Mono Blue vs P1 mono black

[EricF]

The experimental response is only against an opening of Vandy + 1 or more 1/1 guys, so @FrozenStorm should/must start with that turn 1.

[FrozenStorm]

Yep, I am also sticking to my “scripted” P1T2 Black play of HH + Tech 1, and Teching DP + One of Nether Drain, Bone Collector or Shadow Blade, based on the P2T1 play (the float 3 would be a little suspect, I think I’ll probably start out teching Nether Drain but won’t say for certain so EricF stays in the dark on that)

And since the prompt of this thread was Vandy Jav Haunt T1, I’m at least going to start our experiments with that.

I’ll be “playing the turn 3 draw” fairly, and workering from Graveyard, Summon Skeletons, Archery, Jandra, Imp and Rogue, as they are all fair game in my first cycle when I do this. Usually though, Rogue, SS, Graveyard and Archery are what I prioritize.

[Castanietzsche]

Very interesting matchup !
What about keeping track of P1 Blackhand Scourge vs P2 Flagstone Dominion where P2 won ?

I didn’t win many, but let’s contribute with mine !
P1 Vandy rushdown vs P2 Truth tech rush (win with crazy luck)

Some questionable advice from a newbz Blue player

Black starter is incredibly versatile and is your main threat in this matchup !
Deteriorate is of course awesome, but StW is surprisingly even more terrifying. Thieving Imp is not as hard to deal with as it is with Mono-Red or Mono-Green for example, and Graveyard is not as dangerous as it might look like.

Typical P1 Black gameplan is T1 Vandy + Javelineer + Haunt, followed by a hero-based gameplan around Metamorphosis and Dark Pact. Black is quite likely to delay Tech II there.

P2 Blue has many options, and after some games I came up to these conclusions (ok keep critical mind there, I’m not the best Codex player in the world)

• Don’t waste too many gold on cards. Your opponent can heal his heroes by leveling up and remember a Reputable Newsman with a Tower is a higher threat for opponent’s Javelineer than a Brave Knight is. Keep gold to build a Tower (will be useful once Metamorphosis will be on anyway !), Tech buildings and to recruit lvl 1 heroes. (yeah feeding their xp bar is painful but you really need them to keep some cards in hand).

• Don’t go too low on cards. Your strategy implies Tech II and Tech III units, and you need to cycle your deck as fast as possible.

• We all love the Scribe, but yeah don’t forget about Overeager Cadet to build your Tech II as soon as possible. Even if you might not have Tech II cards in hand, Tech II is a threat which might act as a leer to save your Tower.

• Play mostly units. Jail, Manufactured Truth, Eyes of the Chancellor, Boot Camp are awesome as P1 but very dangerous to use as P2. Ultimate spells aren’t your first choice option, use them to react to exceptional board states and with caution.

To sum up, I think that with this on mind you can win something like than 20% of your games as P2 Blue !

[ClanNatioy]

Did this game ever happen? And if so how did it go? If not then why not?

[Jadiel]

@ClanNatioy see here:

Black vs Blue: FrozenStorm & EricF experiment

Per my ongoing experiments with Black and Blue, @EricF has agreed to try a new Blue first cycle opening to see how it fares. Thanks very much to him, I hope this yields some better results for the blue player! I’m going to post the first 5 “turns” (P1 T1, 2 & 3 and P2 T1 & 2) below, and we’re going to play out from that point (perhaps multiple times) to see if we can find a world in which Blue isn’t so disadvantaged. It’s “cheating” a little bit to fix the draws and such, but I think I have …

[ARMed_PIrate]

To sum it up: not going well for Blue. It would be really nice if one of the playtesters could weigh in and “show Frozen how it’s done.” To, y’know, show that it’s doable.

[ClanNatioy]

@ARMed_PIrate

To sum it up: not going well for Blue. It would be really nice if one of the playtesters could weigh in and “show Frozen how it’s done.” To, y’know, show that it’s doable.

I was more of a Green/Black + this multi seems broken let’s try it player in playtesting so wouldn’t be much help with that.

[feathers]

What I’m worried about is that even if Blue has lines of play that can survive Black’s aggression, Black just has too many different threats. Blue may have a line of play that extends themselves to counter a particular strategy of Black’s, but Black can just as easily switch to another one, and Blue doesn’t even know if it’s countering the right strategy in the first place. If two seasoned players are finding the Blue side of the matchup challenging with perfect draws and knowledge of the opponent’s strategy, what would happen in practical play when Blue has none of these advantages? Using the “perfect opening line” against Meta wouldn’t work if your opponent isn’t going for Meta at all.

[EricF]

To be fair, I’m only taking semi-perfect draws (aiming for about the 75 percentile of quality).

Clearly the do nothing -> Free Speech + Scribe isn’t working out. Typically I would trade cards for board position against an aggressive opening (ie: Overeager Cadets), but black has discard effects to make that “suboptimal” - to wit: Imagine I play 2x Overeager Cadet on turn 3, then discard 1, draw 3. One Shadow Blade later and I’d have no board, and only 2 cards in hand, with little prospect for recovery. Although, there might be something to that, with a little bit of variation.

[Bryce_The_Rice]

I’m not seeing why you wouldn’t be discarding 2 and drawing 4, did I miss a discard earlier?
Also I suppose the idea would be to put things in technician to vaguely recoup that, but it is a problem for sure.

[EricF]

Imp Discard and Worker are the other 2 cards used up.