I was wondering if anyone else has had a problem with the Gift mechanic of Celeste, Crystal Dragon not working in Pandora mode?
The Gift mechanic on the card reads: "If your deck has only 1 copy of each card, gain HASTE and PROTECTION.
During the deck building phase I was presented with Celeste, Crystal Dragon I really like it’s stats and thought I would base my deck around that card and only pick EXACTLY ONE of each card so as to ensure I would get the Gift mechanic. First game I build up Faeria and position my lands the first 4 turns or so until I have the Faeria to play her at a 10 cost looking for that HASTE and PROTECTION to kick in because only having one of each card in my deck. Imagine to my surprise when I finally get to play her instead of getting off that 6 damage to the opponents orb I had to sit there in shock and frustration as I could do nothing gaining neither HASTE nor PROTECTION. I’ve had this happen on at least one other occasion and decided I should see if anyone else has experienced this problem?
Had Pandora already triggered?
My initial guess would be that the Shards which get shuffled in to trigger Pandora ended up screwing your deck up there.
I played it on turn 4 the first time and turn 5 the second time. I dont think Pandora was triggered yet. I did presume that the shards were the root cause tho. It would make sense since there are multiple shards shuffled in. I also think that I wouldnt be the only one experiencing this problem. If its in the coding then it would be the same for everyone, right?
I’m interested to see if it has indeed happened to anyone else.
Can confirm, this happens before Pandora triggers because the shards are all the same. I tested this out with a singleton only deck and Celeste’s gift trigger only happened after Pandora had triggered.
I noticed this - I even reported it as a maybe bug, due to it being unexpected (people don’t really think of shards as “cards” in their deck). I thought I’d checked after Pandora also, but if people are saying she works afterward than I guess I just messed up.
Do shards trigger draw synergies like Wandering Monk’s? I can’t remember and can’t easily test.
Not sure what I think is the best solution. If she works after Pandora then I guess just leaving her unchanged is best. Otherwise she needs a fix.
If the card’s gift mechanic of PROTECTION AND HASTE can only be guaranteed to trigger after Pandora has been triggered then that makes the card CONSIDERABLY less powerful. I mean being able to play a creature with 6/6, Haste and Protection 4 turns in is extremely hard to deal with. I think the trade off of a 1 card deck is too high if I have to wait that long to be able to play it.
Pandora is less balanced than regular. It’s probably more balanced after making wells stay active the whole battle. But due to the income increase, high-price cards are more valuable, and income-generating cards less valuable. Draw-synergy cards are also slightly more valuable. Some pandora-terrible cards are also missing, Doomsday and Three Wishes (not sure if there are others).
The main choices then are, IMHO, to either leave Pandora a little bit unbalanced, make some pandora-only alterations to certain cards, or make pandora more similar (as they did by restoring wells).
I guess in this case you could just alter the shards, perhaps claim they aren’t actually cards, or make them distinct. My question would then be - is that a slippery slope? Do you then adjust Barter to not copy treasures? etc…
