I was wrong about Crimson Curse

Almost 2 weeks have passed since the Crimson Curse release and this is a good time to look back on my card evaluations.

My top 5 of crimson curse in no particular order:
Tourney Joust
Svalblod totem
Sigvald
Adalia
Sirssa

Honorable mentions go to: Anseis, Regis Bloodthirst, Fisher King, all the 4p deal 2

Best leader is Anna

— Sin (@Gnurrgard) March 28, 2019

Oh boy.

If you know me around Discord, you'll know that I'm always lecturing people on how X or Y is wrong. Even Team Aretuza has experienced my rambling a couple of times now (shoutout to Molegion for never taking it personal).
For those of you who get tired of this behavior and want to return the favor, this is your chance to point the finger and laugh and you just got baited into Part 3 of my series:

Why do I suck at this game? Part 3: Mistakes and how to learn from them

In the modern day of the Internet, we constantly throw opinions around. Platforms like Twitter and Discord lend themselves towards that. You can discuss anything with people all over the world in a matter of seconds. With so many opinions going around, we are bound to be wrong on something eventually. Yet people rarely admit that they were wrong. This is a natural defense mechanism: We try to look for reasons on why we thought that way, play it down, or even hold on to that opinion, while being aware that we should just admit the fact we were wrong.
One big reason for that is the attitude towards mistakes. I'm sure you've all encountered this: you admit being wrong on something and what you get back is a "I told you so" or people making fun of you. That doesn't feel good, adds nothing to the discussion or learning process and is punishing actual good behavior. We should encourage people to look back, accept the fact that making mistakes is okay, and try to learn from it.
Lastly: We are afraid due to admitting mistakes and thus putting them into focus, we might lose our credibility. So we rather just sit them out and hope nobody notices. If you don't trust my judgement on new cards after Crimson Curse, that's up to you, I'm here to get better, not to be right.

Tourney Joust, Svalblod Totem, Anseis, Regis, Sirssa, 4p cards

Since this article is focusing on mistakes, I will just quickly brush over these cards. 

• Tourney Joust is a staple in Ardal even though he is still not the best NG leader
• Svalblod Totem is a good card, just proactive points, sometimes synergy
• Anseis is one of the best additions to NR, especially Meve
• Regis is autoinclude
• Sirssa fits nicely into the Sheldon handbuff package that is popular in ST
• New 4p cards have found their way into all factions

Now that we got the boring part out of the way, let's look at the blunders.

Sigvald

Sigvald was one of the most anticipated cards of Crimson Curse. You take Botchling, one of the best NR cards and put it in a top tier faction?  Well turns out, not being in NR was his downfall. Skellige is a faction that plays little to no engines and thus denies extra value from removal and locks. Having Sigvald in any existing SK deck immediately gives your opponents locks value and you're better off just playing 0 engines at all. When playing engines, you often go hard or go home. Sometimes engines have such a high floor value that you can just include them. Sigvald was revealed at 6 strength, which trades evenly with a lock. Would that have made him live up to the expectations? You're still giving locks value, but unchecked he can gain a lot of value. We might never learn.

For now Sigvald rests in the collection, wishing Meve would adopt him.

Lesson learned: Don't try to paste concepts from one faction into another. Context is important.

Adalia

We just talked about how Sigvald would rather be in NR. Surely spawning an extra copy of an engine and additionally giving it protection via shield has to be good in the engine faction, right? Yet for some reason, Queen Adalia hasn't really caught on for now. If you look at current Meve Lists, you will realise how the most important engines and orders are actually golds. playing an 11p card to copy a Trebuchet doesn't feel that great and Trebs are usually played around anyway, you don't want multiple of them. Add in the fact that Tridam Infantry is also not an optimal target, since you will end up with 2 Infantries that demand buffs, and Adalia struggles to find good targets to copy. Is this a cardpool issue or will bronze engines naturally just designed in a way that a card like Adalia can not work? I think the jury is still out on this one. Stay tuned for "I was wrong about being wrong about Crimson Curse"

Lesson learned: When evaluating combo cards, think about if a good combo  actually exists and if it even can exist

Cards I overlooked:

On reveal, I thought this was a NR card and quickly argued the card was bad. Then, after learning it was neutral I said "It might be useful in Crach and Eithne", because those leaders have an easy time lining up strength at certain values. Turns out the condition of having a 1 on your opponents field is much easier to reach than anticipated, making Gregoire a pure value bomb at 11 for 9. Almost any faction (Except NR, funny enough) includes this. It has taken the Unicorn spot as a neutral staple (Regis took the Chironex). Expect a nerf coming soon.

Lesson learned: Conditional cards are not easy to evaluate on a quick glance. Pure points are still king. Don't assume a cards faction.

Ok so hear me out: I looked through the monster cardpool and the whole Vampire theme didn't look very competitive to me, which at this point seems to be accurate. So I just brushed over the Dettlaff leader and saw he didn't support the archetype any further and dismissed him. So I basically left out Monsters for my CC evaluation. That means I'm in the clear here right? I technically didn't misevaluate Monsters because I didn't do a proper evaluation, right? Wrong. Every misstep has to be counted and there are a couple things we can learn here too.

I touted Anna as the best new leader coming the new expansion and while this might be true after the nerf on Dettlaff (maybe I'm just clairvoyant?), overlooking such a grossly overstatted leader like Dettlaff is pretty big. The main mistake here was looking for synergy, when Dettlaff was actually just 12 plain points attached to removal in the highest value faction. Unsurprisingly, the single best deck in the game on release was just the highest value cards you could fit into 164 provisions coupled with a grossly overstatted leader.

Lessons learned: Don't half ass things, don't quickly brush over a faction when it starts off unpromising. See the whole picture. Count the points.

Regarding his Higher Vampire form: While he did recieve a nerf, I do not think he was problematic for the meta we were in. I still like the nerf for future considerations, a high value card like Dettlaff: HV should under no circumstances be splashable and the nerf hopefully makes him only viable in decks that have multiple consumes and consume targets.

Alright I think that should do it for my review of my evaluations. I hope you still value my opinion after missing a 12 point leader and start developing an attitude where you're not ashamed of mistakes, rather see them as a part of life. A part of life you can harness and convert into something positive, as I did here. Have a good one and see you next time (Honestly, a 12 point leader?!?)