Why cards allegedly break or actually broke...

[Deleted]

I endeavor to understand why some cards have been restricted, erratad, or banned altogheter, or should be. I'll plot cards, spit a question or opinion. Please respond to some or all, as well as bring up cards of your own.

Ring of Temporal Acceleration-So as of 2 weeks ago this card can only be used on characters? You know why? In my experience, as I'm sure in yours too, it lead to way too much abuse. It made bad cards good and good cards unstopable. I used it on Vorex and/or Acolyte for about a day. In that day, I played about 20 games, had an average game length of 2 turns, and won 18-19 of them in that time, 7-8 of those wins coming first turn, all of them coming from a variety of solidly built deck types including Archer/Wall, Wizard Mayhem, Dwarf beatdown, Rivendale beatdown, Sutraps' beatdown and so on. It was pretty broken. The ring was changed the next day, not that I had anything to do with it, but it's funny I think. I still believe that while this ring has had a lot of it's abuse taken away, it's so good as to go with every deck...all of them! I think any 1 card to go in every single deck type should be banned all together. It would promote diversity amond decks. I know there can only be 2 rings, but I can always find them...Sneakey Snyder, who's a Rogue, very recruitable...especially with Slave Driver...

Slave Driver- Has he been nudered beyond playability? The problem here is that the mechanic itself is overpowered...it just does too much. The slave idea is cool, but limit it to converting creatures in play to slaves, or fishing out only their deck for slaves...the ability to go into the deck I built is too manipulative. Regardless...it is what it is, and now slaves flee to owners hand when the slavemaster is removed, which is totally cool by the way. The problem is the false loyalty of the slaves abandoning the master and not the character...that's TERRIBLE! I think the errata went the wrong way. True, a huge abuse of power has been somewhat dealt with, as Slave Driver is very risky now. But this isn't limited to this card, but it kills the whole mechanic. Unless of course you're recruiting Sneaky Snyders and Cranial Leeches...which is why I do...and it's still overpowered by the way with minimal risk. My point is, the slavemaster mechanic seemed to be someone's idea of trying to do a lot of different cool things, but now it only does one thing very well and is unusable in any other. It's unbalanced, amazing or terrible. WHAT I THINK IT SHOULD BE IS...slavemaster can recruit from only opponents deck. If slavemaster removed, slaves flee back to opponent's hand. Slaves still have -1 power/health, but not health below 1. BUT, instead of slaves having false loyalty, have loyalty of whatever type or number the slavemaster has. OK! This way, slavemaster can still use slaves to attack, chump without committing suicide, but can't abuse creatures with sac powers, especially of the 'enter play disengaged' variety, unless your opponent was unlucky enough to pack those. Whew! That was long.

Spirit Song- Did you all see that deck with 3 of these? Quite obviously a retarded deck. That card should have always been ultra-rare. With the opportunity to have 3 in a deck, you could build a whole deck around it, and should have. You would win almost all the time you drew it, by 2nd-3rd turn, and lose when you failed to draw it. Way too unbalanced...

Trade Agreement- Ok, so what's the deal? This one is a little less obvious to me. I know it's good. But I don't see the abuse of power or lack of balance so easily as the aforementioned cards. I guess I want a little more detail...

That's enough for now...but I'll check back and maybe add more. You guys saw that thread about Banishment? That's another one, maybe. And how about Heat Wave? You know what I think is the problem with all of these cards...they make the game too fast, and take it away from the cool structures that it would be cool but impossible to build with normal builders. I seriously think that mid and late game should exist beyond the 10th turn, which is where I think this game is best, but currently unreachable. Imagine a ME where Prison is actually worth building? Where your dudes aren't Fireballed and Lightning Bolted (also too good too fast by the way)...That's right ladies and gents! Stop hiding behing good broken abuse cards! If we wanted that, we'd play M:tg...even Yugi-oh. This is the only game with cool structure strategy, and we're not using it. Seriously, the only playable structure that takes 4 or more tokens is City Wall, the most broken structure of them all...what does that say? (Ok, Woodland Sanctuary gets used, but that deck isn't that good against aggro or wizards) But you know what I mean.

[Arashi]

Well in regards to the ring of temporal acceleration, I guess it was a good idea to change it. I did like the old rule however mainly because I had an almost unstoppable combo that involved it. Now that it's been changed I might as well post this combo. The cards are:
vorex x1
wandering cleric x1
twisted sorcerer x1
ring of temporal acceleration x1
pathfinder x1

So...can anyone see it yet? if you can post what you think and I'll tell you if your right or not...

[Deleted]

I think I see what you're doing. Your ring is on your Acolyte. Wandering Cleric and Twisted Sorcerer active. Sac your Pathfinder, draw whatever. If it's a creature, activate the cleric to reanimate the pathfinder, put the newly drawn creature into play. Have Acolyte untap cleric, reanimate Vorex. Have Acolyte untap cleric again, then vorex to untap Acolyte. Sac the pathfinder and/or Vorex again, rinse and repeat, depending on whether you want to keep drawing, sneak creatures into play, or attack infinitely. Is that right? Or at least, that would work...it is a lot of dancing though. That's kinda what I was doing to until I decided to cut out the middle man.

What I did was just put the ring on the Vorex, then do whatever you want. You see, I would use the first action for whatever, then use the 2nd action to disengage ITSELF. Keith was there, and was forced to rule that it was legal at the time. If your opponent is tapped out, kill him by attacking infinitely. If you have a Slave Driver, recruit everyone. Of course, I also played Wandering Cleric & Unicorn, Acolyte, Sneaky Snyder, Cranial Leech, Twisted Sorcerer, even Corspe Collecter! In my opionion, it was a much simpler way to infinitely recruit every creature in both decks, attack, heal, reanimate, untap, draw cards, you name it. It was a vile manipulation of rule wording.

You're good though to have done that. I kind of just fell into it, and took advantage of the verbiage. You see my point though? I hate that this stuff ruined it for the other creatures who might have used the ring more innocently, but...it's just the card...even now, it's still too good.

[Arashi]

queue said:

What I did was just put the ring on the Vorex, then do whatever you want. You see, I would use the first action for whatever, then use the 2nd action to disengage ITSELF. Keith was there, and was forced to rule that it was legal at the time. If your opponent is tapped out, kill him by attacking infinitely. If you have a Slave Driver, recruit everyone. Of course, I also played Wandering Cleric & Unicorn, Acolyte, Sneaky Snyder, Cranial Leech, Twisted Sorcerer, even Corpse Collector! In my opinion, it was a much simpler way to infinitely recruit every creature in both decks, attack, heal, reanimate, untap, draw cards, you name it. It was a vile manipulation of rule wording.

You're good though to have done that. I kind of just fell into it, and took advantage of the verbiage. You see my point though? I hate that this stuff ruined it for the other creatures who might have used the ring more innocently, but...it's just the card...even now, it's still too good.

Heh, nice combo! I didn't even think of doing that, having vorex untap itself and all. What I did was put the ring on the wandering cleric. sac the pathfinder and vorex and draw 2 cards. Use the wandering cleric to revive the vorex, and if I got a creature from the draw then the pathfinder as well. Use vorex to untap the wandering cleric and repeat.

Anyway, yours looks like it would work WAY better and faster than mine. I definitely see why Keith changed the ring since the infinite attacks with vorex buy itself. I had an infinite attack combo but it used 2 acolytes with one bearing a ring. I also had a combo for infinite turns(it took a bit to get out but once it was out game over)

You sound like a pretty good player as well. I would like to play a game or two against you sometime.

[spiller]

It does seem funny how Vorex always seems to be involved in the "broken" combos. Maybe that is another card to keep an eye on. Doubling the use of the nasty lockdown of illusionist, frost sorceror, medusa, time manipulator....just wrong. Peace Time is another card the eliminates an entire aspect of the game(attacking). Then we have the Dust of Invisibility issue
I am glad to see some fixes to some of the cards. I am sure we will find some more as time goes on. I know Keith is working on making sure that less of these overpowered cards make it to print. Printing new cards can sometimes fix older cards but it can also cause new problems to arise.

[spiller]

I forgot to mention. I was the one that pointed out the issue of Trade agreements in the sealed format as there were NO answers to it in the other precons. While I agree it is very powerful, it didn't seem to be as abusive as the other cards that were errated or have been discussed. Maybe I didn't try hard enough to break it

[synergy]

ummm ya peace time is great. i love it. but as ive seen it is anything but broken. i won the toueneyr and didnt play peacetime ONCE. its ok but not nuts cause spells are very used.

[spiller]

Grats on the win synergy! I think the fact that you didn't play peacetime is that it is overpowered. I know I would never go into a tournament with a deck that relies on attacking with creatures for the win BECAUSE of Peacetime. The only deck that can compete by attacking is Sutraps/Dust. As of right now, I have yet to see or come up with a deck that is competitive that involves attacking with creatures. Wizard lock or Dust of Sutraps are the decks to beat (I named them but feel free to call them what you want!). Dust of Sutraps is almost always the same deck but Wizard lock is either Zycon/spells/peacetime or Grimus/time manipulator/frost sorceror(or some combo of the two). I would like to see some viable decks based on creatures attacking but they just can't compete. I think that reason is for that IS peacetime. I heard that 100% of the decks at the last tournament were wizard based so it seems like everyone is coming up with the same conclusions. I would have played Dust of Sutraps as I find it holds a slight advantage over wizards but I had other plans for the weekend.
It seems like nobody is posting any decklists. I think my next long thread I will start posting some decklists of what I find to be the most competitive. Maybe it will open up some real discussion on other alteratives I have missed. A thread for each one so people can discuss what they like and don't like, ways to improve it, and such might be the way to go.

[kevmo]

I see that everyone can pick out cards that are broken but I don't think we have tapped into one of the problems with these cards. Loyalty! If everyone can notice that a lot of the really broken wizard combos and the many other excellent creatures with nasty effects is that they all have in common one thing, a generally high loyalty. Grimus might be one of the issues that gets left behind after all these other cards get dealt with. Loyalty was developed to help pace the game so structures can get built, strategies can get laid out, and combos can be developed. Well Grimus has taken all the time and guesswork out of deckbuilding because you can play any frigin creature you want aside from angels which the pathfinder can get which also has a high loyalty. In my opinion Grimus is one of the main problems. I believe it is healthy to create a format that is less explosive as everyone is talking about. Every nasty combo everyone has created is 2nd and 3rd turn!! To me that is game determination way too early.

Also I think people havnt noticed the dust of invisibility errata yet but Lord Sultrops is less nasty now because of it check out erratas section to see what i mean. Basically when a creature or character with invisible attacks it becomes visible.

[spiller]

I see that they fixed Dust of Sutraps (which is a good thing) but now it leaves only 2 viable decks. Grimus with wizards (Arashi has a very nasty one) or Zycon with wizards (Synergy has one together, not sure of exact makeup but I can guess). I am going to study the card pool to see if I can find something that may be able to compete but I guess I will be making my version of wizard.dec! I would love to see another alternative but as the last few tournaments have shown, go wizards or go home.

[kevmo]

I have to admit that I expected to see a couple of wizard decks at the recent constructed tournament but ALLL Wizards!!!! This should be a wake up call that everyone agrees that in order to win you have to play wizards in the current card structure. I am trying to build a structure deck but you have to put so many cards to combat against wizards you start to lose focus on your deck. Please help.

[synergy]

ok let me relaate the good decks to u (spiller) like in magic. so u know G/X/X that lots of pros played in worlds and toher formats in T2. they always have cards like BOP or sakura and then a form of beef. so for ME it is very similar now (excluding wizzards). u have to have slavedriver/vorex in grimus and stuff. its very similar. u play almost every good caard in the deck. wizzards is good but i dont see arashias deck as a wizzard his is the G/X/X type of deck.

[Arashi]

In regards to what you said Kevmo, I do agree that Grimus is a good character(why do you think I use him) but I do not agree that he is broken. Trust me when I say this; He has PLENTY of weaknesses. For starters he has ten health which is VERY low when you see how much damage can be done. A few hits and Grimus is done... He does only one damage, but since it's permanent it's OK. He gives all of the creatures under his control false loyalty which is a double-edged sword. It does keep your creatures from abandoning from loyalty, but one hit to them will force them to abandon if they do not die. This gives Grimus a bad defense which what he needs most. There are many other weaknesses to Grimus decks, but I'm not going to give away ALL the secrets to beating my decks.

As to your post Synergy, I do see what you meant about my deck. However, I have made another new deck that actually has a specific strategy this time! Are you going to the tournament at iGamespot on Saturday? You are a very good player and I enjoy playing against you because of that. I cant wait to try out my new deck!!

And Spiller, I do agree with you that peacetime is a very powerful card. I'm not going into detail about it here as I've left a post on the M.E.G.A. board with my thoughts on the card. By the way, Are you going to be at the tourney at iGamespot this weekend?

It would be awesome if a lot of you come to the tourney this weekend! Playing in tournaments is just more enjoyable when there are other good players there!

I hope to see a lot of people there!

[spiller]

Synergy, I fully understand your point about how every g/x/x deck runs either BoP of STE. It makes sense. They allow you to play three colors reliably. This is more of an issue where there is only one style of deck to play. YOU CANNOT PLAY A CREATURE BASED/ATTACKING DECK IN MYSTICAL EMPIRES TOURNAMENTS. This is the problem.
I don't see a simple solution. There isn't one single card causing this issue. Peacetime is one of them. Illusionist/frost sorceror/time manipulator/medusa is another. Banishment and Dark Union, while focusing on one type of creature, make it more difficult. I have just touched the surface of cards that essentially nullify any attacking based strategy.
OK...now the flip side. I am building a deck based on attacking. What options do I have to counter the wizard/control? Preist of Riverwood is the only option, and not a reliable one at that. Yes, I could add magic to my deck but now I end up watering down my creature strategy which makes the deck unfocused and even less competitive.
At the last tournament, NOONE PLAYED A DECK BASED AROUND ATTACKING WITH CREATURES. Why? Because it is not a viable option in the current environment. If that isn't a red flag, I am not sure what is.
The game is new. It has some issues to be ironed out. I still enjoy the game. It is important that it stays as balanced as possible in the early stages so that as the game expands it stays balanced.

[spiller]

Chris,
I hope to make it down for the tourny but it is quite a haul. I hope to make it but still not 100% sure. I agree, a strong player base makes the tournaments more enjoyable.
Just my two cents on Grimus (who I enjoy as well). Because Mystical Empires doesn't have an energy/mana based system for playing cards. Nothing limits on which cards can play in which decks other than Leadership/Loyalty. Grimus removes that restriction. Yes he has his negatives (limited mana and low base health) but he severly restricts the types of cards that can be printed. I like to use Time Manipulator as an example. Great card but you need to find a way to raise your characters Leadership to play him without risking having him abandon....or you play Grimus. Same applies to Braqmentar, Phoenix, Vorex and Honor Guard (just to name a few). We won't go into the angel trick We could also look at the 0 loyalty creatures and increase the list of cards that are restricted to each other character, but not to Grimus.
When Reckoning came out, Grimus got much better as there were quite of few powerful cards that he allowed to be used. As more sets come out, I think this will continue to happen. While dangerously powerful now, I can forsee it becoming broken.
Character choice for top decks is either Lord Zycon (as discussed in last posting) or Grimus. I would like to see a greater balance. I know that not every character will see play but I would like to see a greater diversity.