Target: commoner, mage, champ, dg, arena1, arena2, unupped pvp, upped pvp, fun/other (tournaments etc). Essentially "intended meta"
These can have overlap. Most things targetting mage also do well vs commoner. Most things targeting champ do well vs arena1. Arena2 varies
Elements: this is easy to categorize, so it gets included
Strategy: more interesting than elements is the plan of the deck. Strategy is ultimately determined by win condition. openEtG currently lacks "if X, you win the game" effects, leaving the only win conditions being drawing a card from an empty deck & non-positive hp. Unlike original, there are viable mill strategies, ie rushing towards the win condition of causing your opponent to draw from an empty deck. This gets into breaking strategy itself into multiple dimensions:
- Win condition (damage, deckout. A deck may be capable of achieving both, but only one will matter in the end)
- Offensive control (lightning, deflag, pande, warden)
- Defensive control (sanctify, pa, atlantis, cloak, armagio, momentum)
- Prophylaxis (healing, anti deckout mechanics)
- Quanta base / Speed (this often implies the deck's intended speed, where heavier quanta will fall off in efficiency in later turns)
- Wide vs Tall (Wolf is wide, Dragons are tall, blessing is tall, sopa is wide)
- Card generation (sose, alchemist, stormspike, hourglass)
- Combo (otks, regrade combos, adrenaline, etc. How efficient are the cards without each other?)
I'm going to bucket decks under these groups:
- Rush: racing towards win condition
- Domin: relies on offensive control, tending to negate threats while playing threats
- Stall: prophylaxis, tends to include offensive control, win condition tends to come once opponent is exhausted
- Clock: relies on defensive control, primarily loses to a faster win condition
- Denial: because quanta production is quadratic, denial decks tend to rush for a soft win condition. Either they achieve a lock which gives them time to draw into their real win condition, or they aim to get a winning position by time the denial is overcome
- Other: ??
With keywords to clarify:
- Mill: win condition is deckout, not damage
- OTK: relies on specific combo that should immediately win
- Wide/Tall: many small threats, or few large threats
