swordsman – A card commonly played as curve filler in Artifact Portal. There is nothing particularly strong or notable about the card, but I greatly dislike him because of the RNG. Generating expensive artifacts early on is awful when you play as the deck, and it is super tilting when you play against Artifact and the enemy Mech Wing just happens to create the best artifacts for the situation. Even when more reliable options like Angel of the Iron Steed are available, Mech Wing still ends up being better because having something to play on 2 is so important in this game.
• The Bloodcraft cards – Oh my god, this expansion was such a dumpster fire for Bloodcraft. The fact that Savage Wolf is probably the best card for the class says a lot about the quality of CG’s Blood cards. I will never understand why Blood Drinker’s Brand still does 4 damage if you target your own follower for the Drain effect. I imagine Blood will be in a much better position going forward without Chronogenesis weighing it down in the Rotation meta.