I checked back into Shadowverse and unilimited isn't really in a completely degenerate state (after the recent restriction there's at least 2 decks competing for the top tier and about 5 or 6 viable decks.) But there is something else that is apparent to me: the warping effect of incidental lifegain.
See Shadowverse is a bit different than Magic or Hearthstone in that your life is capped to 20. If you gain life while at 20 you stay at 20, and there are practically no ways to raise it above 20 (they recently released a few guys that can raise your max life, but even if you chain all of them it only goes up to 26.) Because of this they've felt more comfortable printing life gain effects, with the philosophy that it won't put you into unkillable ranges. Thus it's not uncommon to see an effect you'd play anyway have "restore 1 defense to your leader" (or often 2 defense) tacked onto it as a way of tuning cards and making decks just a little more survivable if they are underperforming.
In rotation I think this is okay, but in unilimited this effectively shuts out all but the fastest aggro decks. The thing is, aggro almost works in the current meta. Even with aggro decks I whip up from my far from complete cardpool in five minutes, I have often been able to get the opponent down to 5 or 6 life on turn 5. But the opponent may have gained anywhere from 2 to 8 life from various random effects meaning that they would have been almost dead to overkill dead without the incidental life gain.
What's especially frustrating about this is that normally life gain is used as an anti-aggro counter, meaning that when aggro is pushed out of the meta people stop using life gain and hence aggro gets a better chance, making it harder for the meta to stabilize. But many of the life gain effects are put onto cards that are worth using without the effect. For example, one of the top decks is dimension shift, which is based around spellboosting. This is an effect on cards which powers them up (often by making them cheaper) every time you cast a spell. So of course Insight, a spell that draws you a card for 1, has been a staple of that deck forever. It spellboosts and digs you to your key cards for practically nothing. They printed another card which can be used to draw a card and gain 2 life for 1 (it has other effects but they are irrelevant.) Of course dimension shift is going to use that card just for three more copies of insight (or at the very least they will ditch insight and use that card.) They don't care about the life gain, but it's still a ball buster for you as aggro when you get in two damage on turn 2 and then see it immediately erased. There's also a spell for 3 that can regain two play points (thus effectively costs 1) which draws two cards and gains two life. Again this is a card that dimension shift would definitely use even without the life gain, but the combination of these two cards (plus some dimension shift cards that can effectively kill off enemy creatures while continuing to spell boost) effectively counters aggro without even trying. I doubt that most people playing the deck are even aware it does counter aggro, especially since they are not likely to see any aggro decks in the meta.
The lack of aggro pushes the meta heavily towards combo decks. This is unfortunate, since an unlimited format already is pushed towards combos (and effects that synergize with themselves like spellboost) since the bigger card pool inevitably leads to more and better combos. (For example there is a card that can transform 4 of your followers into random followers from your deck. In rotation it is difficult to make this work beyond just making your cheap guys bigger, but in unlimited it can be made to always summon 20 damage in storm (haste) and there's even a way to remove any possible blockers.) To make matters worse, a lot of the combos work by repeatedly dealing 1 damage to all enemies, meaning that if you aren't able to finish them off before they start comboing they will wipe your board and now you're screwed (and three of the popular decks will also gain life while doing this.) Control doesn't really work since all combos in unlimited go off by turn 7 at latest. Thus the environment gets distorted towards combo vs. combo play which usually would be a good environment for aggro but as I've already discussed aggro is pushed out without anyone intentionally countering it.
The only way you actually can play aggro is by using counters for the various combos. For example there's a 2/2 ward for 2 that prevents an opponent from tutoring a card out of their deck which counters various things, there's a card that causes players with 5 or less cards to draw a card at the end of turn permanently which counters a combo that requires having an empty hand at the start of your turn, and there's a card that destroys all followers with cost 5 or more which counters decks that use reanimation or spell boost to cheat out big guys. If you are playing these decks as aggro these cards are mandatory. The result is that playing aggro feels like playing control; if you don't draw your answers you're fucked but the combo player has time and draw to get into his stuff. Of course, you also have to deal with keeping ahead on tempo and inevitably running out of cards before your opponent so it's a bit like playing control without the parts that make you feel actually in control.
Long story short, when making a card game be careful with life gain. It doesn't really matter most of the time, but there is a critical mass where it fundamentally warps the game.
July 7, 2022