[Buff] Slime Traveller

Slime traveller recently took a major nerf - it lost Speed Summon, straight up, with nothing to compensate. Speed summon had been propping up the card on both fronts - it could consistently remove locations because it didn't have to survive a turn before doing its thing, and in the absence of a location to remove, a 2 speed summon monster with 10 attack isn't quite optimal (compare to Barrel Mech), but a sudden flanker or mini, overcosted firebolt was frequently good enough to win a game.

I strongly agree with the loss of Speed Summon, but in doing so the card has lost its usefulness on both fronts - it is unlikely to survive to undizzy against a deck which has already set itself up with a location, and when acting as just a monster, a 10/20 for 2 is positively useless.

As I see it, the card is location D for decks which run weenies, but it's such a bad monster that it can't even be used in that capacity. So some buff to its stats seems like the natural solution to me.

What were you thinking? 15/20?

Give it back Speed Summon. Do whatever you want to the stats, but it will be useless compared to the one mana dark and light locations (or even the two mana locations) so long as it doesn't have speed summon. You are paying three mana to get Plains on the field. The reason why Slime Traveller was good is because it's location D attached to a monster, but if it was 10/10 or something, then that wouldn't be as big a factor.

@ Nacho: Yeah, 15/20 is my instinct. 20/20 might even work, but stepped balancing and all that.

Incidentally, the card could also get a speed increase so long as it doesn't have speed summon. The fact that the card has to undizzy despite its low life total gives the card enough counterplay without needing to resort to the opponent's spells.


I strongly oppose Speed Summon. When Slime Traveller did its thing immedately upon entering the battlefield, it trivialized the task of making a deck resistant to locations. Other forms of location D either cost a lot of mana or are dead cards in the absence of a location to remove. But with the ability attached to a 2 price tag speed summon monster, the sense of commitment to the removal is just gone.

Even 1/1 stats would not be low enough; a monster that can flank and chump block the turn it comes out is close enough to acting as a normal 2 mana spell that having it also be location D is too strong.

Yeah, but it also doesn't usually cost three mana to get Plains on the field. Slime Traveller is not very efficient as location D, and if we made it less efficient as a monster it would be a jack of all trades, master of none scenario. I think Speed Summon would be workable.

Having the choice between flanker, blocker, and location removal, as well as location deterrence if it stays alive, is more than worth paying 3 over a Plains. Compare Kerboom to Kerpow and Laser for a different take on the idea (ignoring the removal boosts if necessary for the comparison to work).

Safety cards aren't about mana efficiency; if they were, Reclamation would be a terrible removal spell, even at its pre-nerf cost. Instead, the primary price tag on cards that bail you out from a disaster is deck space. When there's an effect in play that will win the game for the opponent, spending 8 mana or more to stop it is worth it. But what really matters is that, when the possibility the card is protecting you from isn't around, the card will still do something for you.

Compare to the current form of Burn! Burn!, which costs one heck of a lot less to accomplish the same task, but is (usually) a weak deck inclusion since it doesn't do anything if its intended target is not present. Back when it did consistently have something to do, it was stupidly overpowered.

For this card to be okay as a (generally) uninterruptible jack of all trades, it would need to cost much, much more than it presently does. And I mean more than doubling its current price tags.

(04-12-2013 12:22 AM)Bubbleman Wrote:  Yeah, but it also doesn't usually cost three mana to get Plains on the field. Slime Traveller is not very efficient as location D, and if we made it less efficient as a monster it would be a jack of all trades, master of none scenario. I think Speed Summon would be workable.

It would need to be almost useless as a monster for that to happen though, because of all the things a monster with speed summon can do independent of its stats. A 5/5, maybe 5/10 at most.

I was thinking 10/10 as a starting point, since that's what Chookie gets--a zero cost monster with Speed Summon. Basically it would be inefficient as a monster and inefficient as location D, but as Crow said, it would be deck space efficient to compensate. I don't see a problem with any of that.

The thing is, Slime Traveller will not be useful as location D unless it gets Speed Summon back because it will be more time efficient and more mana efficient to play one of the one or two mana locations. And in addition to that, you also get whatever effect the location you play comes with. The idea that your location D is useless if your opponent has anything that can deal 20 damage to a monster is just kind of silly to me.

I will note that persistent (and instant speed) location D is very good against combo decks that require locations, even without speed summon. Drop it before the opponent plays their important location, never dizzy it, and you've drastically increased your chances of winning.

Basically, even without speed summon, it has its place. It shouldn't need to suffer from stat point deficiency if it is now, though.

Speed Summon basically turns Slime Traveler into a location. It becomes a Plains that you can play over and over again as long as you can keep it alive. If we were going to basically make it a location/monster, I'd want to remove the repeatability of the ability and have it just be a 1-shot deal.

With that said, I'd rather Slime Traveler be a means of insurance against locations rather than an instant counter to them (the current form). Locations are already an instant counter to locations themselves. Plus the current form means there is in fact a purpose to actually running Plains in your deck (granted until the meta-game encourages more liberal use of locations, no one will do that because of how often it'll be a completely dead card).

(04-12-2013 02:17 PM)Bubbleman Wrote:  The thing is, Slime Traveller will not be useful as location D unless it gets Speed Summon back because it will be more time efficient and more mana efficient to play one of the one or two mana locations. And in addition to that, you also get whatever effect the location you play comes with. The idea that your location D is useless if your opponent has anything that can deal 20 damage to a monster is just kind of silly to me.

Slime Traveler is about as useful as location D as Dash Breakneck is as monster D. It's a monster, with monster stats, and your opponent needs to kill it before he can play his location. So you're right, it's more location deterrent than destruction, but it still does its job. I'd expect weenie and slime decks to run a pair if he was balanced.

@Nacho: The card was designed to be location D, not a french vanilla weenie. I don't get why you guys think the card would be better off as a french vanilla weenie, but I did get the sense that that's what people are aiming for here. I guess it might be good location D in stall decks with lots of dizziers and such to keep the opponent's monsters from attacking. It would just be a very far cry from what Slime Traveller was previously used for.

@Bugle: I'm not going to include Slime Traveller in a deck just because it's good against location combo decks that don't have any monsters or cheap damaging spells. But I won't say you're wrong that it's good against those.

(04-13-2013 05:10 PM)Bubbleman Wrote:  The card was designed to be location D, not a french vanilla weenie.

The problem was that this initial design was a bad design.

(04-13-2013 05:10 PM)Bubbleman Wrote:  It would just be a very far cry from what Slime Traveller was previously used for.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.

Hmm, Slime Traveller lost its edge when it was nerfed. A player is usually at the mercy of a location until they draw one on there turn and can instantly change the location or if they have napalm strike or slime traveller. Though can also see how annoying it is to have your location blown away when this little guy uses his effect before you can make use of its effect and then having to deal with it (though its not that big of a threat on its own).

Used Slime Travelers mostly as a defense in decks where locations could really screw with my strategy and rarely if ever have the chance to use it more then the first turn it hits the field since the little guy is either taken out or my opponent doesn't have another location in hand/ waiting to pop traveler.

Well, maybe instead of speed summon, couldn't it have a one time effect that when put into play it changes the location to plains, and then adjust the stats and cost accordingly so it's still both a decent monster and a decent location D?

RazorD9 Wrote:Well, maybe instead of speed summon, couldn't it have a one time effect that when put into play it changes the location to plains, and then adjust the stats and cost accordingly so it's still both a decent monster and a decent location D?

Then what would be the point of ever running Plains?

It either needs to be a decent monster and sucky location D, or a sucky monster and decent location D. Given that other locations are already location D (and Plains is already FREE location D) I'd personally rather have a decent monster.

(04-24-2013 12:23 AM)Blue_Elite Wrote:  ...
Then what would be the point of ever running Plains?

There wouldn't be one. There isn't one now, there never has been one, and there never will be one so long as Webrunner's ruling preventing us from balancing it stands. Plains is not a balanced card. What it does, every other location does too, but with the added benefit of whatever that location actually does. There's no need for cards dedicated strictly to Location D when I get that as a side benefit of my Mountain Range or my Messengite Stupa. I'm against making other cards suck just because we're not allowed to stop one of them from sucking.

Though I'll note that Razor's Slime Traveler would probably cost more than 0 mana, so it wouldn't be strictly better than Plains, even if it would be better by virtue of being balanced, and not a worthless waste of deck space.

This might warrant a completely new thread of discussion but I wonder if maybe the problem with Plains is simply the way locations work. If you had to pay the cost of the location plus the location you want to play over it, having a card that allows you to ignore the cost of the location in play (which would have to be an added ability) to destroy it might become more valuable (and make using locations more secure rather than having the always looming threat of losing your investment instantly).

Still, you generally have to build around locations if you incorporate them in a deck as they are a double edge sword (depending on how strong the effect of the location is granted). Having a monster be the go-to defense against locations seems off.
Locations should be the main defense against locations in my opinion.

(04-24-2013 12:47 PM)Blue_Elite Wrote:  If you had to pay the cost of the location plus the location you want to play over it,

That would be a serious impediment to replacing locations of a different color than your deck, though. Unless there were some way to convert the mana.

(04-24-2013 12:47 PM)Blue_Elite Wrote:  Still, you generally have to build around locations if you incorporate them in a deck as they are a double edge sword

Yeah, locations as a card type seem to have two built-in drawbacks: first, they affect both players equally and so it takes careful deck design to actually benefit from them more than your opponent does, and second, they are risky because they are easy to counter and hard to protect.

Always having both drawbacks together does seem rather limiting, but there's no obvious way to fix that.

Though generally, it's not very hard to build your deck to ensure that you will almost always have an advantage over your opponent when your location is in play. Since one of the drawbacks mainly has to do with how you design your deck instead of what's actually happening in game, I don't think it's that big of a factor in how balanced the location type as a whole is.