The biggest challenge with this (its been discussed a lot in Clan Wars) is that if you make such hard requirements (everyone online; only play other teams in the same league, etc) then you have a huge failure rate. Tons of matches are lost from forfeits - even if it wasn't a team-based bracket, an individual bracket could have a lot of gaps as players close the app and fail to show up for their next round. However I agree that some form of deeper/longer form of competitive format would be really exciting.

Based on what we have seen from past features, I don't think we'll ever implement a new sort of player-to-player exchange. The problem with betting on friendly matches (outside of whatever regional laws that would prevent this - ex. Japan is very strict on gambling) is that players would just abuse it to funnel gold from alt accounts to their main accounts. I am not sure how we could prevent the system from allowing players to purposefully lose and give their gold to other accounts. I think something like Fantasy Royale though (picking favored winners from an esports event) could be more viable.

Something we have been tossing around as an idea, that I would LOVE to see content creators test out. This works in Best-of-3 or Best-of-5:

1. Players build 4 different decks, with no cards being used in multiple decks (ie 32 separate cards) - these decks cannot be changed once a match starts
2. Players pick 1 deck (secretly from each other) and play Game 1.
3. After Game 1, Players will pick a 2nd deck (again, secretly). Any decks used in prior games (win or lose) cannot be used again in the same match
4. If it goes to Game 3, you will have 2 decks remaining to choose from. In Bo5 matches, you can use any deck in Game 5 (all 4 decks are available again)

I think this format has a lot of advantages:

1. Extreme deckbuilding skill as you need to balance your collection and really know what decks need what cards, instead of pushing Electro Wizard and Mega Minion into every deck. Can build diverse lineups or maximize a single archetype (like 4 cycle or Siege decks)
2. Information is revealed as the match goes on - if your opponent played a card/deck in game 1, you know you won't see it again and can use that to inform later picks
3. No need for bans - OP cards can only exist in 1 deck/game per match. You will never have to watch 5 games of mirror matches in competitive play.
4. Players would gain a bit of personality in events - "Player X ALWAYS runs a Giant and Xbow deck, gotta predict what Decks 3 and 4 are"
5. While a bit longer than ladder games, if the deck selection was done in battle (like a draft choice, a 15-second little pick screen before each battle) then a Bo3 match would not exceed 15 minutes and a Bo5 would not exceed 25 minutes. This is pretty snappy to watch in an esports set, I think more digestible than massive 7on7 Bo5 matches that can last hours.

I really encourage players / creators to try out this format! We have been tweaking it on the team and playing matches, editing the rules over time. If a creator or tournament organizer was willing to produce a decent sized event (8-16 player pro invitational OR a larger open event like the old Super Magical Cups) I am sure we could cough up some gem prizes. What do you guys think?

It was definitely not a major update - it was about 6 weeks of development time (the prior update was early October), we wanted to get it out in December because we felt the Card Boost and Info Screens were nice QoL changes that we could do in a short period of time before the holidays.

4 decks! I agree Spells are the biggest constraint, which was a big driver behind the Arrows Rework. I think you could run 4 decks rather reasonably:

• Zap & Poison
• Log & Fireball
• Arrows & Lightning
• BarbBarrel/Snowball + Rocket/Earthquake

That's 4 decks that could be built and Tornado is still free to be a 3rd spell somewhere. If its really too constricting we can always release more Spells!