I've been making fewer changes to Scion lately because Rosheen's just been a ton of fun. I only played one game with the dragon since my last changes, and it's still too slow; it's just a lot of shenanigans without much flash.
I'm going to have to make some serious changes to Scion before it's actually playable -- we're talking systemic changes. To that end, I'll probably be narrowing my Haakon packages significantly, removing much of the Volrath's Shapeshifter shenanigans (Essence of the Wild is a prime candidate here) and generally streamlining it to be more of a Scion deck with some wackiness to it. I know, that defeats the purpose; it's just that it's going in too many directions.
Some thoughts:
1. More non-legendary dragon options. This will make the Shapeshifter more powerful, as it will have nicer interactions with Scion.
2. Stripped-back Haakon packages. Essentially, Haakon should be part of an Intuition grab with a Shapeshifter in play, rather than an engine for knights that I wouldn't play if he wasn't in the deck. I love the guy, but knights just aren't a strong tribe, and he's grinding me up in about a million ways -- I have dead draws thanks to him, I've got dudes that aren't that great when he's not around, I have yet _another_ tutor target (this deck needs more subpar decision trees like I need another hole in my chest. That's right, ANOTHER ONE), etc. He's still a star with Crib Swap around, but that should be my game-cinching play, not a setup.
3. So much chaff. A lot of dudes I love -- Disciple of Griselbrand, I'm looking at you, brother -- just clog up my draws. Survival of the Fittest is terrible here since I'm not running anything that honestly synergizes with it (though Tortured Existence seems pretty good still, thanks to Shapeshifter). My solution is to run a) a bunch more good dudes that can get into the red zone and clog up other people's plays and b) more haste enablers, mostly for Scion. In the worst-case scenario, I'd rather topdeck a weak threat (e.g. Spawnwrithe) than a solution to an answer (e.g. Disciple of Griselbrand).
4. I'm going to throw out the rules for a week and do some radical pruning. I plan to swap out at least 10 cards and start again. I just need to get some threat density in the deck so I can do stuff while I'm working toward a crushing Scion or some other nonsense.
Somewhat unrelated: I'm going to mark up my perfect fits over Overgrown Tomb and Verdant Catacombs. The cards look next-to-identical -- I tried to fetch a Tropical Island last night using an Overgrown Tomb. Derf.
