So i actually went through the trouble of watching almost the entirety of the video which certainly stays true to being a rant. I think it would have been better to not make the video as it seems directly after a massive loss streak.
Regarding the topic itself i have to say i don’t see Azure Summoning as an outstanding problem, not even close to being the most broken card in Duelyst. Yes, depending on both players draws it can create board states that are almost impossible to come back from. If this deck goes off turn 1 then yeah, your probably fucked and there is little you can do about it. But how often does this happen?
I’ve played around 20 games with the deck since the combo became popular and faced it even more often on ladder and i haven’t seen a turn 1 or even turn 2 “go off” in a single one of these games. I am not even sure there have been turn 3 “go offs”, if there were i can probably count them on one hand. The fact that the deck can outpace it’s answers is certainly true, but it’s incredibly rare, just as rare as a Bloodsworn Gambler OTK probably.
What does the deck do on average? You get a bunch of minions out somewhere around 6 mana, half of them have 1 health. At this stage of the game almost every deck in the meta has ways to nullify that play. Smash seems to be thinking that just wiping the entire board with one card isn’t a counter because it’s just a 1 for 1 but i think it’s at least an answer, and depending on the situation it might leave the Vet player in dire trouble as you might still have minons on board while he wasted his entire turn. Further more, going of on 6 mana is only possible if you have a Skywing in hand along with Summoning. Starting the combo with Dragon Larks increases it’s mana cost to 7-9 mana. From my experience, on average, pulling of the combo happens more around 7-8 mana, not around 6.
Generally Smash says the combo is incredibly consistent which doesn’t really match my experience at all. I had tons of games where i had to start with Dragon Lark as a turn 1 play or a Dreamgazer. The deck has 12 one or two mana drops but only 6 two drops that you want to play turn one. It’s also a combo deck utilizing 2 different combos that have absolutely no synergy with each other except from drawing out AOEs. Sirocco is pretty garbage if you didn’t get to play a bunch of Golems early on. The flyers themselves are also kinda crappy without Azure Summoning to go off. Have a bunch of Flyers + Sirocco in hand in the early/Midgame and you might as well concede because the deck does nothing worthwhile. Having to play sirocco at 5 mana with almost no prior Golems because it’s still the best play to make feels really bad and i had that kind of situation quite a few times.
In terms of counterplay, outside of just AOE, there is also smart play regarding the manatiles. To go off early on the deck requires as many manatiles as it can get, just deny them those and you can delay the combo drastically. Even if you can’t use the mana yourself, just take them to deny them access.
The replays provided are also not really convincing. The build he was running wasn’t exactly good for the meta imo. From what i saw from his deck it should have a nearly impossible matchup against Wall Vanar sporting both Pando and Thunderhorn. It’s matchup against Swarm Vet is also horrible, but this has little to do with the Flying combo. Yeah in the first replay there was little he could have done, except maybe not replacing that Pando. But what lost him the game wasn’t the Azure Combo. He cleaned it off and still had 5 cards left in hand, more than his opponent. Don’t really get why he says it costed him to many cards. What killed him were the 2 Siroccos afterwards. His deck has simply no effective way to deal with multiple swarm generators, meaning he is destined to lose the long game.
That being said, i think the second game shows a generally flawed approach to the matchup. He was playing for board control the entire game, something that simply cannot work in the long run. He should have played much more aggressively. Just as in the first game, the combo wasn’t really his downfall. The EMP was. Leaving him with 3 useless 1/1 scattered around the board, a dispelled 2/3 and a 3 card hand consisting entirely of spells. He had an answer to the Emp but literaly any other threat played by the Vet player who still had 5 cards in hand would have been an almost guaranteed loss. Aymara, another EMP, Sirocco whatever.
Funny enough, he could have won that game. After the EMP hit he said he was still in a winning position which imo wasn’t true at all. He had no significant board and a smaller hand. But because of that he kept playing for board instead of just going for the kill. OBS the EMP, MDS Heathseeker to clear the Derwish, hit his general with your own, MDS Fox to hit his General bringing him down to 3 at which point everything from Phenix Fire, over Calligrapher to Zendo would have been a clear win. Not to mention that the vet player still had a Fox in his face that he can’t clear with his board.
