Suggestion for Baral

Yawgmoths_Left_Ilium

Hello all,

I've been doing some thinking about Baral. Clearly there's a dilemma. On the one hand, he's powerful... very powerful. Therein lies the problem. It's not JUST that it's such a powerful card that it's a must in every deck. It's so powerful, you create an entire new deck to take advantage of it. Even Olivia doesn't have that power behind her (yes, she's powerful, but you can throw her into any existing deck). Baral is so powerful that you wipe your only deck slot to design an entire new deck around him... and so does everyone else. I've been playing QB all weekend, and EVERY blue PW I've gone up against has had Baral in it: J1, J2, Kiera, Dovin, Saheeli... feels like I've faced at least 20 of 'em today alone. They all play out the same way. I sit there for 20-25 minutes after the AI goes off, doing nothing since nothing can be done while the AI is cycling. Assuming the AI doesn't kill you on that turn, it almost assuredly AT LEAST wipes all your creatures with Moon, negates all your mana, etc. You're left to start from scratch when your turn rolls back around. And that assumes you actually sat through all the animations, and you have an answer for him. Because if not, it almost always starts back up again the following turn. And to me that's the biggest problem, not even so much that everyone is using him. It's that by using him, you're dragging out the game in such a way that it's just not fun anymore. I pulled some great mythics over the weekend, one's I've been after quite a while, but I can't even say I'm as excited about them as I would have been last week, because I know they not only don't fit in a Baral deck, but also since they can't help combat his deck they're all but useless until something changes.

On the other hand, people paid a lot of money for him. If he gets nerfed, in any way, people are going to complain... and rightly so. I probably would too.

So how about this? Would it be possible to remove a Baral deck from the AI's repertoire of deck choices? Simply put, when deciding which deck to match someone up against for QB or PVP events, if that deck has Baral in it, the AI would never choose that deck as an option for a match. That way, we can still make full use of him, and you can still put him in PVE events, but the players won't have to consistently battle against him.

It seems like that might be a fair way to deal with the outcry and the clear impact he's had on the entire game in just three days, without alienating everybody who's paid money for him.

hawkyh1

maybe baral could be changed so that his etb mana gain
for spells is upped to something like 4+ and his spells on
draw gain reduced to 2 mana. this could make him loop
a lot less but still make him powerful enough to justify
including.

I really don't like the recent trend for cards that loop
on and on. if you want another turn then make a match 5
like everyone else.

HH

AettThorn

What about something like this:

When Baral enters the battlefield, and at the beginning of each of your turns, each spell in your hand gains 3 mana. At the beginning of any turn, if a spell was cast last turn, draw the next spell in your deck into your hand.


Would keep him pretty mythic quality, but wouldn't allow for endless spellcasting.

Kami

Instead of -when you cast a spell you draw 1 card-
Make it -when you cast a spell you draw 1 non spell card-
He'll still be a powerhouse , especially in blue where you can draw a lot of cards in 1 turn but you're done with this idiotic 5 minute castings

wereotter

Kami wrote:

Instead of -when you cast a spell you draw 1 card-
Make it -when you cast a spell you draw 1 non spell card-
He'll still be a powerhouse , especially in blue where you can draw a lot of cards in 1 turn but you're done with this idiotic 5 minute castings

If you want him to be good and fix him, another good solution is "whenever you discard a card, draw a card"

It'll make him a major asset when playing against Liliana as well as he'll work well with madness enablers like Catalogue and Sphinx's Teutelage without making him able to chain 60+ spells in a turn.

arNero

Having seen Baral in action today, I have to, first thing first, concede to the point that my tirade against Prized Amalgam sometime back was overblown, and I apologize for that.

Baral is just another infinite combo fiasco that the game loves to have, and yes, he MUST be nerfed.

Let's put it this way: Rattlechains is a dangerous card, but at least it doesn't fetch you FREE spirits (well, it does give you free Spirit if you draw a cheap Spirit later in the game, but you get the gist), and there's also the chance that you draw into Rattlechains, you can't immediately play it for free (being too expensive and all).

Seriously, nerf Baral. Currently my personal suggestion is that, rather than give free mana to any spell he auto-draws, make him instead reduce the cost of the spell to a minimum of, I dunno, 3? 2? Even 1 if you think that's fair? Or maybe do something like Seasons Past:

At the end of your turn, if you have cast one or more spells this turn, fetch one/that many spells from your decks and give them 3 mana each.

Yes, 6 spells a turn is still busted, but that's lesser of two evils compared to 60 spells per turn.

And lastly, I know I sound bragging, but I'm proud that I manage not to pepper this post with a few swear words. Seriously.

Rough Tonality

The OPs suggestion is really the only good one, all things considered(or maybe I'm just biased, I was coming by to make this very suggestion. lol). I would think it workable, although I'm really not that knowledgeable about the programming required for such a thing.

That's not to say there weren't some other good suggestions in replies to the OP, but unfortunately that leaves D3/H in a bad situation. They'll have to curtail exactly what people wanted in the card and the deck built around him.

Aside from D3/H just biting the bullet and refunding money, Yawgmoth's suggestion is the only solution to this debacle. It still allows for a good, solid deck for winning battles, in general, and for completing certain event objectives. But it eliminates the impossible situation encountered when people have to face the deck.

tl;dr Great suggestion by OP. Allow people to keep exactly the card they purchased for use in battles they initiate. Remove Baral decks from matches not initiated by the owner of the Baral card/deck.

AngelForge

How about (card_mana_cost - 1) mana with a maximum of 3 mana per card in hand and drawn?

That would be a nerf but still quite usable. If you think that nerf would be too hard the maximum mana gained could be raised to 4, for example