Counter Play in Infinity Wars

Counter Play In Infinity Wars

I'd like to spend a little time talking over Counter Play in Infinity Wars, what is is, how it's utilised in Infinity Wars, why counter play is the cornerstone of how fun Infinity Wars is, go over some examples of cards with and without counter play, and then complain a little more about Mill because why not.
[b]Definition [/b]
Lets start with a definiton of counter play. Google has been less than helpful in providing a good definition. From what I can tell, the term originated from Chess, with the best example being this:
[Quote](chess) an attack that is intended to counter the opponent's advantage in another part of the board[/Quote]
I'm not entirely happy with this defintion in terms of TCG's, so here's mine:
[Quote] A action a player can take to counter the opponents cards, actions or strategy[/Quote]
[b]Why Counter Play is Fun[/b]
Infinity Wars' main feature that make it stand out from the crowd is simutaneous turns. Simutaneous turns mean neither player knows what will the opponent can do. They can only guess based on the opponents cards on the field, deck purity and experience in the meta. In game, this means there's potential for a large number of actions both players can take. Guessing correctly, while playing your cards in a manner your opponent does not expect, will typically lead to victory. And we all have fun when we know we played better than our opponent. Being better than everyone else is the cornerstone of competitive games. We all play to win (Yes, even you, guy who uses joke decks).
We don't however have fun when we are not given counter play options. Without being able to interact and interfere with our opponents actions, we're relegated to sitting back and watching your opponent beat you.
Long Story Short: Counter Play gives us the ability to defeat our opponents much more consistantly, and we enjoy it because we like being the best.
[b]Examples in Infinity Wars[b]
We're going to be talking a lot about Verore in this section. As Infinity Wars main control faction, its cards are some of the best available examples of cards which counter the opponents cards.
Let's start with Death Ray:
[u]Death Ray[/u]
Cult of Verore (1 Purity)
Cost: 3
Ability - Magic
Text: Kill target character on the battlefield.

Death Ray is a card i'm sure all players have encountered at some point. And it's one of the best examples of counter play in Infinity Wars. A 3 cost card that kill almost any character in the game is crazy. It can kill a 10 cost creature for only 3 resources. That's got to be overpowered right?
This is where counter play comes in. Death Ray is a card that's limited to the battlefield. If it targets a card, and that card is moved to the support zone that turn, Death Ray will end up in the graveyard doing nothing. This means when an opponent feels their card is about to be Death Ray'd they can keep that card in support. If the opponent guesses wrong, and Death Ray is not played, their card then wastes a turn in support it could have been defending or attacking. This results in 4 levels of Yomi that each allow the opponent to gain advantage by guessing right. (You can read more about Yomi here: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/yomi-layer-3-knowing-the-mind-of-the-opponent.html )
4 Outcomes can occur when a Death Ray is a possiblity:
1. The creature is left on the battlefield, Death Ray is cast, and it dies. If you feel this is about to happen, you instead do 2.
2. The creature is left in support. Death Ray is cast, and is wasted. If the Verore player thinks this is going to happen, they do 3.
3. The opponent does not cast Death Ray, and instead uses the resources on something else. The creature is left in support, instead of pressuring the opponent's health or board advantage, or protecting your own health. If you think your opponent thinks you won't put the creature on the battlefield, you do 4.
4. You put the creature on the battlefield, utilise it for board advantage or damage on their fortress. The opponent assumed you would not play the creature, and did not use Death Ray. And if they feel this is about to happen, we go back to step no.1

Lets move on:
Mass Death: Kills a bunch of stuff and stuff.
Every creature based deck fears Turn 6 versus Verore because of this one card. Many have called this card overpowered, and called for nerfs. But it's also an interesting card because it can be countered quite easily, by staying in support. There are multiple levels of counter play here. You can keep everything in support, and hope he wastes his turn and resources on Mass Death. You can split your forces between support and the battlefield, meaning he gains some value if he uses Mass Death, but you can still pressure him with more creatures next turn if you do. You can put everything onto the battlefield and hope he doesnt use it, and deal a large amount of damage to the opponents fortress.
Mass Death also adds into the mix something else that's interesting for counter play. It locks the Verore player's creatures to the battlefield if they started the turn there. If the Verore player has a number of creatures on the battlefield, he won't want to use Mass Death. The Verore player might assume you know he won't want to mass death, and does so anyway in order to take out all your creatures when you recklessly put them all out, hoping to gain more advantage than he loses.
One of the older tricks in the book was when Verore moved all his creatures to the support zone one turn. This was usually done to set up for Mass Death, because he attempts to save his characters by moving them out the turn before he Mass Deaths. But the Verore player can also use a mass retreat as a bluff, hoping his opponent moves all his creatures to support, which then allows him to cast Desolation, or move all his creatures in for an attack against an empty defense zone.

I could go into more specific examples of counter play such as untouchable VS Death Ray, Paladins of the Flame Dawn VS Mass Death, but my point is made even without considering the hundreds of other interactions and counter play options available in the game to just these two cards.

All of this is a crazy amount of consideration. One might even think it's just guesswork. There's no WAY you could possibly predict all this outcomes. But time and time again, the veterans of Infinity Wars, and the Top Ranked players all beat everyone else because they CAN guess what you're going to do more often than not.

Lets talk about a card with seemingly no counter play:
Dark Blast: Deals Damage to the fortress. And stuff.
On the surface, there's no counter play here. Your opponent casts this card, and you take damage. What exactly can you do about it?
Well there's more to it than that. Dark Blast has a hiden cost. It doesn't affect the board state at all. This means that when your opponent chose to put this card in his deck, he's chosen to reduce the number of options he has to affect the board. Drawing Dark Blast when you're losing board advantage is a bad thing, because it's not a card that will stop you from losing (unless your opponent has <12 HP of course).
By putting pressure onto your opponent, he will not find the time to use Dark Blast. He'll be too busy responding to your threats. He may even have to use 3 resources to shuffle it away, hoping for something else. You counter played Dark Blast with pressure, cost your opponent 3 resources, and you didnt even see the card get played.
In addition, 5 Resources is a lot. By choosing to Dark Blast, he's given up the ability to draw a card at the trading post instead. If you counter by drawing a card, you gain card advantage, at the cost of losing 12 health on your fortress. This may or may not be in your favor, based on board state.
It's interesting how cards with seemingly no counter play options can be countered, isn't it?

Lets talk Decks:
I'm going to single out Overseers here, because they're common complain from new players, and an easy example to understand, and to talk a little less about Verore. This is not me saying 'Overseers are overpowered!'. This is simply me talking about the limited number of counter play options that most decks have to this deck.
So overseers. Overseers are a mid-range deck that focuses on getting a large number of flying angels, and buffing them with AoE buffs to create an overwhelming force the opponent cannot deal with. They're also one of the decks new players will complain about.
Overseers use a large number of flying creatures, and one of the only decks that can make large numbers of flying creatures (the other major one being Verore with Summoning Stone). Flying creatures cannot be blocked by non-flyers without reach. This means to counter flying attackers, you need other flying creatures, creatures with Reach, or kill spells/damage on flying characters.
Flying in most decks is limited to a small number of creatures. This makes it so you can plan around them, use your own flyers to deal with them or if you don't have those, your kill spells. You can also try and put pressure on your opponent, and force them to instead defend with their flyers.
Overseers however, make a large number of flyers. This makes blocking with a handful of flyers unfeasable unless you can buff them. You won't have enough kill spells to kill them all. The normal counters to decks that create large numbers of creatures is Area of Effect damage, aka spells or effects that deal damage to a large number of creatures. Not all decks have access to such spells and effects, and the factionless Winds of War often doesn't do enough damage to kill most angels when buffed. Calamity often becomes an option too late in the game.
Well, if you can't block overseers or kill them, your options then become killing them before they kill you. But overseers have powerful anti-rush cards, such as Zealous Defender, Heaven's Assistance to create tokens to block with, Champion of Ruin to kill off low HP attackers, and Azael, which limits the amount of damage you can deal to their fortress. When you can only attempt to deal 25-30 damage to your opponents fortress each turn, you limit the number of attackers you can use. If your opponent then blocks with tokens, you can end up dealing no damage.
You may think this is a level of Yomi. You need to decide how many creatures he will block with, in order to figure out how many creatures to attack with. Guessing wrong leaves you dealing no damage, or facing Azael. Guessing right... still limits you to dealing X amount of damage each turn. There's no way for you to deal more than X without being punished for it. There's no counter play for this.
So this leaves new players with a conumdrum. If I can't block, I can't kill his creatures and I can't attack faster than he can, what are my counter play options?
I won't go into counter play options for Overseers here. They exist, and are not my point. My point is to highlight the small number of counter play options to overseers, and why this upsets new players who can't figure out what to do. We don't have fun against decks we can't counter.
Decks with limited counter play options will typically dominate a given meta. They are the most resilient to other deck types, and make the most sense in competitive play if you wish to win more than you lose.
PLEASE DO NOT TALK ABOUT OVERSEERS IN THIS THREAD. THIS IS NOT AN OVERSEERS COMPLAINT THREAD. THIS IS ABOUT COUNTER PLAY OPTIONS IN INFINITY WARS.


So what have we learned so far? Lets recap
1. Counter Play is what we find fun about competitive games
2. Infinity Wars is a game dripping with counter play
3. Simutaneous turns and cards that limit themselves to certain zones create hundreds of possible scenarios to plan and account for
4. Even cards that seem to have no counters, can be countered with pressure.
5. Some decks and cards don't have good counter play options. This isn't always a problem for a meta, because metas can adjust to counter a dominating deck, but this doesn't always lead to a diverse meta with interesting decks, and casual players don't like hearing their only options to play a decktype that they don't enjoy.