Must pick cards

[Th3S0uL 1]

Hello everyone,

I want to ask you if there are must pick cards of each color. I don't want to know your favorite cards, but cards, that are necessary in every deck.

If you like them or not is not important. Just enumerate the colors with one or two must pick cards

My list looks like that:

Green: Surge of Light, Ensuring Roots

Red: Eruption, Mine

Purple: Furnace of Flesh, Shadow Phoenix

Blue: Coldsnap, Juice Tank

 

[Treim 489]

There are no such cards, that must be picked every time.

Ther certainly are cards that offer a lot of things and are very good, but a must pick in a general sense. Maybe you could make that statement if you‘re talking map specific but for a general scnerario there are no must pick cards.

[Volin 470]

Imho none card is ever mandatory. As Treim stated, some cards are obvious better then others, and ofc some cards are played way more often then others.

Reffering to your list:

1 hour ago, Th3S0uL said:

Green: Surge of Light, Ensuring Roots

If you play Nature T1, yes, this cards are very good. If you play late nature orbs this cards could be a waste slot.

1 hour ago, Th3S0uL said:

Red: Eruption, Mine

Same as for green, good if you go fire t1, else perhaps a waste slot. And even if you go fire t1, no card is mandatory (though Mine is ofc what you normally want)

1 hour ago, Th3S0uL said:

Purple: Furnace of Flesh, Shadow Phoenix

Two very good cards, but situational: If you play SoW for example, you could decide to leave FoF at home, or or or

1 hour ago, Th3S0uL said:

Blue: Coldsnap, Juice Tank

Here comes my harsh disagree! I see often people playing 4x Juice Tanks in rPvE *facepalm* Please don't spread the message that Juice Tank was a "must pick" card - it is NOT. Juice is a very, very situational card, that almost never benefits. Exceptions are the Juice/Booster combo or VERY long campaign maps (for instance if you solo longer 4 Player maps, and even for this purpose they are mostly a waste slot)

Coldsnap is again ofc a very cool card, but can be replaced by other cc cards.

 

My personal(!) "must pick" list, would be situational, like:

If you play Nature T1 with WW, I would highly recommend Ensnaring Roots.

If you play Fire T1, Mine is recommended.

If you have at least one green orb, you usually want to take "Regrowth"; perhaps Breeding Grounds, but that is again depending on the rest of the deck.

If you don't play pure Frost, consider any Voidmanipulation! SoW>FoF>SoM (imho)

But I think we have enough posts, where we hail the nice cards that everybody plays

[ImaginaryNumb3r 120]

On 1/18/2019 at 8:42 AM, Th3S0uL said:

Hello everyone,

I want to ask you if there are must pick cards of each color. I don't want to know your favorite cards, but cards, that are necessary in every deck.

If you like them or not is not important. Just enumerate the colors with one or two must pick cards

My list looks like that:

Green: Surge of Light, Ensuring Roots

Red: Eruption, Mine

Purple: Furnace of Flesh, Shadow Phoenix

Blue: Coldsnap, Juice Tank

 

You should first say whether you mean PvE or PvP, as those modes pose vastly different card requirements. I agree with what @Treim and @Volin said.

Nontheless, there are cards that offer so much in pve and pvp that it is hard to neglect them (which starts with T1 archers). I think Lavafield is one of the most universally useful cards, along with Curse of Oink. And then therer are cards such as Twilight Abomination that offers too much to a Twilight T4 to ignore it, but at this point you are extremely faction/lategame specific.

Edited January 23, 2019 by ImaginaryNumb3r

[Treim 489]

To expand maybe a little bit more on my answer:

I think you can always play around missing 1 card that is considered „Core“ or „Meta“ for factions. 

F.e. Abomination —> Play spell heavy with inferno, double cluster explosion, thunderstorm and then use Grimvine or Nightshade Plant with maybe Skycatcher. In that type of deck Abonination is still nice because it makes melee bosses and income much easier with its ability, but must play —> definetly not.

SoL —> Play Shaman 

T1 archers —> Phasetower/Nox, Dryad/Mana Wing/Shaman, Mine/Nomad/Eruption/Blaster Cannon, Frost Mage/Home Soil.

There are options to play around anything as long as you don‘t restrict yourself with too many things. 

I think it is fair to assume that there are Meta cards which if you don‘t have enough of them your deck becomes significantly less effective, because the workarounds often are at least a tad bit worse or require additional deck slots. 

If you consider any card isolated though there are however no „If you don‘t pick this, you‘re fckd“-cards