Mage had 3 of the 4 of them before the mini set, and the deck was tier 4.
Skyla and some coins bumped it to tier 2/3 ish?
It added a turn 4 blowout in addition to the king tide turn 5 blowout. That’s really it. The cards are flashy, but it’s really one dimensional.
I’ve played with and without it. They both work but I just don’t like constraints that Surfalopod puts on choices for the rest of the deck.
I think Surfalopod is fine because of the tradeoff. The addition of the rogue cards and coins does make it a bit faster sometimes but I still don’t think it’s a problem card.
That’s because it is, and it’s not nearly enough to carry this archetype
Just open the drawn/played winrates of the card pre-miniset and see the difference.
It puts too many limitations on your deck and you first have to draw a card NOT BEFORE, but AS SOON AS POSSIBLE after playing the card.
It’s just insanely inconsistent.
These decks aren’t meant to showcase good design; they’re simply exhilarating to play. There’s a thrill in waiting for that one card to come out and completely turn the game around. It’s an archetype that, like any other, appeals to certain types of players and should be allowed to exist.
I consider myself one of those people. While I appreciate well-rounded gameplay, I always find myself drawn to decks like these.
I rarely find myself playing anything that can’t just win the game with a certain combination of cards.
Yeah, that’s why you’re abusing BSM now 12 hours a day, right?
Oh, wait, no, you haven’t even tried it.
Just like you haven’t tried Handbuff Pally, Shopper DH and every other deck I was talking about.
I wasn’t talking about Sif Mage, that deck had layers upon layers of complexity.
How was I supposed to know that?
Didn’t you say, “the main engine is any 1 or 2 cards”?
Though I had other examples in mind too, like Beetle Druid.
I don’t see much difference between my examples and BSM. Both have incredibly strong cards that can essentially end the game on the spot.
Sif wasn’t the main engine. You can’t call a finisher card “main engine”.
“Main engine” cards are turn 3-4-5 cards without which your deck wouldn’t make it to late game or win anything.
Usually weapons, as well, but not always.
Except Sif needs a lot of preparation. Just drawing and playing it doesn’t end the game on the spot.
Unless you miscounted your damage, realized you’re 1 off-lethal, and conceded.
Then it ended it on the spot.
I don’t know how to do any time machine tricks.
Unironically yes. Metal Detector is a HUGE addition to the deck. Frankly, anything less than 2 Instrument Tech is wrong. It’s a pre-nerf Umpire’s Grasp tier weapon (not quite as good but still same tier).
Where do you even find your drawn/played winrate data from? Please just don’t say hsguru.
HSGuru.
Where do YOU?
I don’t.
I mean, I have Firestone premium, but those stats are slightly different and not precise. I don’t need them to be precise, I just need the order displayed to me to be correct, which it probably is.
HSguru is trippy for all higher ranks, and I don’t accept lower ranks drawn/played winrates as anything meaningful, and neither should you.
If those noobs knew what to do with the cards in their hands, they would be playing against me and having similar problems like me - no data.
EDIT for clarification: I opened up sludgelock and insanitylock stats when I was experimenting with data sites to see if their stats are working for higher ranks, and they’re not. You can see some very clearly bad mulligan picks suggested. When I openly posted about this, d0nkey himself came and said the sample was too low. He suggested using Legend data, but if you compare how data changes through ranks, you won’t find that theory reasonable at all anymore.
EDIT 2: of course, none of this is relevant for this discussion. I wanted to find out which stats you’re using. I hoped there was a hidden part of VS i didn’t know about with stats, but I got disappointed xD
Surfalopod being number 3 is correct for this deck. It just doesn’t mean exactly what you think it means.
Objectively incorrect.
So you need Under the Sea and Watercolor Artist. That’s not much of a limitation. I mean, it is a bit of a piloting restriction, because unless you have an Under in hand already, you should probably NOT treat Watercolor Artist as a turn 3 play, but instead as a post-Surfalopod play. But assuming that you’re not making turn 3 Watercolor noob plays, nope, the spell draw is very consistent.
There’s an argument to be had for other ranks, but in this case it’s a moot point. Whether it’s “All ranks” or “Diamond 4-1” or “Top 1k,” the data says the same thing:
For Skyla and Surfalopod, it doesn’t matter if we’re looking at drawn winrate or mulligan winrate. They’re #1 and #2, by both metrics, at every rank.
Surfalopod is hands down, by the data, in every way, at every rank, the second best card in the deck.
The thing with surfalopod is what you could do without It and not about the card performance itself.
Because cards like it have obligation to Win more than the average 50% to even be considered.
With that said surfalopod is easy mode deckbuilding because it almost auto builds the deck when you put him due to his ant sinergies.
The real card in the entire expansion that needs to be nerfed.
Marin is doing for all decks what Skyla does for BSM.
Skyla discounts and creates huge swing plays that “feel bad”.
Marin does that and more. Marin swings so many games that it’s just tiresome at this point.
Surfalopod clearly outperforms King Tide.
Both drawn and mulligan winrates. All ranks.
But it’s made strong by the other cards supporting it.
That’s the point everyone is trying to explain to you.
And that’s what I originally said.
And I told you to look at the data BEFORE the patch because I know they would show the card to be mediocre. If it wasn’t mediocre, BSM would have been tier 2-3 before the patch.
It wasn’t. It was a meme-tier deck. It took this broken miniset to allow dumpster legend BSM players to hit top 1k.
Or even top 500.
I refer your misguided behind to this post by the only BSM expert I accept on this forum:
This is true about literally every card. There is no such thing as the power of a card outside of the context of the deck that card is in.
Your point is technically true, but it doesn’t serve the argument that you’re making. Surfalopod is in no way unique in this regard.
Metal Detector, Surfalopod and Under the Sea have intense synergy with each other. Of course the power level of Surfalopod is lower in a pre-Rogue context.
This post is why it DOES serve its purpose:
Just accep it - you were wrong to point out Surfalopod at all. Just pretend it doesn’t exist, because in the analysis, it doesn’t exist.
Once Skyla gets nerfed, Surfalopod will show its’ weakness again. Not only is it not good enough to carry the whole archetype, which we know is proven before the patch, but it will be proven that it’s so bad that BSM is stronger without it.
And the only guy who ever claimed that before any stats were out was Smeet, which is why he’s the expert for BSM, and you should know I will always trust a human expert more than a plain number withotu a context.
Oh, and this is funny coming from you:
It’s usually YOU who ignores the context. Even now, you’ve chosen the wrong context to examine.
Corrections a broken card in a good deck.