I think it’s the mana cost. At 7 mana it saw almost no play.
Seven mana casting cost doesn’t equate to making all minions cost five mana. You still keep the same mana cost so if you draw into high value assets, you can cast them the following turn. One mana cost creates too much snow balling with intellect and Luna.
But that’s the point of LPG. It’s supposed to create a snowball with Luna. The problem is that the snowball effect comes too early on turn 4/5 and almost always by turn 8. The mana cost is so low that’s it’s ok to hard mulligan for.
At 7 mana, it wasn’t. You’d never hard mulligan for a 7 cost spell. Furthermore, losing tempo on turn 7 was disastrous as mid game decks would punish you.
At 5 mana, losing tempo on turn 4/5 is no biggie because of flame ward and various other anti aggro tools and many decks pose no real threat until turn 5.
I’m not saying it should be reverted to 7 mana. I think it has its place as a 5 mana spell.
But, the snowballing, whether intentional or not, is bad. Cheating out a big answer or threat once per turn is enough. It’s the machine gun card drawing and board development that needs to stop. Making all minions cost 5 would fix that but give just enough tempo to play something else in addition to the under costed minion.
That would be the worst card in the game. You wouldn’t be able to make a deck with minions that cost 4 or less because it would backfire.
Honestly, that’s a terrible change.
I’m going to put money on it that they change the cost to 6.
Six mana won’t fix it. Cheating of minions has got to stop when all you have to do is cast this spell. Mountain giant is already bad enough. Giving mage a deck full of conjurers calling targets is a recipe for disaster.
Mage has enough stall to last well past turn six or seven. Changing LPG casting cost just slows down the inevitable by one or two turns. You don’t eliminate the mana cheating value that’s unpinning this epidemic.
The card wasn’t played at 7.
Those extra turns plus a larger mana sink of a ‘do nothing’ turn all contribute a ton to making a deck more vulnerable to Aggro and Midrange decks. I’m not sure if 6 would change a ton but 7 would probably send the card back to the abyss.
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Quest Paladin its the warriors nightmare and then you lose to the other decks hahaha
The do nothing turn seven will arguably hurt more than do nothing turn five. But mage has enough answers to sacrifice a turn seven for the hopes of cheating stuff out later.
Recall that LPG came into existence in a world without CC. I think that having access to multiple mana cheating mechanics in a CC world is what leads to this imbalance. I’m fine with keeping mountain giant and CC as is but then LPG needs to go. Or keep LPG as is but destroy CC. Mage can’t have both.
Well… and how about HoF frost nova?
if we analyse the stall game of mage until LPG or until giants this is one of the cards that enable the deck.
The turn 5 LPG followed by turn 6 blizzard or the turn 6 giant+CC are the “mega turns” but until there mage needs to stall the game.
A nerf to 6 mana is a big deal in term of survival until that turn. Keep in mind that not only you loose a more impactful turn playing it, but you probably need to add something low cost to your deck to survive to that point. To do that, you cut high cost card, and decrease the effect of LPG. A nerf to 7 mana is a kill.
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I think that people are highly, HIGHLY underestimating the added support that luna’s pocket galaxy gained in RoS and SoU that could have made the card very playable at 7.
I don’t agree that 7 would send it back to the abyss. Especially now that they have tortollan pilgrim which can fetch it from the deck along with phaoris that doesn’t mind a “dead” 7 cost spell in hand. Plus, with freeze mechanics being further embraced, along with conjurer’s calling / luna interactions being well known to be incredibly strong, I don’t believe it will go back to unplayable from this point forward, even at 7 mana.
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At 5 mana playing it on curve does not interfere with mages board clear/ stabilizing turns.
At 6 and 7 it interferes with clutch blizzards or Flamestrikes. What else is a mage going to play on 5? Nothing. But turn 6 is giants turn,or Reno, and if they have to choose to survive LPG is now a dead card in hand because it couldn’t be played on a lower threat turn. Moving nourish from 5 to 6 was huge for the same reason. Or glowstone from 6 to 5
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RoS improvements for the deck style, namely CC and Ray of Frost, did exist for awhile WITH a 7-mana LPG. So Ray of Frost and CC + Giant wasn’t good enough to make LPG playable outside of a sideboard option in Specialist.
Now, we move to what SoU brought. You have Naga which would set all spells to 5 which… kind of helps but also doesn’t by that much tbh. Tortollian is great but it doesn’t really help you with the issue of Aggro and Midrange getting a dead 7 and more turns to find lethal, it doesn’t hit until 8 and will have more spells potentially being pulled from the deck.
Again, this core hasn’t changed from pre-buff RoS situation. There isn’t quite enough stall for the deck to reliably exist as a power-deck with Luna at 7. Personally, I’m fine with this but I think ti goes back to near-meme status at 7. I think 6 makes it playable but not dominant to the point of holding a 5-card cost at mulligan to be the best option in most situations.
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Yep, but those experimentations had started to be done back then, and now has additional support.
A sideboard card is still a playable card in the right meta environment. It was inching toward playable prior to the buff, and now is incredibly strong. I suspect that 6 mana, at this point, would not do nearly enough to resolve the concerns with the card.
LPG shouldn’t be an IWIN card. Right now, it effectively is. The same folks that hate the high roll nature of big priest should take the same exception to LPG. At least in wild format, classes have more answers. Here, you have a more limited format which makes it more prone to oppressive mechanics such as LPG. This isn’t healthy and the data is beginning to show this. The issue is whether a simultaneous nerf to LPG and CC would unduly cripple Mage. I would say yes. Which is why only one should be changed. I would think LPG the better nerf because Mage needs CC to stay relevant.
I 100% agree that LPG is currently an issue (and CC).
For LPG we’d need to play with at 6-mana tbh. I think a nerf to 6-mana would make it weak enough to enough decks to make the trade-off something of note. I’ll fully state that I could be wrong on that but that is just my belief.
I think something should be done with CC as well, but I would have liked more ‘poison pill’ minions to have been put in the 10 and 12 mana slots. Right now, I think the only real nerf is to Mountain Giant… I don’t think CC can effectively be nerfed without insane overkill.
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I think the poison pill approach needs to be thought out clearly. Simply creating more cards to address CC doesn’t seem economical or stem the already RNG heavy centric feel of this game.
I say either or because CC is a card that enables a lot of mage decks. LPG isn’t. A nerf to both would hurt mage too much and more likely to be done wrong. A mere change to LPG would be more targeted and reasoned. LPG, if merely a changed casting cost, would still be overpowered in this meta. There are numerous games where mage doesn’t pull LPG until after turn seven and still produce ridiculous results. Further, with tortillian, mage has yet another way to find and cheat this spell. LPG is too good for a class that has CC, freeze, and mana cheats. I think LPG needs to change to make all minions 5 because that would effectively stem some of the crazy snowballing with Luna and CC.
The current synergies through Luna, CC, and LPG is not OK with all of the stall available to mage and the potential repetitive freeze though discover and RNG spell generation.
This was already barely tolerable with conjure mage. It’s a whole new level with what we see now.
Just get good and don’t play bad decks
Being able to create a non-meta deck to compete with meta decks and come out with a positive result is the very definition of what “good” is in this game. In fact, it could be considered better than “good” since the meta decks are the “good” decks.
And if you’re playing a “bad” deck and still out perform people playing meta decks, then I’d also insist that you no longer need to “get good” as it would logically follow you are already “good”.
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