I play at rank 1 currently, and that's where I was seeing them all. You did not say barely playable, but you did say it sees "next to no play" in the context of the comparison being "not exactly positive." Which kind of sounds like "barely playable." [...]
In that case it appears that I was being unclear, my point was that I saw next to no Tactic centric decks and as such the comparison could not be positive, given that there is no reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from a lack of data.
[...] And the spoiled bit was regarding us being dismissive towards 5p cards that give us easy 8-9 pointslam value, just because... what? There are plenty of cards that give 7 for 5 for (practically) free? [...]
My point is that there is an actual condition to meet and that they become increasingly awkward as the game progresses, during later rounds it becomes increasingly difficult to get the same value that other units are always giving, so drawing them later on is quite bad, while the advantage from drawing them early is a few points better. With Tactics one would usually also want to play the engines that actually benefit from Tactics or one has to wait longer and longer before being able to contest the units of one's opponent.
Also I did not say that Venendal Elite and Safe Crackers should not see play, I just stated that they are usually the cards that are nice to have, when building the deck, rather than being the reason to play the cards they support (which is fine for a 5p card).
[...]
If it's not abundantly clear by now, I disagree. I think the "nerfed" safecracker, Elite, and vrihedd vanguards are all perfectly fine cards and VERY valuable in their respective decks. Giving them engine capabilities is breaking them, not making them "exciting."
I never stated that Safe Crackers were exciting before, I just stated that they are not exciting in their current form (to clarify just being a large body on deploy is not exactly exciting).
Maybe your definition differs from mine regarding that term (in general exciting =/= good), if you take it that I refer to that as the bottom of the barrel, then that is obviously not the case. Just playing a large body of poison bait, while delaying engines can overall be worth it, however it is definitely not what carries the deck.
They had to take a nerf and the nerf itself was reasonable, following that the card goes from being obviously too good to being just good.
I disagree on the "VERY valuable", you are massively overselling them.
7 for 5s are cards that are usually not worth considering, if they have even remotely difficult conditions.
8 for 5s are good, if they are very consistent and do not have heavy conditions.
9 for 5s are quite good, depending on the conditions.
