if you are denied your Otyugh what does Heavy armor do? Zenith on its own prevents 3 damage to you.
If you're denied an oty you can be denied a zenith (creature control denys otys, quanta control denys zenith).
If your opponent steals your gravity shield, and Otyugh can't eat that Collosal or Massive dragon, what do you do? Zenith just cuts down the opponents offense.
What deck uses steals and a card your heavy armored oty can't eat? I'm curious. It sounds like a generally horrible deck
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Zenith attacks, and is immune to damage and has a reusable effect. Heavy armour is gone with a reverse time, pointless unless Otyugh is present and adds no offensive capability if Otyugh has no targets.
Lol @ 2 damage being offensive capabilities. Do you get scared of a damselfly every time it's played? AMG 2 damage!
Yes, otyugh + heavy armor is more vulnerable to control than zenith, but oty's ability is so much better it's balanced.
Otyugh stops you playing a creature for fear of being eaten. Nadir does the same. No other gravity card together with Otyugh increases Otyughs potential in any serious manner. Nadir locks out any creature you play with 3hp or less, 2 Nadir lock out any creature you play with 6hp or less. No tricks or out of element cards or anything, play it and your ahead. Otyugh on its own, can't take down the larger creature like a Devonian Dragon. Nadir can for only a loss of 3 more hp.
Why are you comparing Nadir to an Oty? All they have in common is that they both are creature control cards. It's like comparing fire lance to lightning.
A much better comparison is eagle eye, since their abilities are so much alike, but you can't seem to come up with an argument for why nadir is more powerful than eagle eye... Meh. I'll repeat my view on it:
The ability to play more than 1 without a two card combo is what balances the fact that the ability is weaker, the card's attack is weaker, and the card's defense sucks.
Can you link me to this currently front running Speedbow that features creature control?
It doesn't need it. It'll kill you before you can take control and before you draw, play, and get enough quanta to fractal vampires. Most do carry a pair of lightning for control, though. And all the other deck archetypes I mentioned (and more) will beat that deck too, so my point still stands:
If it's counterable by so many meta-game decks, it isn't OP.
Against an earthquake deck, table control is more important than mass. Especially when denial reduces your ability to Mass.
In normal deck construction, yes marks are worth more than towers. In the protective swap its not.
Oh. Alright, I missed the earthquake part.
However, you will never know that your opponent will use earthquakes unless you get Seism predicted, in which case there's much better options.
So it's a moot point since you'll never want to make that swap because it only helps on the off chance that your opponent will use quicksands, and when they do, you'll probably lose if you use the original build. Hence, the deck loses to decks with quicksands too.
I didn't say you needed the vamps to counter rush, just that you will fractal the Vamp rather than the Nadir. Nadir can kill most if not all rush reatures with a pair. THere is no need for more than that and the vamps will keep you topped up if a counter solution like drain life is going to be played.
You keep saying that nadir will kill all rush creatures before you lose, but it just won't happen.
And a pair is pushing it. Fractaling it won't be fast, so you can't rely on that to get a pair out, so you need to hope you draw 2/4 in your first 10 cards of the deck, and then you need to wait a turn to start using them and then you need to begin killing the 5 creatures your opponents played-
Oh wait. You're dead.
