I mean, it has Fissure, which knocks out ANYTHING... The worst/best part about it is that if you Fissure a building, it goes away instantly, taking it's domain with it.

It has perhaps the most overpowered creatures in the game. Bilgrim's a 4/8 that had 5 movement... so what if you have to dim it every once in a while.

Draknor's chain combined with .. a big creature or even a Wheel... opponents buildings go bye bye.

Volcano. Wow. Dag Cannon... protect it and it decimates the opponents forces.

Answers to creature and building attacks? Training, Iron Gate.

Flux/Domain acceleration? Ord Stones, Throne.

Creature control? Besides the Battle Ready creatures and Horns to Hide: Fissure/Negate/Volcano

Building problems? Fissure/Negate/Volcano.

Problem with Enchantments? Disenchant.

Some other domains have cards that can wipe out or control creatures (Lysis, Sunburst, Cloudburst, Entangle, Teleport) or cards that can wipe out buildings (Tremor).. but MF has a Destruction Trinity of cards that can be used for all the above... Fissure/Negate/Volcano will take care of both creatures and buildings. Two of them can even take care of enchantments. One of them can take care of a creature and/or building with half a dozen enchantments on it in one fell swoop.

I know there were rants against Sylvan before I started this game. And it resulted in a rebalancing. Thought it was time to start the MF rants

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Altren wrote:

I agree with Keyser, and that's what I'm planning to implement actually.

|| The Rise of the DCC | Plasmatium Netherious | Tastes Like Chicken | The Astridian Conspiracy ||

Guild -> | Platypus Rising|

MF always was strong in close battle, but MF also always was slow. While your dwarves trying to reach opponents base he can run around and attack you from behind, or just build new buildings far away to capture 2nd flux well.
Negate? Choose wise what, where and when you trying to place (catch when opponent used his flux, place in unrevealed spaces or make him negate not so good card to put your good in next action)
Volcano? When you see that your MF opponent got MM just place you creatures not so close to each other, it's pretty easy and volcano becomes worse than lysis.
Fissure? 5 flux is so much to call it strong card. And use your aloft figures if you so scared by fissure.

5 flux? losing 4 glory? Heck, it'd still be a magnificent card if you lost 8 glory.

If you doubt this, just play against Hithlum!

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Altren wrote:

I agree with Keyser, and that's what I'm planning to implement actually.

|| The Rise of the DCC | Plasmatium Netherious | Tastes Like Chicken | The Astridian Conspiracy ||

Guild -> | Platypus Rising|

Personally, I'd like to see one flux added to goose tamer. Oops. wrong thread.

I switched to MF a while back because it is the only domain with reliable non-creature control (Negate and Disenchant). Those cards have won far too many games for me. Everything else is just a bonus. I'm hoping some other domains get control options in the next set.

The thing with Negate is that its caster has to choose wisely what to use it on, for it to be super-powered. This is often easy in constructed matches, as many people know fairly well what their opponents' decks consist of, and thus know where the Negate hurts most. This is because in MC:s it's usually the fairly small bunch of people playing against each other and there are only so many people that are similarly ranked to you. Maybe a larger player base and the next set will help with this...

No other color has anything like ord stone at the moment. Gather Spirits sure tries, but it's A) unreliable as there often aren't corpses around when you would most need the flux B) it gives a bonus of only 3 and the Stone gets ahead in just 6 rounds. A first turn Ord Stone is thus better than Gather Spirits at any point almost without exceptions. The combos with Ix can be useful, but they require a lot of setting up, and Ix is very vulnerable itself with only 3 health. Part of he reason why that constant flux gain is so powerful, is that the gain of 3 per turn in early game and the typical gain of 4 a bit later won't be enough for dropping much more than 1 card a turn, except with some weenie decks, and that means a card advantage to the player using ord stone. That alone wouldn't be enough to make it so powerful, but the extra flux can be later used very effectively on some cards like Ord Beast, Magnetide Beacon and Draknor's Chain.

Training... Casting training will always bring you a lot of advantage without much need to think how to use it. It doesn't take a master strategist to cast a Training on a guy with 0 health, and then have it kill a creature or destroy a building which it couldn't otherwise have done. Even after that, he gets to keep the creature and it will be even sturdier than originally in most cases. How to deal with it? Sure, there is Lysis if you have the flux saved up after they cast Training. But even then Lysising the guy means giving a flux advantage of 2 to the opponent, as the creature would have died without the training and Lysis costs 2 more. Other than that there is encasement that costs 1 more and entangle that is very unreliable and easy to get around. Using disenchants (if you are lucky enough to have one in hand and playable at the right moment) for Trainings is a waste and again gives flux advantage to opponent. Something as easy and cheap to get as a trained thistle falcon is enough to decide many games.

Would it make a difference if Fissure didn't substract glory points? Maybe it would against some decks using alternative glory gaining methods, but it should be easy to guarantee your opponent won't get glory for a few turns with a Fissure. Can any other domain fight back against a card that makes anything disappear immediately for 5 flux?

This post wasn't meant as a rant or shouldn't be interpreted as complaining. I'm not saying any of the above cards should be nerfed, or that their users are lame or anything. I think it's clear that MF is easily the most powerful faction at the moment, but it's ok as it's impossible to ever reach perfect balance with a game like this. I believe the developers have tried their best and have done a good job anyway. That being said, I hope these matters will be taken into consideration in new expansions(?) and tweaking the first one, that is coming soon.

I actually think ord stone and training are both overrated. A round 1 ord stone is 3 less mana you get to spend round 1. I'll spend that flux on a Galom's Prospectors or a Mahal/Building combo to beat you to the center. The flux advantage is then negated. More generally, it takes 3 round to pay for itself and 6 turns to match up with gather spirits. 6 rounds is an eternity. If you manage to hold everything else equal for 10 or 15 turns after you play it then that is a big win. That's a big if though.

Training only really shines if you can play it on a creature that is about to die (otherwise I can just take out the trained creature for a 2:1 card advantage and likely a flux advantage any number of ways. Plus, it requires 2 domain. This means it often clogs your hand uselessly in the critical early game. In its place, you could simply include another 1 domain creature that is always playable.

The card I hate the most from MF is training. Every time someone uses it against me it is a blowout. I used to have ascent as an answer but now that card is unplayable. I'm pretty sure that MF could beat Sylvan before the rebalancing and now it doesn't really have to try as hard. Hopefully the next set evens things up a bit.

Ascent is very playable as an answer to training if training is that big a deal. You pay 4 flux. They pay 2 + cost of card so it should come out at least a wash.

What about the decks that don't have training? Ascent is too mediocre to use in my opinion. Also, there are better answers to training.