The Metagame: a multi-purpose community project

[OldTrees]

The metagame is never perfected. It can always be expanded. Everything that increases the metagame has some value to it. plastiqe and majofa's suggestions only tweak existing cards but, since the existing cards are not perfectly balanced, those suggestions would improve the metagame. Is it viable to try to rebalance with just tweaks? It can be depending the the cards that existed prior. Is it effective? Again, I believe so.

Is adding cards preferable? In some cases yes but in other cases no. Flooding is a great example of a card that is best fixed by tweaking cards rather than by adding new cards. PC on the other hand is a great example where adding new cards is easier than tweaking each permanent to be less effective against elements that lack PC.

Adding options is usually best implemented by adding cards.
Tweaking options is usually best implemented by tweaking cards.

The Buff/Nerf sections (tweaking) and the Card Ideas and Art sections (adding) are both valuable sources of suggestions.
Imbalance can be fixed with tweaking. Dominance can be fixed with adding counters.

[The_Mormegil]

Thanks to Cheesy111 for the writeup on the first BL season to include shards in its metagame.

Also, most of the information available in the OP now is largely outdated, and there is no mention of the new shards (in particular Shard of Focus). If someone wants to contribute...

[OldTrees]

Shard of Focus

Shard of Focus currently costs 7 |5 + 1 card and has an activation cost of 0. It starts with 1hp but gains 15hp per turn.

Shard of Focus can be played turn 1 fairly easily with 1 Nova. (What are the chances of at least 1 of each in the starting hand with 6 copies of each in a 30 card deck?) Shard of Focus in then able to destroy 1 permanent per turn. Black hole hits 5th | 4th turn. (60% chance of also being 4th turn unupped).
This results in a Qucksand | Earthquake + Black Hole (value 3 |2 + 4 |3 +2cards) of unprecedented alacrity, increased flexibility for a relatively minute cost 3.4 |2.4 +2cards.

There are 4 responses to this:
1) Play Shard of Focus to equalize
2) Structure your deck to have turn 1.5 CC
3) Build a Permanent less deck (Immolation, Supernova, no shields or weapons. However the Black Hole hurts worse now.)
4) Structure your deck to have turn 1.5 Protect Artifact

These responses are too demanding/restricting of deckbuilders and are not viable enough to reduce the frequency of Shard of Focus to a point where it can occasionally be ignored to build other decks.

One option to nerf this combo would be to slow it down. An activation cost of 3-4 would slow down some of the pillar destruction and slow down the Black Hole. It would also increase the cost so that it would be closer to the Duo combo it imitates.

[furballdn]

CL metagame: Shards the game. Seriously, nearly every CL deck contains at least 6 shards of a certain type.

[dragonsdemesne]

Most of my CL decks they I've been using have 2-4 shards.  (usually 2 shard of focus :p)  Other than my monodeath poison deck and my shard golem deck, none of them have more than 5 shards.  Most of my toughest matches in CL have been against other people also using shard of focus.  It's definitely shaping the metagame there a lot.  Giving it an activation cost would help some, but in rainbow supernova/quantum tower decks, it'll barely be noticed.

A different way of adding another activation cost to help balance it would be to add a cost that was something like 'discard a card from hand', 'discard a card from hand at random', 'sacrifice a card in play', 'sacrifice a card in play at random', (or limit it to either creatures or permanents), or allow your opponent to get a benefit, like destroying one of your cards back, drawing a card, gaining life, or costing life yourself.  (though an HP cost would be negligible, unless it were quite high; something like 5 hp/use would not affect anything, while 10, 12, or 15 would)

[Chapuz]

This is by far one of the most important topics in the forum.

Just posting to keep track of it.

[rosutosefi]

In BL, I agree that the decks with shards are by far the most effective ones. The only "powerful" shard I have 6 of now is Shard of Readiness, which is very strong with Pharaohs or Golden Nymphs. The power of the shard may be a good way to indirectly buff the pharaoh in the metagame, but the problem is that pharaoh itself is still not viable for competitive PvP, it's just that the shard is just strong enough to make this viable. Too strong, IMO. Too strong that not adding one will make your deck look silly.

I've seen the horrors of shard of focus, too. A turn 2 shard of focus can pretty much end the game for you especially with discord. Seeing that 6 of them can destroy 18 permanents, you can easily lock an enemy with them, possibly even destroying all the pillars in their deck. The black hole just makes this worse. How many decks out there can stand black holes AND tons of PC? And this is a creature that gains 15 hp after a single cast. Can you kill something with 16hp so easily? Yes, maybe reverse time, but this has always been the bane of gravity and this only makes the game much more rock-paper-scissor-like.

And one indirect result is: Ghostmare got buffed. People now decide against firestalling and ghostmare is somewhat effective against SoF. We all love buffing ghostmare, right? 

[Jenkar]

... If your firestall can't handdlle creatures startin' with 1hp, it's pretty weak

[OldTrees]

... If your firestall can't handdlle creatures startin' with 1hp, it's pretty weak

The primary concern is not about how it will impact CC dominated decks. The primary concern is about how it will drastically cull out many other valuable decks.

[ralouf]

... If your firestall can't handdlle creatures startin' with 1hp, it's pretty weak

Turn 1 : nova SoFO
Your turn : play pend/pillar

Turn 2 : destroy a pend/pillar, become 0/16, make a troll face.

[Chapuz]

... If your firestall can't handdlle creatures startin' with 1hp, it's pretty weak

Turn 1 : nova SoFO
Your turn : play pend/pillar

Turn 2 : destroy a pend/pillar, become 0/16, make a troll face.

Yeah, SoFo rocks in PVP2 too. Sanctuary is the only anti denial card and the way to bypass it was PC ---> quanta denial. Now, one card has both of them. In PVP2 I implemented decks with massive quanta generation and tones of CC. Idk how many people started to do it too.