Adeleine Skye
tl;dr at the end if you need to skip the preamble.
(Copied/Edited from my post in the Discord)
Hey there, LadyBlurbles here. I don't know what everyone's opinion is on the current state of the Guantlet format, but my first experience with it was incredibly overwhelming. My very first pick (as Magmar) had cards choices from 4 different factions, all at common, and I suddenly had no idea what to expect.
During my games, I constantly got blown out by cards in every faction every duel, and I could not possibly wrap my head around trying to mitigate every possible threat AND answer in the game all at once.
In stark contrast to my time playing in the season ladder, some of the greatest fun I've had in ages, Gauntlet run #1 was quite possibly the
most unfun
CCG experience I have ever had.
In my second attempt at Gauntlet running atm, I have Arclyte Regalia, Aymara Healer, and Flash Reincarnation in my deck... as Abyssian.
Hilarious and broken? Sure. Fun and strategic? Not even close.
As-is, I will only ever play Gauntlet when the game gives me free entry, and even then only because of the loot. Speaking of loot, with a 50/50 win rate, the expected value of rewards is only 15 gold, making Gauntlet a less-than-zero-sum proposition for players. Yes, wins also count towards your 15 gold per 3, but as-is... it's literally not worth playing unless our win rate is above 70% (unless the individual card rewards are better than saving your gold for buying packs)
Given how unfun the Gauntlet has been so far... yeah, not happy with the current state of affairs.
I've been in queue now for almost 20 minutes, by the way, and it's never taken me more than 3 minutes on ladder. I wouldn't be surprised if other players feel similarly about not wanting to play Gauntlet given the wait time.
tl;dr and my suggestions:
If you want the card pool to be the same in Gauntlet for every player regardless of faction, I recommend curating which cards are available out-of-faction rather than letting ANYTHING be possible.
Common removal like True Strike or Phoenix Fire, maybe, and possibly even simple "staple" minions like Young Silithat as "evergreen/neutral" picks, but NOT haymakers like Aymara Healer and Arclyte Regalia. In doing so, I highly recommend this curated list be made equally common across all factions for consistency, so in-faction and cross-faction cards appear equally likely for given rarities (and keep that list SMALL!)
Peace and love, Dream Sloth Games. You've brought back my favorite digital CCG of all time, and I am so happy to be home.