Sagami Huntmaster nerf

Balance Discussion
#1

OK, so I have only been playing a few weeks but became very fond of Sagami Huntmaster immediately. Now it’s been nerfed hard. The change is:

“Now teleports an adjacent friendly creature to any land you control.”

So, before you needed an open Forest on which to play the Huntsman, and any free adjacent hex.

Now you need an open Forest on which to play the Huntsman, adjacent to the dude you want to move, plus a free land you control. The Huntsman is left back where you generally don’t want a creature. (Otherwise why move the one you are moving?) It reads like a small change but in practice this guy now sits in my hand doing nothing. Because there is too large an opportunity cost.

“Huntmaster has created many of the most spectacular plays in Faeria’s tournaments, but the threat range was too extreme.”

Well, I am not saying the card couldn’t have been changed. Perhaps an increase in Cost by 1 would have been justified. Or a reduction in Life to 2, making him more fragile. But with the change, is it not better to use the Syland Horsemaster? It can target ANY critter and give it Charge 3, so there are no target or land requirements at all. PLUS, as a bonus, it costs one less Faeria. So, a Neutral is looking better than a card in Colour. That’s rather sad.

“We’ve redesigned the card to teleport a creature to a land you control, which is a much more intuitive threat range (and is already used by haste creatures).”

OK, there’s a lot wrong with this sentence. First, there is no such thing as “intuitive” as any designer should know. Intuitive is only what we are used to. I have long ago stopped being annoyed when punters use the term as short-hand for “what I personally prefer and am used to”, But it is not good at all to see a designer use it.

Besides, how is the current text any easier to figure out than before? It isn’t.

Second, why do we want all our mechanics working in a similar way? Shouldn’t we have variety?

Third, I fail to see what this ability has to do with Haste, since the Huntmaster does not let any critter work on its first turn. It takes a turn to set up the play, which is a further opportunity cost.

I guess we will have to see what the impact is, but if Huntmaster stops being viable for surprise plays then Green has no surprise creatures. Unlike in other colours, the Legendaries work slowly (if at all). My preference is for more surprising cards that take care to use properly. Not fewer.

#2

Firstly, Huntmaster isn’t worse than Horsemaster. If I’m defending my God with a massive creature, Horsemaster can’t teleport it to the enemy God the moment I want to start racing. Huntmaster still does that.

Even Desert Twister can only teleport to friendly deserts. Huntmaster still has the strongest mobility effect in the game, allowing you to teleport a creature from anywhere adjacent to a friendly forest to any friendly land.

Horsemaster only gives a creature Charge, so the target creature still needs an unobstructed path with lands all the way to where it wants to go, for a maximum of 3. This is also pretty situational. I’d say it’s more likely to be effective for aggro-Green, whereas Huntmaster will still be much better for mid-Green. No change there.

Secondly, why would a Green mobility card be outright better than a neutral mobility card? Does Green specialise in mobility?

Personally, idk what Green is doing with a mobility card at all.

I can see that it makes sense in terms of balance - Green is vulnerable to control cards, but it shouldn’t be the case that it just loses to control every time. Giving Green the best mobility card in the game fixes this. I just don’t think it makes sense in terms of the colour themes and I’d much prefer to see Green getting some strong Green cards in new directions (Resurrection, maybe with a delay? Spell-protection? Something that absorbs stats from anything that’s removed while it’s not taking damage? A contagious buff that grows when the host dies? There must be some other valid strategy to mitigate removal than just copying another colour’s speciality) that are unique to Green than a strong Yellow card that costs forests instead of deserts.

Also, on a personal note, I don’t like surprises that give a massive, immediate advantage to their player. That’s why I started playing Faeria; because it had a stronger focus on tactics than on playing swingy surprise cards.

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#3

Sagami Huntmaster needed a nerf. If the change hit it at all, it didn’t hit it too hard.
It’s still the best movement trick in the game. It enables any big creature (especially the slam-creatures) to strike from anywhere on the board. It was and still is a movement trick which is pretty much impossible to play around. Except for Desert Twister, there’s no movement trick in the game which is even close to Huntmaster’s level of unpredictability. And even Twister needs 5 deserts and a target friendly desert to place your creature on.

Horsemaster can be blocked by any body and it consumes the moving creatures movement. Banquet is a little better, but still “only” offers one tile of bonus range. Flash Wind, Fanatic and Windborne Champion offer a bonus movement, so if it isn’t paired with a jump/charge in the first place, it’s still just one more tile of movement. Sunken Tower, Shifting Tides and Prophet of Tides require ocean tiles to do anything, so they usually are only good from early to mid game. In case of Sunken Tower, you can even see it coming. Any I forgot?
Don’t get me wrong: All of these movement tricks are good. Some were/are even considered op. Still, they’re all overshadowed by both the old Huntmaster and the new one. Because all of them offer a limited range of movement (again, except for Desert Twister). So you can at least kind of predict them and play around.

You can’t do that with a teleport. Is the new Huntmaster more predictable? Hardly. I mean, it’s not like you’d only need to expect a creature next to a forest being teleported. The teleport target can move to a nearby forest before. It can also move to a nearby ocean or praerie tile which is turned into a forest on the same turn. Granted, if it moves towards the (new) forest, it can’t move afterwards anymore. It still offers too many possibilities to consider and predict them all. And by any means, many more than all the other movement tricks.

If you play green anyways, you should have no problem whatsoever to fulfil huntmasters new condition of having a forest near by any big creature you want to teleport. And if there’s no forest in the first place (which seems rather unlikely, at least in mono green), so what? Just create one on an empty praerie or ocean tile.
And what’s even better than before: If your creature stands next to a forest (or one tile away), you can aim for a quick and very deep 2x praerie to teleport it on. Oh, but you can’t teleport it directly on an opponent’s tile anymore, so I think that compensates for it.

Your opponent also can’t play around it by blocking off your deep forests anymore. Because you don’t need any.

To me, it’s quite the opposite: Huntsman itself has a crappy combat body. 2/4 is a threat to nothing, if you don’t apply buffs. And why would you, if you can apply the buff to the teleported creature in the first place?
So now it can safely sit back and continue the collecting job of the creature you teleported away. This is huge. Green is a rather expensive color, at least if you play lots of big creatures - which are the #1 teleport targets in the first place. The moment you started your attack with the old huntmaster by teleporting your only creature on board, you had to set up new harvesters or continue with only 3-4 faeria/turn. Which was a (small) opening window for your opponent to recover from the surprise attack.

It has lots of similarities with haste in the sense that you can (re)place a creature, move it, collect with it and attack with it immediately from where it is now placed. Sure, the said creature must be on the board one turn before, but you can place it in a safe spot. Think Kodama, Oak Father, Seifer or any big creature, safely at a back line, out of any threat’s reach. Then, when there’s an opportunity, you can go all in from anywhere on the board.

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#4

I agree that something different would be nice but I read something about this on reddit that I think made allot of sense, basically length of games is something the devs have to be concerned about if green has no access to mobility and just adopts a turtle style of play then that’s something they have to address since many find that un fun both to play and to play against. I kinda of brute force way of giving them a non turtle option but it’s probably always going to be there if for no other reason than they don’t want green to be too slow.

That said I think the current form of it is ok and certainly significantly weaker than it was before, while it can still be used to get the green player some good trades it’s much easier to protect your orb from and I like that it places more emphasis on land placement for both sides really.

In general I think any mechanics that take the focus off of the board should be carefully considered since the board is what makes this game unique, this is why I think they should be looking at all the direct damage effects in red personally but that’s just my opinion.

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#5

It’s definitely a valid point that contribution to average game length is a consideration when adding new cards, but I don’t know, Green’s lack of removal kind of makes it the least slow colour, since it caps at mid-range. I think it could stand to have a few more slow cards, especially if they target slower decks by countering hard removal, but aren’t as effective vs fast decks.

Mid-Green is currently pretty good against rush, but maybe if it had some anti-control options, the opportunity to include them instead of some anti-rush cards could make a lot of match-ups more even on average.

I really agree on your last point, that it’s hard to feel good about cards which invalidate/ignore the board state, when making that board state is so central to the game.

#6

It’s good to read some of the other opinions. After testing I have cut Huntsmaster down from 3 and my deck is the better for it. So lots of other cards are now strictly better than this one, at least in my experience.

#7

What are you talking about? It’s the best card in the game and far better than it used to be. If you are not running 3 in every deck that runs green you are doing it wrong.

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#8

Er, OK then. I guess you enjoy seeing two Huntsmasters in your opening hand. Me, not so much.

Elemental is a better card, for ramp. Kadoma is a better card for kill. Almost anything with taunt is better against rush which, y’know, there’s a fair amount of. Embrace is better. Without kill, green needs additional boost cards just to keep their creatures alive, so some further slots need to be taken for them. After that, one can choose the Huntsmaster, though it is too often a “win more” option.

There are also far better cards in the game for other colours.

Besides this sort of analysis, anyone who says “best card in the game” is automatically wrong. Because every card is situational . Huntsmaster is pretty bad in my mono red deck, for example.

#9

Say one card is the best doesnt means she can be played in every deck … When i say Messi is the best footbaler, does it means he must be in a rugby team? (its still sport !!!). And if someone ask me who is the best legendary card, i don’t have the right to say Aurora because she is not play in Mono red?
Argment guys plz …
Anycase, Huntmaster is pretty strong now, but pretty insane cause of slam IMO. Its already hard to manage those teleport, but with slam, its a pain. But well, i am not for a nerf, its still quite fun and interesting in stream. Just give something as interesting to other color and all will be fine :p.