Cruel Reality needs a nerf?

Mainloop25

Kinesia said:

Hmmm, actually, Sorin, The Abbey, Murder Investigation, and our new Christmas Gift...

It's beginning to look a lot like a frosty christmas sacrifice at the Abbey...

Just tried it. Still  garbage. Takes a lot of setup time not only to fish for your Abbey AND support, but then to match enough gems to flip it. You're talking about 5-7 turns to do anything meaningful. 

andrewvanmarle

Kinesia said:

Hmmm, actually, Sorin, The Abbey, Murder Investigation, and our new Christmas Gift...

It's beginning to look a lot like a frosty christmas sacrifice at the Abbey...

It's beginning to look a lot like christmas,,
blood on ev'ry street,
Sacrificial knife in m' hand,
you'll die you you understand,
on your own front lawn.....

FindingHeart8

Bil said:

I actually think cruel reality is a very annoying support but not overpowered which is precisely what a mythic support has to be. Not too hard to destroy, it will slow your game but allows you to keep playing, and it won't damage you too fast neither if you ain't got creatures.

I think a few supports would be better candidates for a nerf. Sandwurm convergence seems more unbalanced to me... Popping a 5/5 creature each turn is far enough for 13 mana... Adding the anti flying creature seems a bit too much for a single card. 

  Sandwurm Convergence is 15 mana.  You wouldn't think that makes much of a difference, but it puts it generally out of reach of turn 1 or 2 gem match ups.

While it functions as a nice, solid backbone to all of my green decks...if I had to choose I'd almost always prefer to drop my Gaea's Revenge an extra turn later.  Your opponent rarely can interact with GR, and between me running mass green gem conversion and opponents playing support destruction...my Convergence usually isn't around for too long

HomeRn

Sirchombli said:

It's important to build your decks to be prepared for things like this. Supports can absolutely stop you dead. So prepare for them. I kind of plan for the worst case scenario in deck building. 3 out of 5 colors have support destruction that cycles. There's absolutely no reason not to run it. Those 3 colors also have alternate support destruction if you don't like the cycling ones. Seems silly to cry for a nerf because a card is annoying. Most good cards are annoying to play against. Oh, also, mono blue and mono black are asking to get pegged down by supports. Wouldn't use them in standard unless you don't have any other options. 

Not exactly true in the case of mono-black in regards to supports.  Black does have Anguished Unmaking, which is a support removal and a creature destruction spell, but it's legacy at this point.  Mono-blue on the other hand, is very vulnerable to support spam.

Bil

FindingHeart8 said:

Bil said:

I actually think cruel reality is a very annoying support but not overpowered which is precisely what a mythic support has to be. Not too hard to destroy, it will slow your game but allows you to keep playing, and it won't damage you too fast neither if you ain't got creatures.

I think a few supports would be better candidates for a nerf. Sandwurm convergence seems more unbalanced to me... Popping a 5/5 creature each turn is far enough for 13 mana... Adding the anti flying creature seems a bit too much for a single card. 

  Sandwurm Convergence is 15 mana.  You wouldn't think that makes much of a difference, but it puts it generally out of reach of turn 1 or 2 gem match ups.

While it functions as a nice, solid backbone to all of my green decks...if I had to choose I'd almost always prefer to drop my Gaea's Revenge an extra turn later.  Your opponent rarely can interact with GR, and between me running mass green gem conversion and opponents playing support destruction...my Convergence usually isn't around for too long

Sorry about the 13/15 thing...thats not a big difference but as you said it can delay the cast of the support.  I wasn't trying to say that convergence is more problematic than cruel reality... But I think popping a 5/5 each turn(which is the main use of the card)  was good enough for a support card. Adding the flying creatures can't attack seems a bit excessive to me. 
      For example, if you're playing a flying creatures deck, let's say blue, you won't be able to attack nor destroy the support, and you will have to deal with infinite creatures. Without the " can't attack" effect you could at least try to play the watch and damage opponent faster. 

Tilwin90

Agreed! Cruel Reality is nowhere near as abusive as Sandwurm Convergence or even Hixus. It's actually a pretty slow mythic that can be shut down by either lifegain or a recurring creature stream, which means it can be answered quite easily even by black and blue. I never have a problem going against Cruel Reality, it's just that slow in the hands of Greg.

As compared to it, Sandwurm Convergence is stupidly good - compare it to Thopter Spy Network and you will see why it can actually be better. Stopping fliers is powerful indeed - it completely shuts down some opponents. But my real issue with it is that it starts functioning immediately as it enters the battlefield. TSN at least generates tokens on beginning of your turn (so there is the window of opportunity of removing it on your next turn before it starts pumping creatures), plus it's conditional (you need another support around).

Now I'm not saying card X should not be nerfed just because card Y is more powerful than it, but I just don't see the arguments for nerfing Cruel Reality. In fact, I rarely if ever rely on it to remove my opponent's creatures - I prefer it slowly pings the opponent in creatureless builds. Black already has plenty of removal that deals with either the first creature or a targeted creature so a measley -3/-3 is nowhere near impressive.