That would work, although I dont know if I quite like the idea myself. The biggest threat to lava golems (imo)has always been a fire shield, because although they can become insanely powerful, all it takes is a simple fire shield to destroy them (as long as the shield gets out before the golem), with that change however, I can simply throw out my 1 hp golem when theres a fire shield, and the next turn use his growth to raise the hp to a suitible number s that he can attack. I think that would make fire shield pretty much worthless, although once again thats just my opinion. im no elite player, so I cant say how that would do in the actual metagame.
It would still make it easier to kill lava golems with rain of fire, plague, devour, paradox, lightning and a lot of other ways. Unless golems are immortalized, in which case procrastination/ice shield/gravity shield/phase shield would be better. Momentumed, quinted golems would still be a problem, but I do not see these too often
Not really sure I like that suggestion about Fire-Shield... If a creature remains in play it is still very much a threat. Even more so if you rely on On-Death effects such as Scavenger or Boneyards.
I agree that a creature remaining in play is often a threat... but as long as mortal creatures are concerned, that would simply make fire shield a little bit more defensive (creatures stop attacking one turn earlier), and even though this shield should be the least defensive, the most offensive of shields due to it being
it is still a shield and so I think making it more defensive in an already very damage oriented deck wouldn't be that bad. Simply if you are playing mono fire and are afraid of growing creatures, take a few RoF too. If playing duo/trio/rainbow there are numerous ways to counter growing creatures.
As for immortal creatures - if you take additional cards, additional elements, or play a rainbow instead of a duo/trio deck simply for the sake of being able to protect your creatures/permanents, then it is enough of a problem. It can be easily countered with most fast decks that overwhelm with creatures, especially with momentum and a few deflags to remove sundials. There is no deck capable of easily immortalizing creatures, removing opponents creatures, protecting your sundials/phase shields and still dealing a lot of damage. Even the famous SG rainbow decks can be easily countered.
So basically if you take all these disadvantages into consideration, and still build a deck around immortality (often making it slow to play and lacking either permanent control, or strong hitters), then it should at least guarantee your creatures are safe. It obviously does not guarantee a victory, but at least creatures safety should be guaranteed. Ok, there are a few ways to make an immortal heavy hitter, but these could be countered with statuses like freeze, while you play a few mortal heavy hitters and outdamage your opponent. Against immortal ability users like druid, ulitharid, ffq immortality should be a complete protection, as these decks can still be outdamaged easily, and even if mutants can deal some damage, they are more often than not mortal, so you can take care of them. Abubises are hard to play, as killing/freezing/lobotomizing/mutating/devouring/poisoning/a lot of other things simply destroy a strategy based around anubises... and try playing a deck with both anubises and quints to protect your first anubis - good luck
What I am trying to say is that right now immortality is not OP, there are tons of decks that can counter them, even without a fire shield. Ok, false gods using immortality is another matter, but only because the double draw and lots of quantum make up for the disadvantages of an immortality based deck. If you think it is overpowered - use it, and count how many decks without immortality beat you.
These are the reasons why I think immortality SHOULD be split from etherealness, but not made something easy to counter (as it is already). Making it even easier to counter with lobo/mutation/rewind would make it totally useless.
Immortality will be a lot cheaper than Ethereality (Quintessence), because it has it's obvious downsides.
Ok, so I guess you want immortality to be something like 2
or so spell? Who would use that? It would be totally unreliable - saving you from some decks (damage based ones), while useless against others (rewind, mutation, lobo)... I guess 95% of decks would use quintessence then to protect their creatures, even if they could be killed with fire shields, simply for the fact fire shield is a single card, not very common, with it's big drawback of no damage reduction, while mutations, rewinds (eternity), lobo are very common.
Ok, there would still be anubises, but I rarely see a successful deck using those. They are clearly not OP, and nerfing immortality like that would only worsen the case.
Ok, maybe a few more creatures with immortality will be added at some point, but that does not change the fact, that this kind of ability is the most useful if cast on a creatures that already have some powerful ability like devour, mutate, FFQ, etc...
So (at least if I understand your idea), your suggestions would make immortality useless. And this would be no fun. What use is an ability, that makes it easier to win in like 30% of the battles (still not guaranteeing a victory, as you can be rushed for example), while useless against 70% others?
So I still think that immortality should not be possible to remove with lobo/liquid shadow/mutation, should make a creature immune to rewind (although there should be more cards able to remove buffs from creatures, and these should work on immortals), and should cost more, maybe even 8
or 8
(upgraded to 6
or 6
) like other useful spells (aflatoxin, antimatter). It would be much more useful then an immortality for 2
that anyone can remove, and would see much more use in play, while still not being overpowered.
Sorry, if I misunderstood your idea, or if my knowledge of how often firewalls, lobos, mutation, quints etc. are used is not correct... I've been playing only for about 2-3 weeks, and my knowledge of these is based mostly on decks I see on forum, as I still rarely play PvP, and even when I do the better decks I play against are rarely using immortality, more often a quick rush with growing (mortal) creatures and the like. I rarely see fire shields in PvP.
