That aside, a single Squid/Octopus can freeze one creature forever if it only uses its ability every 3/4 turns. On the other hand, a single Golem CANNOT freeze one creature forever: you'll need to use the ability every turn, and after three turns the Golem dies with no ways to revive it unless you have another Golem or a Freeze spell. Nerfing this card to a 1-turn freeze would make it very weak IMO.
- This would make Squid obsolete: This card certainly isn't overpowered, is it? If that's the case, then the Squid is underpowered and needs to be buffed. I think making it a non-rare would be good. And again, in my above argument I think this wouldn't replace Squid at all.
Let's consider the use cases for both the Squid and your Golem. In both cases, the "real" use, which can be defined as the most common, standard use of either card, will be in a freezing deck.
In the case of the Squid, the deck will usually have many freezes and many Squids, and the basic purpose of the deck is to stall the opponent with creature control until he either decks out or more powerful forces can be summoned to defeat him (depends a bit on the style of the deck). Once two or three Squids are out, they can singlehandedly keep 10-12 creatures in check with their freezing. That is their purpose; in every other way Squid is a fairly useless card.
Now consider Golem. In what we might call an "Ice Golem" deck, you'd have several Ice Golems and several Freeze spells. The focus of the deck in this case is NOT creature control, but in fact regenerating offense (much like a Phoenix deck). Killing the Ice Golems with Fire Bolts (just for example) is quite useless because a single Freeze spell, or a single use of another Golem's ability, will revive the first Golem immediately. As the Golems have 6 attack power, this deck is clearly meant to kill the opponent outright with offense.
Another version of the Golem deck would be akin to a Shrieker rush deck, only with Water Golems. The relatively cheap Water Golems come out quickly and are frozen into powerful offensive weapons, also quickly, thereby outstripping the opponent.
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The reason Elements is a good game is game balance. The fact that a stall deck like the Squid deck, a regenerating offense deck like the Phoenix / Ice Golem deck, and a creature-growth-rush deck like Shrieker/Water Golem are ALL effective is based on the related fact that they each have weaknesses. Therefore it is imperative that you don't create a card that spans the gap and has multiple advantages ... because suddenly you create a deck that is "the best." Any time there is a "best" deck, the game has lost its balance.
In my view, if you leave Ice Golem unchanged, then an Ice Golem deck will be too strong. It will be a creature rush deck with regeneration AND creature control, all within the same color. Not at all fair. That's the real problem in my book. And I actually think the concept of Ice Golem having a freeze ability is not that bad, and makes sense, since it's integral to the functionality of the card itself to morph forms by freezing. But that freeze ability should be used to trigger that metric and not to endow the deck with incredibly powerful creature control. After all, with just 3 Ice Golems in play you could basically stop all your opponents' creatures forever if the freeze ability lasted two turns, except for VERY few decks with creature spamming.
Anyway that's the way I see it.
