Control Warrior, which I mention because is the control archetype that feels more prevalent over the years for me, was at it’s best when it had a limited amount of removal you could count and manouver to position yourself against, while full, unconditional clears stayed as a high mana option like Twisting Nether.
The fact I know thar all that warrior is drawing is armor and board clears and that they frequently are both in one card is annoying. You put a board, it’s wiped clean, 5,6,7 time per game. It feels like playing against the original spell mage.
Are We talking about Lone Ranger?
I can only speak for Wild, but the card is everywhere.
I myself wish neither version exited.
40 card decks running both Reno’s, as well as Theotar, Zephrys, and Zilliax’s is a bit much, even for Wild.
Particularly when my class isn’t allowed a fast deck to counter.
What you are missing is that those cards create an identical play experience to OTK decks, just slower.
You queue in, you know you have to win before the turn 8 or 9 play. You also know that every other card in the deck is designed to stop you from doing this, and your victory is more dependant on them drawing in an incoherent order rather than you playing well.
It’s just an OTK, but without the combo requirement. They are just as uninteractive.
I don’t believe that the main handicap of highlander is that the rest of the cards are that much weaker (in some decks at least). The rest of the cards are usually very strong in several highlander decks and sometimes they even have synergies. The main handicap is that it just takes a long time to play those decks (most of them produce games that last between 12 and 20 minutes and the month has a limited time to play games); it’s why I was wondering why not more people were playing highlander Druid in the tournament yesterday (they don’t have to care about running out of time in the month there); if that deck ramps up on a curve the card becomes relatively “cheap” anyway (the Druid may have 10 mana when the others have 6 or 7).
I disagree, OTKs actually end the game the moment their played, where as with attrition win-cons (Alexandros, Rheastraza, Sargeras), there’s still time for the opponent to push through the value to win before they get overwhelmed (assuming you haven’t like, destroyed their deck or taken 9 mana crystals from them with Doomkins)
if an attrition deck has gotten to the point where them dropping their attrition card is the equivalent of an OTK, it means that the attrition decks’ other tools are too strong. I think a good example of this is Triple Blood DK pre and post Festival. Before Festival, triple blood was viable but it was more than possible to overpower and push through Alexandros damage for a win despite Blood DK having like, 60 Health and great lifesteal. Post Festival, a lot of decks lost their ability to push as hard, and DK lost nothing (they still had school teacher + limited spell pool), which meant playing a card like Alexandros was a game over essentially.
And look at that, School Teacher (and other DK cards) were nerfed heavily after that!
Sure, but in reality it tends to be more like this:
If the control decks are actually good enough to win with those kinds of cards, the game might as well be over once they are played.
They basically instantly create a game state where you either have an OTK, or a better infinite grind card because the odds of you overwhelming them after the inevitability card is too low.
Whenever these kinds of win conditions become tier 1, the deck gets nerfed heavily because of how toxic they are.
You can make that argument about any deck being fine if it’s not the best deck.
I find it a flawed argument.
If you are propping up decks with cards that can not be allowed to be highly competitive without ruining the game experience, maybe you shouldn’t be making those cards.
“Enabling” control with those kinds of win cons just means you can never have good control decks because those win cons make everyone miserable.
It’s no better than fatigue games, it just takes a few less turns. You will run into removal after removal tool, then eventually 1 card gets played that you can’t come back from.
Even if nerf reno again what happen next to it because already raised 10 manna. Blizzard not going kill the card and at the moment you barley see reno decks.
Reno is almost worthless outside ramp-mana decks, because most aggro and mid range opponents of Reno almost never go round 10 for their win condition (so it would be only good against slow control). You can only hope for nerfing ramping; but I doubt it’s happening and if those decks are replaced it’s more likely by indirectly having better decks rather than a direct ramp nerf; Reno at this point will be “nerfed” by just rotating it soon-ish (2025).
So The Reno fan base saw an opening and came back into the meta. Then the Warriors saw the Reno players were back and figured. Why not? So then after those two came back the Wheel locks were like “Hey look there’s enough decks to target and dump on” Lets do this!!!
