Okay, so, wow, talk about a knee-jerk patch. Just when I thought DWD couldn't make more balance mistakes in such a short time (RIP Stewie), along comes this deuce of a patch that doubles down on said mistakes. I don't care if it's Patrick Chapin or Pitiful Chump leading the design team, the anecdote that comes to mind is that Michael Jordan is the GOAT on the basketball court, and was anything but as an owner/coach. Just because you're a hall of fame mtg pro-tour player doesn't mean you're as good of a designer, and with this patch, it continues to show. Those interested in whatever topic can just scroll for the bold.

So, let's get to the parts that have me saltiest:

VARA (RIP sweet princess :( ): easily the biggest change for me. Though I didn't play with her a lot, I absolutely loved watching Vara decks go off. And, playing against her, she was easily my most favorite way to lose the game, because when she worked, the player winning with her earned that win. If you managed to get Vara into the void, with a reanimation target, with a grasping at shadows, all on turn 5, and not get run over for having no board presence for the first 3 if not 4 turns? My hat's off to you. You earned it. If you managed to survive to 8 as Feln control to recur a champion of cunning and win from there, again, congratulations, you played a good match and closed it out. Given the high amount of variance in this game, people really need to answer the question "how would you like to lose?" And for me, the answer at the very top of that list (and I'm not sure anything else comes close) is Vara. Vara, Vara, VARA. And I know other great players loved Vara as a card as well. Beyond that, what's really stupid is that not only is Vara an iconic card in her gameplay, she's also one of Eternal's central protagonists and is such a mascot for the game that DWD had her commissioned as a cosplay for GamesCon 2016. Also, the statement ...her ability to chain so effortlessly with other copies of herself can greatly restrict the range of reasonable endgame strategies." is basically a tautology. If a Vara chain is unanswered, then obviously the Vara player is going to win. But there were plenty of endgame strategies that prevented Vara chains from occurring to begin with. Chalice was able to silence -> remove her in some cases. Big Combrei was able to outgrind her with Vodakhan on occasion. Control decks could just harsh rule a vara chain away. The only "endgame" strategies that Vara shut down were midrange strategies, and those decks don't really have an endgame strategy besides maybe Elysian crystallizing you, or Praxis bombing you for 12 with a flame blast. The subset of " she’s been cutting off the majority of non-Fast Aggro strategies" is also completely false, in my opinion. If you were playing a midrange deck, Vara was the least of your worries when considering matchups. What mattered far more were things like grenadins with their madness + combust packages, removal piles that went wanted poster -> slay -> wanted poster -> vanquish -> Icaria, statuary maidens that started a kill chain rolling and outsized you, and maybe even aggro decks that set up, removed one or two fatties, and killed you before you could play a third. Vara was basically a non-consideration. Overall, right when we finally may have had a good unorthodox deck in the form of various feln reanimator packages, the game's princess gets nuked from orbit. One other thing--I know that Patrick Sullivan loves to opine on risk and reward, but this change is incredibly myopic from that point of view in my opinion. The way I see it, being able to get Vara into play, one way or another, is the reward. The risk is in playing a game whose goal is to play Vara, and either getting there fairly, while letting opponents play out their entire game plan (Feln control), or filling a deck with combo pieces that you spend multiple early game turns setting up, leaving yourself heavily vulnerable to aggro (reanimator). That you could have a higher high in the form of the occasional Vara chain is more than reasonable given what she asks of your deck construction. And considering that the DWD devs have plenty of experience playing Magic, in which a card that costs 4 better win you the game on the spot, they know just how ridiculous the idea is of fairly casting an 8-drop, yet that's what we have. That there's now no payoff for those strategies doesn't mean that people will still play reanimator/Feln control, and take "more risk". It just means they'll stop playing those decks altogether. Reanimator will just turn into another scream shell, and Feln control will now just cut its top end and play Feln midrange with CoCu as the top end. I'm not sure I can go on any more about how ridiculous this change was, both from a gameplay perspective, and even from a business/lore perspective. I know if I was in charge, I'd say "no, you are not hosing one of the game's central protagonists and cosplay mascot. Period." And at the end of the day, if you absolutely had to make a change to Vara, the correct change could have been "when you play a shadow unit from your hand" so that Vara could still be a payoff for playing a fairer game, instead of "LOL unplayable because fuck you". A ridiculous change that I didn't expect from minds such as Patrick Chapin's and LSV's, but then again, Michael Jordan was a dumpster fire off the court, so there you go.

Lack of Tavrod nerfs (again): "Tavrod, Auric Broker. Big victory conditions can often hog the credit, since they so frequently get to deal the killing blow. However, Tavrod doesn't appear to be out of line compared to other strong finishers." So, basically, another "we looked at the data" comment. I wonder if the data analysts DWD has on staff are actually good at Eternal or data analysis, or are a bunch of bonobos and baboons. Telling a bunch of high-level players that they are completely wrong in their evaluation of a card that was obviously created to dodge as much removal as possible about their frustration with Tavrod being hard to interact with is just bad business IMO. Furthermore, it's this dumb cow that gave rise to the current meta we see today. Argenport Midrange winning -> removal piles come out -> everyone plays charge units to attack slow-speed removal piles. That someone said "oh, let's just look at the data" while having seemingly zero domain expertise is lunacy. This isn't rocket science, this isn't analysis of terabytes of complex chemical reactions (again, /u/NeonBlonde, how complex does your chemical engineering doctorate get?). This is "play with (and against) the card". Sure, Tavrod's on the downswing at the moment because "dies to slay, literally unplayable" (to say nothing of the diesel cycle that die to permafrost and annihilate as well), but he's still easily the most powerful 5-drop, and is stronger than he has any right to be, especially in light of the Jekk cycle. Furthermore, you gotta love the double-talk. Tavrod: "the data shows he's fine". Vara: "KILL HER WITH FIRE." (well, no...nerf fire, but kill Vara anyway) Despite the fact that Vara has never won anything outside of the occasional weekly, while Tavrod got both finals and the worlds win.

Soulfire Drake: "the change to Steward of the Past has led to it running away with the five-spot in the majority of Rakano, Stonescar, Skycrag (and even some Praxis) aggro decks. It was also one of the bigger contributors to the meta being a little more about Charge than we’d like." So, several problems with this nonsensical statement. First off: it isn't the lack of Steward that makes soulfire drake good. It's the lack of titan and desert marshal. Soulfire Drake's entomb was always gravy, since as an aggro finisher, you're not drawing many more cards after you play soulfire drake. Also, the reason it's played in the five spot of rakano, soulfire, and skycrag decks? Because there's basically no other options, you dinguses. Do we have a Thundermaw Hellkite? No. Do we have a Glorybringer? No. So we used soulfire drake as a poor man's imitation of such cards. Now? LOL obliterate. And if the flameblast nerf was any indication, DWD doesn't like fire decks burning people out either. So, then the question is: "in what way does DWD intend for fire aggro to finish games?" Because it isn't plate (4/4 for 4 -> 5/5 for 5 nerf way back, protect nerf now). It isn't burn (flameblast nerf). It isn't charging flyers (drake). Can we get an answer here? Because as far as I can remember, we've seen nothing but nerfs for aggro, and constant buffs to anti-aggro cards, even though aggro has rarely been problematic to play against when you know you're playing against aggro.

Elysian Trailblazer: LOL guilty by association, and fuck /u/LocoPojo and that stupid carpet shuffle deck he likes so much, right? Oh, and this probably breaks one of the puzzles that involved playing carpet shuffle to win. In all honesty, the nerfs to trailblazer and pathfinder make me really question the quality of DWD's work, and should make others question it as well. I mean, what was the conversation like last patch when Steward was nerfed and stonepowder alchemist was buffed? "Hey guys, so, we're nerfing Steward and buffing alchemist and we know that there's an echo-revenge deck floating around. Think we should look into it?" "Think raising pathfinder's influence to TT will make people put the deck down?" "Yeah, that should do it." "Think we need to test it to make sure?" "Nah, that should make the deck unplayable." I know /u/NeonBlonde wrote in one RNGEternal article that developers don't have all the time that the community does to play all the games we do and discover potentially game-breaking corner cases, but the nerf to pathfinder and trailblazer from last patch knew they were fully aware that echo revenge might become problematic and just seemingly neglected to do even the slightest modicum of testing. Furthermore, something I don't get is this: in set 1, stronghold visage went from 4 to 5, rendering it unplayable because of "future proofing" (I.E. lifeforce). Come set 2, lifeforce outside an aggro shell is stone-cold unplayable. Meanwhile, DWD knew they were releasing a revenge mechanic and just completely missed the boat on pathfinder? Is it too much to ask that the product that's released to the end users isn't created with such negligence that we need such a massive knee-jerk change after the fact? This effective ban is DWD basically saying "yeah, we screwed up". How many more "yeah, we screwed up" moments should we be expecting? Because if this change is any indication, odds are, there will be a long list still coming. Not the quality of work you expect from names such as Chapin, LSV, Conley, etc. I think that we as a community need to have standards and to call out shoddy work products like this.

Major salt ends here.

Protect: so with the wanted poster nerf, DWD is making an implicit statement that removal pile decks were a little problematic. So what do they do? Oops, nerf one of the best checks to removal piles. Want to play that 5-drop on 6 with protect backup? LOL. Deepforged plate, hold up protect? LOL. Amilli? LOL. I understand this is partially aimed at Tavrod, but the funny part is that Argenport is the least hurt by this change, since at least they can fall back on sabotages. In the meantime, LOL Rakano (especially in conjunction with the drake nerf). Shelterwing Rider? Nerfed by proxy. Combrei? Screw you people, and your angry fowl god that hasn't played the game seriously in months. Maybe we might see a card like 1TJ fast spell, target unit gains aegis for this turn, scout in the future. But even that would have its own issues. Again, while I'm not sad for Argenport mid to get nerfed, the collateral damage to Hooru, Rakano, and Combrei is something that makes me sad. Also, between the crownwatch paladin nerf, steadfast deputy vs. snowcrust yeti, and the Bart nerf, it seems DWD really hates when justice gets aegis. Inb4 Copperhall Elite goes to 5 and Icaria goes to 8 because F U.

Wanted Poster: okay, so playing against it, and going 1-drop on the draw only to see poster -> torch feels bad. Getting your first fatty poster -> vanquished feels bad as well. And I even said "I wonder if wanted poster was a mistake, because it feels awful to get hit by it." Okay, great. Now, here's my follow-up question: does the nerf to wanted poster mean that we can never have another good 2-cost draw/manipulation spell in three colors? For instance, consider the following card: 2S spell, select a card from your top 2 cards, scout. Would that be no-go territory just because quarry exists in JFS removal pile? Shadow is supposed to (allegedly) have card selection in its wheelhouse. Is it never allowed to actually be good at that because JFS removal pile getting a critical mass of draws/cantrips is problematic? Is Rakano never allowed to have something like 2F spell reduce the cost of the top card of your deck by 2, draw a card? Just seems a bit iffy if quarry existing means that three entire factions, and their 2F crossovers will never get another good card selection/cantrip/cost reduction card because the "removal pile" playstyle exists.

Salt ended.

Let's talk buffs ^_^.

Explorers, sentinels, and stirring sands (oh my!). So, as someone that's a fan of Praxis, I'm always partial to buffs. And certainly, the buffs to lunar magus and seasoned spelunker are welcome. However, you still have the A+B problem with spelunker, and there just aren't really good early-game relics in this game right now. Family charter just puts you down a card. Power stone is great if you can accelerate a turn 4 play to turn 3, but you're playing 4 of them just in the hopes of drawing one and then never seeing it again. Stirring sands is basically screaming "PLAY MYSTERIUM ORB!", but again, we're talking A) play mysterium orb B) play explorers C) play sentinels D) have two or more die E) stirring sands for VALUE. That just seems like multiple levels of draw dependency that you just cannot count on to occur consistently, and would be better served by playing other cards in your deck. Beyond this, while the early game buffs are helpful (ish), Praxis still has the problem of "can I torch it? No? Can I beat it up with my big units? No? Well, I'm screwed." Maybe with this early game buff, praxis displacer will be a better card, but I have my reservations when your turns 1 and 2 aren't really devoted to gaining significant board presence. Oh, and reliquary raider...ummm, I'm not even sure what to say here. A 1/3 for 3 just seems to be a complete non-card in today's environment. Maybe "don't attack me because I'll crack back and draw a card" vs. aggro decks? Or "sure, attack with your rakano outlaw, I'll happily gain 3"? Jury's out on this one, but I have both my hopes and my reservations.

Xenan buffs: why in the blue hells are we buffing Ayan? I get that Xenan was collateral damage from the dawnwalker + instigator nerf from last patch, but Ayan, of all cards, didn't need the buff. Cabal slasher buff might have implications for constructed, but I have my doubts. In the meantime, I'm not sure what DWD is attempting to do with the lifeforce theme. You're still a dog to removal piles, silences, and torches in many cases. Xenan killers is alright, but again, does not seem pretty well-positioned in this meta. Overall, I still think Xenan is in a worse place than it was before the last patch because you're still looking at going from SS to TTTT for dawnwalker, and these lifeforce buffs seem tangential to the issue of Xenan's competitiveness. Regarding mask of torment, I'm just not sure what you're trying to ramp to. Though ramping to things like Azindel's gift seems like all sorts of hilarious shenanigans. I suppose my issue though is that a 4 power do literally nothing is a pretty big tempo blow for a faction that doesn't have the greatest sweeper to get back into things, and haymakers that aren't quite good enough. Oh, I got it--generate tons of power, then play copper conduit -> power -> twilight hunt and SMAAASH.

Lastlight Druid: squarely in meme tier now. Curving him into Magus of the Mist = OH BABY. Of course, multiple levels of draw dependency and all that :(.

Salt over lack of other buffs: okay, so a little more salt. I would have wanted to see some unseen buffs. Namely, Darkveil Agent going to 3/2, and spellshield architect going to a 2-drop. I don't think this would break either card, and would allow us to play unseen tribal a little more. I also would have liked to see ancient defenses go to 3 to push the sentinels + relics theme a little more. A slow torch for 3 with a little sentinel upside isn't too much to ask for, is it DWD?

So yeah, that's it.