Touch Me wrote:if you ignore the matchup against petrova or ailzonius because you want a more consitent deck, then thats a risk you are willing to take, right?

(its like when players make their control matchups stronger by running fewer blockers and trigger amounts for mroe control elements. of yourse youll have problems against rush or aggro then)

Great arguments, Touch Me! Countless times I have heard how control duelists have complained to aggro duelists that their deck is too fast and they don't know how Controls work. You should always prepare yourself for aggros. If not with anything else, then at least with lots of shield triggers (12/40 shield triggers is already very good).

I don't really see Holy Awe broken since you have to have control over the battle zone when casting it, even if TCG is more about power than OCG. If Awe saves you by triggering from your shields, it's all about odds and that's the main reason for using Holy Awe. Holy Awe gives a player a chance to make a counter attack, which can't be done if you don't have any kind of set-up in the battle zone, i.e. your opponent is totally crushing you. Holy Awe is a risk you have to acknowledge when trying to take down your opponent. That's why non-aggro decks wait before attacking to shields. You usually want to take down all of your opponents creatures before making your move. Aggro decks are already out in the open (mainly tapped creatures), so Holy Awe shouldn't make that huge difference there. It is a great and meta defining card, no denying in that. Wouldn't call it broken.

ELTP wrote:

Touch Me wrote:if you ignore the matchup against petrova or ailzonius because you want a more consitent deck, then thats a risk you are willing to take, right?

(its like when players make their control matchups stronger by running fewer blockers and trigger amounts for mroe control elements. of yourse youll have problems against rush or aggro then)

Great arguments, Touch Me! Countless times I have heard how control duelists have complained to aggro duelists that their deck is too fast and they don't know how Controls work. You should always prepare yourself for aggros. If not with anything else, then at least with lots of shield triggers (12/40 shield triggers is already very good).

I don't really see Holy Awe broken since you have to have control over the battle zone when casting it and TCG is more about power than OCG. Even if Awe saves you by triggering from your shields, it's all about odds and that's the main reason for using Holy Awe. Holy Awe gives a player a chance to make a counter attack, which can't be done if you don't have any kind of set-up in the battle zone, i.e. your opponent is totally crushing you. Holy Awe is a risk you have to acknowledge when trying to take down your opponent. That's why non-aggro decks wait before attacking to shields. You usually want to take down all of your opponents creatures before making your move. Aggro decks are already out in the open (mainly tapped creatures), so Holy Awe shouldn't make that huge difference there. It is a great and meta defining card, no denying in that. Wouldn't call it broken.

i was a bit unspecific with the term aggro, because it was late.

what i actually meant is field control-centric aggro decks.

or even some slwoer aggrod ecks that do not swing shiedls immedietly.

you actually do not ahve to have control over the battlezone. just slightly is enough.
and even if it is evenly distributed it can be really unfair.

holy awe Can be the most broken card. it isnt always  broken without set up.
but even then it can be if the aggro player has broken enough shields.

i am talking about a field controlish mirror matches of course!

i could go on and give you a lot of counter arguments but
t ill just give you a simple scenario, where both palyers posses good boards:

you have: tajimal, magris, sarius, hulcus , and melnia. (marino control)

your opp has: petrova, mist rias,la ura and pala olesis and locomotiver

now you hardcast awe: melnia kills > pala olesis, tajimal kills > petrova,
magris and sarius kill > la ura and mist rias and hulcus kills loco.

you just lost yous field of 5 creatures. you must have seen those scenearios definitely.

you actually gave a argument why awe is good by saying you need to get rid of the field:

1. getting rid of the field isnt easy especially  a field cotnrol matchup.
2. not being able to swing just because an awe might be hidden beak your field shows how strong it can be.

as you can see exactly those 2 scenarios happened in the last DM Meeting.

if you remember, i played someone who couldnt attack me because awe would
tap all their blockers and i would have had game.

in the other game i did hardcast awe and broke their field.

so i actually got an crazy advantage

now you may say: this needs set up.

well a field control deck naturally sets up their field.
setting up is nothing special.

i dont call it broken as well but it CAN be. and the possibility sucks.  
it just does too much and is the one of the cards card in the tcg that can change the game the most.

people win so many games they should have lost because of awe.

You have to have a strong battle zone to crush your opponent's battle zone. And usually if you do that, you are already on a verge of running over your opponent. I think that it's good that you have to watch out for Awe (and other triggers) and you can't just demolish your opponent by attacking mindlessly. Awe still need set-up but naturally it's strong with cards like Petrova and powerful light blockers. You just need your creatures to have a bit more power than most of your opponent creatures since you choose battling creatures.

I understand how you could see Awe broken, but for me it's just powerful (depends on the situation, naturally) and gives a nice twist to TCG meta. It's not like Clamp, which is always advantageous, except when your opponent is in top-deck mode and then your opponent already is vulnerable. Awe is strong but not too strong.

getting that strong battlezone is not hard.

you just get it for playing the game.

you dont need to have a way stronger battlezone than your opp either.


i have just proved you in the above scenarios why it can be really broken.
i dotn see how yous till dont see it.

actually you dont have to have a "strong" battlezone either. just a slightly better than your opp
or one that counetrs theirs.

as i have shown in my scenario its not hard to pull off. everyone should ahve seen this countless times palying the game. you saw it how game winning it was in both games last time.

clamp is not always advantegous though. there are scenarios where you shouldnt clamp:

1. your opp outadvantaged you and you rather keep your hand to make it safely to the later turns if your opp ahs clamps too and a bigegr a hand. its betetr not to paly the discard agmes ometimes.

2. your opp has a field that broke some of your shields and will break more if you dont address their field.

i dotn see awe broken per se. its potentially really broken though.

By strong battle zone I meant quantitatively. You just need to be able to pick up your opponents creatures one by one. I said it weirdly and Clamp has it's flaws late-game especially. Maybe that's occasional "brokenness" is what doesn't bother me but it's okay if you don't understand how I don't think Awe is broken.

Holy Awe Broken, then you will hate OCG's Bolmeteus White Flare and DNA Sparks. Also one of the new cards that is a master spark and if it's the last shield broke, a cost 8 or less creature appears.

Mr-ex777 wrote:Holy Awe Broken, then you will hate OCG's Bolmeteus White Flare and DNA Sparks. Also one of the new cards that is a master spark and if it's the last shield broke, a cost 8 or less creature appears.

Indeed, lot's of Spark (Awe) variants in OCG, maybe that's why it seems so regular to me.

sigh...tcg and ocg are different.

i know there are way better sparks in the ocg which even there are not broken (dont know the ocg cardpool/meta)

what i know is that ocg has a different level of powercreep and is faster. the creatures dont have that many crazy effects in tcg. tcg is generally slower.

brokeness is all relative to the cardpool. a card is broken when its way above the power level of other cards, creates too much advantage or is generally unfair. this can be the case with holy awe in the tcg.

there are a lot of ocg cards that would be broken in the tcg but are not in the ocg. powercreep and cardpool does have a lot to do with it.

Touch Me wrote:sigh...tcg and ocg are different.

That argument is rather pointless, we all know there are differences in TCG and OCG. I play both OCG and TCG and I even played OCG during time when Super Spark (DM-25, 2007) was relatively often used and OCG was still very similar to TCG power-wise. The effects of Spark spells have never felt broken to me. Holy Awe is powerful in TCG for sure since it helps you to resolve a developing situation for your benefit and also gives you a chance to counter attack. I understand how you can see it broken but based on my experience it's still rather balanced and I consider it to be just powerful in rather many situations. Sometimes one hopes to draw Holy Awe while other times one wishes one had drawn something else.

When we hold DM tourneys (once a month or so), Bombazar is banned while slash charger/future slash is nerfed to your deck or opponent's top deck only. Reason being nobody is comfortable with their opponent deck scanning. It's agreed upon by most players hence we do it.

Cranium clamp is easily countered if you have cash. Clamping into 2x Arque is almost immediate gg, regardless of decktypes. However, this has resulted in many people force feeding 2-4 copies of arque in many decktypes (F/N rush, F/W rush etc) and RUBs are turned into GRUB just to incorporate arque and counter clamps.

Corile is one card that I'll advocate banning, at least in certain tournaments. It restricts all cards that don't have CIP effect. I've even went one step further and set a "no water" challenge to encourage players to build a deck without water but sufficiently competitive in the sea of Marinos, Rubs, HHs and Hydrooze decks, since water is the most overplayed civ in DM.

Hmmm... personally i don't like playing any Corile by myself because it is so annoying to me. Maybe your rigjt @zhouker . I never saw a serious problem in Corile but your arguments are good. Hmm...

I'd say water is overplayed but played a lot and for a good reason. Interesting idea to have people build decks without water. We couldn't do that in a tournament here but maybe just for a funny side challenge. We have just around 2-4 tournament meetings a year in Finland.

Delacerna is a nice counter against Clamp but still not enough and like you said, demands lots of money or/and efforts of getting it.

Corile is especially mean with discarding but works also without. OCG has enough CIP creatures so Corile's no problem there.

In OCG Corile allows your opponent to reuse fatal cip effects which is quite bad and it also allows your opponent to recycle speed attackers (Which is why you don't bounce MaltNEXT without discarding it), and cost 5 is pretty clunky for an ocg one shot removal card.

But in tcg....really, especially when stuff don't have speed attacker that much.

ELTP wrote:I'd say water is overplayed but played a lot and for a good reason. Interesting idea to have people build decks without water. We couldn't do that in a tournament here but maybe just for a funny side challenge. We have just around 2-4 tournament meetings a year in Finland.

Delacerna is a nice counter against Clamp but still not enough and like you said, demands lots of money or/and efforts of getting it.

Corile is especially mean with discarding but works also without. OCG has enough CIP creatures so Corile's no problem there.

Some notable decks we've seen so far without water are 4-civ wave strikers, 4-civ survivor, GYB control and RGB mana burn. The first 3 mentioned decks have all been semi-finalists/champion while RGB shows potential. This is in 7-15 people tournaments where even casual players enter with a rub/marino (We use jap cards here, so the cost part is much lower in building either of those decks).

Maybe for slash charger, we can make do with the top 2-3 cards, instead of just the top deck of opponent. This gives at least some room of choice to the one casting it without exposing the whole deck of opponent.

striker EX wrote:Maybe for slash charger, we can make do with the top 2-3 cards, instead of just the top deck of opponent. This gives at least some room of choice to the one casting it without exposing the whole deck of opponent.  

this was my idea for a long time as well, just was lazy posting it.

i generally agree with qbius points for not hitting it though.

though if it gets touched than either to 1 OR at 4 but with this effect:

reveal the top 3-5 of your opp. deck and discard and mill a non-multi creature or non evo creature? (this would prevent milling avatars or multi civ evos, which have their decks filled with bait and would make it really unfair of milling)

also let the player still look at his whole deck if he/she decides too mill his own combo pieces.

picking cloned cards or creatures to recycle with tanz, morbid, carnival etc is fair and fun.

since the community does their own lists, we dont have to keep the original banned/restricted system.
in yugioh for example, there is the section semi-limited. 2 copies instead of 3 . we could do a semi-restricted list as well, since removing 3 copies of a card is sometimes too much. cloned nightmare at 2 and only counting your cloneds would be a good nerf/restriction.

I'm pretty certain we'll start a Doodle poll this weekend asking about how many copies of each cards should be allowed in tournament play.

Been engaging in DM on and off so am discovering this thread a bit late.  I sort of agree that some sort of regulation should be in effect since there are a lot of ridiculous cards despite there only being 12 sets... Nice work, guys.

We have done a questionnaire for Finns about how they would handle certain cards. I could just translate that questionnaire and use it for our users here. Nerffing can be considered later, let's just focus on the amounts for now.

I already talked about that two months ago but forgot about it since no one seemed to be interested.

ELTP wrote:We have done a questionnaire for Finns about how they would handle certain cards. I could just translate that questionnaire and use it for our users here. Nerffing can be considered later, let's just focus on the amounts for now.

I already talked about that two months ago but forgot about it since no one seemed to be interested.

i was and still am interested, can you please translate that questionnaire?

iamjason8 wrote: I sort of agree that some sort of regulation should be in effect since there are a lot of ridiculous cards despite there only being 12 sets... Nice work, guys.

which cards are ridiculous in your opinion?

Soulswap and Cranium Clamp.

Have never seen a physical copy of Cloned Nightmare but I can see that being an unhealthy card too.

iamjason8 wrote:Soulswap and Cranium Clamp.  

Have never seen a physical copy of Cloned Nightmare but I can see that being an unhealthy card too.

its a true nightmare after 1 is in the grave(s) obviously.

a good errata would be: only counting the players own Nightmares and if that is still too much, then put it to 2/semi-restrict it.

unlike Yugioh DM doesnt have a semi-restricted list (eventhough people can play up to 4 instead of 3) and since the community started adjusting rules,
this would be one of the best rules to change IMO: implementing a semi restricted list for cards like this or for hitting cards that putting to 1 would be too much.


did you check my reply to you on the TCG+ thread?

Imho Mirac plaque should be banned.

I will find time to update the list next week then and publish it here so that everyone can vote!

It's weird that Cloned Nightmare hasn't been that deadly in Finnish meta even though we have had Clamp restricted to 1 for a long time now. With Emergency Typhoon you could Discard 2 cards with Nightmare on turn 3. Maybe people just haven't tried it out that much yet.