MArcomage

Hey everyone, I want to know what you think about the beast keyword. So basically it's an underpowered keyword that is used to support other keywords(eg Burning, nature, soldier) but because it has 3 different keywords to support it doesn't have much synergy with any of those (unlike eg Holy-Soldier). I mean i wouldn't waste any slot in a nature or a burning deck for extra beast cards.

Also the token effect is not that great compared to other token effects like soldier, burning, undead, etc (especially in long mode).

I think many of you must agree with me because I really don't remember the last time somebody played me with a beast deck.

Some ideas i had to improve it include making some beast self-supporting cards (eg recruits +# of beasts or something like that), or improving the token effect to either increase damage or have an extra effect. Finally i think it needs more cards like war hound to increase synergy with the keywords i mentioned earlier.

What are your thoughts on this?

I wouldn't have agreed, but come to think of it, I really haven't played my Beast deck in a while.

I think the main reason you don't see decks that combine Beast with another keyword, however, is that there are enough Beast cards to have the deck focus solely on them with +Dungeon and +Recruit cards for good measure. And Frenzy support cards if desired, of course.

As for the keyword effect being underpowered, I'm not sure I agree. The token gain is large enough to trigger the effect every other card, much like Unliving. You play a Common followed by a non-Common and keywordless cards when you draw more than three. It is rather potent if triggered together with Frenzy, too, and triggering it with Vulture can cause a lot of damage for the cost.

Well you can make a +Dungeon, +recruits deck with soldiers which is better, or you can make one with barbarians which is also better. In fact one of the reasons i believe it is underpowered is because it's not on par with those keywords

I agree. Weak keyword effect, few support cards, and an unusual number of weak-to-useless cards (Abyssal viper, War wolf, Fire fox, Forest guardian, Giant bear...). Fix any one of those three things, and maybe we'll see more people using this keyword.

I am currently playing with a babarian/Beast deck (Frenzy, in fact) and i have made good experience with it. Beast is mostly focused on its rares, which are summones easiely due to beast farm, book of life, Wolf misstress, Overpower and call of the wilds and which can deal a lot of damage for low recruits (My Frenzy Deck got a recruit rate of 3,14, which is quite low for a recruit based deck). The other beasts are mostly fillers for the tokens, so i would not say that beast decks are underpowered. I would rather say that the beast keyword is for some sorts of decks a support (eg. Beast/Soldier) because you need only a few of them to increase your damage drastically. In Fact, i would just say that we need more cards which are based on beast support which is combined with other keywords and which are mainly focused on the beast keyword (Like the Frenzy-Keyword Cards).

Frenzy is the only thing that makes Beast decks somehow useful. Almost all Beasts have low-to-moderate damage, but low cost, and Beast/Frenzy cards basically have the best damage/cost ratio in game.
But that's not always working in normal mode and definitely not enough in long mode. Holy/Soldier decks have good synergy, good damage and resource returning and many Holy supporting stock increasers, Barbarians aren't so good in attack, but have ultimate wall destroying tools, Undead just rips you apart with high damage (I hate Undead host), split resource cost and ridiculously effective stock gainers, especially Crypt, Mage/Legend... Swift chains are fun, effective and sometimes free.
What do Beasts have? Chimera (the only oneshot), Byakko (strong, but needs a LOT of recruits), War elephant, Imperial griffin (these ones are really hard to play because you want to press the opponent, not defend and oneshot), Cockatrice (this one is really good though) Beastmaster (VERY dangerous for you) and many really cheap Beast/Frenzy cards - decent damage with Frenzy and token. No stock gainers, no defense (okay, 20 wall from Dark forest, 2N from Forest spirit, 6 from Warhound and 5 from Beast farm), not really effective summoners (Centaur trainer is looking like a bad joke for me), and a bunch of ineffective or simply useless cards that was mentioned before.
In fact, I thought about Beast improving before. Of course it needs some resource gainers, but that's not all. I remembered that there is one underused keyword: Enduring. If some common and uncommon Beasts would get Enduring(2-10) - Beast deck would become a good rush/constant pressure deck.
Any thoughts about this idea?

So we can almost all agree that only frenzy makes it useful somehow and that it definitely needs some kind of improvement in order for more people to use it.

By the way, I still like this concept, as a strong ice-queenish support card to buff beast.

There is nothing wrong with the attacking side of the beast cards or and it has a good synergy whit nature.
But they have one fatal flaw and its it the reason why Holly-Soldier decks are beater it is the lack of tower building cards in beast keywords and in its complementary keywords such as nature, barbarian and frenzy.Beast decks only have a good synergy in attack and wall building with nature keyword but none in tower ,Unlike holly-soldier which has all there.

I agree with dindon about the black swan.
Also another thing that came to my mind: What's with all those cheap rare beasts? They are supposed to be rares!!! Sometimes you just don't care about the cost/damage ratio (which could be 0 for a zero cost card that does 1 damage!), you want something heavy to hit the opponent. Imagine having a lot of resources, and also being lucky enough to draw 3 rares like beast mistress, crimson hawk or white crocodile just to be beaten by a leviathan (btw never happened to me but it's not that hard to happen)
I know that beasts are not about one-hitters but a little diversity wouldn't hurt right?

We want diversity in the game as a whole, not necessarily in a particular keyword. It is precisely because the Beast keyword is so focsued on cheap attack rares that makes MArcomage in general more diverse as a game.

If you want flexibility, build a deck with different keywords. Beast decks are supposed to be in your face aggressively costed attack cards, and I think that's the way they should stay.

It's not just about the diversity, that was just one point. I mean the way i see it beast is not a suitable deck for a long mode game because of what i said in my last post.

Beasts are supposed to keep attacking, to put pressure on the opponent. However soldiers are much better at doing that than beasts and so are the barbarians. Those decks however have cards that do heavy damage. They are better in every way.

Besides, if you want to apply pressure then you'll just use a rush deck because it seems that beasts are not even that good at doing that!

sol wrote:
It's not just about the diversity, that was just one point. I mean the way i see it beast is not a suitable deck for a long mode game because of what i said in my last post.

Beasts are supposed to keep attacking, to put pressure on the opponent. However soldiers are much better at doing that than beasts and so are the barbarians. Those decks however have cards that do heavy damage. They are better in every way.

Besides, if you want to apply pressure then you'll just use a rush deck because it seems that beasts are not even that good at doing that!

This.
Beasts without Frenzy can't attack effectively (compare it to Soldier, Nature, Barbarian or Undead), can't defend effectively, can't discard (except VERY dangerous Beastmaster) and can't do anything with enemy's resources (except Cockatrice).

Point well taken. Yet, I'd still prefer to see the Beast keyword get better by becoming more effective at attacking than to see it gain a lot of different effects.

Instead of making them capable of discarding or other abilities, just push up the power level on the beast rares by boosting the attack values. That way you keep the spirit of "beasts", who are, after all, just ferociously attacking creatures, while making the keyword better able to win games.

I could get along with that. Anything really as long as it's an improvement over how it is right now

I've not been around much lately but i used to be a realy active player and if i believe i was one of the biggest fans of beast decks. I used to have a beast deck with about 80-90% win ratio and felt it was quite overpowered, it was a Beast-rush type of deck. However it got hit badly by serveral small changes that eventually made it less desirable, it had core cards such as sorcress, centaur trib, ninja, quick commons etc that were changed alongside the introduction of more rare beast cards that made summoning less reliable.

If you want to make it more powerful give it a way to get rid of undesirable cards and it NEEDS to have its commons cheap because their primary funcion is to raise the token counter.

Edit: As i like beasts i dont have any problem with them becomming more powerufl but i just checked my stats and even as recently as deck statistics were introduced my beast deck still maintained a 70% win ratio with about 100 games played.