Eternal Card Game Sunsfury's thoughts: the upcoming balance patch

Sunsfury's thoughts: the upcoming balance patch

Posted: 30 Jan 2022 07:29 PM PST

First of all, I'd like to start things off with what might be a bold statement, or might not: Jotun Hurler and Xo, of the Endless Hoard were two of the top 5 cards in Eternal ever since Defiance (Set 5) released. They have existed in practically every meta since, and have grown to be iconic staples of Eternal.

The issue, however, is that they are inherently unhealthy designs that would only grow more and more powerful as Eternal gets more and more cards that use any kind of "exchange card in hand for effect". This is not the first time that we've seen Skycrag use Hurler/Xo/Know When to Hold 'Em/Crafty Occultist/etc to generate frankly absurd numbers of cards, but it will be the last.

Now, the reason why they were unhealthy comes down to a combination of two things: the fact that both provided free advantage and could be used independently as strong plays. Some of the card advantage generation involved is really interesting - choosing to use a "chaff" card now for an impact on the board vs. cashing it in with a merchant is an interesting squeeze, and cards like Powercell and mechanics like Plunder also partake in the cycle of chaff cards -> real cards. The issue is that you don't need to spend a single point of power to get that bonus Snowball or Treasure Trove, and you don't need an extra card to "cash in" and gain some degree of value.

TL;DR: Xo/Hurler problematic because free advantage, shuffling chaff is cool but can be done in healthier ways

Onto the actual changes, and my thoughts on them:

New Jotun Hurler: 5P-cost 4/4 with summon: create + draw two Snowballs

This is much worse than old hurler. Good. This is also a completely different card. Also good. Hurler's new role is purely to generate chaff at a low influence commitment, with the occasional upside of enabling spells-matter and spell damage archetypes. Hurler might never see highly competitive play again, unless there's a demand for large amounts of chaff cards later on down the line, but maybe that's perfectly fine. Part of me wishes that the patch made him a 4-cost card, the other part of me is saying that if I see hurler being played 5 years from now, it'll still be too soon.

New Xo, of the Endless Hoard: 6FFF 6/6 with inscribe and summon: create + draw a Fire Sigil, and the same ultimate

If you've ever managed to swing in with Xo, you'll know it's an incredibly fun time and a big swing in value. Making Xo actually playable before a game is in a super drawn-out state means that Xo has a real identity other than "Treasure Trove with a Dragon hanging on that you'll want to throw away". This is great news, because Dragons are cool, Xo is cool, and the inscribe + bonus Fire Sigil goes a long way towards smoothing out your turns.

Enter the monastery from 3 cost -> 4 cost

No fancy reasons are really needed for this; Combrei ramp probably needs to be taken down a peg pre-emptively given that one of its key predators needs to go home and dress itself up in a different fashion. When nerfing ramp decks, generally it's best to hit their strongest enablers, because otherwise you just wind up with the same deck with slightly different topend - and Enter the Monastery absolutely is the best enabler by a long shot.

Why not nerf Plunk??

This is going to be a bit controversial, but I think it's okay to leave Plunk as-is, FOR NOW. Xo/Hurler changes will impact Primal decks something fierce already, and Plunk requires a noticeable power cost and can be answered cleanly with ambush, killer, relic weapons (kinda), and large blockers, so there's at least some input from both sides of the playing field as to what goes on. I do acknowledge that Plunk is a very strong card and is likely to get tapped in some way, but now is probably the wrong time to do so

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I am iron man.

Posted: 30 Jan 2022 03:25 PM PST