Baron Thulgar is terrible - And the problem with hard removal

[Commissar]

The Barons effect is neutral (it benefits both sides) so I’m going to discount it from the cost. You’re basically paying 6 faeria for a 4/5. Considering legendaries are supposed to be a bit op compared to other cards the Baron is just pathetic. Compare it for example to Seifer. He costs 1 less has 1 more attack and has an effect that not only is completely one sided but it’s also pretty, dare I say, overpowered. I get that the Baron is a neutral card so he doesn’t have the requirement of any land and doesn’t need to be placed anywhere specific but it seems to me the land requirements are extremely over valued in respect to the balancing of some cards.

An example of this over valuation is frogify and last nightmare. Both only require 3 respective lands but have some of the most OP effects in the game. Both of these cards for 5 or 6 faeria have the ability to completely remove any other minion. And honestly the 3 land requirement doesn’t seem to matter too much when your 15 faeria Tarum that requires 5 green land gets turned into a frog for 5 faeria with a requirement of 3 blue lands. The worst part being that it doesn’t even get to use it’s last words. The hilarious part being that the ‘turn it into a 2/2 frog’ thing is supposed to be a negative side effect so frogify costs 1 less than last nightmare even though it’s objectively better!

Frogify and Last Nightmare are both the root cause of the same balancing issue. They pretty much stomp on green decks and large minions because you constantly have to fear your big minion you just invested a large amount of faeria in is going to be instantly removed for significantly less faeria. I’m certainly not suggesting there shouldn’t be hard removal, in fact I think there should be more. I just think it should have a larger penalty or more situational usefulness. For example frogify could have a large land requirement like 5 blue lands so it’s more late game and you can’t as easily make a hybrid deck with frogify in it. For Last Night Mare it could scale but be easier to play so it costs 0 faeria 2 yellow land “destroy a minion. this card costs 1 faeria for each health the minion has.”

Those are just my thoughts after trying to make green decks work and being constantly stomped on by yellow rush decks that get in your face and then destroy any card you try to counter with and going up against green-blue hybrids that turn all my last word cards into bloody frogs.

[J0k3se]

Hi Commissar!

First of all, “Considering legendaries are supposed to be a bit op compared to other cards”, this is just false. The legendary cards have unique/cool effects, but they are not supposed to be OP. In fact, almost all the legendary cards are bad. There are 23 or so legendarys in the game, and the only ones considered good (really good) are Seifer, Aurora Myth Maker, Garudan, Baeru, Khalim and maybe Radiance, Auroras Dream and Tethra.

The thing about Baron Thulgar is that if you run him in your deck, you most likely have a lot of high-cost cards in your deck meaning you are likely to get a really powerfull procc of his last-words (for example a 10-cost card).

If you as a green player play against Blue or Yellow, it is usually a good idea to spread the power among your creatures instead of making one super-large creature, unless they already played all their removal.

[Robobert]

I agree with J0ke for the most part here. I have a deck with an average Faeria cost of 6, and when the Baron dies I usually get a HUGE discount compared to my opponent. Honestly the worse part for me is that they got to draw a card.

Commissar, I wont assume how much experience you have playing, but when I first started playing I felt very much the same way. Now, I have a better understanding of how the Legendaries work, when they are likely to appear, and what to do when they do.

[Amaznazaz]

8/23 in a set being totally OP is a much higher percentage than you’ll find in the common slot, which strikes me as a design flaw, but yes, most of the Legendaries are “fun” cards rather than being competitive auto-inclusions.

I like that Last Nightmare suggestion!

If you ask me, Frogify should have a Frog requirement instead of a land requirement.

[J0k3se]

I wouldnt call Radiance, Tethra Baeru or Auroras Dream totally OP though, they are playable thats all.

[ZuesAwoken]

If your getting stomped by yellow/blue decks because of removal, recognize that they will almost always have it. If you know that, then you can learn to play around it, bait their removals, and play your big boys when their removal is gone. I use a GY sac deck with 3 Shaytan Assassins, 3 Last Nighmares, 2 Wind Soldiers, and 2 Death Walkers, and still lose to green decks around 35% of the time, with a pretty heavily favored matchup. If you still think removal is too good and that too many people use it, then use a different deck. The meta changes, deal with it.

In regards to saying legends are supposed to be OP, they aren’t. They are supposed to have powerful abilities that have the ability to change a game, but there is no legend that is an insta-win. Besides, look at cards like Bone Collector, I’ve seen those at 30+, and Elderwood Hermit, is 3 f for a redistributes 3/5.
I win games consistently with Soul Eater and Alter of Souls. They aren’t legends, but there are very good.

By your own logic, why not just make removal cards legends if their so good.

I do think all colors should have some kind of hard removal, which green is currently lacking.

[Amaznazaz]

Baeru has better stats on average than Oak Father, on top of his crazy Production effect. I don’t know how you could think he’s not OP.

You can also add Time of Legends to the list imo, since it will let you draw your turn 3 Baeru or similar. I think it’s actually a particularly obnoxious example, in the context, because to properly utilise its effect, you need to have more than one OP Legendary in your deck.

It’s certianly true that Legendaries aren’t the only OP cards and that the majority of Legendaries are not OP, but it’s also true that, as in most other CCGs, it’s a higher percentage and that a lot of them are strong enough to greatly improve popular decks which aren’t at all built around them, but just include them as cards which are generally very strong.

I think it’s not wrong for new players to express frustration over this, since it’s genuinely not very nice for them to play against the few Legendary cards which do have such a high power level that they improve almost any deck in their colour.

Edit:

My first game after writing this… turn 3 Baeru. Even with a much better than average answer, you can guess how that game went.

[Wavelength]

Several people have already pointed out that you missed the point of Baron Thuglar (to speed up high-cost decks; its Last Words effect in the right deck is absolutely not neutral), so I won’t harp too much on this point.

But one thing I do want to say about neutral creatures (and low-Land Requirement color creatures) in general is that they enable their player to play x2 Plains on many turns, which is a bigger advantage than you may realize. You will have a lot more options over where to play creatures (including near your opponent’s orb), and you can trap your opponent into having very few options.

As to Removal - I agree with you halfway. On one hand, if we look at pure value, you are cherry-picking examples. Yes, Frogifying a Tarum or Stormspawn can win a game on its own. Yes, Last Nightmaring an Icerock Behemoth or Magnus is insanely good value. But think about the flip side - the user of the hard removal has to hold on to this card for a long time, and even then they are not guaranteed a good target will come out to use it on. Do you really feel that good about Frogifying an Axe Grinder (the most powerful thing that will come out in the first ten turns of a Red Trash Rush), or using your Last Nightmare on a Scourgeflame Specter that’s already had the chance to attack once? Don’t forget about Gifts and Last Words - did you actually get good value when you had to Frogify a 5/5 Crackthorn Beast? Did it really feel that good to Nightmare the Tarum?

On the other hand, though, Removal does come with great versatility (it gives you the means to counter nearly any card in the game if doing so carries enough strategic importance to you), and even higher threat value (the mere possibility you have Last Nightmare stops your opponent from playing most big bodies once you’ve placed two Deserts). I would argue that Removal IS problematic because it counters big bodies so hard that it forces high-cost, big-body creatures (and creature buffs like Elderwood Embrace) to be overpowered against everything except these two cards in order to be competitively viable (I’d hazard the guess this is why fatties/buffs are so good in Pandora). It’s as if Frogify and Last Nightmare are flimsy seals holding back a thousand-year-old-evil from ravaging the world. And I believe that when such a tiny subset of cards influences the rock-scissors-paper nature of matchups this much, that it is bad for game health.

Removing Removal (LOL) entirely is not the way to go - that would also hurt game health by making damage spells mandatory. But I think either Removal should become harder to use (4-land Requirements) or more expensive, and the really big-bodied creatures could have their health toned down to make them more removable by damage alone, OR Removal should become more widely available (perhaps some form in all four colors plus a neutral) but most expensive creatures should be given Gifts or other fast impact in order to make them more generally playable (changing Removal’s function from “game-changing threat against insanely big creatures; useless against mid-level rushes” to “mediocre-value but strategically useful trump card”).

[Amaznazaz]

Most creatures are also not worth playing the moment you draw them, that’s not a unique trait of removal.

When you see a 6 Faeria 3 Desert cost card getting played in most versions of the most popular aggro deck, I consider that a hint that it might be a pretty powerful card which doesn’t usually stay dead in the hand for very long.

Creatures are also much more vulnerable to getting bad trades (your Last Nightmare vs Axe Grinder example), since you don’t play removal and wait to see if the enemy has an answer for it on their next turn. You play removal and it does exactly what you intend it to do, the moment you play it, with no opportunity for counterplay. If it gets a bad trade, that’s because the player decided “hey, I feel like getting a bad trade with this card right now”.

I don’t agree that removal is a necessary evil. Green does fine with buffs, Red does fine with combat and damage spells and Blue and Yellow could do fine with their various synergies and movement tricks if they weren’t all balanced around those colours having access to OP removal cards.

[Wavelength]

When you see a 6 Faeria 3 Desert cost card getting played in most versions of the most popular aggro deck, I consider that a hint that it might be a pretty powerful card which doesn’t usually stay dead in the hand for very long.

Usually those decks play one Last Nightmare, which is a pretty strong signal that, despite its very high power level, it does sit in your hand for a long time before being played (generally, cards that can be played immediately when drawn see three copies of the card in a deck).

Creatures are also much more vulnerable to getting bad trades (your Last Nightmare vs Axe Grinder example), since you don’t play removal and wait to see if the enemy has an answer for it on their next turn. You play removal and it does exactly what you intend it to do, the moment you play it, with no opportunity for counterplay. If it gets a bad trade, that’s because the player decided “hey, I feel like getting a bad trade with this card right now”.

I think “what is a bad trade” could be a really interesting discussion, because bad value trades can still be great strategic trades, and vice versa. But I don’t agree with you about “there is no counterplay” on removal. There is tons of counterplay on removal - it happens before the removal is ever actually played, and sometimes before the removal is even drawn. This kind of baiting/bluffing dynamic can add a lot to a game (see: Poker), but I feel that the extremely skewed triangle of power between damage events, big bodies, and removal give some decks far too large an advantage against others (while not severely affecting their overall, general, winrate), which ruins some games.

I don’t agree that removal is a necessary evil. Green does fine with buffs, Red does fine with combat and damage spells and Blue and Yellow could do fine with their various synergies and movement tricks if they weren’t all balanced around those colours having access to OP removal cards.

Now that mad rushes at the orb are out of meta, Green decks of all sorts would utterly dominate if removal didn’t exist. Red certainly doesn’t have the tools to deal with it. Green dominates Red in a pure-color matchup. I certainly agree that the removal cards forces Blue and Yellow to be slightly undertuned in other areas, and that could be corrected by removing removal… the problem with that, though, is that there is no room in the game for creatures with 10+ life, often for less than 10 mana, if there is no way to remove them with a single card.

[Amaznazaz]

Usually those decks play one Last Nightmare, which is a pretty strong signal that, despite its very high power level, it does sit in your hand for a long time before being played (generally, cards that can be played immediately when drawn see three copies of the card in a deck).

My point was that hard removal is not generally a good fit for aggro decks and high cost cards are not generally a good fit for aggro decks, yet while some lists don’t run it, or run it as just a 1 of, Last Nightmare is usually a 2 of in Yellow rush, sometimes a 3 of and often supplemented with Doomsday, Choking Sands or both. These cards are so strong that at least some combination of them goes in practically every Yellow deck, no matter how poor a fit.

To put it another way, I don’t think there’s a competitive non-rush Yellow deck that runs fewer than 3 Last Nightmares and even rush runs an average of 2.

I think “what is a bad trade” could be a really interesting discussion, because bad value trades can still be great strategic trades, and vice versa.

Therefore, getting to choose exactly what you trade your card for is pretty good.

But I don’t agree with you about “there is no counterplay” on removal. There is tons of counterplay on removal - it happens before the removal is ever actually played, and sometimes before the removal is even drawn.

Sure, but this is also true of every other card. Maybe because the options for counterplay are so limited, you think about them more, but however much you want to aggrandise those options, removal cards have the least counterplay.

Green dominates Red in a pure-color matchup.

It depends on the decks, but it’s usually Green favoured, sure. I’m not arguing that overstatted creatures (in any colour) are the best thing for the game, just that hard removal is generally a shoddy concept and still grossly undercosted in Faeria, however much better the game does than many other CCGs in that respect.

the problem with that, though, is that there is no room in the game for creatures with 10+ life, often for less than 10 mana, if there is no way to remove them with a single card.

Like a creature with Deathtouch or a creature statted to beat it eg. Ancient Herald vs Thyrian Golem? Then there are movement tricks which can get past it or keep it from the fight. Those are just the single card options. If a card is worth 1 Faeria, there are a lot of other options with multiple cards which can be even better value. Anyway, I’m not making any claim that the game would be balanced (adjective) if the hard removal were removed, just that it could be balanced (verb).

[Wavelength]

To put it another way, I don’t think there’s a competitive non-rush Yellow deck that runs fewer than 3 Last Nightmares and even rush runs an average of 2.

I don’t believe this is true - we seem to disagree on our basic assumptions here. Most competitive rush decks I see run 1 Last Nightmare and 1 Choking Sand. I’ve definitely seen good decks with 2, but I think they’re the exception more than the norm. I’ve been a “god” rank player twice in the last 4 seasons, although in fairness I don’t run pure Yellow decks myself… can other high-rank players weigh in on how much hard removal the best Yellow decks use?

Therefore, getting to choose exactly what you trade your card for is pretty good.

Agreed. The versatility of removal is its biggest strength, and often represents hidden power.

Sure, but this is also true of every other card. Maybe because the options for counterplay are so limited, you think about them more, but however much you want to aggrandise those options, removal cards have the least counterplay.

This is not a fair argument, and your speculation about my thinking is incorrect. To bring up a good counterexample - there is very little counterplay to a Flame Spitter, once your opponent already has one mountain on the board and can use heavier damage cards than FS on subsequent turns. You are not going to morph your strategy to play around something like FS because it is not worth doing so. Compare that to Last Nightmare, if you’re holding (for example) a Queen’s Guard and a 5/12 Wild Avenger with enough mana to play them both. You can explicitly bait the Nightmare on Queen’s Guard. That is counterplay before it’s played.

It depends on the decks, but it’s usually Green favoured, sure. I’m not arguing that overstatted creatures (in any colour) are the best thing for the game, just that hard removal is generally a shoddy concept and still grossly undercosted in Faeria, however much better the game does than many other CCGs in that respect.

A little bit of hard removal can make games better, because it adds a lot of room to bluff and bait (see above), but I agree with you - they have to be expensive. I would go so far as to say that in most games hard removal should never be a directly value-gaining move (in terms of cards and mana), except super-situational stuff like Doomsday. The versatility is too high to justify even face value.

By the way - speaking of CCGs with really stupid hard removal - remember the early days of Yu-Gi-Oh?

Like a creature with Deathtouch or a creature statted to beat it eg. Ancient Herald vs Thyrian Golem? Then there are movement tricks which can get past it or keep it from the fight. Those are just the single card options. If a card is worth 1 Faeria, there are a lot of other options with multiple cards which can be even better value.

Deathtouch IS hard removal. (So I guess all the colors already technically have it. But DT is a very unreliable form of hard removal - especially because the hard removal spells can clean up DT creatures before they do their job.) Ancient Herald could break even with Thyrian Golem only if TG is unbuffed - and what self-respecting green deck doesn’t include some creature buffs? A card is worth far more than 1 faeria - consider “Wisdom” as the single most direct conversion of mana to cards. You are paying 3 mana for a 1 card gain.

Anyway, I’m not making any claim that the game would be balanced (adjective) if the hard removal were removed, just that it could be balanced (verb).

OK, here I think you’re making a good point. It’s certainly possible the game could be balanced (verb) around the lack of hard removal (and might be more balanced (adjective) if it were). Would it be worth throwing off the whole balance of the game until it could be found again, now that they’ve just launched? Sadly, probably not.

It’s for this reason that I make the more moderate suggestions of either making hard removal more difficult to use, or making it easier to use but slightly changing some of its best targets to give them some implicit immunity (e.g. Gifts) to hard removal.