So, what were some things you thought Chaotic could have done to make it better?

As stated earlier on, attacks aren't forgiving in trying to excel at a specific area. If I wanted to run mono-earth vein of expertise, I have Clean Slide, Earth Pulse, Fear Fight, Granite Balls, Gravel Grind, Grounding Grapple, Infectious Implosion, Mineral Mayhem, Paraseed, Petrifying Power, Pillar Quake, Sunder Ground, Terrantula Tackle, Terraport, Trampling Tackle, Vacuum Hemisphere, and Vine Snare (these are ones without any formal checks/challenges/fails/elements than just earth). Sounds like a "long" list, right? Take into account that there's only three 0BPs, only one practical among them; eight 1BPs that are mostly angled to either Danians or Mipedians; and sporadic high BP cards that are STILL angled in some cases. That's just mono-earth. What if I wanted to make an oddball fire/courage deck? I could theoretically mix and match some fire and courage cards individually, but there are no cards that actually combine those two like Fearocity or Ash Torrent.

Every set past Silent Sands began initiating these ideas of what the tribes had to do. Take a look at the Underworld. How many of you have seen a few dozen burn decks that were all fire/power/UW? Answer: Every. Single. One of us. Kopond HMOTH is a cliche stacked on a cliche to be useful in only one kind of deck (some call that specialty, but still). But you know what is the Underworld's greatest hidden strength? Debuff and control. Both of these work to deadly effect for my kind of player: the griefer. The guy who removes your elements, your disciplines, and laughs at your pitiful attempts to delay your inevitable demise. The one who in the spirit of Van Bloot's cult makes you suffer in agony while he makes popcorn. Bloot SoA and Dissonance of Distraction with his cronies like Galmedar and Krekk PR can troll the game with tormenting teamwork against anything that ain't a dagger (they smash your gear with glee), but no one uses this strategy anymore.

More dirt against the devs in terms of elements and disciplines. My tribe, the Overworld, is pretty good with any element or discipline they choose, and often make for the easiest to mix into another tribe because of it. But let's go back to the Mipedians. Sure, you're fleet footed and have mastered air and earth, which embodies the shifting sand. But what of the Mipedians of old who learned the art of water in their lush jungle? Surely they have to be wise for their ways of staunch conservation. Or the few Mipedians of today who learned the power of fire under the punishing sun? Are they not courageous for pioneering such a destructive and unpredictable force? We're getting very little mix of disciplines and elements outside of tribal cliches, and it's bugging the heck outta me.

There were confines like that implied and staged by they who made the cards, but also many confines set by players. I guarantee everyone here has run into at least one Mipedian deck running Melody of Mirage/Fighter's Fanfare/Aegis Airia as "staples". After all, the Mipedians are masters of illusion. I, on the other hand, can tell you that for every time Melody of Mirage has saved one of my guys' hide in a tight spot, Melodic Might has saved me too. The Mipedians also happen to be hunters honed to perfection who specialize in choosing their actions and engagements carefully. An adverse location ability that will get your army killed can be neutralized with Notes of Neverwhere, a Bladez with Husk Armor can be coded by Gear Glissando after a few strikes, and Maxxor PoP is a billion times less scary when he gets hit with Trills of Diminution.

Another example is how many overlooked gems we have because everyone's so quick to jump on the popular things. People on TCO are coming to respect and fear Garv because of how Ketac123 and I have been using him for offense and defense. I flip up two Girgeth Tars, that's 40 points of healing on deck, or two counters I can throw onto Drabe if Plasmarrow disables healing. He combines Garv with Ilx and a Mipedian Fulgurite to get a real shelf life on some sickening air power. I'll give you another one: Lobanne. This little muge has become just as good as, if not better than, Karraba in many situations. Pretty much every good fighter that people use after AU (except Aivenna to my memory) has at least one element on them. How many strike and burn decks are going to be equipped to take on creatures going into the fight with 120 energy (Dibanni working overtime)? More than once? With healing to regenerate them? And how many of those burns/strikes with fire or air and good speed bother to lay their hands on an Inferno Gust anymore?

Moreover on the idea of confines is that I fear certain cards may be becoming crutches or bad necessities. I don't mean crutch as an insult like something that's always needed to win; more like something that a deck ends up being forced to use these things lest they be torn apart. I find myself being horribly guilty of this on multiple occassions: I have an entire deck centered on Zamool's ability as a temporary crutch for Arkanin, and it disgustingly remains undefeated even now (that isn't a challenge). But how many burners have become so reliant on the little zombie-ninja who doesn't mesh well with his tribe at all in terms of stats? How many decks have been forced to run Xerium Armor because of how much payload can be delivered by attacks when they miss out on other gear? As mentioned earlier, how many attack decks have had Primal Smash, Invader's Tactics, or Marksman's Prep for their versatility instead of fitting with the deck? So many self acclaimed "pro" players run these cards in every deck and felt that you had to run them too for their so called standards. That got into people confusing what you have/use with "skill", but that's an entirely separate and longer rant altogether. Like the words "need" and "want" were synonymous.