The most obvious strength of
is control over draw power, mostly through just drawing more cards yourself, but reverse time and eternity can also stop your opponent from ever drawing a new card, resulting in a lockdown. That draw power easily allows
to essentially steal anyones defensive war deck (doesnt really work with rushes, as the draw power takes a few turns to get going and decksliming with precognition is a completely different strategy) if you want and use it yourselves. For rushes you can use graboids and Ghost of the Past, there is some potential in dejavu too. As such
can employ any kind of deck strategy, meaning each loss is at least a little bit your own fault. Its defensive options range from pretty damn op to quite alright, but interestingly they have next to no synergy. Sundial and procrastination are less efective when there is less creatures on the board, additionally reverse time isnt viable cc for a stalling tactic as it doesnt actually reduce the amount of creatures your opponent has in the long run and delays deckout, but its amazing cc nonetheless, unparalleled in the way it essentially instantkills any creature and also possibly makes the opponent's draw worse. Scarab also doesnt really want those other defensive options with it, as it will eventually eat the whole board and likely has a lot of companions to help it (though probably only the sored ones can actually use their abilty, unless you really want gravity in your deck).
Imo
lacks that one deck for their opponents to beat. Ghostmare comes close, but it doesnt feel as oppressive as patient wardens, monosofree, swallow and co which require very specific counters to have a chance against them at all. There is no nobrainer deck that will win pretty much everytime. Also
needs to lend a lot of techcards from other elements. PC, healing, CC that can be used in an actual stall, quantacontrol (unless you count rt) all need to be lended from other elements, even the most important rush card, graboid, isnt innate to the element (though you need not bother with a bow to use it when you are
). This reliance on other elements makes good vaultbuilding essential.
As for the card, if its meant to cover the elements weakness I can only echo what basically everyone else in PCless elements said. PC is very scarce and time has no natural shieldbypass etc. either. A thematic fit for that would be corrosion; it would infect stacks of permanents and destroy one of them per turn. The version that can target all permanents would have to cost at least 4 (3)
and perhaps only trigger at the end of your opponents turn. It could also be specific to quantasources, in which case it would be hardly better than earthquake and could cost 3 or even 2(1)
(and also lose most of its contribution to times completeness, but feel a bit more intheme). A better shield might be good to cover weaknesses too, while turtle shield has the same potential as dusk while also disabling abilities half the time in the long run, the fact that its completely useless for half the turns, always including the first turn it's in play just makes it inferior.
Aspects thematic to
that are completely unexplored in the game are aging and the saying "
heals all wounds". For the latter there could be an antineurotoxin card, that adds a purify counter to you each time you play or draw a card (not both ofc). I guess its comparable to an empathic bond that doesnt require you to run creatures and help them survive, but therefore always starts at 1 when you play it, so it should cost about the same so 5(4)
(empathic bond is a pretty crappy card tbh, but the ceiling of this card far exceeds that of it at ~60 healing per turn with just one card and a lot of
maximising it (including rewinding own creatures to potential infinity and beyond). for the aging card it could render a single creature nearly useless, but that would always feel inferior to rt. So instead I suggest it as shield card (the tooth of
), that reduces all enemy attacking creatures attack by 1 on hit. 3 (2)
cost, synergizes with adrenaline and healing.
Both of these cards would greatly help the stalling potential sundial already offers.
Huh, all of this sounds like I was a huge fan of stalls. I actually like the domins best which stop the early game hurt with rts and then kill the opponent through dmg.
Poll
