[Official] Pandemonium | Pandemonium

[kev]

List of Effects: Ice bolt, Drain Life, Fire bolt, Sniper, Shockwave, Lightning, Freeze, Gravity Pull, Reverse Time, Infection, Lobotomize, Parallel Universe

	Upped Panda	Upped Firestorm
Cost	5	5
Area of Effect	All opponent's creatures	All opponent's creatures
Effects	Varies	3 damage

Conclusion: If you have no other quanta it'll do an average of 3.2 damage per creature half the time, and the other half it will freeze, GP, RT, poison, lobo, or PU the creature.  Those effects are situationally better or worse than damage and uncertainty over the spell's effects is sort of a built-in nerf.  Upped Panda is about as good as a similar spell, Firestorm.

	Unupped Panda	Unupped Rain of Fire
Cost	3	7
Area of Effect	All creatures	All opponent's creatures
Effects	Varies	3 damage

Conclusion:  In situations where you have no creatures, immortal or burrowed creatures, Unupped Panda is ridiculously overpowered.  In situations where you have high-HP creatures, Unupped Panda is significantly overpowered.  By itself the card is situationally very powerful next to a similar spell, Rain of Fire.  The trouble is the deckbuilder has control over these situations (i.e. Hematite Golems are a better compliment than Phase Spiders).  Overall the discrepancy in cost between these two cards is too high.

Possible changes: Increase cost or have it randomly effect 75% of creatures.

[cookiepirate]

but more than half the time, you DO NOT have no/burrowed/immortal creatures
also, people don't like to use panda too much because of its unreliability

[ratcharmer]

If unupped panda wasn't better than RoF when you have no creatures on the board (i.e. it's ideal situation) then there would be no point whatsoever to the card.

As it is I don't think panda gets much use since the range of decks it works well in is pretty limited.

[LongDono]

I am currently running  PvP deck with this, and it is far from over powered, the effects are so random, and they effect your guys as well.
Most decks that use this use voodoo, or immortal creatures, or no creatures, simple task of not overloading the field and to force the mass CC out. I had to play someone twice and once they figured it out from the first game they destroyed me in the second, if you know whats going to happen this card is easy to avoid.
Also the unupped cost between rain of fire and panda is perfect because rain of fire will not kill your guys off as well.
In short....you can play around this card, the opponets strat is limited due to the card, it is luck based.
Also rain of fire unupped cost alot I admit, but it also will not do 3 damage to your whole side of the field as well. Panda will effect everything and that means your stuff too. This means it's cost should be about half of rain of fire due to it being an insane double edged sword, even voodoo decks can have it backfire. So at most the effect should increase by 1, but if you did that then the card would see even LESS play. that one extra quanta is a really big issue with many decks that use this card.
Also I believe there is no OP deck that uses this card.

[RootRanger]

In some average random deck the card is weak. But in the right deck, I agree; it is overpowered. A card is overpowered if at least one deck makes it overpowered, even if it is weak in most decks.

This card does mass damage for a low cost and crushes any fractal deck, FFQ/Pharoh deck, or deck with many creatures

[jmdt]

Unupped panda is amazing in several decks.

1.)  Creatureless stall decks.  Panda works very well in conjunction with poison or alternative damage for cheap CC, especially with bonewall.   Its also useful in larger entropy based deckout decks.  In these type of decks, you use alternative means to negate the self damaging aspect of the card while keeping the benefits.

2.) In conjunction with voodoo doll.  The fact that panda damages voodoo dolls while also putting CC on the opponent makes it hugely powerful.  I'm these type of decks, panda acts as both offense and defense.

3.) In immortal decks such as flying glories, you again get all the benefits without having any negative aspects.

So in each of the 3 deck types mentioned here, the self harming aspect that allows the card to retain its low cost is negated.

[LongDono]

While some decks like Jmdt listed can use Panda I must ask, are any of those decks overpowered?
Creatureless stall while annoying is not overpowered.
The Voodoo deck makes for a great combination however I don't think it is that great. ( reverse time can backfire but I think thats about it.... not sure... )
The immortal deck would be slow, but yes no bad side effects. Honestly I have never really played with this sort of deck so I wont say to much on this other than, is it really that good?

[ratcharmer]

I'm not going to argue that pandemonium isn't good in those decks, but I would like to point out that none of those combos are exactly game breaking.

I admit I don't pvp that often, but I don't think I've ever encountered an opponent using a pandemonium deck. I have tried it myself and with some success, but none of the decks you can build around this card are extreme powerhouses.

Simply put pandemonium can do lots of damage, but you can't count on it doing damage. Usually at least one of the possible effects on a given creature will be at best useless, and sometimes out and out counterproductive.
(ever reverse timed your opponent's entire field when you're trying to deck them out?)

As to the decks jmdt mentioned:
Pand + voodoo doll -> gravity pull and bblood + voodoo is just flat out a better deck. it's only effective if you have your entire field full of voodoos, which means a trio so you can get fractal. Very card intensive for not a lot of payout.

Creatureless stall-> has no spell that can damage the other player, and discord doesn't deal huge amounts of damage, so unless you're decking them out you need at least a duo. Stalling with a duo doesn't actually work well. Bone wall might get along get with pand, but vulture and boneyard don't really, so most of the time you're better off using plague.
In mono deck-outers reverse time is hugely counterproductive and you can't count on taking out dangerous creatures. Usually it seems like just antimattering the scariest thing on the field would be better.

Immortal decks-> Flying glories doesn't really sound workable, you need a duo (trio technically, but no is needed) and a lot of stalling wouldn't get along with pand. (none of the shields available work well in a / duo)
  / is workable (or at least it holds it's own in pvp1), but nothing to write home about. For the most part what keeps you going there are the phase shields, not pand.

[jmdt]

Creatureless stall-> has no spell that can damage the other player, and discord doesn't deal huge amounts of damage, so unless you're decking them out you need at least a duo. Stalling with a duo doesn't actually work well. Bone wall might get along get with pand, but vulture and boneyard don't really, so most of the time you're better off using plague.
In mono deck-outers reverse time is hugely counterproductive and you can't count on taking out dangerous creatures. Usually it seems like just antimattering the scariest thing on the field would be better.

You should look at entropy's war 2 decks.  Entropy had a bonewall/panda/poison/arsenic deck that had only 1 loss the entire war and was feared by almost every team.  Without specifically predicting the deck and bringing a counter, it was quite difficult to stop.  Similar decks have also popped up in PvP eventsto counter certain types of decks.

[ZephyrPhantom]

Hmmm... this is hard, but I am going to go with my instincts and say keep the card the way it is.  This cards seems hard to balance, but it does have it's counters.

If you must REALLY REALLY REALLY nerf it (I say this with reasonable emphasis), then make it unable to affect cloaked creatures on your opponent's field.

[LongDono]

Creatureless stall-> has no spell that can damage the other player, and discord doesn't deal huge amounts of damage, so unless you're decking them out you need at least a duo. Stalling with a duo doesn't actually work well. Bone wall might get along get with pand, but vulture and boneyard don't really, so most of the time you're better off using plague.
In mono deck-outers reverse time is hugely counterproductive and you can't count on taking out dangerous creatures. Usually it seems like just antimattering the scariest thing on the field would be better.

You should look at entropy's war 2 decks.  Entropy had a bonewall/panda/poison/arsenic deck that had only 1 loss the entire war and was feared by almost every team.  Without specifically predicting the deck and bringing a counter, it was quite difficult to stop.  Similar decks have also popped up in PvP eventsto counter certain types of decks.

But also the cards you could use were limited in war. the deck was feared because of the lack of counters, and you did not know who was going to play it and on top of that you can not field nothing but decks only ment to stomp that one.
I am sure it is still an awesome PvP deck, but war was an event where cards were limited and you did not know what deck you were going to play against. ( unless the other team had a small vault )

[LongDono]

Well I was against it before I was for it.
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,18513.12.html
I say nerf it so that you can't PU spam dragons, and then panda..... and not have your dragons effected...... ROFL