We all got a bit of a shock, didn’t we, when RatC rolled around? 1.1, with it’s 5 energize and <=3 turns was pretty random, but 3.1’s 400hps to get through in 4 turns was bloody ludicrous.
At first, many players, including myself, railed at the randomness of these objectives. ‘How are we supposed to get perfect scores!?’ we cried. ‘These are next to impossible!’. Players on the other side of the argument pointed out that perhaps even players at the top of the game were not supposed to get perfect scores all the time. And dyou know what? With hindsight, I think they’re right. Make no mistake, I consider these objectives to involve a far, far higher degree of randomness than skill. But perhaps the RatC event is a good place for objectives like this. There is no individual leaderboard; only a progression ladder which is achievable to a certain % of the player base even without getting these extra 5 point bonuses; and a coalition leaderboard, consisting of teams of 20 players… team scores will be less affected by randomness as some players within a team will get lucky and others won’t. In fact, it makes team chat kinda fun, doesn’t it? 'I got the 3 turns kill!!! 
’ 'Curse you, I missed it by one!! 
’
However, now we have a PvP event, EmO, and it’s blue node has another objective (<=5 turns) which is determined largely by luck. Only the top 5 players are getting mythics, and it’s basically just a matter of luck who gets put there. Those top 5 are the players who have the right combo cards (whether through luck opening packs, or worse, just buying a ton of booster packs), got lucky in their matchups, and got lucky in their games. That is too much luck for my liking, personally. There’s some skill involved, but let’s not underestimate the degree to which it plays second fiddle to luck.
(The other 2 nodes in EmO have their problems too, but they’re not as bad as the blue node. I really like the ‘0 supports’ one as a deckbuilding challenge, but if the matchmaking system decides to pair you up against one of those Kiora decks that’s designed to win in 5 turns, then you probably aren’t going to get higher up the leaderboard than one of the other 3000 players in the bracket who didn’t have to fight her. And, personally, I have a grand sum of 0 decent Energize cards available to me to play in the black node. Anyone else feel like that?)
Back to the <=X turns nodes, tho. There are some serious problems associated with these objectives specifically and what they say about the design of the game. Let’s not forget they were not a mistake.. the dev team wanted decks to exist in the game which were capable of defeating 3.1, to the degree that they playtested it a lot (Perhaps even more than they tested 3.3 to see just how irrititating all those Fabricate animations were)
M’colleague Irgy commented perfectly on this:
There’s not much more I can add to that point. It’s just so blatantly self evident that cards & decks which are capable of dealing 400 damage to an opponent in 4 turns are bad for the game.
I do have a couple of other points I’d like to add, tho, and they relate to just how interesting these decks are to play.
Firstly, the act of building a 4 turn deck is interesting (if you have the cards). The act of testing it can be fun too; whenever you make a new deck you can find brand new decisions to be made, and in combo decks like this they can be quite subtle and interesting. I had about a days worth of fun building, testing, and then playing my 4 turn Kiora deck before it all got a bit automatic and dull. I wonder how many other players feel the same? If no changes are made to these events, I can be expecting to watch the same 10 cards looping and the same graphics whizzing around the screen for the next 2 months or so.
Secondly, a deck which wins in 4 turns does not have any room for interaction with an opponent. All the cards in the deck must be geared towards the goal of winning the game quickly. If there was room in my 4 turn Kiora deck for an Imprisoned in the Moon or an Engulf the Shore, you can bet I’d whip it out and make it win more consistently on turn 4 by adding another combo piece. (You can count Prism Array as interaction if you like, but I didn’t put it in because it disables creatures, I put it in because it will draw me >50 cards a turn). Interaction is a key part of the fun and variety of this game (There’s a reason why WOTC stopped printing cards with Mind Twist, Sinkhole, Balance, Hymn to Tourach, and Stone Rain in paper MTG long, long ago). Plus, if your PvP opponent should happen to throw out a card which you actually need to answer in order for your combo deck to continue working? Well, that’s you out of the top 5. Bad luck.