Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-25856498-20161204060422/@comment-25856498-20170131152006

Just need some place to place my thoughts on metas:

In a diverse meta, there are many different strategies you can use to get to the top of the game. Obviously this happens when the game is really balanced but knowing SC that might never happen. There, versatile cards, such as Zap and Archers are king and become staples of many decks. Situational cards (example, Arrows solely for Minions/Princess/Barrel and little else) will see much less use as players cannot anticipate what sort of cards everyone else uses. Less people will bring situational cards as they think that the situational card will be useless against players who don't use cards that the situational card counters. Virtually everyone will be using the versatile cards, and the situational cards might still get some use as part of the strategy in the diverse meta.

In a single-strategy meta we have three classifications of cards: the meta cards, the anti-meta cards and the others. The meta cards are, put simply, part of the meta either because they are OP or they are versatile, and hence get used a lot. The anti-meta cards are those that are able to counter the cards in the meta, but are less popular than the meta, because of difficulty using them or because of obscurity or some other factor. And then we have the others, gathering dust as their use rate stays low.

Every card is viable in a diverse meta, depending on the strategy. However those affected by the meta (e.g. Sparky, when Zap was prominent) will remain in the shadows, never to emerge until the single-strat meta is replaced by a more diverse meta. A diverse meta is the reason some of the non-meta cards actually see the light of day at all.

Sorry if I'm rambling on but maybe the state of the meta explains why some non-meta cards are horribly underused over others.