"BROKEN." What does it mean?

[Nosferatu]

My comment was not about powerful cards, which is why I didn't mention Vorex or Goblin Archers. My comment was about a combo-based deck in general. Errata's and restiriction did not come from the deck being overpowered, but the single card seeing play in 90% of the decks, as you mentioned. Just to clerify. You also said that cards with Flying, Invisibility, and Unblockable are broken, which is not the case. This post is here to clerify what broken is, and none of the mechanics are even close to broken (except slavemaster).

[JChadbourne]

I guess that I should have done my homwork befor eposting so nevermind my last post...

[mtheory]

I think it would be a good idea to try an example of a broken versus unbroken card here. I'll make a few sample cards, and then make some minor changes to show the difference.

Broken

Ethereal Scourge

Loyalty 0
Actions 1
Power 2
Health 3

Black Magic 0
White Magic 0
General Magic 0

True Loyalty
When Ethereal Scourge comes into play, choose a character in play. As long as Ethereal Scourge is in play, that character has:
"All damage dealt to this character is reduced to 0. At the beginning of this character's owner's Time Phase, this character loses 2 Health. During this character's Draw Step, it's owner may pay 1 Health in order to draw a card (this ability can used be used many times as that player wishes.)

Obviously this card is overpowered, but why exactly is it? Let's see:

This card has only one action. Not too big of a deal, sense most people do not want this card attacking for any reason.

The power for this card is somewhat high considering it's other abilities, but because it is also comparatively low to other monsters used to attack, it's fine for now.

The health it has is an issue. Three health is a fair amount, meaning it can't be killed by even two archers or any card that does less than three damage. Which means this card can also act as a fairly decent meatstick against decks that use small creatures to attack.

Since it has absolutely no magical abilities, that's not an issue.

The fact that it has True Loyalty is not actually a problem, because without True Loyalty, it's zero Loyalty would pretty much make it unplayable (unless you combined it with other cards.)

Now on to the ability.

The fact that the ability goes off each time it comes into play can make it a little too powerful. Since this card doesn't need an action to use it's ability, it's quite possible that a player could destroy it right before their Time Phase in order to prevent the damage, and then resurrect in order to gain the card drawing ability. Also, the fact that this card allows you to choose any player means you can put a control or combo deck on a very small time limit.

Drawing cards is a good thing. I actually thought about Necropotence after I decided upon that ability, and man, Necropotence got abused in tournies. 1 Health for one card is a very good trade-off.

The idea of reducing damage to zero sounds sort of interesting and yet doesn't go TOO far. Except the fact that the player only loses 2 life. That's a small amount. A very small amount considering its other abilities (not to mention it has three Health, so it can act as a defensive meat stick for a little while.)

Now, considering all these things, let's try to tone this card down a little in order to still make it a good, viable card that isn't too overpowered.

Unbroken (hopefully)

Ethereal Scourge

Loyalty 0
Actions 0
Power 1
Health 2

Black Magic 0
White Magic 0
General Magic 0

True Loyalty
When Ethereal Scourge comes into play, choose a character in play. As long as Ethereal Scourge is in play, that character has:
"All damage dealt to this character is reduced to 0. At the beginning of this character's owner's Time Phase, this character loses 3 Health. During this character's Draw Step, it's owner may pay 1 Health in order to draw a card (this ability can used be used many times as that player wishes.) When this card is removed from play, it's controller loses 5 Health.


I would consider this a much more balanced version of that card.

The Power has been toned down a bit, and the change in Health is actually more significant than it seems. The difference between 2 and 3 Health is a large one, since a 2 Health monster is far more easy to kill than a 3 Health one.

I boosted the loss of life to 3, because 2 is obviously too low, while 4 would make the card unplayable because it is such a large amount.

The one thing that truly rounds this card out is the loss of Health once it leaves play. This essentially makes sure that the card has a true drawback.

I also took out the one Action it had because giving this card the option for attacking is just a little too much.

[redshirt]

For what it's worth, I think either version of the card could be fairly easily broken.

Making it so the main routes of victory in ME (combat and direct damage) aren't possible while it's in play is a big deal.

That's not even factoring the ability to "Necro," which is a bigger deal as written in ME than the real Necro was in Magic, because a) you got the cards in Magic at the end of your turn as opposed to before your main phase here, b) in Magic, some percentage of the cards you potentially could draw would be land, whereas in ME every card is essentially a business spell and c) Necro made you forego your actual draw, whereas this card as written doesn't.

[Deleted]

Copy that on all counts. I thought I was the only one that thought both those cards were out of control.

Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure that this thread as a whole has pretty well covered the meaning of broken. Very simply stated, broken cards upset or unbalance metagames. If at any point you find yourself without a healthy metagame, it's very probable something somewhere is broken (unless of course all the cards are too bland, which is another story entirely.)

[noobpwner]

There is no broken there is whats legal in the tourney and what aint. Evrything else is crybaby noob stuff. I have won based on timing out and people say it's cheap but lets look at cheap what does it mean it means it cost nothing so my win cost me nothing. BTW when our you going to get buildings out of the game cuz unless I am using city wall there worthless. I like 2nd turn kill.