OP
An interesting thought
- Cards that prevent your opponent from using his her mana.
- Cards that discard your opponent’s cards.
- Cards that empty your opponent’s deck.
- Cards that straight up win out the fight and cannot be played around.
- RnG that makes it impossible to predict what your opponent might play.
#4, and sort of #3 on your list is why #1 and #2 are the game. But since every card has counter cards #4 is a 1/2 truth, the problem is not every card has counter cards for each class equally, or at all, which is a deeper design problem than it seems but ofc would be amazing to have so you don’t have to play a specific class to beat a certain deck without losing a big matchup spread.
“[Groups of] cards that win the game and can’t be played around”
Suck, but they aren’t unpalyaroundable overall just for specific classes or decks at most.
So, they added “play around”
By printing:
“Cards that prevent your opponent from using his/her mana”
Like Loatheb preventing a combo, rarely Weblord from preventing a BC.
Or a lethal combo of your own when by defeating you prevents you from using your mana.
“Cards that discard your opponent’s cards”
Like Mindrender or Rat or like the Treach Fel combo or the handful of ways the game has this feature / headache however you look at it. Same with your own lethal combo also known as burst.
and “Cards for other classes that are burst/aggro combos that have cheated mana so they are faster than the original problem cards that are supposedly unplayaroundable”. If not done evenly, we have a polar meta, like wild for the last 1/4 decade.
OP combos that win the game suck, so they printed limited disruption to interrupt those combos, and limited burst to turbo them down from hand, and a lot more aggro type speed to steadily attack an op combo instead of a one or two turn mid game situation combo.
So like what’s the root problem here?
Unchecked op combos, whether that’s aggro or ‘combo’, and that’s in the form of mana cheat most the time as opposed to an overprice or underprice in the design part of a new set although obviously these errors do happen too. See if they’d balance the game to give more options vs the ‘op combos’ it becomes wider and more fun. F/e in wild balance is a very part time story so thats why the meta is so thin archetype wise, it’s cheat mana, or don’t play wild its a 1 decktype format.
“Cheating mana” is the same thing as “cards that straight up win the fight”.
“cards that prevent your opponent from using his/her mana” are like desperately needed in the game to provide an open way to counter mana cheat, if you’ve played wild you’d see this how OP mana cheat is vs how little of anti-mana-cheat is in the game. Its so little ppl play aggro or faster-combo most the time (that cheat their own mana so it’s no different playstyle wise) to beat mana cheat combos. So, #1 is exactly what the game especially wild needs a whoooole bunch more of to open it up if they don’t want to try and balance 1000+ cards in wild. #2 is also a decent idea to have more of but not too much. 3 is less powerful than 2, so maybe that’s the safer call, but ‘empty’ and ‘affect’ are very different stories here.
#5, the only single case i can see this making sense is vs wild secret mage, bc the secret options are so wide and amazingly designed to be unpredictable in the beginning within a small pool of very predictable secrets. And, secrets in wild, especially mage bc they have instant anti spell, and only bc of that, are going to be a bigger headache each new expansion.
But yea the summary is if they leave mana cheat unchecked, than you have lots of “OP combos out of thin air” and too little “anti mana cheat” options, and that’s exactly what we see happening in wild. The end result is the deckbuilding game is beyond predictable, even tho there’s a sea of cards, only the same type of cards are playable which is mana cheating packages and supporting that.
“this card cheats mana but is a 1/1 on turn 2”
“this card does not cheat mana and is a 2/3 on 2”
See in wild card 1 wins always forever even in an aggro deck.
So you can blame the devs for leaving mana cheat so unchecked and/or for not printing enough mana cheat prevention cards that are not your own burst combo or disruption, also known as #1 and #2 and sort of #3 on your list. If they dont balance mana cheat, give us 1 2 and 3, dont just make us do 4 into 4 with a side of 3 in there but only for a few select classes. 1, 2 and 3 are not bad things, when 4 is totally out of control, 1, 2, and 3 are the only options to beat 4, besides faster 4. Make sense?