I took the Survival challenge. Last season I thought about it, but didn't have the time as I the though came too late. Different this time! So, here's my resume of Survival Bracket 4, Gold level. 50 players in that group - but it seems that my gaming time does not coincide with theirs at all.
Of the last 100 battles, only 3 were against humans. And in total I think it was 5 or 6, so barely 2,5%. I know, the chances are low when it's around the world, and also the leaderboard is not very concentrated. 2,000 Rating Points are between me (currently sitting on no.1) and the number 10.
Which leads to my main critique - the grind. Yes, the bots were able to kick my but around 20% of the time. But one could feel that it was very random. Not because of particular skill in combining the cards, just by what cards they had available. Sometimes they suddenly had all the bangers, and then they'd barely have reward cards.
My own deck is quite concentrated on the cards that I use most, and the combinations that I find useful. It's rare that I buy a new one, like recently the Darkguard Ironwing or the Conjurer's Hubris. From there, it's a matter of skill and combinations. Sometimes I face a ruleset and mana supply that I just can't deal with. Sometimes.
For the bots, it seems all the time. Which leads to a win-rate of 80% in Gold League, what my deck is built for. Which takes the excitement out of playing against Bots in Survival. When they win, I can't really learn something from it. It's more coincidence, luck.
This is were the bots fail a lot. Even when they have the cards, they just throw in some really weird combinations. Like this one:
Giving the cat repair instead of Armored Strike and Piercing made them lose. Since the cat has True Strike, it would've put up quite the battle against my Commander.
But even weirder this one - not only because of the choice of summoner regarding the ruleset, but because they managed to win despite it. Very poor team by me.
The good part here - I was able to experiment a lot, which is visible in the fight. The bad part - I lost focused after winning to many times in a row, just grinding, not paying attention but wanting to get the 250 battles full.
Positioning was also questionable from time to time, like in this one where Mantaroth is placed in the last position, without any need for that.
If the bot had used the Warden or another Void Armor in first position, okay, then the Repair and tank in the rear with Shield would've made sense. But not like this.
In the beginning, time-out for cards was reduced by 99%. Which is already pretty cool, as it takes a couple of hours for my lower level cards to be back. So, I did have to be careful with them, use defensive tactics, or blow out the cards that needed to die when they had the perfect setting (Arrowbait).
But then it was changed to -99.99% reduction, basically seconds. The the whole idea of the Survival mode was gone completely. I just played as I would in modern Gold League, and that was boring against bots.
That was what I loved most. I could finally play all the strengths of my deck, without having to hope that Dragon is available (Akane is my only max level Summoner). And that did help me training.
Lucky me, right now a Gold League Torunament started, and it seems like training with bots did pay off:
I was very outspoken for Brackets for a while now, as they're a lot of fun and reduce the pay2win, but enhance the skill needed to make it to the Leaderboard. Right now, I'm playing my deck between Diamond and Champions. I would probably try to keep it in Diamond, as I usually have more fun there. In Champions, I always get kicked around.
For Survival, it's a big no-no as it is. The bots are too erratic. I might try the same in Diamond next time, though I fear that I will get my but kicked there as my cards aren't good enough, and the bots will be a lot better.
But as test for brackets - gold star. If the idea is transferred to Modern, I'm all for it, after fine-tuning the bots. I read somewhere that the bots in Champions are cannon fodder for the big players. Anyway, I'm still liking the bracket idea, even more than before, having it tested.
Oh, what I did like is that most of the bots were marked as such, by "Scholar: Archmage.app" or something like that.
EDIT: 
That's it! Thank you all for your attention! Any questions are welcome!
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Calculating Land part 2 - Are pools worth it?
Calculating Land part 3 - Organic Growth
Land Plot Efficiency for non-whales
Card-Production-Coefficient - Combining LPE and ROI
Renting for Land - at what cost?
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My perfect plot - Conclusion of my calculations
Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!
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