counterplay wasnt important because its the computer but then, against a human opponent the game would probably work WAY differently at first i thought it was because i sucked at it so i just kept at it and then solved every battle in the game simply because for any given deck i faced, against the opponents card there was a fixed line that would just work. for a game with a huge tree of opportunities, i found time nad time again that the point where the game started to slip into an unwinnable state was nowhere near the end of the games. I had played spectromancer sometime last year abot summer i think and i came to the conclusion that it has largely the same problem. it isnt an observation on the main game itself (although i hate that too) this is true for most games but the startling part was that this was fairly early on. and going over it i realised that the game was set up in such a way that i COULD not win after a certain point. it didnt randomise the draws at every turn, the whole order of cards was predetermined till someone shuffled. and in the end i found that no mater what happened, there was in general, only one or two correct sequences out of hundreds that let you win the round. it got to a point where i sat down and over the course of hours, went to grind every single permutation of cards to be played. at one point i couldnt understand why i was losing over and over and over again. and the duel masters videogame was one i just lost horribly at over and over again. When i played tcgs for the first time, it was mostly just yugioh and duel masters videogames for the gba. this was against the computer on the demo but it drove home exactly what i should try not to include in my own games - what iv called the duel masters syndrome to me it was boring and bland but most importantly, it was too diifficult to win.