Outland Colossus Needs Depowering

Hullblazer

This card comes out early in a game, being a cheap coaster. But at 6/6 and having a reknown of 6 it really unbalances the game.

It has come out in my last three pvps and by round 4 is doing 12 to 24 points of damage and is ignoring blockers?

As it stands this card is destroying any joy in the game: I don't mind losing but losing by such a long chalk in so many games is demoralising.

Morphis

Hullblazer wrote:

This card comes out early in a game, being a cheap coaster. But at 6/6 and having a reknown of 6 it really unbalances the game.

It has come out in my last three pvps and by round 4 is doing 12 to 24 points of damage and is ignoring blockers?

As it stands this card is destroying any joy in the game: I don't mind losing but losing by such a long chalk in so many games is demoralising.

I do not know... Actually I have it and was thinking of removing it from the deck... Yes it seems op while it keeps going but only in a rush vs rush match where there is no other interaction in the game.
But it does not happen that often.

Also ignores blockers? Unless your opponent has rogue passage support that is not the case.

In the end there are faaaaar better creatures in the game colossus rarely has the chance to really shine.

Unknown

Actually he is by far the best mana/cost ratio of any card assuming he gets through.

He is one of green's best creatures and one of the best raw damage creatures in the game. He is a vanilla fatty with no effects, but he is the measuring stick for mana efficiency.

There are far different cards, as well as cards that can counter it, certainly, but I would say he is the best card that does what he does.

Hullblazer

I've only just checked back in - sorry.

I have played against this card several times now and I stand by my previous post. Yes, I have developed strategies to get around this beast but it still remains a game-ender and destroys a lot of fun.

I have faced several games where two of these cards are played in quick succession (and I do mean two in one turn or one a turn for several turns). This ends up in a walk-over, rather than a game with interaction.

Irving

Hullblazer wrote:

I've only just checked back in - sorry.

I have played against this card several times now and I stand by my previous post. Yes, I have developed strategies to get around this beast but it still remains a game-ender and destroys a lot of fun.

I have faced several games where two of these cards are played in quick succession (and I do mean two in one turn or one a turn for several turns). This ends up in a walk-over, rather than a game with interaction.

It's all subjective, but I really like the card & find it top-of-the-line but not needing depowering. At 15 mana, if somebody's getting two in a turn, they're getting the kinds of crazy cascades that *should* be able to beat you. For me, it's the card that lets Green have a unique identity as the color of big, efficient beaters and the ability to go over the top of a Gideon with first strike/defender. I like that if it's not buffed/renowned, Skysnare Spider, a Consul's Lieutenant with Sharp Eyes and renown, and an Exquisite Firecraft can all take it down.

It does end the game awfully fast once it hits, so it does increase the variance, and that's something that needs balancing from time to time. If it had to be changed, Renown 4 instead of 6 might be the best way. But I like it how it is.

Unknown

Oh it is way too powerful for 15 mana lol.

I think we've all known it for a while now and noone's bothered to care.

12 power to 15 mana is simply unheard of.

Tentatively though I'd say 16-18 mana is fair for it, but that would make it too weak pre-renown.

perhaps make it an 8/8 for 18 with a 4 renown.

Irving

I kind of like this - we're repeating every MTG argument ever Something has to be the best card in the deck... who knows what the line is between "that's the best card" and "that card's too good and needs banning (or in our case nerfing)." It's even worse in our case because you can't play against other humans so there's no real metagame and the difference is between winning 92% of the time or 92.5% of the time, hardly noticeable.

I do like that it starts as a 6/6 because an 8/8 wouldn't die to Skysnare Spider/Exquisite Firecraft/Renowned Lieutenant with Sharp Eyes.

Unknown

It is a good card, and the best beatstick in the game (next to volcanic rambler).

But it surely is not the best card in the game. Many things defeat it, but once it hits renown there is very little that stops it.

0rnur53

It is part of learning how to build a good card set for your planeswalker. Sure, it might be powerful for those who are starting play MtgPQ. But as soon as you have access to better cards your chances of defeating this type of creature will increase. Find a planeswalker and card combo that works for you and don'the be discourage.

Fitomagic

There is no need of depowering is well balances. The are ither cards like hangarback walker or topter spy network may be

Unknown

Hangarback is probably one of the worst expenditures of mana, right up there with pyro goggles.

Its not to say it is a -bad- card in a vacuum, but in the way the current game plays out neither of the two offer any sort of defense nor disable and battlefield control, and they simply cost way too much before they come out.

Hilariously Hangarback is beaten by the very card you guys are discussing, outland colossus. This card comes out twice as fast, and with two of them you get an 18/18 which wil take hangarback at least 3-4 additional turns to hit.

In fact hangarback won't even catch up to the damage output of colossus until like 10 turns down the road, and unless you can show me a planeswalker with 180+ hp, this point is completely moot.

heykirby

Turn to Frog.

Gun Bunny

Unholy Hunger
Cruel revival
Act of treason/fiery conclusion
Anchor to the aether
Confusion
Iroas' champion
Enshrouding mist

Unknown

I am not really sure if you guys get the point lol.

"you can use creature DD to destroy a creature"?

*** You can use that for literally all but one creature in the game.

But what you can't do is get 12 power for 15 mana.

***

***Admin edited to remove insults. Please keep things friendly.

Irving

Oh, come on, you've been civil so far, no need for this.

When someone says "That card is too powerful," a perfectly reasonable reply is "There are answers to it that are accessible to most decks, so it's not out of control." Feel free to disagree but it's a legitimate counterargument.

Unknown

But the counters people have are counters to literally every other creature.

By that logic I could have a 1 mana 20/20, and your counter is "turn to frog".

OK.

The whole issue that we are attempting address is its mana cost relative to its performance.

Now I'm not actually super invested in nerfing this, but I just don't understand the arguments currently.

ChrisTot

I think we can easily figure out how much this card should cost by comparing the MtG equivalents of:
Outland Colossus and Patron of the Valiant.

Outland Colossus could EASILY cost 14 and be on par with other cards in the game like Patron. Seems very reasonable.

Irving

pandabear wrote:

But the counters people have are counters to literally every other creature.

By that logic I could have a 1 mana 20/20, and your counter is "turn to frog".

OK.

The whole issue that we are attempting address is its mana cost relative to its performance.

Now I'm not actually super invested in nerfing this, but I just don't understand the arguments currently.

I don't know if you play paper MTG, but it was a cliche for many years whenever some cool-looking giant beatstick came out that people would quickly dismiss it with "Dies to Doom Blade." It was kneejerk and annoying, but also had a grain of truth. This feels like those discussions - and the conventional wisdom in the game has come to recognize that a creature has to do something other than be big to be unbalancing. Big dudes like Terra Stomper look crazy efficient and exciting, but then don't actually win as much as you would think because opposing decks can deal with them. (Just a rule of thumb of course, obviously there's a point where it would have to break down, you can't really print a one-mana 20/20.)

Another part of it though is that I think we really are talking about different things. You're saying it's by far the most efficient card for the cost - I'm saying it isn't unbalancing. I think we might both actually be right. Yeah, it's way more efficient than Zendikar Incarnate, Herald of the Pantheon, etc. If you have a green deck and you want to win, you ought to play it, even if you don't have ramp (ok, maybe not if you're low level and matches are worth less mana). But if you're playing against it, you don't just quit when it hits the board (or wish you had) - that's what I think about when deciding if a card needs "depowering."

It's true that it's a less interesting game when one card is an autoinclude, but I'm cool with that for now - I imagine as more cards get released it will have company at the top end of the curve. Plus, you can't trade for or buy cards, so lots of people don't even have it.

Unknown

As a rule I don't say anything about AI decks using it, or how I face it, because the AI is so bad you can win with anything.

But when playing vs ai, it absolutely stomps anything the AI has.

As nissa you can have this out by turn 2 and then it turns into a 5 turn countdown.

The issue may not be its efficiency, but nissa's ramp. For instance, red has a similar creature in terms of efficiency, a 5/3 for 8 which is 1.6 mana per power as opposed to 1.25. It seems worse in general, but it is more efficient with any reinforcement. But noone has a real problem with volcanic rambler, because red's mana ramp is nonexistent and red needs to expend a lot more mana on control by burning.

Of course burn is a 1 mana per power ratio which is fantastic, but it still slows red down. Typically green gains between 1.5-2x as much mana as any other pw on a given turn.

So this coupled with her other big wonderfully statted reach creatures, which come with life leech, mean that Nissa with this is a powerhouse.

As soon as colossus drops it absolutely is game over for the AI, even a setback takes only a turn to recover from, because noone in their right mind would bother reinforcing it, so you can keep one in hand to drop later.

Anyway destruction is extremely uncommon when playing AI. Unsure why, but the AI sucks at burning and destroying your cards. Only 2 real cards in the game that destroy it anyway, blue and black, and those are underrepresented in pvp because they are too slow. So the reality is the card rolls over everything and is a gg if it drops in the first 2-3 turns.

THe reason I bring up the efficiency argument is that we have nothing else to compare it to aside from there. There are many vanilla or almost vanilla beatsticks in the game and this one is by far the best. Think about the best cards in the game, almost half are simply good because they are efficient, nothing to do with their effects, etc. This game is not MtG, where the vast majority of decks are built around card text and interactions, rather than simply a big ol beatstick. So yes in MtG doom blade means a big ol vanilla fatty is almost never a consideration. In MtG you are also only limited to 20 hp - with that a 2/1 turn 1 is so much better than a big fatty turn 6 because that turn 1 2/1 immediately puts a 10 turn counter on you.

But in this game with huge hp pools, and very limited ways to deal with opponent creatures, as long as you can clear a path for colossus he is an autoplay.

To put it another way, ask yourself "how many games have I played where I lost a creature to destruction? How many of those times was it actually a big detriment?" If I asked myself this, I'd say between 2-5% of my thousands of games played have I actually encountered destruction, rather than simply combat damage.

Similarly, ask yourself, "how many games have you won with spells and control, and how many have you won with creatures beating each other, where the most efficient creature wins?" If I asked myself that, I'd say approximately 0% of my wins came from spells (notable exception from enshrouding mist, but it simply gives your creatures 100000% more efficiency). Though the old jace drain and liliana demonic pact cheese deserve a mention, there are far quicker and better ways to win.

Irving

That makes a lot of sense. For one thing, it's totally true that the AI doesn't seem to use its destruction well - I see Claustrophobia reasonably often but I hardly ever get hit with Unholy Hunger, Anchor to the Aether, Turn to Frog. Even Chandra seems to deemphasize her burn - when I'm playing Mizzium Meddler and the AI is casting its last card, it seems to be burn pretty often.

I can't really tell if casting the Colossus is an auto-win, because Nissa wins all the time anyway (and I have the 50 vs 1 bug so especially so for me), but if so that's a good argument for changing a card (or printing more destruction, or, preferably, improving the AI).

Overall I have very different experiences with spells, because I do like to play Jace drain and Liliana reanimator, and my Chandra deck is 6 creatures and 4 burn spells. So I haven't had the same experience that efficient beaters is the way to go, but it's certainly *a* way to go, more so than in paper MTG (not that there aren't Sligh/Modern Jund/Legacy Merfolk/the now-banned Eldrazi lists that mostly put out efficient guys and hit you with them).

Anyway, if the Colossus really makes it just about impossible to lose, more so than any other card (other than Meddler, which is already being nerfed), then I'd agree that a change should be considered. I haven't seen it but maybe I will once the bug gets fixed and I'm playing fair.

fox1342

As soon as colossus drops it absolutely is game over for the AI, even a setback takes only a turn to recover from, because noone in their right mind would bother reinforcing it,

That right there is a key argument why it doesn't need nerfing. The efficiency goes way down if you have to block you hand out with useless cards.