madwren said: andrewvanmarle said:7 @madwrenYou just spelled out a win condition, using the opponent's deck against itself, what are you poohpooh-ing about. I'm not sure if you actually read my message, but yes, the best counter to these decks is to run these decks yourself, not to advocate bad cards like Kambal as a viable sideboard option.
andrewvanmarle said:7 @madwrenYou just spelled out a win condition, using the opponent's deck against itself, what are you poohpooh-ing about.
andrewvanmarle said:By the way, I forgot to list the mistcaller.
__Adam said: arNero said: If they can do that much, why not touch some of the other busted Legacy cards?Because it's a bottomless pit of fail. It would require an entire rewrite of the whole block to even have a chance. And oddly enough, there's an audience that likes the broken af format.I agree, they should have left cycling alone. I suspect they only fixed it because it's broken and inexpensive to achieve, hurting their bottom line.
arNero said: If they can do that much, why not touch some of the other busted Legacy cards?
If, despite all these factors since its inception, you still think that this particular combo deck needs a nerf, it might just be time to take a hard look at yourself in the mirror and admit that you just don't like combo decks. To which my kneejerk reaction is to say "Suck it up buttercup, combos are part of Magic", but that's probably not the most tactful or understanding reaction so let me try to walk it back a little and suggest more charitably that we are approaching from different perspectives....There are exceptions of course. Sometimes a truly degenerate combo can come into being and need to be nerfed. A combo deck that absolutely does win at a way higher percentage rate than equivalent aggro or control decks. But that kind of deck is usually absolutely obviously detrimental to the metagame - something that strong will be everywhere all the time. Prismveil, a combo deck that has quietly existed for two and a half years, is as far from that as a combo deck can possibly be. Leave it alone.
octal9 said:andrewvanmarle said:By the way, I forgot to list the mistcaller. also missed this
Mburn7 said: I really don't think it is possible to fix Legacy. There are just way too many cards that combo super well with each other.I mean, sure, stuff like Omni, HUF, HoP, Deploy, and the like can be scaled back a bit. But then there will just be some new combo that breaks everything. So what is the limit? Is a consistent 2-3 turn win bad but 4-5 turns is ok? Do you think ok should be "no deck wins before turn 8 without a lucky cascade" or something? Because I don't think that could ever happen.I personally don't mind the brokenness, but that's mostly because the AI is just SUPER bad at running combo decks. Like, really bad. So even if I don't play busted loop stuff I rarely have an issue.Also, I find it hilarious that (as someone else mentioned) Kiora was the first dual colored walker ever released in MTGPQ and she is still the most powerful of them all, even though +3 is now terrible for a mana bonus. Now that is some killer design Hibernium. Yeah, all things said, I guess this thread was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction of seeing that busted Kiora-veil again after not seeing it for a while, especially when I remember full well that out of the many strong Legacy decks, they just HAD to pick on the one that actually pose NO threat to general players against AI. I mean, nerfing Cycling deck is like nerfing Knight of Pilgrim Road into a 12-mana 1/1 minion with ability "When this card enters the battlefield, deal 12 damage to your planeswalker". A card/combo that isn't a problem, and yet they instead hammer that further down, while some other crazy broken cards/combos (not just Kiora-veil; we have HUF-Deploy, Lich's Mastery, Starfield lock, and a few others I can't (or don't want) to remember on top of my head) remain untouched, does that make any sense?Also, I guess it's also a bit of a carry-over from what I've seen from Hearthstone, where they occasionally take steps to neuter Legacy cards that have ended up being too good. In a way, I can see that so far MtG Puzzle Quest has done that with Baral and only Baral (although if I remember correctly, the nerf was done when he was still in Standard, so actually that's a miss topic), and aside from that, the next nerfing was on that Cycling deck, which in hindsight, as I have said again and again, is actually a stupid and needless move.
Mburn7 said: I really don't think it is possible to fix Legacy. There are just way too many cards that combo super well with each other.I mean, sure, stuff like Omni, HUF, HoP, Deploy, and the like can be scaled back a bit. But then there will just be some new combo that breaks everything. So what is the limit? Is a consistent 2-3 turn win bad but 4-5 turns is ok? Do you think ok should be "no deck wins before turn 8 without a lucky cascade" or something? Because I don't think that could ever happen.I personally don't mind the brokenness, but that's mostly because the AI is just SUPER bad at running combo decks. Like, really bad. So even if I don't play busted loop stuff I rarely have an issue.Also, I find it hilarious that (as someone else mentioned) Kiora was the first dual colored walker ever released in MTGPQ and she is still the most powerful of them all, even though +3 is now terrible for a mana bonus. Now that is some killer design Hibernium.
arNero said: Mburn7 said: I really don't think it is possible to fix Legacy. There are just way too many cards that combo super well with each other.I mean, sure, stuff like Omni, HUF, HoP, Deploy, and the like can be scaled back a bit. But then there will just be some new combo that breaks everything. So what is the limit? Is a consistent 2-3 turn win bad but 4-5 turns is ok? Do you think ok should be "no deck wins before turn 8 without a lucky cascade" or something? Because I don't think that could ever happen.I personally don't mind the brokenness, but that's mostly because the AI is just SUPER bad at running combo decks. Like, really bad. So even if I don't play busted loop stuff I rarely have an issue.Also, I find it hilarious that (as someone else mentioned) Kiora was the first dual colored walker ever released in MTGPQ and she is still the most powerful of them all, even though +3 is now terrible for a mana bonus. Now that is some killer design Hibernium. Yeah, all things said, I guess this thread was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction of seeing that busted Kiora-veil again after not seeing it for a while, especially when I remember full well that out of the many strong Legacy decks, they just HAD to pick on the one that actually pose NO threat to general players against AI. I mean, nerfing Cycling deck is like nerfing Knight of Pilgrim Road into a 12-mana 1/1 minion with ability "When this card enters the battlefield, deal 12 damage to your planeswalker". A card/combo that isn't a problem, and yet they instead hammer that further down, while some other crazy broken cards/combos (not just Kiora-veil; we have HUF-Deploy, Lich's Mastery, Starfield lock, and a few others I can't (or don't want) to remember on top of my head) remain untouched, does that make any sense?Also, I guess it's also a bit of a carry-over from what I've seen from Hearthstone, where they occasionally take steps to neuter Legacy cards that have ended up being too good. In a way, I can see that so far MtG Puzzle Quest has done that with Baral and only Baral (although if I remember correctly, the nerf was done when he was still in Standard, so actually that's a miss topic), and aside from that, the next nerfing was on that Cycling deck, which in hindsight, as I have said again and again, is actually a stupid and needless move.
starfall said: Mburn7 said: Look, Prism Array has always been stupidly powerful. And there have been sporadic complaints about it over the years. But the thing is, there really isn't any way to change it without either completely changing its function or making it completely useless. Not true. You could change it's mana cost, you could change it's number of shields. You could change the number of cards it draws. You could change the effect it has on your opponent's first creature, or remove the effect completely. You could make it not trigger on your opponent's turn.There's a broad spectrum of changes you could make to the card, and at one end, yes, it's completely useless, and at the other it's overpowered. But there's a lot of space in the middle. One example of a more balanced Prism Array is Retreat to Coralhelm. That's a perfectly decent, if unspectacular, card. And you can see that there's design space in the middle for a card more powerful than RTC and less powerful than PA.I understand that urge to throw your hands up and declare that there's just too many moving parts in a TCG for it to ever be balanced, but it IS possible. Compare 1990s paper MTG to today, and you'll see a world of difference. They don't print Ancestral Recall any more; and when they try and make a new version of it with some kind of drawback, like Treasure Cruise, and it turns out to be too powerful, they nerf it. Today's MTG is not a perfectly balanced game (and, as has been noted before on these forums, a perfectly balanced game might turn out to be a little dull), but it's a hell of a lot better than it used to be, and the game and the community are healthier as a result. Nobody wants to live through Combo Winter again.
Mburn7 said: Look, Prism Array has always been stupidly powerful. And there have been sporadic complaints about it over the years. But the thing is, there really isn't any way to change it without either completely changing its function or making it completely useless.
starfall said: Mburn7 said: Look, Prism Array has always been stupidly powerful. And there have been sporadic complaints about it over the years. But the thing is, there really isn't any way to change it without either completely changing its function or making it completely useless. Not true. You could change it's mana cost, you could change it's number of shields. You could change the number of cards it draws. You could change the effect it has on your opponent's first creature, or remove the effect completely. You could make it not trigger on your opponent's turn.There's a broad spectrum of changes you could make to the card, and at one end, yes, it's completely useless, and at the other it's overpowered. But there's a lot of space in the middle. One example of a more balanced Prism Array is Retreat to Coralhelm. That's a perfectly decent, if unspectacular, card. And you can see that there's design space in the middle for a card more powerful than RTC and less powerful than PA.