Legend of Mount Hyjal
The Dark Portal Sneak Preview page went live today and we got to see the EA participation card, Legand of Mount Hyjal. Many players looked at this card and said, "Wow! Wrath of God!"
This card is not Wrath of God. Wrath of God is far more powerful. As I've talked about with some of the other preview cards, LoMH has a very powerful effect but a very high cost. For comparison, WoG costs 4 (as does Damnation which does the exact same thing). LoMH costs 10. The irony here is that Wrath gets used as an answer to aggressive decks helping keep them in check. But in World of Warcraft, Legend will serve as a way to keep control decks from playing giant allies. Of course, even in that case it will most often serve as a 10-cost Vanquish that takes out a few extra less meaningful allies.
This illustrates something that mildly annoys me about the design of this game. The designers seem to be terrified of making the cards too good. There have been several previewed cards that would have had the opportunity to be very good (not great and certainly not broken) if their cost were simply lower. This is a prime example. At 6 resources to play, this card would be far from broken. It certainly would not kill Hunter rush as a decktype since they can still kill you before you even play it.
This may just be my personal preference, but I like playing with powerful cards. Not broken, mind you, although I must say that is actually quite fun too. One of the things that this game is sorely missing is metagame-defining cards. Let me quickly define this. A metagame-defining card is one that is a very powerful but not format-breaking card. Wrath of God is a perfect example of this. Wrath's effect is a very powerful one, but it does not bend the format around itself. For any Magic playing readers out there, Time Spiral was a format-breaking card. Format-defining cards make you think about them when you design a deck. They don't disallow the existence of certain decks. IMO, the only format defining card we currently have is Fury. Medoc Spiritwarden in close but not quite there.
Many people will disagree with me. There are a lot of people who don't think powerful cards are good for the game. While I agree that cards should be balanced, I still love me some power cards. I think at 6, this card would have been fairly costed. It obviously wouldn't have hated Elendril completely out of the environment (it probably wouldn't even have done this at 4). At 10, it's an uber-Vanquish for control on control.
Here's hoping that UDE let's some of the costs drop with some of the other potential power cards in this set.
posted by B Lyons @ 4:05 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Hello. Longtime reader, first time poster. I think people (including me) compare this to Wrath of God because they share the same effect, not necessarily that they are both played the same. The difference in cost is evident that they won't be played the same way.
I think 10 cost is justified, though 8-9 cost would have been nice. At 8 cost, it's double that of Vanquish, and you would only use LoMH to destroy 2 or more allies. 9 would make it a 1 cost premium for card advantage reasons.
Powerful cards in this game needs to be kept in check because card advantage is so much more important in this game than say in Magic. In Magic, there are no quests to help with card draws, and the game still runs smoothly. In WoW, if you have no quests you'll quickly lose steam by say turn 5. Even with quests, many classes still have issues with card draws. My point is that, if LoMH destroys a couple allies, that pretty much half of your entire hand. WoW is a very fast paced game compared to Magic.
I do agree with you that Tanwa seems pretty weak for a 6 cost drop. It's still early to say though until we see the rest of the set and know how to value these powers.
"IMO, the only format defining card we currently have is Fury. Medoc Spiritwarden [is] close but not quite there."
I would add Searing Totem to this list.
-scm2117
I agree with Fury, Medoc and Fire Totem but would put Chasing A'Me at the top because of its neutrality. It's a staple in every type of deck, and changes the way you build and play every deck.
7 would be more realistic For LoMH. Chain Lightning is 5 and it defines what type of control is neede to beat Elendril. 6 would be for a Wrath that is class stamped. I think 7 is better because it is neutral.
You could apply the same logic with a class stamped Vanquish, it could cost 3 instead of 4. Polymorph is a limited vanquish for 2. (same as Chain lightning is a slightly limited sweeper)
I agree with you that most of the new cards are not really powerful/format defining. however, I really like it that way. In other games most new sets were often much better than previous sets. UDE has done a great job of maintaining the balance. I like it that we have difficult decisions to make about choosing cards for decks. the point is that HOA can compete with The dark portal and that's great. however, there still are very powerful cards in The dark portal like Katsin Bloodoath and Purloin (www.wowtcgdb.com).
on the format defining cards in the first set:
I think especially powerful weenies (voss, bloodclaw, teep) and searing totem are format defining because this requires most deck to put 1-health killers in the main deck. Fury and Medoc are good cards, but not that format defining as the weenies/searing totem because prepairing against fury and medoc does not require as much adjustment in deck and playstyle.
For me these cards will be on the second tier with King Magni, Moko, weapons like annihilator and kroll blade.
cards that are maybe too powerful right now are ancient cornerstone grimoire and parvink in my opinion. these are not really game defining in the sense that people do not heavily adjust their decks to play against grimoire (aside from shattering blows in side decks) and against the card advantage of parvink you can do nothing. if it is an 'auto-include' in a deck the card is probably too powerful. if you can play parvink or grimoire you will play parvink or grimoire.
ooh and I forgot chasing a-me. I agree with Kirk that this is also a format defining card. This is why Ophelia is so popular..
sorry for the long post, but I feel these discussions are really interesting.
thnx for all the good articles Blyons!
First, I'll explain why I chose Fury as the defining card of the Hunter decks. All the little allies are good, but there's not one specific one that jumps out as the reason the deck wins. Fury is the card that really jumps out (to me anyway) as the one card in the deck that pushes it over the top. It's the one specific card that every other deck cares about. Take Fury out of the a Hunter deck and it's not nearly as good. If it were just the Teeps and Latros beating it would be a lot easier.
As for Parvink and Chasing A-Me. I consider these very good staples as opposed to format-defining cards. You don't change your deck because of Parvink. And while Ophelia is popular because of her ability to eat the graveyard, I think it's more of a response to Medoc with blanking Chasing A-Me and decent side effect.
And the reason I didn't choose Searing Totem is because while it is very good against Hunters and makes the Shaman viable against Hunters, I'm not sure control decks really care about it more than say Kulan Earthguard. But the fact that it weakens Hunters in the overall metagame, may have in indirect effect on the format. So it's probably right there with Medoc as well.
Those are just my thoughts. Keep sharing yours. Great discussion.
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