Imagine getting to 21 or 22 out of 25 and then backsliding … “exciting” wasn’t the word I was using at the time. 
1 Like
fair enough.
I’m contending with a checks 43.75% ranked weekly win rate so getting one game away from the first proper level has been an uphill job. Newbie learning curve. That said, my beginner’s luck extended to beating @JMH.75 first go with Frontiers. Safe to say it’s run out since then.
Star Realms’ system sucks muddy bay water.
It should just be renamed “grind” instead of “rank.” It’s the worst part of the app, by a factor of 10.
1 Like
I like the Star Realms system. 
Feel like I achieve something every time I gain a level.
Newbie moment of ooooh. Just finished a game in which I bought a freighter on turn 4. Freighter and 4 scouts came out on turn 6 which let me buy Brain World, which came out on turn 10. The opponent finally managed to kill BW on turn 17, for all the good it did. Sometimes the shuffler doesn’t hate you 
This also reinforces my instinctual response to BW so far, which has been to scrap it out of the trade row at the first opportunity if I can’t buy it.
If you are playing only Vanilla (the base game) you are correct that if you are primarily in Blob, scrap out Brain World from the trade row. Essentially, for Vanilla it is Blue -> Green/Yellow -> Red -> Blue
So a high amount of life gain in blue can outlast Green/Yellow damage focus. Generally if you can get heavy aggro early, Red cannot scrap down fast enough, and in Vanilla, red damage is mostly rather small. But blue is slow, so red can scrap down to 5-6 damage cards and take down blue.
Green is much stronger than Yellow, and Red is actually dominant in that format. Scrap is king in Vanilla.
As you add expansions though, change the thinking to:
Mitigation -> Aggro -> Deck Size
Mitigation can be life gain, but it can also be a heavy base strategy. It’s anything that lowers your opponents effective avg per turn damage against you for one of their decks.
Aggro is aggro, damage.
Deck Size is scrap, draw and cycle. All of these things can make your deck smaller, or seem smaller.
In my opinion, of the three base sets, Vanilla is about scrap. Colony Wars is about Damage. Frontiers is about speed/deck size.
4 Likes
Back in the day I remember you would lose earned ranks if you lost at 0 of X, so this is ezmode!
1 Like
True, but back then, challenges counted, so you could theoretically beat up on a lesser-skilled friend (or, more nefariously, an account you control) and rank up that way.
So, 1,242 games later I‘m taking a brief holiday from SR. 50.24% win rate, which I‘m quite happy with having plunged to mid-low 40s around game 800. On the whole, I think I’ve got my money’s worth of space pew-pew
3 Likes