Most of us are currently in this weird spot for the game lodged between the end of Regional Season and waiting for Convergence to drop and i think of it as purgatory. We’re in this damned waiting room suffering with not much to do and no real guidelines. It wasn’t until recent that we even knew when the set would drop and whilst we could let our rage at the situation take hold of us, it is best to instead put this time to good use and for that, here are my thoughts on few things that you can do.

Pre-emptive Deck Building

We’re still 50 cards short of the entire Convergence set so we’re technically putting the cart before the horse, but getting acclimated with what we know can at least get us a head start on the meta to come. Many of you play on Tabletop Simulator and are already jamming games of Convergence, but for those of you who are IRL players only, have you ever considered printing up stickers or using proxies (printed fake copies, or even just writing on paper and slipping it in the sleeve)?? Some of the guys in my area have printed stickers so that they can play with the physical cards / dice instead of staring at a screen. Maybe none of that is for you, but at least readying the cards in the set to memorize them and at least theory crafting and going over your mulligan strategies or expectations of what you’ll do in the 1st Round will go a long way towards being prepared.

If you ARE getting games in, then you’ll be able to get a better idea of which cards were shittier than you anticipated and which ones have been AMAZING!!! You’ll be playing against other people who likely had different ideas and are using different cards and maybe you catch on to some card that you didn’t realize existed or some Legacy block card / combo that is usable now.

Keep in mind to not say some deck that is on the cusp (of being good) is guaranteed trash, because we’re still short those 50 cards and things could change, but the goal is to look for what has been playing well or better than initially anticipated and building upon that. Look for cards with potential and decks that just needed “a little bit more” because maybe that comes out and you’ll be out there playing a deck that came out of left field and crushing faces (i’ll miss you “Nines”).

Improve Your Understanding of the Game

Go read everything under the sun by any one who has done anything in the game. Go and read thought pieces from people who play other games; Most skills in one game are easily link-able / transferable to other games. Find those hidden gem articles written by World Champions that talk about mind sets or the importance of specific elements in their game then question if it can be applied to Destiny.

We haven’t put out much free content as of late, but check out the old Patreon exclusive videos and see if you can add to your existing knowledge of the game. Many of our Patrons will watch the videos and pause in between actions to see if they can figure out what play will be made and the sequencing and then when it doesn’t align with their internal thoughts they’ll try to break down why it wasn’t (assuming it wasn’t explained) and they grow from it. I always feel like the proud father when I see “my children” doing well at big events and then it pushes me to further improve my game as well so that the student doesn’t overcome the master!

Learn a New Game

There are times where just taking a break from a game is the correct thing to do. I was playing Artifact: The Dota Card Game and I still think the game is phenomenal, but it didn’t hold my heart like Destiny has. I often feel that when I play some game that has brand new elements, then I get new ideas and a better understanding of things in the other games that I play. Artifact is a game of sequencing and seeing many actions / rounds ahead of things to come so that you can try to best prepare for them.

Magic The Gathering Arena is running full steam ahead and if you’ve never played MtG then it could be a good time to see what it is about and improve your Destiny game whilst digesting how to play that game. MtG was largely about deck building, mulligans, and the foreshadowing of what your opponent is trying to do. One of the components of the game that you absolutely have to understand in that game that doesn’t apply to Destiny much is “card advantage”. In MtG you only get to draw 1 card a round naturally, where as we get to draw until 5 in Destiny and since you have to play lands from hand to afford things in MtG, that means if you play a land every turn (our equivalent to Rounds) then you’ll have only been able to play 6-7 actual non-land cards before you no longer have a hand and are in “top deck mode” (playing the top card of your deck only).

Duelyst used to use a 2 card draw per round system and that used to push people to run aggressive decks because you could play 2 cards a round (your mana generated +1 each round for free) without ever running out (excluding running out of cards in deck), but they changed to a 1 card draw and it messed up SO much of the player base because aggro whilst still good, didn’t have that engine to supplement the situations where everything got blown up. Duelyst was good for trying to understand positioning and preparing for the next Round or two’s available cards that would mess up your plan. Hero Powers were once every 2 rounds and played a solid part of the game plan usually, but due to the infrequency you didn’t have to pay nearly as much attention usually.

Hearthstone is also a 1 card per round system (unless you were Warlock) and followed a similar maintaining card advantage plan of burying opponents in advantage or jamming all of your dudes down and rushing to kill them. Two of the big differences from MTG are that you received a free resource every Round and the Hero Powers being available each Round was a pretty big thing for card advantage since if you played a minion with 1 health into Mage, you were asking for a free -1 card advantage. Mage’s ability was pay 2 mana, deal 1 damage to target minion (creature) or hero. Free cards are good but sometimes its incorrect to do your hero power for tempo reasons.

The decision is yours so do with it what you want, but knowledge is power. FFG is a huge fuck up and we should be accustomed to it by now, so don’t let your hate consume you. Well, unless they put out the Draft Kit a month after the set comes out again, then at that point, I’ll be right there with you mobbing them on the internet streets!!!

~HonestlySarcastc

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