My best deck still relies heavily on Mahals. At 5 they are far from useless, you just need to be more careful about when and where you play them.

If that was the issue, this was IMO a horribly wrong way to fix it. Better would have been to give all or most domain-giving buildings some sort of power, e.g. "2: this building is shuffled into your deck" or "The ruins of this building have: 2: this card is shuffled into your deck". A bit different approach: "4: return this building to your hand" or "The ruins of this building have: 6: return this card to your hand."

these building ideas have been noted, will try to find a place for them in Galath, or elsewhere in my designs.

my point wasn't just that vapor mahal being the only building that could do that was bad, but also that it was too low a flux cost for the effect. I'm all for new cards with such abilities in the future, but they had better not, for instance, cost 4, have no cost to use the ability, and provide domain. oh, and have 2 vision. and be bases. seriously? it was probably the most powerful building for its cost.. you could probably argue that it was a close call with any of beacon of c, thunderhead reach, hadarck's fort and throne, for different play situations and formats -- reach is completely broken in limited, throne is broken in constructed, but vapor may have been almost as good in both.

Winning a MC with mono-sylvan deck is still possible, just did it out of 11 players, winning 4 games in a row. My verdict - sylvan is fine.

I'm sorry for ranting and whining before... On second thought, the changes are mostly ok, except for 5 (In my - possibly worthless - opinion):

1) Enchantments coming into play dimmed. This actually decreased diversity in deck building and weakened E and DL relatively. Diversity decreased because desert decks and ocean-utilizing decks were hurt by whorl and arid getting worse. Moreover, a good anti-weenie weapon, the termites was made a lot less useful.

2) Reef now costing one more. Another blow to E and especially to decks that use a lot of ocean stuff (duh). I really don't think reef should have been treated equally to the other buildings since it can only spawn in ocean, and is a lot more limited.

3) Benefits. Yet another blow to E and destroying a whole category of decks, decreasing diversity. Desert & ocean-decks are still somewhat playable, even though maybe not competitively, but Benefit-deck is no more.

4) Ascent. Assuming 3 flux would still have been too cheap, at 4 it should at least return the creature to the top of the players deck instead of hand to be usable IMHO.

5) Training. Honestly, does the additional X domain matter at all? If anything, the card is even more OP now without ascents around.

And fort's price being about a hundred now, it's clearly one of the most powerful cards out there now, given that it's an uncommon.

So far, I have stayed off of this thread, not wanting to complain about the changes. A couple of days ago, I realized how much of a financial impact the changes have on me... and I don't have a lot of spendable income at the moment to spend on the game.

I'm currently deciding if I should spend more money on this game, or drop it altogether.

<soapbox>

I understand and fully appreciate the gesture of offering a rebate on the loss in value of cards after re-balancing.

Unfortunately, this doesn't actually fix the problems caused by the re-balancing.

When I started this game, I liked the idea behind "elementals", so I did my first domain in those. I wanted to build a competitive MC deck, and saw that many of the winning decks had Sylvan as a strong base, so my next two domains were both in Sylvan.

This means I have invested almost 2000gp into Sylvan.

And even if I get some of that money back, it won't fix the problem that I still have a lot of money stuck in cards that are far inferior now. If I had known these changes were happening, I wouldn't have invested money into Sylvan or Elemental, but into DL and MF. I'm wary to invest more money into this game, because it all might go to WASTE again.

"But Jed's giving money back!" You say. Partially true. Take this as an example: Card X was worth 200gp before the "re-balancing". A month later, it drops to 150gp. Jed gives me 50gp. But I still have 150gp invested in a card that no one really wants anymore and that I can't sell on the market. Three or four months later, that cards is worth 50gp or less. I got screwed out of 150gp because of changes.

What's to stop the programmers from making such changes again? Why should I put money into MF or DL if they are going to be sauced with the next unforeseen change or expansion?

With the "re-balancing", many of my good cards are now shot. My deck isn't as quick as it used to be. I went from finishing top 5 on the ladder to having less than 10 ladder points this week (losing almost all my games to MF decks. The only ones I win are against other Sylvan/Elemental decks). My Sylvan/Elemental deck now takes 8 flux for the bamboo+vapor base extension. Beacons take two green domains now, making them far less effective as expansions.

Sylvan's ability to control or eliminate opponent's creatures is seriously hampered. Ascent now pales in comparison to its counterpart in DL, Lysis. Sylvan and Elemental have no real way to deal with the powerhouse enchantments of MF (Think you killed a creature? bam! it got trained!.. Think you killed a building? Bam! It's made of iron), while Sylvan's creature control of entangle is easily avoided (teleport/twister/exhaustedmine/draknor'schain/etc the creature to a desert or water space).

</soapbox>

The good thing about printed cards is that they can't change overnight by a simple programming code. Maybe I should go back to spending money on MTG instead?

_________________

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|

Its true that balancing changes have shifted the meta game. It is frustrating, and I believe that such changes should be done only when really needed, but, at least with the undercosting of vision (which was helping sylvan the most) they were. Furthermore, the meta game is always shifting anyways. The expansion will arrive at some point and I expect deck building to fundamentally shift in some way. Even without an expansion, the metagame changes as people discover things. It took a long time before Mahals became popular. Today I saw Uraxor with a nasty deck that, while perhaps helped by slowing other decks a little, would have been just as nasty before the balancing changes.

I think comparing this game to MtG is a little unfair; MtG is a lot older, so they have had *many* sets to shake down the balance issues. I played MtG when it first came out, and there were all sorts of balancing changes (in the form of errata to cards) and some cards were straight up banned. If you had a deck built around those cards, tough luck. I'm ok with some balance issues in return for a fresh experience.

Oh, and for an answer to MF enchants, I'm a fan of the silver stagg. Fits is pretty much any deck and is a solid creature even if you don't need his ability. I don't think those enchants need much of an answer though; I don't even run them anymore. When the perfect play situation comes up they are great, but they tend to clog your hand on a bad draw. As an additional option for training, for Elemental you can use Icy Encasement on an annoying creature (no standard Ele deck should be without 3)

Well we will definitely try our hardest not to change cards after they are released. I understand that it is very frustrating. This will hopefully be the last time we ever have to resort to doing that.

As far as these changes reducing the value of your cards, you have to keep in mind that a card's value only comes from players playing the game. If there are no players then a card has no value. If the game isn't balanced then people will stop playing it. I know many people that left because sylvan was overpowered. These people leaving lowers the price more than the balancing changes did. So I really think that the balance changes will increase the value of your collection in the long run.

Sylvan is still very good. Sure you probably have to change the deck a bit but you can definitely still make a winning Sylvan deck.

Anyway a new set is coming soon and it will change the meta game much more than these changes.