February 04, 2009

Proposal: MEV-134 Blink 3-cost errata

If you've read some of my post-MEV articles, or listened to my appearance on The Ring Has Chosen...you'll know that I think Exiles is incredibly broken. The biggest key culprit to the problem is Blink, Earth-295 - Clarice Ferguson. She reads:

When Blink enters play, put a shift counter on each shifted card you own.

Think about that for a second. Enters play. With some of the other great shift effects that are available to Exiles I think Blink's text is far far too powerful. The possibilities for abusive counter generation is far beyond what is healthy or fun for anyone playing against the Exiles deck and I think it needs to be changed.

My proposal for an errata is a simple one. I think it should read:

When Blink you recruit Blink, put a shift counter on each shifted card you own.

Now I don't think that this will completely stop Exiles from being one of the most powerful decks in the game, but I do think that it slows it down enough that it might be beatable. I'm going to leave this up for debate among the players for a few weeks, and then decide whether or not to make this a ruling for our hobby league or not. Please weigh in with your thoughts on the subject folks!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you and think you should make that a ruling at the hobby league. It's not fair at all considering that in one turn you could probably bring her in and out of play 2 or 3 times easily.

Anonymous said...

Ya I agree, and with Beak saves the day and Panopticron it's uber broken. That solution would slow the deck down but it's still going to be the most deadly deck to date in my opinion.

Anonymous said...

I still think it's the Shift machanic that is too powerful. If you limited it to shifting in one character per turn that would be fair but that would ruin too many cards in MEV. I think if you eratta Blink and made Shift or the shifting effects negatable by existing means then the deck would be much more reasonable and fun.

Anonymous said...

Hey this is sorta on topic, I'd like to put together a revenge squad deck with the updated Bizarro world that give's Revenge Squad characters the Shift keyword. Any thoughts on how to make it competive? I was thinking 2 and 3 drop RS swarms on turn 4 or 5 similar to Exiles but without all the "comes into play" effects... just swarm beatdown.

Obsidian3D said...

I have a few other ideas for slowing down Shift shenanigans on Exiles, but I don't want to wipe the mechanic out as a whole, because I think the other teams that use it, use it fairly.

As to the Revenge Squad idea...I've been batting it around the week the text list came out. We'll have to sit down together and come up with something.

Anonymous said...

Shift should be a payment effect "Remove X Shift counters from a counter with a cost X --> Bring this character into play" type of thing :S then it would be negatable!

Anonymous said...

*cough* "from a character with cost x", that is what I meant...

Anonymous said...

i totally agree with you jon. good thinking.

Anonymous said...

I think it would be better to have blinks effect read: "When Blink comes into play, you may discard up to three cards. If you do, place a shift counter on shifted cards you own for each card you discarded this way."

Anonymous said...

Ok I feel like an idiot... Shifting in a card is a payment...

well this could potentialy break the exiles in golden but in modern i think if you had it something like that shifted cards arent removed from play, but are in play as characters, just cant be used, attacked or stunned and are exhausted and they read "Remove X shift counters from this card where X is its cost >>> Bring this card into play in your front row. Use only during your recruit step."

Obsidian3D said...

The discard idea isn't a bad one either. We do have to be careful about modifying things here. I don't want to screw Shift as a mechanic because I think it's a good one when used by non-Exiles characters.

What I think needs to be done is simply a way of slowing down the crazy resource point gain that Exiles as a team has. I think the 3-cost Blink is the biggest key to that.

Anonymous said...

Ya maybe change the 3 drop blinks effect to Jon's idea, or "Discard 3 cards. (Blinks Current Effect)."