Turn 5 has an 8/8, 8/8, 7/8, 7/8, 2/2
why do I even play this game. Might try out motg
Mage is fine. Summon Mage is strong, not broken.
In order to do what he did he had to:
Play nothing for 3 turns
Draw his Mountain Giant
Have his Giant survive
Draw Conjurer’s Calling
Save the COIN OR draw his Khadgar
Were you applying any sort of board pressure? Did you think to hang on to removal for the Giant?
Dragon Mage is currently the best variant of this deck and it’s not even in the top 5 decks right now. Token Druid, Mech Hunter, Murloc Shaman, Tempo Rogue and two variants of Warrior are currently doing better than the best variant of Khadgar Mage. If you’re struggling against this deck, it loses miserably to Mech Hunter and Zoolock and especially Murloc Shaman.
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I wish people would stop using this argument.
Just because it lacks the consistency other decks have, doesn’t make it less of a pain when they do pull it off.
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A deck isn’t a problem just because it makes you salty when it works.
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Consistency is a part of balance though. Powerplays like Khadgar + calling on Giants should be hard to pull off. When it’s too easy to do it, it isn’t balanced.
there are different types of balance as well. hearthstone heavily uses the polarized type of balance in (at least) two ways:
-
within the deck itself: if a deck has a condition that practically guarantees a win (for example exodia or otk) or is a great advantage (mage) it seems to be fine until the deck becomes oppressive win-rate wise or until almost all matchups are 80/20s.
. -
across decks: paper beats stone, stone beats scissors, scissors beat paper. a strong deck (even winrate-wise) seems to be alright if it has some counters within the meta. for example this mage thing or the for a while heavily complained-about token druid are pretty easy to deal with as a control warrior, which has problems with stuff that decks that suffer from mage or druid beat.
I believe that blizzard is fine with a paper/stone/scissors balance (that they only influence if it doesn’t change itself, hence the long waiting times for patches). many players want a communism balance (all are equal) though.
if it was up to me, I’d prefer communism as well, but at some point everyone’s gotta accept where the developer wants to go with its game and act accordingly. and in my opinion blizzard is designing hearthstone towards are wow-effect oriented game, in which almost all strong decks are combo decks of that sort that is able to produce 25 mana worth of value by paying 5 mana.
I think there’s still fun to be had here, but those who want chess with cards might be looking in the wrong place. (this is a big picture type of comment. I’m not saying that this particular thread is an example of pettiness. I don’t judge anyone for getting annoyed at something, but if anyone constantly finds himself in annoying situations, I think it’s time to look at the circumstances.)
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No, but constant overuse of a deck does. I don’t mind dragon mage deck atm, the one deck that seems to be excessively used at the minute is the mech warrior. I can’t seem to play 6-8 games without at least half of the decks I’ve played against being mech warriors. It’s starts to get boring to play when the meta gets saturated with a particular deck.
May decks are strong if everything goes perfectly. A lucky bomb warrior can kill you on turn 5 with Elekk on 3, Wrenchcalibur on 4 and Clockwork Goblin on 5. Summon Mage needs a lot to actually get a big board early. Usually they die to Aggro opponents before they even play a minion.
No, Mage is NOT balanced. They had to give Jaina some OP sh*t like this since they covered up her boobs, otherwise no one would play her! Also, Bush did 9/11
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Which is fair, but this post and my reply were about whether Khadgar Mage is a problem
It can be. For Blizzard, two things are (or: should be) important when they think about balance.
One is the actual win rate of decks. A deck that wins more then 55-60% is too strong and will start being played by everyone, sapping the fun out of the game and then losing players. Blizzard does not want to lose players.
But the other one is perception. A turn 1 Coin - Keleseth - Shadowstep - Keleseth - Shadowstep - Keleseth combo makes the opponent feel like they have no chance at all, but it’s okay because it is incredibly rare to pull off exactly that opening hand. A turn 4 Barnes or turn 5 Coin - Shadow Essence into a big minion, with an Eternal Servitude already in hand feels equally bad and is more likely to happen. I think this combo has cost the game some players when it was still in Standard and popular, and I still don’t understand why Blizzard did not nerf this when it was popular. Not because of the win rate (I know that same deck loses terribly when they draw all big minions before they can pull them in other ways - the deck was basically a 50/50 good draw = auto win / bad draw = auto lose), but because facing the deck with good draw three times in a row makes one hate the game.
I don’t play much Ranked so I do not know if Khadgar Mage is in the second category. Depends on the how often they can pull off the oppressive combo mentioned in the first post, I guess.
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My answer was simply no, I don’t think so. I think the mech warrior posses more of a problem. Are there any good well established counters to the mech warrior that can width stand all the removals the mech warrior has?
bomb hunter and mech paladin
This is literally the only argument you need though. I’ve tried playing that mage deck and its so inconsistent it’s ridiculous. Yes, when they can pull it off it can be extremely difficult to counter, but its not a combo that you can pull off regularly enough to make it a viably competitive deck. This deck is extremely susceptible to bad card draw and gets annihilated by strong aggro/tempo decks if it doesn’t draw well. It’s a mid-tier 2 meme deck at best and anyone who is serious about pushing their ladder climb shouldn’t even be considering using such an inconsistent deck
It’s not common, I’ve laddered with the deck, played over 50 games with it and I’ve only pulled off that combo once. I would agree it would need looking at if it was consistent but from my experience it is not.
Half on year later on MTGO forums
“GAEM IS HARD, WHY I NO WIN, I DEMAND WINS, HS SO MUCH BETTER”
oh, and the most amusing one, as most of us know what is teh microtransaction model in MTGO
“Gib refund!!! I’ve spent 2k euros to have one decent deck, and now I can’t use it for winz”