Why am I not surprised? [Is Blue Too Powerful?]

Unknown

As usual, this game, just like so many other MTG incarnations, biases the game on blue being ridiculously above and beyond anything any other faction can come up with in terms of cost efficiency, utility and playability.

Terrible. If there isn't balance brought to the factions, I'll be uninstalling it right quick.


Mod Edit: Clarified thread title

Brainstormin

Blue is good but easily beatable.
Black can make them discard everything. Red can burn them out easily too. Green can play Gaea's Revenge and they have no answers.

Some colors are better against others, just like paper mtg.

That said, Harbinger of Tides is broken and needs nerfing.

Unknown

In theory gaias revenge is good, but the reality is that you'll never ever cast it unless blue is extremely unlucky, or you are extremely fortunate with cascades.

That's where my issue lies. Blue has ridiculously cost efficient cards, while others require 3-4x mana for anything comparable.

Brainstormin

Jace is considered to be not as strong as the other PWs but I do think that he's the only one that gets a +3 bonus for on-color matches (when you level him high enough). That mixed with efficient spells can make him a pain. I maxed my Jace and got bored and moved to Chandra who is fun in completely different ways.

So yes I probably agree blue is the best color so far but we'll see more cards in the future. I think we all know the game was rushed but unlike paper Mtg they can go back and edit cards and power levels.

As far as Gaea's Revenge goes: a few nissa's pilgrimages, elvish visionaries and Nissa's first and third ability all make it easy(er) to get 23 mana. I've lost to it a bunch of times with Jace...granted I might have been at 7 life because I skip any QuickBattle that doesn't give me 150+ runes.

Unknown

Balance only really comes into it when playing real players. In quick battles it is usually whoever you choose vs Nissa.

Brainstormin

You see a lot of Nissas early on in Quick Battles but it seems like there's a variety of Planeswalkers opponents the higher your PW level is. People realized it wasn't worth it to Max out Nissa.

Shiser

Brainstormin wrote:

I've lost to it a bunch of times with Jace...granted I might have been at 7 life because I skip any QuickBattle that doesn't give me 150+ runes.

Wait! You can tell in advance? How??

Unknown

I'm the current Rank 1 player on the ladder, my experience has been that when I started off I was playing tons of Chandra, Gideon, and Nissa. When I broke top 10 it started being tons of Jace, Nissa, and a bit of Nissa and Gideon. Now it has become entirely Jace and Nissa. I played against Jace 5 games in a row today, literally.

My personal current tier list is:

Top:
Blue

Mid:
Green

Bottom:
Red
Black

Blue is just absurd, honestly. If playing real opponents was possible, there is no question in my mind that Blue would be overwhelmingly dominant. Anyone who says "there are things you can do to deal with Blue" doesn't know what they are talking about. This is what typically happens against Blue decks (for context I play White) :

They play Claustrophobia repeatedly for 6 mana, you cant use your first creature the entire fight, so just forget it. They spam their 1st ability basically for free that gives your second creature -6/0, so you cant use your second creature without significantly buffing it, while also hoping he doesn't play a defender or a berzerker that will kill your creature before you can buff it enough. If you buff your second creature enough to counter act his -6/0 debuff every turn, or manage to send out a 3rd creature, he will send out Separatist Voidmage (2/2 for 10) and/or Harbinger of Tides (6/6 for 10) and send it back to your hand anyway, with Harbinger making it cost +9 mana to summon, which is laughably broken.

Then he will send out Alhammarret and make all of your cards cost +6 mana until your next turn. If they also have Disciple of the Ring, then they will be able to also disable an extra creature you have each turn, while also buffing itself, while also draining mana from the first card in your hand. If they have Jace's Sanctum then your first card loses another 3 mana every turn.

It is so ridiculous how stupid all of those effects are when combined. Basically Jace doesn't allow you to play the game. The point of Blue is not to beat the other person, its to prevent them from doing what they want. The game becomes a grind that gets reduced to just hoping that he doesn't get the cards he wants fast enough, and that you get better gem RNG. I honestly cannot believe that he gets a -6/0 for next to free every turn. That was just a silly choice.

Can you "deal" with Jace? I guess. But it is very frustrating. You dont feel like you are being beaten, its more like someone is repeatedly unplugging your controller while playing Mario Kart. IMO raise the cost of Confusion, or lower it from -6/0 to -4/0. Lower the increased mana cost effect on Alhammarret from +4. Increase Psychic Rebuttal from 1 damage to 2 since its completely useless. And nerf Harbinger of the Tides into the ground.

DrNno

Shiser wrote:

Brainstormin wrote:

I've lost to it a bunch of times with Jace...granted I might have been at 7 life because I skip any QuickBattle that doesn't give me 150+ runes.

Wait! You can tell in advance? How??

Probably not in advance, but once the game has started, you can check the level of your opponent. If it has 3+ levels than you, you'll gain more runes (and ribbons, but that doesn't count). If you're not interested in a small reward, as Brainstormin seems to be, you can end the match, losing some health.

DrNno

InfiniteGXT wrote:

It is so ridiculous how stupid all of those effects are when combined. Basically Jace doesn't allow you to play the game. The point of Blue is not to beat the other person, its to prevent them from doing what they want. The game becomes a grind that gets reduced to just hoping that he doesn't get the cards he wants fast enough, and that you get better gem RNG. I honestly cannot believe that he gets a -6/0 for next to free every turn. That was just a silly choice.

You just summarized the entire concept of Blue within Magic: The Gathering card-game. Blue is the big NOPE! Blue is the denier. Blue is the sadistic wizard who enjoy nothing more than seeing you cry with a full hand and no way to play the game. Then he summons a Prodigal Sorcerer and pokes you one point at a time until you die.

You can beat Blue, but you need to either play Blue too, or tailor your deck to counter Blue. MtGPQ is a bit harder to play this way, because the Mana flow is entirely different from the card game, and Blue feels a bit overpowered because it has access to so much more Mana than a card player could hope on a tabletop.

Unknown

DrNno wrote:

Shiser wrote:

Brainstormin wrote:

I've lost to it a bunch of times with Jace...granted I might have been at 7 life because I skip any QuickBattle that doesn't give me 150+ runes.

Wait! You can tell in advance? How??

Probably not in advance, but once the game has started, you can check the level of your opponent. If it has 3+ levels than you, you'll gain more runes (and ribbons, but that doesn't count). If you're not interested in a small reward, as Brainstormin seems to be, you can end the match, losing some health.

You get 50 runes per level difference, up to 250.

<=1 level = 50 runes, 1 ribbon
2 level = 100 runes, 2 ribbons
3 level = 150 runes, 3 ribbons
4 level = 200 runes, 4 ribbons
5 level = 250 runes, 5 ribbons

Unknown

I encountered an interesting Blue strategy today. Usually when I play Jace I go the Claustrophobia + Confusion route, but this time (as Gideon) I faced a low-level Jace armed with Sphinx Tutelage (I think that's right), which adds to the cost of your next card every time Jace draws a card. And his deck was stuffed with cards that allowed him to draw an extra card. That combined with an unlucky board where it was hard to get manna, and I was quite worried. Very hard to get anything into play.

Still won, though.

Unknown

pandabear wrote:

You get 50 runes per level difference, up to 250.

<=1 level = 50 runes, 1 ribbon
2 level = 100 runes, 2 ribbons
3 level = 150 runes, 3 ribbons
4 level = 200 runes, 4 ribbons
5 level = 250 runes, 5 ribbons

Wait, what? I have literally never gotten anything other than 50 runes per win and 1 ribbon. And I have played with decks at several different Planeswalker levels. I didn't even know it was possible to get more than that.

RubiconX

InfiniteGXT wrote:

Wait, what? I have literally never gotten anything other than 50 runes per win and 1 ribbon. And I have played with decks at several different Planeswalker levels. I didn't even know it was possible to get more than that.

In that case you have either been:

1) Very unlucky
2) Not fought many Quick Battles
3) Your PWs are all maxed out

I get >50 about 40% of the time

Brainstormin

Yeah there's no reason to play in any of the Quick Battles if you're only getting 50 Runes. I can beat the first level (Heavy Infantry) in less than two minutes and get 50 runes. If I enter the Quick Battle and see the opponent is at my level or below, I quit and retry.
My life goes to 5-7 but you can still beat opponents with 5+ levels on you at low life. My Jace and Chandra are both at level 50 so I don't get anymore matches worth more than 50. Right now I'm using Liliana and it's not that hard to win at a low life. Make them discard and play removal. Repeated quitting screws up your win / loss percentages but doesn't hurt your Win streak record. All which mean nothing right now.

Unknown

RubiconX wrote:

In that case you have either been:

1) Very unlucky
2) Not fought many Quick Battles
3) Your PWs are all maxed out

I get >50 about 40% of the time

Ive played 180+ Quick Battles. My Gideon is maxed but the 20 games Ive done with my other decks (all low level) have still had me fighting enemies beneath my level. I specifically played a few games with my level 1 Jace to see if I could get more rewards and every single opponent I got was level 1.

RubiconX

InfiniteGXT wrote:

RubiconX wrote:

In that case you have either been:

1) Very unlucky
2) Not fought many Quick Battles
3) Your PWs are all maxed out

I get >50 about 40% of the time

Ive played 180+ Quick Battles. My Gideon is maxed but the 20 games Ive done with my other decks (all low level) have still had me fighting enemies beneath my level. I specifically played a few games with my level 1 Jace to see if I could get more rewards and every single opponent I got was level 1.

paralistalon

InfiniteGXT wrote:

Can you "deal" with Jace? I guess. But it is very frustrating.

If they make some really efficient hexproof creatures, that might help.

I'm not sure why you would put Chandra in the bottom tier. Against Jace, she could probably just burn him away with her 1st ability and burn spells if he was just sitting there trying to lock up the board. I feel like Chandra would do worse against a live opponent, however, just because if they saved up their creatures until they could reinforce them the same turn, it would be more difficult to burn then with Exquisite Firecraft + 2nd ability.

Irgy

It's hard to really tell what's balanced and what's OP without a proper metagame that you could get from having real PVP. There are counters to blue's things. Green has a creature which can destroy a support to get surprise damage in through claustrophobia, creatures big enough to overcome the -6, and mana gain to offset the mana denial. Red can also destroy a lot of supports as well as race with direct damage from Chandra. Black's card-denial strategy could still work (even with Jace's spell recursion ability). I don't know as much about white but white at least has its own Claustraphobia.

Alhamarret doesn't even seem good to me. Sure, you're blocked from doing anything for a turn, but just rearrange your hand to charge up one of your more expensive spells that turn so you don't waste any mana. Some of the other mana denial that only affects the first card in hand can be mitigated with good hand management too.

These things can beat the AI Jace, what's not clear is whether these other strategies are actually "good enough" to win a fair fight, i.e. against a competent human Jace. I actually agree that blue does seem to be the best colour, with some quite unfair cards, but it's all just theory craft without any way to play against a human.

InfiniteGXT wrote:

Ive played 180+ Quick Battles. My Gideon is maxed but the 20 games Ive done with my other decks (all low level) have still had me fighting enemies beneath my level. I specifically played a few games with my level 1 Jace to see if I could get more rewards and every single opponent I got was level 1.

At max level you can't get an opponent of higher level. At level 1 (and maybe some other low levels) I'm pretty sure you always get a pre-built Nissa-bot. So you may almost never have given yourself the opportunity to be matched up.

Unknown

Blue is overpower.

But you still can beat them.

Red : keep using Demolish card to destroy her support.

Black : I hate this deck so much. keep discard blue so blue can't build her game from sphinx tutelage + jace sanctum or claustrophobia.

Green : Blue cut off your mana but Green can get mana from reclaim card and your PW skill. so blue can't stop Green seriously.

White : Surrender !! have no Idea for this deck.

Blue weak for me, I think her systematic game need to create from many card such as

Support : Claustrophobia, Jace sancetum, Sphinx Tutelage.
Spell : Disperse, Anchor of the Aether.

and all of this you need to spend much mana to make your game but this wont be problem if your enemy use small creature and effective such as Green.

Unknown

Here's a possible broken combo that needs to be watched:

Soulblade Djinn + talent of the telepath

So... This combo is especially dangerous when combined with jace's ingenuity ability. Because of the rotating mechanics of the 10 card deck, it's possible to infinitely buff your other one or two attackers on the board if you simply continually draw talent of the telepath each time you use talent of the telepath.

Since talent of the telepath automatically charges the drawn card with 6 mana, and the card itself only requires a cost of 4, you can OTK with this simple combo. Add in some other draw spells and/or cheap buffs with upcoming releases, and it will become a definite win condition in the future.

For now, it requires some luck, but i have buffed units 10x with Djinn already on some turns with this silly combo.

Show me another combo from any other colour which is this broken already.