Shard of Sacrifice | Shard of Sacrifice

[OldTrees]

How are you supposed to counter this? I believe it should be only physical damage, which would make spell damage a decent counter here.

Strategy 1: Field only 10|8 damage per turn so they won't play SoS. Then unload for the final blow. (Bolts, Fractal and OTKs are good supplements.)

Strategy 2: Field only 11|9 damage per turn so they use up their SoSs. Then unload your offense to reclaim the lead.

[onnig]

How are you supposed to counter this? I believe it should be only physical damage, which would make spell damage a decent counter here.

Strategy 1: Field only 10|8 damage per turn so they won't play SoS. Then unload for the final blow. (Bolts, Fractal and OTKs are good supplements.)

Strategy 2: Field only 11|9 damage per turn so they use up their SoSs. Then unload your offense to reclaim the lead.

Yeah, I had kind of figured that out. The only problem I see with this card is in arenas where it can be abused. The first time I encountered it, the AI played 7 shards over 3 turns, which was bit frustrating when it happened.

[darkrobe]

How are you supposed to counter this? I believe it should be only physical damage, which would make spell damage a decent counter here.

Strategy 1: Field only 10|8 damage per turn so they won't play SoS. Then unload for the final blow. (Bolts, Fractal and OTKs are good supplements.)

Strategy 2: Field only 11|9 damage per turn so they use up their SoSs. Then unload your offense to reclaim the lead.

strategy 3: they play SoS. you play sundials for the next two turns. then continue on beating on them.

Strategy 4: ai plays shard of sacrifice and is left with less than ten health. you kill them with holy light.

to summarize what i already said. and i appreciate your strategy 1 and 2, but that sort of assumes you know how many shard of sacrifices they have. you play them in the arena they could have 12 SoS. If they dont have SoS you want to play all your creatures and kill them fast. But if they do you want to follow strategy 1, problem is you wont know to use strategy 1 until they have already started playing SoS.

[OldTrees]

How are you supposed to counter this? I believe it should be only physical damage, which would make spell damage a decent counter here.

Strategy 1: Field only 10|8 damage per turn so they won't play SoS. Then unload for the final blow. (Bolts, Fractal and OTKs are good supplements.)

Strategy 2: Field only 11|9 damage per turn so they use up their SoSs. Then unload your offense to reclaim the lead.

strategy 3: they play SoS. you play sundials for the next two turns. then continue on beating on them.

Strategy 4: ai plays shard of sacrifice and is left with less than ten health. you kill them with holy light.

to summarize what i already said. and i appreciate your strategy 1 and 2, but that sort of assumes you know how many shard of sacrifices they have. you play them in the arena they could have 12 SoS. If they dont have SoS you want to play all your creatures and kill them fast. But if they do you want to follow strategy 1, problem is you wont know to use strategy 1 until they have already started playing SoS.

Good point: Both of my strategies assume you are trying to predict/read the opponent and not alter your deck.

[macgawel]

strategy 3: they play SoS. you play sundials for the next two turns. then continue on beating on them.

Strategy 4: ai plays shard of sacrifice and is left with less than ten health. you kill them with holy light.

Strategy 5 : AM your creatures ?

[Elite arbiter]

Only realistic with a preferably quinted Entropy Nymph on your field, unless you're using the 'I only need 3-7 hp to kill him and thus am using anti-matter in place of holy flash' logic.

[onnig]

Wouldn't the card be more manageable if the sacrifice damage was a % of max hp instead of a flat amount? This is mainly for arena decks. The current numbers are fine for a 100 HP, but it's a whole different thing IMO when you start with 200 HP at turn 1 and have 12 SoSa in your deck. Not sure if the numbers should be slightly reduced if they become % of max health.

[RRQJ]

One of the main problems is that there is there is no card that has the intention/drawback of healing your opponent (except maybe holy light, and that's debatable).  Things like AMing your own creature, sundialing to purposely stop your creatures, etc. are normally what your don't do, so they can't really count as viable counters.  You need cards such as a creature that starts with negative attack as an additional drawback for a powerful effect, or a powerful spell/permanent that has a drawback of healing your opponent when played.  These cards would be played with the knowledge that they have these drawbacks, so they would count as viable counters to SoSa.

Edit:

Oh and technically SoP would be an example of such a card.  It is a weaker effect, however, so it being the only such example makes SoSa still look powerful.

[darkrobe]

Wouldn't the card be more manageable if the sacrifice damage was a % of max hp instead of a flat amount? This is mainly for arena decks. The current numbers are fine for a 100 HP, but it's a whole different thing IMO when you start with 200 HP at turn 1 and have 12 SoSa in your deck. Not sure if the numbers should be slightly reduced if they become % of max health.

ouch. i like using shard of divinity in conjunction with SoSac. it would be annoying to have to calculate _% of my max hp every other turn.

Hmmmm.... you could make the shard remove _% of your current health (say 50% for example) to a minimum of 40/32. that way it is more expensive to use if you have a lot of health. (would lessen the current use for ems i think)

[OldTrees]

Wouldn't the card be more manageable if the sacrifice damage was a % of max hp instead of a flat amount? This is mainly for arena decks. The current numbers are fine for a 100 HP, but it's a whole different thing IMO when you start with 200 HP at turn 1 and have 12 SoSa in your deck. Not sure if the numbers should be slightly reduced if they become % of max health.

No. If it were a percentage then the deck would wait until it was almost dead resulting in a much lower cost than it is now.

Edit: I misread as % of current hp.

[onnig]

Wouldn't the card be more manageable if the sacrifice damage was a % of max hp instead of a flat amount? This is mainly for arena decks. The current numbers are fine for a 100 HP, but it's a whole different thing IMO when you start with 200 HP at turn 1 and have 12 SoSa in your deck. Not sure if the numbers should be slightly reduced if they become % of max health.

No. If it were a percentage then the deck would wait until it was almost dead resulting in a much lower cost than it is now.

Not sure if I quite get it since it's based off of max health, and will probably remain the same. I do agree on the cost reduction though.

Hmmmm.... you could make the shard remove _% of your current health (say 50% for example) to a minimum of 40/32. that way it is more expensive to use if you have a lot of health. (would lessen the current use for ems i think)

I believe this is better than mine, but 50% is crazy IMO. I was thinking of something more around 25% of current health with the 40|32 cap (flat cap hitting at 160|128 HP).

[Elite arbiter]

Holy Light isn't even too viable a card 'here', because a lot of the marks used by SoSa users will probably be Death due to going mono-death to avoid the quanta drain.