When Zephrys got announced, people were insanely excited about it. Getting the perfect card to solve any situation, that card is nuts! And it is nuts. Getting a board clear, huge minion, removal, etc. is genuinely nuts. But is that necessarily a good thing?
You see, there are a few cards that are so nuts, that they become too good not to run. For instance, Leeroy Jenkins - a very powerful finisher that makes it’s way into any Aggro deck that isn’t entirely focused on minions. Zilliax - it’s versatility and overall power is unmatched, you’d be a fool not to run it! Archivist Elysiana - if you’re a Control deck that doesn’t have a late-game finisher/fatigue plan, just stick this in and you’ll be fine!
And it’s not just neutral legendaries - Azure Drake, Ice Block, Ultimate Infestation, Spreading Plague, all of these were a serious problem because of their sheer power. If you didn’t want to run these cards in your deck, you needed a very good reason for it.
So why is this a problem?
All of these cards created lots of problem in terms of Card Design, Deckbuilding and Dust Management. Card Designers had to come up with new cards, that either diminish the problem (Golakka Crawler, Skulking Geist, etc.), or are just straight-up better than the problematic cards. Option 1 is much better long-term, but it’s much more difficult to design and balance in a very delicate way, weak enough that the problematic deck isn’t completely invalidated and still remains playable despite an existing counter, but not strong enough to become a problem of its own.
Deckbuilders also suffer from this. They could build that Ramp Druid they really wanted, but they need to add cards like Ultimate Infestation or Spreading Plague, otherwise their entire deck just becomes a joke. They could build that Control Warrior they liked, but they’d have to sacrifice a deckslot to fit in cards like Baleful Banker/Young Brewmaster to even have a chance in mirror matchups. Because of these cards, players have less room to experiment with and decks have less “flex spots” overall.
Players in general suffer from this as well. If they want to have a viable deck, they need to craft those cards in order for the deck to be competitively viable, and that dust cost can add up very quickly, especially if you don’t have a large amount of resources to begin with. Sometimes players can just switch cards around to save dust, but these powerful cards are often far too important to miss out on them, and there are often no other options available, so what do you do then?
So how does Zephrys fit into all of this?
Now let’s finally take a look at the genie himself. Zephrys’ effect is immensely powerful and has synergy with the archetype comparable to cards like Kazakus or Raza the Chained. You could open a pack, get, say, Reno for instance, and think to yourself “Wow, this card is so cool! I’m going to build a deck around it!”, but suddenly Zephrys pulls you aside and asks you “Now hold on a minute, if you want that deck to be any good you’re gonna need to cough up 1600 dust. What, you can’t afford that? Then BEGONE, I banish thee and thy deck into the empty void of obscurity!”.
If you want to have a good highlander deck, you need that 1600 dust in order to even be competitive. If you have that 1600 dust, you now have 1 deckslot less to experiment with. If you don’t, your deck is garbage. Zephrys may be an impressive card, both in terms of coding as well as power level, but we only need to look behind that fake smile and those glowing orbs of power to see a growing problem. People might not see it right now, but eventually it’ll grow enough to get their attention, which might be too late.
EDIT: I know I’ll be getting tons of hate for this, but I’m hoping this’ll become more and more apparent as time goes on and all of the hype fades away.
