4Game

My thoughts:

NR: The buffs are cool! I've seen a few Siege players since the patch and it looks pretty scary, planning to build a deck myself. It's really nice to see NR rediscover its identity a bit with a decent engine deck, although I'm not sure how the deck will turn out to match up against the new top ones. Alumni also still looks like a tantalizing alternative, though if Locks become meta, that would be terribly unfortunate.

NG: Pretty nice! I don't really see the buffs to the status/ball archetype as too oppressive. The deck is playable, but lacks the consistency of Assimilate unless you can find a way to squeeze in some tactics and Calveit. It's also extremely vulnerable to Veil or Unitless, as most of the cards are extremely low tempo without good targets. Overall I believe that Assimilate will remain the best NG deck… which is kinda ehhh… but at least there's a newly playable archetype.

ST: Honestly not sure what to think here. All the changes we did get are great, but there was too low a volume to really bring any new decks to the surface, except some renewed interest in Alzur/Special Shenanigans with Francesca, or some kind of Gezras/Great Oak thing (symbiosis?). In particular the bronze Elves and Dwarves stand out as still pretty useless and I guess we will have to wait for the next batch of reworks.

SK: I like that the devs are pushing the very cool and thematic self-wound archetype, first with Cerys and now with this patch. I really want it to work, but it just never seems to poke into the realm of viable. I don't know if just two cards is all it needs, but maybe this will be the time? Also, I doubt a one-prov nerf will take Gedy out of relevance.

MO: the pain never ends for MO players… until next month, when supposedly they're getting a lot of changes. Looking forward to it…

SY: Unfortunately the nerfs to Jackpot are far too weak imo. I can't think of many games where a 4-5 point difference (from the provs and KoB nerf) would've changed the result against Jackpot, when it dominates, it dominates. The core problem of the deck is in both the massive finisher and the extremely snowball-capable passive, (plus general versatility) and not much was truly addressed. While it's nice that Off the Books got a buff, I really doubt it will overtake Jackpot, and the other SY leaders are still in the mud.