Red Hard Removal

Balance Discussion
#1

I’m making this post to ask what people think about finally giving Red some form of way to deal with buffed up creatures. I’m sure anyone that’s played Mono Red for awhile can tell you how screwed the match up between R&G is.

I’m choosing now to bring this up because of the recently added Green card that is effectively a efficient scaling removal card that fills a previous weakness in Greens line up that they would of otherwise had to turn to neutral cards to fulfill.

Now I know some people may have strong opinions on what particular strengths and weaknesses make up a faction but I think we can agree that having RPS match ups between colors is hardly fun.

Currently every faction besides Red has a cost effective way to deal with beefy creatures. This is made into a greater issue by the fact unlike other weaknesses that can be fulfilled partially by neutral cards like for removal(Falcon Dive, Punishment, Royal Judge) or taunt(Court Jester, Imperial Guard, Kings Guard, ect) or even movement with the ever useful Syland HorseMaster. All of these useful cards help factions mitigate their weaknesses but for hard removal all we get is the almost entirely useless Queen’s Assassin, a card that every single color has a multitude of easy answers for. A card that’s practically useless against Red or Yellow and that even Blue and Green even have several commonly used cards that directly counter it.

So I’m asking, if Green can get Sagami Grovecaller to help with slow movement and Deepwood Stalker to help with removal can Red please get some form of decent Deathtouch or removal event?

#2

Deepwood Stalker isn’t a hard removal card. Red has a lot of cards that do more damage (flame burst, firebomb, bomb slinger).

#3

Red could really use some way to deal with big creatures. Mono red decks have a very bad matchup against green because of it, much more so than any other color combination.

Since green’s biggest weaknesses were basically removed with Voice of Truth and Deepwood Stalker, it would be fair if red also got tools to deal with its weak points. Red is the weakest color overall right now, since it’s the only color that doesn’t have a good way to deal with creatures like Apex Predator.

Red used to have a deathtouch creature. It’s odd that it was removed, since it wasn’t causing any balance issues. It would’ve been better for it to remain in the game. It was a clunky card, so you didn’t want to include it in every deck. But it made playing mono red less rock paper scissors, since it allowed red to kill large creatures without having to waste a lot of resources.

#4

I would love to see deathtouch reintroduced to red, or just reviving the old lord of terror as suggested above.
DO NOT give red direct hardremoval! red has aoe and direct dmg spells that no other class has access to, adding hard removal on top of that would break the colour.
I dont like sagami grovecaller in green aswell. horrible idea and design imo and its only causing problems, both in mono green and green/red, there was always the option to include horsemasters to give green and red mobility, and it should have stayed that way…
i think color identity is VERY important to promote multicolored deckbuilding. if every color has every option, why even bother with multicolored decks, or different colours in general?

Neutral cards are where the mechanics of every color should be combined. but at a weaker level, such as syland horsmaster vs prophet of tides, or kings assassin vs Shaytan Assassin, or punish against flameburst, famine+ plague bearer vs flamestrike.

Instead of creating a lot of colors that all have the same tools, divide them further by adding new mechanics. why is there no “root-effect” for green instead of mobility? why no “dmg over time” in red? that would be “hard removal” if you ping a creature for lets say 3 dmg, and 3 dmg next turn, and 3 on the next, and so on. but it would fit the theme of red very nicely, have a unique flair for the color AND you would be able to play around it in SOME way. other then underpriced hardremoval.

#5

except that red is still one of the most played factions (more than 1/3 of my encounters at rank 3, I can give the stats if you want I am making an excel sheet of all the decks I encounter. and grim guard is the most encountered card in the last month, 3.6% of all cards seen (and I see even situational cards as I play 3 wishes)). And that if we were to give hard removal to red, we would have no reliable way to defend against burn, as we’d have either that hard removal, either bomb slinger or flame explosion for single mid creatures, either Garry or firestorm for crowds as blue. Last but not least, it would mean that we would have a return of aggro red (axe grinder, my old foe) as they would no longer fear the late game. For all these reasons, I think that it is not a good idea to give red hard removal.

#6

@ Rayton7 - It’s not hard removal like Last Nightmare but it is removal just as good as Reds. It functions the exact same way as any other removal cards except it leaves behind a monster half the time. I mean heck I kinda thought it was BS that it supposedly battles any creature on the board but it’s not effected by taunt monsters being down. That would actually make it different from normal burn and give it a significant disadvantage to balance it out in the faction it’s in. This is made worse by the fact that in a blue, yellow, or red deck it wouldn’t have easy access to the plethora of in hand buffs that green has making it scale better than Reds burn. A Flame Burst always does 3 damage, it’s predictable and set unless Faeria adds in something like spellpower from Hearth Stone. Deepwood Stalker is however not, it can be easily comboed to make it a much stronger and more efficient burn than any of Reds single target burns. Now I don’t mind a little cross faction sharing but it does seem kinda BS that with all of Greens unique advantages it gets a burn card that’s just as efficient if not more so than the ones Red has.

@Berelex Over all balance wise I still see plenty of red as well, but since the new cards dropped I’ve mostly been seeing Green. I’m not talking about over all balance more so than it’s bad design to have rock paper scissor match ups based off color. Also the idea that giants are a necessary counter for burn is rather ridiculous when you consider that burn and hard removal both are almost always an equal trade or worse in terms of faeria and card advantage, two of the biggest factors in actually winning. Giants on the otherhand almost always take more resources to kill than it took to make them unless you happen to have a Frogify handy. It’s also worth noting that if burn was powerful as you say it should be the natural counter to Blue with it’s middle of the road health creatures, it’s not. It is however a great counter to Yellow and it’s low for their cost health averages.

This is bad because it puts Yellow on the back foot against Red and Red meanwhile gets beat by Green. Blue as far as I’ve experienced with my own deck so far has no color based weaknesses. This is not good, assuming all factions get a decent amount of play having a 25% chance of a terrible match that you have little chance in. In short you can’t make one factions weakness the other factions strength, it’s not fair nor fun.

I mean at one point Greens weakness was it was considered slow, had little way to deal with buffed up creatures but to use their own, and it had no removal to deal with problematic creatures. Now it has Sagami Grovecaller, Voice of Truth, and Deepwood Stalker to cover all of these gaps. Red and Yellow both have obvious weaknesses, Blue is well rounded but lacks taunt, Green has a little of everything. If I may ask, if you believe every color needs a defining weakness than what is Greens currently?

#7

I think red doesn’t need it, and it would reduce color identity. Battle Ragers are quite anti-giant, although not by killing them. Instead of killing the giants, just burn the god dead. And red’s not too bad at just smashing giants up.

I’d like a DoT though, just for interest’s sake, and red should probably get it. Faeria has few status effects, and adding a ton would probably diminish it. But one or two more might be OK.

#8

The fact is that deepwood stalker is really, really costly : your oaklings or spirits of rebirth would have to go on these to be able to kill ~6 cost creatures, and it would most of the times die in the process? It is an interesting card, but definitely not overpowered as you need to build your deck and hand around it. Therefore, green still lacks, and will always lack, efficient removal.
You won’t solve the domination of blue jump and aggro green just by giving hard removal to red : it will make red stronger, but it won’t parry efficiently these two dominating decks as they rely on cost-efficient agressive creatures, and you’ll always be at a loss if using hard removal. It would just put yellow even further behind, and definitively kill green beefy, or any big creature-based deck, as every faction will be able to destroy them. The problems, imo, come from the over-efficiency of blue jump while blue’s economy got completely destroyed, from the strength of garry that paralyses blue seven, yellow in general and mono green sacrifice, and from the strength of wavecrash colossus that will always be too expensive to remove.

#9

@Xaxazak While I think that if we had more(and more efficient) creatures with Battle Ragers effect it could serve as a unique way to combat giants I don’t see Battle Rager in his current form as a viable option. A 7 cost creature that can be easily taken out for anywhere from 2-4 faeria? No thanks. It’s good vs giants and crap against literally everything else. Highly situational cards are always a hard sell in quick pace CCG with limited deck space, being overly expensive for its stat line don’t help it any.

DoTs are an interesting idea but can be tricky to balance when most creatures have relatively low health to begin with. It seems like it’d end up just being a viable alternative to burn with the trade off being a possible cheaper cost for a delayed reaction. With things like Thymian Golem, Oak Father, and Primeval Colossus simply shrugging off the damage long enough for it to matter little more than the regular burn cards we already have. Even worse is that since you need a few turns for a DoT to return its value you leave your self open to Green simply trading it in via Feed the Forest or resetting its health via Voice of Truth. Once again Green has a huge tool box to deal with potential problems, it seems ridiculous to leave the other factions with a proverbial kryptonite that they have no chance of dealing with.

I’d like to also point out that while direct damage would in fact be a great way to play around Green having a overwhelming dominance on the field it’s countered by healing, something that Green also has an abundance of but most feel little need to employ currently as it’s not that big of a threat. It’s also hard in that Red is rather resource starved as they don’t have extra faeria generation or card draw to the extent the other 3 factions have. You need some field control to remain relevant as Red so having one color with a significant advantage in creature stats like Green has puts you at an unfair disadvantage. It’s not really an issue when facing Yellow or Blue as their creatures tend to be comparably stated with some notable exceptions like Aurora.

@Berelex Siefers Wrath is 2f for 2 damage and 2 direct damage, Deepwood Stalker is 3f for 2 damage and a very likely chance of a left over creature as it has a decent 4 health. 1F is definitely worth the added bonus of summoning a creature, it’s basically a budget Bomb Slinger with infinite range and a buffable nuke. If you buffed it with Oakling it would be 7/9, that’s 7 damage anywhere on the board with a extremely high likely hood of a surviving 7 damage spider ready to attack on the following turn. That’s an incredibly potent combo for 8f and 2 cards that happen to be good independent of each other as well as together. I mean Oakling was already seeing play before the spider, I’ve even seen Spirit every now and then.

The point is that combo cards only become a liability when they’re inefficient or ineffective without their partner. None of Greens current cards that combo with spider could be classified as such, they’re all perfectly playable on their own right and have seen plenty of use before this new card came along. Spider just gives you even more reason to run them.

Deepwood Stalker is just that good. OP? Probably not honestly, but it is a great card to have available and it fulfills a role that its host color never had before that gave said faction a weakness that is now no longer the case. I find this an issue when people insist that Red maintain its glaring weakness to buffed creatures along with a host of minor ones like movement and resource generation along with Yellow’s creatures generally having low health and being prone to AoE wipes. I mean even Blue has one solid weakness in that it lacks taunt creatures, this is just generally easier to play around with strategy or a host of solid neutral taunt creatures. Once again I ask, what does Green not have? What’s its weakness? In no particular order they have card draw, faeria generation, taunt, dash & jump, land generation, teleportation, buffs, healing, overall creature efficiency, and now a form of pseudo burn. I’m sure I missed something but you tell me, what do they lack that is as easily exploited for a win as Reds and Yellows current weakness?

As a final note I don’t see how you think Red having a way to deal with giants would remove them from the meta when they’ve already survived Frogify and Last Nightmare. The trick is that Green has way more giants and ways to make giants than people have to deal with them. I can only take 3 Frogifys, do I use them on your Elderwoods, your Golem, or your Oak Father? I’m not asking that Red become an expert on killing such things, just that they at least have a viable option.

#10

[quote=“BomberGob, post:9, topic:7190”]
Once again I ask, what does Green not have? What’s its weakness
[/quote]Is it OP in multiplayer or the competitions? If not, it’s not OP - unless people have somehow not figured out how to use it right. No matter how you analyze it theoretically, there’s no need for a fix unless there’s a problem showing in actual game results.

One weakness is land. It requires more than other colors. It can make more, too, but that’s an extra cost. It also often starts slowly.

#11

It’s not OP in the typical sense that it dominates the majority of decks thrown at it, that was never my claim. My point was that while some bad match ups happen between deck archetypes it shouldn’t be based off the color of the deck.

The match up between Red and Green is terrible because Red simply has no efficient way to deal with high health creatures. This makes no sense as every other color, including green to a limited extent, have an efficient way to deal with buffed up creatures. Now if the main faction that can actually employ and use giants and buffs also has an effective way to deal with them then how come some of you seem to think it would break the game if Red also had a way?

I brought up the spider and other cards because at one point those were all considered key weaknesses of Green and yet they received a card to fill that role and the game managed not to implode in upon it’s self.

So once again, if every faction needs it’s kryptonite than what’s Greens? Their land requirement is only high for a few key cards. Even if that was a weakness they also have the best elemental along with some very good land generation cards. It’s hard to call it a weakness when you have a readily available way to make it a non-issue.

So in short, the different colors shouldn’t counter each other on a faction wide basis. If you think Red having something like Yellow’s Shaytan Assassin or Blue’s Frogify would be op please explain how it would negatively effect the other match ups. Honestly, with the current cards we have Green’s the only one that employs such tactics commonly and the other color capable of it funnily enough is Red with Seifer or Gift of Steal. It would have little effect on the other match ups simply because they rarely employ the type of creatures that would make hard removal a valuable trade.

#12

[quote=“BomberGob, post:11, topic:7190”]
and the game managed not to implode in upon it’s self
[/quote]I’d say it’s slightly worse now. Pandora is slightly more worse. Rethink illusion, give stalker more HP and more faeria - perhaps a maximum range (or some other small nerf), fix krog/dinner in pandora and it’d be good.

[quote=“BomberGob, post:11, topic:7190”]
please explain how it would negatively effect the other match ups.
[/quote]That’s not the point. Less identity = less interesting = less fun.

#13

its pretty easy. red has firestorm, groundshaker and garudan. so you can never overextend on the bord against this colour.
the only play around aoe is less creatures OR big health.
playing less creatures will loose you board control to direct removal, so not realy an option.
now if you add a hardremoval like frogify to reds arsenal, you cant play around anything anymore. so you just play everything and hope for the best. not fun.

no colour may have both aoe and hard removal. greens weekness? no aoe AND no hard removal. yes it can now debuff creatures, but thats not hardremoval.
and deathtouch is not hard removal unless it also has haste. it can be played around and needs a turn to be able to trade.

*edit:
efficient is the key word. no colour may have efficient hard removal and efficient aoe. red already has hardremoval: meteor, but its ineffective and costly. which is perfectly fine. if you have such big problems with green, try some bargain list and include a meteor… (im not serious btw… but thats a lot of fun)

1 Like
#14

@Xaxazak Less identity is rather subjective, I personally think a factions identity should be based off what it’s good at not some arbitrary weakness. In any event I’d be willing to sacrifice some identity for further balance between colors. You talk of fun, but really, how fun is it to know you’re likely gonna lose when your opponent puts down their first land?

This ain’t a unique experience to me, even watching some of the higher ranked streamers they often comment on how bad of a match up it is.

But if you’re that concerned about identity it don’t need to be an exact analog, I’ve thought of several idea that would serve the same role but be used in a different way. For example.

Spell Surge - Reset a creature to its base stats and deal damage to it for every bonus stat it received.

So for instance a Grimguard with GoS would be reduced to its base stats and then dealt 6 damage from the bonus stats provided by GoS. An Oak Father summoned with 7 forest active would be reduced to it’s printed stat line and then dealt 7 damage. Such a mechanic would be great at screwing over buff stackers but still leave things like Thyrian Golem and Primeval Colossus as potent forces.

@Shagric AoE is always a tough balancing act in these sort of games I agree, but I believe this aspect of red is balanced by the lack of resource generation. Red is dead last in faeria, card, and land generation. To even get the cards/faeria necessary to do said AoE combos they need to cede board control to their opponent for 2-3 turns while they save up. Even after said combo is used you’re highly unlikely to have any resources left to summon with so you’re giving the initiative to your opponent.

So far I think this balancing factor has worked because frankly the idea that you need giants to play around it is nonsense. One of the top decks dominating right now is Blue jump and the majority of its creatures have pretty average health. If AoE was as much of an issue as you state I don’t see how a deck comprising completely of creatures vulnerable to said AoE combo can be doing so well.

#15

The reason Blue jump doesn’t get obliterated by AoE is because it has plenty of creatures too large for things like Firestorm/Garudan such as Colossus, anything hit by Triton Trainer, and Triton Warrior. As well as the fact that Blue Jump can accumulate resources quickly while developing it’s board state and applying pressure with it’s movement tricks and highly mobile creatures. If someone wanted to board wipe Blue jump, they would have to sacrifice Tempo and resource advantage to do so. Another thing: in your games against Blue jump, try to keep their board as clear as possible, you’ll realize they have an abundant amount of creatures, holding them down and maintaining the board is very difficult to do. As for everything else, no red does not have hard removal. They have the mentality of: “Oh, I can’t deal with those massive creatures that my opponent invested a lot of resources into. You know, I have a lot of damage in my deck, I bet I can race him.”

1 Like
#16

@Cynic I know how Blue survives AoE, my point was that their creatures rarely get above 5-6 health and that’s enough to not be field wiped by Red. With this being said Green’s creatures have a higher base health on average, more than Blue or any other faction for that matter. This was my counter to the idea that supposedly giants are necessary to beat AoE when clearly they’re not.

The problem with racing Green as Red is they have both the best taunt and the best healing in the game currently. Most Green decks I run into don’t even bother to run healing as the match up between Red is already biased enough and they don’t need it vs the other match ups. I personally run Ruunin’s Guidance in my Crackthorn deck and have had little problem with direct damage since I’ve done so, barring the few occasions the draw screws me over of course.

Red quite simply needs a way to deal with giants to make the RvG match up fair. Buffing Red’s direct damage is not a good idea for two reasons. One, DD already works pretty good in Red’s other match ups. If you buff it this will negatively effect the balance of the other colors. Two, out of all the factions currently available Green has the most efficient way to deal with DD in the form of healing. This further increases the problem of my first point in that it makes Red stronger overall and leaves Green as it’s primary counter.

#17

red has as much landcreation as blue and yellow: one elemental. admited, its the worst one, but yellow is not realy viable aswell outside of flyers, and the red element is GREAT! against green, since they dont have direct removal.
*edit: WAS great, hello stalker!

red has VERY GOOD fearia generation. the +2 combat creatures are NUTS and it has bold bargainer, ogre dance and blood song, all three very solid options. and new: krog + krogs dinner.

red IS lacking carddraw, but so is green and faeria is very forgiving to that thx to the power wheel option to draw an extra card.

Red also has very strong harvesters, so normaly you do not have to save up 2-3 turns to play an aoe.
most of the time you can protect your collectors by direct removal. so once you fall behind on board, you usually have a faeria bank from earlygame that you can use to aoe down the board.

on the blue jump topic: the ONLY color (hi yellow flyer gnats: did not play you yet…) preventing blue jump from dominating everything IS red and its AOE. how can you say it does not help against it? ever played the matchup?
blue jump has no chance of winning this matchup UNLESS it can buff its creatures out of range with trainer, or draws warrior/beast/colossi at the right time. and now you want red to have a direct removal if that happens? hell no.
(and im not the one playing blue, i play red/yellow control most games last month)

so back to topic:
red cant have direct hardremoval.
they CAN have deathtouch, Dot effects or stuff i cant come up with.
as soon as red gets hardremoval ala frogify/choking/last nightmare, the colour is broken beyond repair. its even now the most played colour besides blue, and not without reason. it has strong collectors, efficient faeria gain, direct damage and AoE.
Seifer is a good card against high health creatures, perhaps red could use more of that style. but abrakam has to be REALY careful with implementing these cards, because it tipps to broken realy fast in reds arsenal.

*edit. so why exactly DOES red need a way to deal with giant creatures? i think this is the question that has to be asked. heal has gotten a lot stronger the past months, so perhaps the ticking lifetotal realy is not strong enough of a clock for red anymore?
i personaly realy hate sagami grovecaller in green. green should not have that huge mobility (the best in the game??!).
i think that is the biggest part of reds problem. Its possible to play around a huge creature with low mobility (taunt, switching sides, counterrush,…), but not one that can teleport around the map. grovecaller is just completely broken.
there are always counters and weeknesses in strategie games, thats what makes the game interessting. but if a specified card is such an allrounder it sees play in every deck of the color, its a problem.

emperors command (very new, so not 100% sure…)
aurora
prophet
groundshaker
sagami grovecaller
windstorm charger
khalim
…

thats the ones that come to mind first for me.

#18

Yellows elemental is probably the second worse just ahead of Red, it’s just it’s still leagues better because of the flying ability. This allows it to collect faeria without a land investment, something that’s extremely useful in Yellow. The flying tag also allows it synergy within its archetype, but it’s still useful on its own.

While I won’t understate the usefulness or the Underworld creatures as a whole I think you’re over stating their value as a form of Faeria generation, in the best of cases they generally just return their value over the course of several turns. The little one needs to survive 2 rounds of attacks to generate 1 mana, the big one needs to survive 3, combine this with the fact that they have low initial stats for their cost and it’s obvious it’s more of a potential value buy than a legitimate form of generation. Obviously you can use GoS on them to extend their duration but this also further increases the amount of attacks you need to survive to actually come out ahead.

In either event it’s a delayed reaction, it’s not like Green’s FtF that can instantly garner you vast sums of faeria on demand or similar on demand faeria generation cards we see in other factions.

Green lacks true card draw, fair enough, but they still have cantrip in the form of FtF and Earthcraft. Not to mention a few ways to randomly generate extra cards with the likes of Bloomsprite. That’s a fair bit more than Red has in any event.

Strong harvesters? In what way? Faeria for stats our creatures generally ain’t nothing special compared to other colored creatures with some notable exceptions like Axe Grinder. Once again Green is superior in this regard, if you want sturdy creatures for good value than Green is the go to faction. Look no further than Barbarian Ogre and Verduran Force, same exact stats with no special traits but Red’s cost 1 faeria more.

First off I’ve not only played it, but I’ve done it from both perspectives as I own and play both decks. I’m calling BS on this one, I’ve always had rather evenly balanced games in this match up regardless or not if I was the Blue or Red player.

As for why Red needs a way to deal with giants I’ve already explained multiple times, because it’s an unfair lose condition for the Red player. This is evident not only in RvG match ups but mirror matches as well. My opponent drew a Grimguard and 2 GoS? I have no way to stop it and it can 2 shot my orb, GG. I lose simply because my opponent drew 3 cards, it’s the same for if Green draws all of its Elderwoods early.

To put this in perspective what if this game had something like Exodia from Yu-gi-Oh, for those not familiar it was a combo that where if you could get 5 different cards in your hand you automatically won. But instead of needing 5 pieces you only needed 3, and instead of having only 1 of each piece you could have 3, oh and the decks 10 cards smaller increasing your odds of getting it significantly. I’m pretty sure the majority of the Faeria community would get sick of it rather quick, that’s basically what happens to mono Red in these match ups.

Every game I’ve ever played like this has made sure to allow ways to punish people that put all their eggs in one basket with buff stacking. and for obviously good reasons.

As for Sagami Grovecaller, I agree. Three cards I think Green should of never gotten is Grovecaller, Voice of Truth, and Deepwood Stalker. From a purely mechanical level they fit the theme of other colors and work just as efficiently as if they were. Grovercaller acts like one of Yellow’s mobility cards, VoT is similar to the stat manipulation of Blue, and the spider fits in with Red’s theme of reactionary cards. Obviously we’re gonna have mechanics shared here and there, but for cases that behave like an out of faction color they shouldn’t be even more efficient than the host colored cards they burrowed the mechanic from in the first place.

Cards that add desired mechanics from other factions should be appropriately taxed or limited like Red’s GoS. It’s effectively the same amount of stats boosted as Elderwood, but they made it inefficient for anything without a combat ability, thus limiting your deck structure. You’re not gonna take GoS unless you built your deck around it, it should be the same for the three cards I listed but it’s not. Every single one of them can be incredibly useful in your deck irregardless or what else you take.

#19

so your argumet for direct hardremoval in red is, other classes (mainly green) got op cards aswell?
i think they should rather address these problems instead of producing more.
to remind you, im totaly in for some cards to deal with big stuff in red, like deathtouch or DoTs, but please not a card like frogify or last nightmare in red.

offtopic:
underground brigand is a sturdy collector (no other class then red has a 3 dmg ping) and even flameburst just trades one for one. played on turn two he can gather at least 2 turns, then when he dies fighting (which he will against anything not red) he will deliver another 2 faeria and deal 2 dmg to soften up a creature. he also has synergie with GoS. and no, he does not have to fight two more times to justify gos cost. gos basicly is a 3 dmg removal for 3 mana if the combat creature survives. which is the same as flameburst and you get the combat effect for free.
so this collector is a huge threat if you cant kill him with movement tricks or direct dmg, and even then he will always trade in favour for red.
very strong? yes.

you agree with me on axe grinder as one of the strongest earlygame cards, because he is also viable in later stages of the match due to insane stat/cost ratio. (same stats as mystic beast, but that has a 3 lake requirement in trade for jump - not beeing able to play beast turn one is a huge deal.)

so thats two 3 faeria collectors which both have big impact in mid and lategame. thats as good as the other colours.
bloodsinger, seifers fodder, grim guard and seifer himself all are viable tools for different decks aswell.

for midrange creatures, instead of comparing verduran force with ogre, you should compare it to ground shaker. both 6 faeria midrange creatures that see play. i strongly favour groundshaker as the better card.
yes, red does have an influx of bad 7 drops, which is sad, but they also have bold bargainer and orge dance which makes it dangerous to add strong stuff for that cost. (see blue 7s, for a long time the best deck because of these synergies)
you ignored both of these and bloodsong as faeria gain. while bloodsong is to random to be viable, the other two created their own archtype.

#20

Honestly despite the title I could care less in what form Red receives a giant killer, as long as it’s effective. It’s just silly that every other faction you have to gamble and take risk with when and how you use your buffs except when facing Red, you just spam them and win.

As for Groundshaker it’s probably one the best all around non-legendary cards in the game honestly. It’s not broken per say but can easily fit in any Red deck. Currently every faction has 1 or 2 cards that are alittle too good for the cost, this is ours and I honestly expect it to get lowered stats at some point. That being said it and Axegrinder are notable exceptions, not the rule. But that’s getting off topic, point is Red needs some way to not instantly get it’s butt handed to it by high health creatures.