How are you guys dealing with the early game; rather, what’s your general plans or strategy for the first couple turns?
Especially if I’m going second, heroes just steamroll me. Between the combination of easy leveling up, and free heals from leveling, heroes just create an advantage that’s tough to deal with if your deck has a weaker set of units in the starting deck. Their hero seems to kill mine, and then level up and heal - making retaliation tough.
Also, what’s your guys’ thoughts on how Blue (/the Blue starter deck) plays out the game? It’s starting units are just so weak, it’s really hard to establish any board presence, especially if they get a good hero (problemed above). If I don’t get a Jail on turn 1 (going second), the board gets tougher to control, and it’s harder to find a good time to build it.
Ultimately, I need to play more games and get more practice in; just looking for advice for starting the first couple of turns, and transitioning from there.
Playing blue is certainly tough.
My general advice is make use of chump blockers early, until you can start slapping down your first techs.
Blue has good options for stalling at tech 1 to make way for any of your powerful tech 2 plans.
I don’t play a hero as player two unless I know for certain it cannot be killed. I would rather play a tower, which is a good play to turn your 1/1s into 2/1s.
If you’re player one, you can get value out of Oni early, and he stays good as the game goes on.
As player 2, it’s important to avoid giving free levels to your opponent.
In some cases, you can play Quince with Building Inspector / Traffic Director if you know one of them will survive and you’ll get Manufactured Truth next turn.
Most of blue starter’s tricks are very situational (Arrest on Bloodrage Ogre, Spectral Aven against purple starter…) but the most difficult is (IMO) to answer a Garth + spells early strategy.
Always consider all your heroes. Onimaru tends to get the most focus and while frenzy is great for attacking, he’s super expensive beyond that and usually isn’t that great when you’re on the back foot. Bigby has cheap levelups and a 4 hp midband, both features which could be crucial. Quince doesn’t fight well, but the free illusion (and the option for more without spending cards) even if only as a speedbump in scavenger/technician is nothing to scoff at.
Second that Tower is one of your best ways to help in trading. I usually build it turn 2 against a fast-leveling hero, and avoid bringing out a hero of my own until I’m using a spell or I have a solid tech 1 unit line.
Spectral Hound is often a good way to trade up against early hero aggression, just not against the black starter (deteriorate is killer).
Otherwise, I tend to rely on Scribe to help stall to tech 2.
But you’re absolutely not the first or last person to struggle playing P2 Blue against early aggro (I don’t have a great handle on it yet, and I’ve played like 20 games of P1 Black vs P2 Blue): it isn’t very well equipped to handle heroes like Garth / Vandy / Cala / Grave / etc…