[Change] Valiantine's Day

The sac drop wasn't a good idea. Monsters are pretty rarely sacrificed, and it's usually no skin off anyone's back if you have to use them for one last hurrah instead of recouping their mana cost. Or recouping 2 mana of their mana cost.

Worth Too Much eliminates sacing completely, and it costs only 1/1 and cantrips, and it's still only ever used to lock down monster slots with Stasis Field.

I think we should go back to the drawing board.

People still use the "monsters hardly get sacced" argument? Sigh...

(12-22-2012 04:30 AM)Norlaan Wrote:  People still use the "monsters hardly get sacced" argument? Sigh...

At least he's making a statement

He's right, monsters do hardly ever get sacced. There are some decks that rely on saccing, but most of them rarely need to do that unless you're mana screwed. Even if 50% of the games you play involve your opponent wanting to sac their monsters (which they really don't), Valiantine's Day wouldn't be useful. As we've found out time and time again, cards that rely on what's in your opponent's deck to be useful generally suck. If the card's a waste of a deck slot over half the time then it's not a good card.

And keep in mind it also reduces your own monsters sac value, so if you want to sac anything then you have to get rid of Valientine's Day. Basically you can't have it both ways. If saccing is incredibly useful and everyone needs to do it then the card sucks. If saccing is rarely useful and almost no one needs to do it, then it's also a bad card. See, there are two problems here. The one I stated in my first paragraph, and the fact that cards which have the same negative effect for both you and the opponent tend to suck unless they are the type of thing you can build your deck around (such as TDQ).

The +6 attack to Paladins barely makes up for losing the effect slot, much less the three mana cost, so don't say that that's supposed to negate the fact that not every deck needs to sac monsters to be effective. I've played literally dozens of games this past week, and maybe 20% of them involved saccing in any significant way. I've also used Valientine's Day before, and the sac reduction ability has never ended up being useful. It was a waste of deck space, and I ended up taking it out of my paladin deck.

(12-22-2012 05:00 AM)NOLDER Wrote:  

(12-22-2012 04:30 AM)Norlaan Wrote:  People still use the "monsters hardly get sacced" argument? Sigh...

At least he's making a statement

I don't see why not, seeing as how it's true and all.

Walls get sacced all the time. Damaged beatsticks are sacced to bring in fresh ones without losing mana. People sac monsters when the opponent plays The Nothing or when about to play FoH. Reclamation, skeleton, mana furnace and more exist. In other words... Monsters get sacced.

Now, I'm not saying all monsters get sacced, or that saccing happens every game. But it does happen. And often enough I don't think that removing this kind of ability from the only card that has it is warranted.

Basically, the card is a hoser. A global hoser, but still a hoser. As such, it'll probably need to wait for our hoser discussion, which is admittedly a ways away at the moment.

(12-24-2012 04:21 PM)Norlaan Wrote:  Now, I'm not saying all monsters get sacced, or that saccing happens every game. But it does happen. And often enough I don't think that removing this kind of ability from the only card that has it is warranted.

Roujinsei na Ninja

(12-24-2012 04:21 PM)Norlaan Wrote:  Basically, the card is a hoser. A global hoser, but still a hoser. As such, it'll probably need to wait for our hoser discussion, which is admittedly a ways away at the moment.

If I'm not allowed to bring this up for balance until your hoser discussion, then can I have a new thread?

(12-24-2012 04:21 PM)Norlaan Wrote:  Basically, the card is a hoser. A global hoser, but still a hoser. As such, it'll probably need to wait for our hoser discussion, which is admittedly a ways away at the moment.

It really isn't though. It hoses "monsters you might want to sac" in the same way Laser hoses "things with less than 60 life", and Smash Hopes hoses effects. I don't really think it needs to be grouped in with cards like Smite for it to be balanced.

You tried something new. It didn't work. Lets try something else. Just like masa said we would if it didn't work.

(01-31-2013 01:45 AM)Norlaan Wrote:  

(01-31-2013 01:24 AM)Bubbleman Wrote:  I actually thought that at the time, but didn't want to argue.

I'll note we're not a dictatorship and actually do listen to people =P If you (and/or anyone else in the community) has a suggestion, qualm, question, or psalm about CMC, we're interesting in hearing them.

Especially the psalms.

For the record, the reason -I'm- calling it a hoser and waiting until the hoser discussion (can't speak for the other two) is because the idea is to discuss how to handle hosers in general, whether they have an alternate useage (like torpedo launcher) or not, and make them in general more useful. V-day is a more subtle hoser in that it affects a deck archetype rather than a colour/entity type, but I still think it qualifies. If people still want to discuss it, go for it. Especially since the other BC members haven't posted their opinions and seemed to have been just letting me speak for them (maybe they have different thoughts, who knows? We're not a hive mind.... as far as you know).

A card that can only hose a deck archetype is never a good thing. Maybe if we had a proper metagame, and it was hosing the top deck archetype, and sideboards were a thing. But we don't, it's not, and they aren't. What deck does this even hose?

We'll be passing over this one this time, and taking a look at it later along with hosers as a whole.

Still not a hoser.

Yes, but we're lazy and have latched onto the excuse, and you're not taking it away from us that easily!

7

Logic

Cast spell

Obliterate target excuse.

Oh wait, that's a hoser, so it's probably worthless.

From what I can tell, neither masa nor Serith think it needs changed.

I think it's probably fine, as it's a decent answer to mana furnace and sac site decks, as well as complements cards like stasis field, reclamation, and The Nothing, while punishing a few cards like FoH (indirectly), Skeleton, and walls, but I suppose I've never really seen it to have any tangible proof. I do know that not being able to sac my asteroid belts for profit would hurt my one deck quite a bit.

So either way the card's probably not getting changed now unless someone can sway us. It may get changed when discussed with hosers depending on how that talk goes.

You'd have a mighty hard time fitting The Nothing and more than 1 or 2 Reclemations into a Paladin Deck. Stasis Field maybe, but like you, I've never seen it work. And mana furnace and sac site decks don't need a decent answer. Haven't ever since you nerfed Sporkman back when I first started playing.Without him, they're nowhere near top tier.

I think the problem with the ability is that it's counter-intuitive to Paladin decks. Paladins are some of Light's most hardy monsters; having high life and generally something defensive like damage reduction, a Shield status, etc. On top of that, they're also an expensive race (Paladin Monument is better than Slime Hill Monument precisely because of that).
So basically, you have a card that makes one of the most sacable races Light has penalized whenever saced.

Is there any particular reason this is global? The other two cards have secondary abilities that only benefit you. At the very least I could see using this if the drawback was one-sided (and maybe reduced to 1/1/1 as while 1 less sac is trivial for mono, 2 and 3 less for dual and tri hurts a lot) as it's fairly easy for a monster to attack/be attacked by a Paladin and still survive to be sacrificed.

I could see one sided. At least then you could use your own Asteroid Belts. And Blue does have a point about sacrificing things in and against Pali decks.

Yeah, if the effect was one-sided it would probably be fine because then it would be a lot more viable to actually plan your deck around using the card to its fullest.

(01-31-2013 11:50 PM)Blue_Elite Wrote:  So basically, you have a card that makes one of the most healable races Light has penalized whenever saced.

Fixed that for you.

But they only have one healer, and one of their most defensive monsters has ability immune...