Is Permanent Control too Imbalanced?

[Xenocidius]

While creature control is abundant and counterable through Heavy Armor, Quintessence, high-HP creatures and those with immortality or burrow, permanent control is much less common. And yet, it has much more of an effect on the opponent.

If we list all the Gods with heavy PC we get: Divine Glory, Dream Catcher, Eternal Pheonix, Hermes, Jezebel and Rainbow. Notice something? Those are some of the hardest False Gods in the game. Would they really be so hard without all their PC? By contrast, Neptune, considered by many to be the easiest False God, has a deck full of CC, but no PC.

Even the Gods with less PC - Chaos Lord, Decay, Graviton, Hecate, Octane - are made much harder by those small amounts of PC - and victory against Obliterator often depends on how fast he gets a Pulverizer out.

Not to mention that PC is used widely in the Arena as well, and the decks that use it *cough*Firestall*cough* can be ridiculously hard (and annoying).

One of the large problems as I see it is the lack of counters to PC. There is only Protect Artifact, immaterial permanents such as Jade Shield and Hope, and (to a much lesser extent), Cloak.

So perhaps we need more counters to PC. My Sphinx (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,29869) card was an attempt at this. The problem is that original counters to PC are quite hard to think of.

Thoughts? Ideas?

[TheCrazyMango]

y u no talk about obliterator?

[Xenocidius]

... I do.

[TheCrazyMango]

... I do.

pardon me if im wrong, but i cant find it.

[Rutarete]

... I do.

pardon me if im wrong, but i cant find it.

3rd paragraph

[TheCrazyMango]

*tactical Facepalm*

[Kamietsu]

Still irrelevant to the issue he is trying to bring up. It's true, sort of. PC has an unbalanced advantage as far as decks go, but only in comparison. If you play without Permanents and go a more creature route, PC is ineffective. Same goes true for most strategies. The problem, however, is that there is almost a canon deck used to defeat most other decks. The problem isn't PC, it's that everyone uses similar style decks. When everyone is using a deck with a lot of permanents that are viable to the deck, PC becomes the number one method of defeating them. If someone found a viable creature centered deck that wins a whole lot, people would begin to migrate into that route, and some already have, CC would be more seen eventually as a problem. Those that already use that sort of deck have very little problem with the PC heavy FGs you mentioned or PC heavy arena decks.

[Wadjet]

I find that while PC IS very powerful, it has a very simple counter; Quanta Control. Only a few cards are capable of this unfortunately, but quanta control buys you enough time to get a few turns about your permanents and against certain PC, like earthquake, this takes the effect of Earthquake down by a lot. Also, while PC is amazing, it's also occasionally useless. I run 2 pulverizers in my deck and about 20-30% of the time they feel useless. Against some opponents it is just impossible to get any decent use out of your PC and it just wastes a draw.

[Xenocidius]

Unfortunately, Explosion only costs 1 , making quanta control somewhat ineffective.

[Hyroen]

I had heard someone, I believe Essence, posit the idea that Permanents could have a certain durability such as 3 "HP" as a maximum, varying from permanent to permanent.

I thought I should include it in the conversation.

[ColorlessGreen]

I think the problem is more with the lack of PC counters that aren't PA or "don't use permanents," particularly since "don't use permanents" tends to mean that all that PC hits pillars instead. I don't necessarily think it's crazily imba, but i would certainly enjoy seeing another card or two that would work. Possibly a card that damages anyone who destroys a permanent as a counter to PC that doesn't just copy PA?

[Pineapple]

I kinda wish that PC would put a timer of 1 on the permanent or that permanents should be buffed so that they don't have summoning sickness.
And shields are severely UP compared to weapons, since weapons do stuff on the turn their played, i.e. before the opponent can destroy it.

I had heard someone, I believe Essence, posit the idea that Permanents could have a certain durability such as 3 "HP" as a maximum, varying from permanent to permanent.

I thought I should include it in the conversation.

It was Mr. Guesticles.