Snip
Also, these are not "Strictly" better than pheonix since the eggs only have 1 hp as opposed to the 5 hp for ash. The eggs will thus be markedly more susceptible to CC (which I was hoping would help keep them from overshadowing pheonix... though you may be right that its still not quite enough).
Short of lightning and lobo, nothing can 1 shot ash. Even an elite oty needs a buff or a small snack before its ready to do so.
Eggs, on the other hand, will die if you look at em funny.
That is a deceiving statement, because Lightning will 1-shot Ash, but since there are 3 separate eggs, you would need 3 lightning bolts to take out the 3 eggs. And if you do not take out 2 of them, you wind up with your opponent having more of them on the field than before.
We can simply look at 3 eggs on the field versus 1 ash, and see what is required to kill both. Lobotimize, a 6+ def oty, a Fire Bolt with over 10
quanta, all get rid of ash in 1 hit, but require 3 to get rid of the eggs. Even the things that do not get rid of it in 1 hit like shockwave or owls eye, get rid of it in two. But you still need 3 of them to get rid of the 3 eggs. The only cc where this becomes an even trade is under 10 quanta frozen bolt and drain life. Which is unlikely at best.
There is literally no single target creature control in the game that will kill three eggs, even at 1 hp, more cost efficiently than 1 ash. Granted for some niche mass CC cards, it is more effective (notable examples being Firestorm and Thunderstorm). But this is hardly enough, triply so because this defense actually serves as a pseudo-mitosis if you fail to kill it rather than just regenerating itself up.
I know you changed it, just illustrating my point that despite the low hp they are actually less vulnerable to CC.
The changed version however looks far better in terms of balance. Ideally you'd have a death schism, a dark schism, and a fire schism, if you were planning to run this like pillars/pendulums. However of the types of quanta generating creatures already in the game aren't totally universal, so this would run along with the idea of not everything gets the same if any creature based quanta generation.
Generally I don't see any issues with balance of the card. It might even be UP in its current state, but it is to fuel trios and quads, so that would have to be looked at. The only thing of note to say is that the unupped is essentially strictly better than Antlion, and upped is almost in the same boat. However, this is
Antlion we're talking about. The unupped version is the posterchild of UP.
