Omniscience and Swarm Intelligence need adjustment.

Corn_Noodles

With Baral nerfed to prevent endlessness, why was Omniscience designed and implemented as it was? It has the potential to create endless turns very easily. Masterpieces are supposed to be powerful, yeah, I know. However, it is bad design to have interactivity removed from the players.

[EDIT] Updated title reflecting the concerns of other knowledgeable players.

Gilesclone

Yes, please rebalance this broken card.

babar3355

Not sure Swarm Intelligence doesn't deserve a mention in this thread.

GrizzoMtGPQ

@Corn Noodles and @babar3355 agree with both of you. Both Omniscience and Swarm Intelligence both need to be reworked.

Corn_Noodles

I don't have either card, but I watched Omniscience in action a few times and saw how it could be easily broken. Fortunately, my opponent didn't have the cards, knowledge, or luck to break it and I was able to play around it.

I have only seen Swarm Intelligence used in the PVE event where it hasn't affected me, so I'm not sure how to exploit it. I trust @babar3355 and @GrizzoMtGPQ in their estimations of the danger of that card along with Omniscience.

MTG_Mage

Both those cards have it so when its ability is triggered that support loses a shield
so they are not endless but limited to cards in hand, however there are many ways to draw cards upon a spell casting. 
In the case of omniscience it is easy to abuse since it can recast itself, so a good solution is that it does not give any mana to other copies of itself.

New Perspectives, Drake Haven and Faith of the Devoted need to have this mechanic (shield loss upon trigger) added to them so cycling is not broken.

Corn_Noodles

MTG_Mage said:

so a good solution is that it does not give any mana to other copies of itself

This only accomplishes so much. There are cards that can be cast with them that change gems which then generates mana.

PhoenixRisen

Cycling is totally fine. Leave it be. The AI doesn't use it, so it's not broken. No one is getting beat by ridiculous drake armies. Nerf cycling and the harder battles in Return of the God-Pharaoh become far more difficult. I do NOT want my battles with Bolas to extend any longer than the 20 mins they currently run even with cycling!

PhoenixRisen

MTG_Mage said:

Both those cards have it so when its ability is triggered that support loses a shield
so they are not endless but limited to cards in hand, however there are many ways to draw cards upon a spell casting. 
In the case of omniscience it is easy to abuse since it can recast itself, so a good solution is that it does not give any mana to other copies of itself.

New Perspectives, Drake Haven and Faith of the Devoted need to have this mechanic (shield loss upon trigger) added to them so cycling is not broken.

So you'd get 3 2/2 drakes from a single Drake Haven? Do you want to take our entire weekends away from us all?! It's bad enough that Bolas takes 20 mins without shield loss to Drake Haven. The encounter would be ridiculous otherwise!! The AI doesn't cycle. It's of no consequence. It's strong, yes, but heavily favours the player - always. That, imo, makes a GOOD mechanic.

Corn_Noodles

I use Ob for Bolas and haven't had an issue. I like my boss battles done in 5 minutes.

Gilesclone

And how many mythics are you using?   Drake cycling requires 2 rares and no mythics.  A deck for the unwashed masses.

 I'm no fan of cycling, but it at least it's not as P2W as most of the other broken cards.

GrizzoMtGPQ

Just wait till the AI plays either of these decks against you. They go infinite. It's auto-lose. That's just bad design.

babar3355

Yeah, I am pretty sure the AI can pilot my SI loop deck.  I guess I will unleash it in some TotP and PvP and see if I can change some opinions that way. 

FYI I just had a 3000/3000+  creature before my loop broke down on turn 4. I am not saying that the AI needs to play it that well... but they can play it at least as well as a hydra/waterveil deck as its mostly idiotproof.

The deck has 5 mythics and is not standard legal. However, our brewmasters are already putting together toned down versions that get the job done nearly as well. 

It's scary that none of us even have omniscience yet.

AresOmega

I deliberately put my standard compliant Kiora loop deck on the "cast 4 or more spells" node for the past week's coalition PvP event with whir of Invention, swarm intelligence, Baral, Locust God and a bunch of gem change spells like animists awakening and stir the sands solely for the purpose of seeing if the AI can pilot the deck effectively enough to illustrate how broken the possible combos can be. Given the lack of response, I can only assume that either not many people got matched against that deck, or that Greg prioritized Locust God over baral or whir and totally screwed the pooch piloting it.

MTG_Mage

Any time a mechanic allows for Looping it is a bad design. Doing the same thing over and over dozens of times is not fun and boring as well as abusive. Combos are good as long as they dont go infinite, but with unlimited cards in a deck this is more possible.

I would suggest setting a hard cap on cards in a deck, but I doubt they would do that and it might be an issue in long boss type battles. 

Another option is setting a limit to how many cards can be cast in a single turn, so after you cast say 10, you stop casting and it moves to combat.
Since cycling is not casting, the rule would have to applied separately for cycling so after 10 cycles in a turn, the next card attempting to be cycled exiles as normal with no cycle effect.

Mainloop25

PhoenixRisen said:

MTG_Mage said:

Both those cards have it so when its ability is triggered that support loses a shield
so they are not endless but limited to cards in hand, however there are many ways to draw cards upon a spell casting. 
In the case of omniscience it is easy to abuse since it can recast itself, so a good solution is that it does not give any mana to other copies of itself.

New Perspectives, Drake Haven and Faith of the Devoted need to have this mechanic (shield loss upon trigger) added to them so cycling is not broken.

So you'd get 3 2/2 drakes from a single Drake Haven? Do you want to take our entire weekends away from us all?! It's bad enough that Bolas takes 20 mins without shield loss to Drake Haven. The encounter would be ridiculous otherwise!! The AI doesn't cycle. It's of no consequence. It's strong, yes, but heavily favours the player - always. That, imo, makes a GOOD mechanic..

Sorry but it doesn't. Go read that other thread so I don't have to explain why. But anyways, my nicol bolas battles rarely last over 10 minutes. I use Ob so no drakes allowed. But the solution to one design mistake shouldn't be a different design mistake.

Ohboy

Gilesclone said:

And how many mythics are you using?   Drake cycling requires 2 rares and no mythics.  A deck for the unwashed masses.

 I'm no fan of cycling, but it at least it's not as P2W as most of the other broken cards.

Ob vs bolas requires 0 rares or mythics. 

They just speed up the process. 

Edit: to elaborate, bolas is badly designed such that he requires you to have creatures to kill you in any decent amount of time. Just play creatureless, cast skill 3 and play all your card draw spells. I personally prefer midnight oil and archive, but that's a rare and mythic. 

Gilesclone

True enough for Bolas.  My point is that nerfing cycling hurts the poor much more than the rich.

Ohboy

Gilesclone said:

True enough for Bolas.  My point is that nerfing cycling hurts the poor much more than the rich.

That would be like saying fixing floodwaters hurt the poor more than the rich. 

Entirely true, but it's not really an important point to consider. 

Tilwin90

I pulled and faced Swarm Intelligence and also went against Omniscience. Between the two... Swarm Intelligence is a toddler while Omniscience is a complete monster.

Swarm Intelligence
There are no truly broken spells you could cycle through with Swarm Intelligence in Standard. It's the same with Hazoret's Undying Fury. I've been trying to break them in Standard with no success whatsoever. They are powerful, I won't deny that, but nowhere near infinite. (and I do have some of the powerful mythics like Nissa's Revelation, Rishksex, Day's Undoing, etc.). The limitation to spells is quite a decent limitation - even though I can comfortably say that limiting it to 3 shields would be totally fine given the power level.
It's also limited to timing - cast both SI & the next spell on the same turn. Since this requires strategy, once again, you won't get as frustrated vs. the AI.
I expect once Whir of Invention will depart Standard that it will lose from its potency and power level.
Legacy... meh, I wouldn't find this the biggest issue. Hazoret's Undying Fury is just as bad there and it's a rare.
                    

Omniscience
This is plain stupid. It triggers immediately, casts everything without limitation and can even power itself up. So you can put in ALL the broken cards you can think of in Standard, and they will synergize with Omniscience - Gaea's Revenge, crazy expensive angels, gods, you name it. There's no "building around it" needed to make it crazy good. Build your deck around it and there's no way to stopping it. 
With rotation this will only get worse - without Pact of Negation there's no way to stop the carnage - at least now there's this thing called Insidious Will, though my opponent even circumvented that with Omniscience a couple of times. It triggers off immediately and instantly - just like old Baral did, only on super steroids. If this is not reason enough to nerf it, I don't know what is.

So bottom line, Swarm Intelligence is a powerful Standard mythic (though I don't find it more powerful than Rishksex for instance, or Skysovereign or even Hazoret's Undying Fury), which requires some building around. But Omniscience is too good simply because it is an auto-include in ANY DECK (I see no reason why you would not include Omniscience in a deck) and it's pretty much unstoppable once it hits the board.

UweTellkampf

AresOmega said:

I deliberately put my standard compliant Kiora loop deck on the "cast 4 or more spells" node for the past week's coalition PvP event with whir of Invention, swarm intelligence, Baral, Locust God and a bunch of gem change spells like animists awakening and stir the sands solely for the purpose of seeing if the AI can pilot the deck effectively enough to illustrate how broken the possible combos can be. Given the lack of response, I can only assume that either not many people got matched against that deck, or that Greg prioritized Locust God over baral or whir and totally screwed the pooch piloting it.

Or, another probability: AI did cast Baral, but he was destroyed immediately, because that is what every player will do if he has the means to do it (and most decks pack killspells or bounce galore these days).

Last time I encountered a looping deck steered by the AI was a legacy Arlinn, I believe from @Hesturk.