The February patch notes dropped last night and boy was it a doozy! There was a lot to take in but the next question we need to ask ourselves is, did Equinox make all the right calls with their decisions?

The Sigismar in the Room

Sigismar has been dominating the Tumult ever since the off. He’s been competitive from the beginning, and even when Waru, Treyst and Afanas were dominating things, Sigismar was the reliable deck that could still pull out wins. It has never been out of the top metagame and it’s been clear for some time that he was too good. Equinox chose to put in the small nerf that several people including myself had previously outlined. This was to exclude Sigismar’s free token on the first turn, which removed his nearly free expedition on turn 1. The question we need to ask ourselves though is whether this is enough. Sigismar was already very good in Beyond the Gates and he’s just got more and more good cards over the upcoming sets like License Withdrawal. I think he’ll still be strong and that by taking down his key competition (see later) that he will still dominate.

Bravos takes the Hit

Bravos has been doing very well recently. I’m a big Bravos fan but when all four Bravos heroes are in the top ten heroes, you have to feel that possibly something has been overcooked. Tiny Jinn and Haven Seringar (common and rare but not Uniques) are banned therefore. Now Tiny Jinn I feel had it coming. He may look cute but he fuels degenerate Hunger plays too early and I think without him it will be so much harder to pull off. The alternatives Smoldering Jinn and Mighty Jinn probably won’t get played as much though will be tried. I think this is good for the game. Haven Seringar though I am not so sure on, as it was our most reliable common card draw character in Bravos. The alternatives look slightly less appealing:

• Departed Brother (common) – costs 4 to draw the card from reserve
• Leviathan Spotter (common) – costs 2 but needs more set up with another 4 cost card in hand from reserve. Will get play in Atsadi
• Wingsuit Jumper (common) – costs 3 but forces you to rush. Fine for Sol but not what you want with the other heroes.
• Pastry Chef (common) – Costs 5 from reserve and needs 2 boosts on it when you play it from reserve to draw a card. This is not a good card.

Niether Basira nor Kojo is keen on these alternatives and it’s going to make it really tough for Bravos without the Seringar. I’m not the greatest fan therefore of this ban. They’ll probably survive but they’ll have to either play rares or uniques to help draws now or rely on resupplies.

The Great Axiom Treyst Massacre

More cards were affected in Axiom than in Bravos with this patch, though the rarities that were affected were much more variable. The stated goal seems to be keeping Treyst’s power level in check, but its actual effect will be to put a hammer blow to Subhash, Della and Treyst as well.

• Dr Frankenstein (rare Axiom) was suspended as its interactions with a lot of the new permanents (Restocking Station in particular) makes it very strong when played from reserve
• The Grems (common) was also suspended as it was just too good to take out an opponent’s permanents that cost 3 or less for such a cheap cost. That said, the rare version is not suspended so I’m guessing that those players who want this effect will move across to the rare.
• Restocking Station (common and OOF) were also suspended as they were creating loops of repetitive play that was causing an issue. I’m not sure why the Bravos OOF version got hit too as I don’t really see it getting played or being an issue. I’m very suprised to see the Bravos version on the suspended list.

Now Treyst needed taking down a peg or two but it just looks like they nerfed Axiom in general. They could have made Treyst need 6 counters instead of 5 to get his late game activations, but instead they chose wider nerfs.  Now I’m not saying that the wider nerfs weren’t needed, but it looks a bit like trying to crack a nut with a sledgehammer at the moment.

No Prison will hold Me!

There is a fringe deck that the player Runefolk has championed that uses Moyo and Celebration Day to create a situation where the opponent can’t move their expeditions forward until the deck has built up such an advantage that they will win. It’s a very frustrating deck to play against and Equinox have decided to ban the rare and OOF versions of Celebration Day (just to be sure). I can totally understand why they did this but it’s a shame when a player finds something new to champion. I hope they bring the card back with errata that says the card is removed from the game after play.

Going Round Again

In a more suprising move, the Equinox devs decided to act against decks that resupply and recycle cards to build up a loop where they can consistently replay their powerful uniques. It is a lot of fun seeing these shenanaghans going on the first time you see it, but I can completely understand for tournament play that this can result in timeout games and a lot of draws as well as a frustrating experience.

The new rule is that you can only shuffle your discards into your deck if you run out of cards in the morning. Now I think that this might have some weird unexpected consequences whereby you genuinely run out of cards during a day when your card says you can draw a card. I may not lose sleep over this one but I think it will have a strange side effect.

Watching the Cards

Muna multi anchor uniques are still on the watchlist as well as Counting Sheep, which it seems is helping Rin and Fen Festival decks do better. I’m not really that worried about either at the moment, though of course that could change in a bizzaro alternate future. Finally The Ouroboros, Lyra Bastion (Axiom OOF rare) is added to the list to keep an eye on resupply loops that can lead to some ten minute turns.

The Great Rotation

The development team has finally decided to introduce a format whereby sets rotate out of standard play. They decided that this will start with set 7 (currently unnamed) which will see the rotation of three sets. Beyond the Gates, Trial by Frost and Whispers of the Maze will all rotate out when set 7 comes in. This will effectively remove the initial 3 heroes in each faction from Standard as well as removing a lot of problematic Uniques from BTG.

It will however leave only four sets in the environment and they will all be smaller sets (BTG being around the size of 1.5 sets). My expectation is that set 7 will have another full compliment of 6 heroes (one per faction). This would give us three heroes for each faction available to play in what will then be termed standard play. All cards would be playable in a new eternal format.

I am not keen on this rotation method for two reasons:

• Firstly because it decimates the card pool in one go and means that heroes that have not had a chance to shine in the sun with just be cast adrift without ever having had the chance to get the support they need. Exalted cards were partially brought in to help struggling heroes, but it looks like they will not be available in time to actually help Arjun or Subhash.
• Secondly investing money in a TCG set is a significant amount of expenditure and set 3 (Whispers from the Maze) will only have been playable for around 15 months when it is forced to rotate from the standard environment. That’s not really a good investment and will mean that every third set is less worth investing in.

The Alternative

My alternative would be to have a standard environment with the last 6 sets in it. That way it is easy to remember (just the last 6 sets are legal) and all cards would then be playable in standard for 2 years. Charles stated in the AMA that they did it the way they did so that new players wouldn’t get confused, but having a easily understandable – last 6 sets would get around that.

Support for heroes would be at the best it could be at various points in the cycle but heroes could rise and wane as the environment changes making it more exciting and better that the lumpy rotation format they have proposed.

Now there is one issue with my proposal and that is removing overperforming heroes that were reprinted in TBF and WFM. I would have an addendum to rotation that said that the following heroes rotate under the first three rotations:

• First rotation under set 7 – Treyst, Kojo, Fen, Teiga, Sigismar and Afanas rotate
• Second rotation under set 8 – Sierra, Basira, Nevenka, Rin, Gulrang and Akesha rotate
• Third rotation under set 9 – Subhash, Atsadi, Auraq, Arjun, Waru and Lindiwe rotate

Now this may not be the clearest I agree, but it means that we slowly rotate out the BTG heroes in a structured way and it would all be sensible with full set rotations going forward after that.

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