I could not be happier that ID have not only walked back the nightm🌌are that was Eternal, but outright *sprint𒆙ed* in the opposite direction.

Forgive the wordplay, but with the introduction of a sprint feature🀅 I couldn't resist.

But yes, I, l🌞ike many Doom fans, loved 2016 for its reinvention of a classic formula and its tactical pacing, and *hated* Eternal for turning the game into a twitchy aps-fest that distinctly didn't feel like Doom. So every step away from that is a good one.

The very things that the author of th𒅌is arti෴cle doesn't like are the exact reason that I will be breaking my "no purchasing on release" rule for Dark Age. Might even go so far as to pre-order it.

The problem with Veilguard was t⛎hat, pretty much regardless who you ask, there is *something* wrong with it.

Personally, I don't care about the "wokeness" side of it, it's not a knock against the game for me. For me, it was that the dialogue was badly written, the🍌 combat was unengaging and spam-tastic, and its biggest sin: it lacked any meaningful role-playing possibilities.

In a Role-Playing Game.

Luckily, Mass Effect 4/5 has the perfect formula: a well-crafted, beloved, pre-existing universe; the fantastic moment-to-moment gameplay and role-playing capacity of And⛄romeda (Andromeda's personality system blows Paragon/Renegade out of the water, an𝓡d I will die on this hill); and the (mostly) pitch-perfect storytelling and art style of the Original Trilogy (which I honestly believe that an "Andromeda Trilogy" could have potentially topped, had it not been cancelled).

...but yeah, I don't have much fa🉐ith that modern Bioware can pull it off eith🤡er...

People cram th🐻eir decks in as "7 or lower" because that's what𒆙 most groups mean by "casual".

Generally, I've seen the scale described as

1-3 Jank, no winc♏on, no tutor or draw control, wildly inconsistent

4-5 Average, no focussed wincon, 🌠generꦗally thematic or tribal, inconsistent

6-7 High-Power, focussed wincon, generally mechanically focussed with tutors, draw control and🃏 fast manℱa, consistent

8-10 CEDH decꦺks,𓆏 multiple wincons, mechanically optimised, consistent

No Casual group wants a CEDH deck at their table, so no-one admits that their deck is higher🀅 than a 7.

Me? I run a Thraximundar Zombie Tribal deck. It's probably a 4 due to lack of consistency. My newest deck is an Atraxa, Praetor's Voice Phyrexian Tribal deck that began as "I want every version of all of the Praetors in one deck" and then I couldn't find a 5-colour Phyrexian (yes I know Omnath, Locus o༒f All exists, but I didn't at the time). It's probably a 5.5 because it is powerful and I have won 4-player games over the course of a single turn (not "turn 1", but taking all three other players from 0 to dead in just once of my turns later in the game), b🔯ut it has no consistency. It's thematically focussed but not mechanically focussed.

That's the kicker, focus and consistency.

Okay, so we've got𒁏 some serious dis꧙agreements here.

#1) Every deck is a 7 because everyone interprets the scale differently. To some, the scale really starts at 5 because no-one would ever play a 4 or lower, so 7 is average power. To others, the whole scale is used, so 7 is a high-power deck. Other people have no idea how to judge the power of their decks because they're wildly inconsistent. And yet others look at t🍷he power of the cards in the deck instead of the deck as a whole.

#2) You absolutely can not judge a deck by its Commander. For CEDH, sure judge away. But for Casual, not a prayer. Take Atraxa, Praetor's Voice, for example. It could be an unholy Infect/Proliferate machine, 𝔍or it could be a +1/+1 stacking engine, or it could just be a Phyrexian Tribal deck. Her being commander tells you nothing about the deck or what it does, unless you bring expectations from CEDH which you yourself call out as being wrong to do for Casual.

#3) Your Archenemy comments are... unfortunately tainted the same way your Commander comments are. Because they're not actually based on the strength of the deck you're playing, but on your opponents' presuppositions of the strength of your deck. A guy I used to play with before I moved house had a reputation for building decks that were 8s or 9s,𓃲 dude was running full-on CEDH decks in a Casual group. So he was always targeted first by the entire table, even when he rꩵan decks that were the very definition of 3s and 4s. That example shows that Archenemy situations have next to nothing to do with the actual deck you're playing at everything to do with what your opponents think you're playing.

Asജsessing whether your deck is actually a 7 is about two things and two things only: time to win, and consistency. If you're consistently winning by turn 8, your deck is a 7. That's it.