OTA Review - 7/30 with Decks!

A great set of OTA balance changes includes taps to the top decks to keep them from running wild, changes to older cards to revitalize struggling archetypes, and interesting changes to promote churn and deck-building fun. This OTA mostly delivers on those concepts, even if it's a little light on each point.

The Changes

• Drax, Avatar of Life: 3/4 ⇨ 3/3
• Galactus First Steps 6/12 ⇨ 6/11
• Fin Fang Foom: 7/12 ⇨ 7/14
• Karen Page: 4/5 ⇨ 4/6
• Tombstone: 2/3 ⇨ 2/4
• Apocalypse: 6/8 ⇨ 6/9
• Colleen Wing: 2/3 ⇨ 2/4

Card Analysis and Deck Ideas

Drax, Avatar of Life

• [Old] 3/4 - End of Turn: +3 Power if your opponent played a card with greater Power this turn. Move to that card if you'd be winning its location.
• [Change] 3/4 ⇨ 3/3

Drax has been great, in Doom 2099 decks as well as Aurora decks. I was surprised Aurora took a hit before this card, but Drax gets his turn this week. This card has also been a terror in multiple LTGMs, though I doubt that played into this decision. This was about hitting the top performing decks, even if this is just a slight hit. In fact, there are some situations when this could be considered a buff. At 3-Power, there are a lot more cards your opponent can play to trigger that first instance of his ability and he will still be able to follow that up with his big-Power guard dog role. It's a nerf, but this card is far from irrelevant.

Galactus First Steps

• [Old] 6/12 - My Herald is the next character I see you play. End of Turn: +2 Power if you're winning my Herald's location. (if in hand or in play)
• [Change] 6/12 ⇨ 6/11

I always point to this card as the prime example of a card I thought I would hate, but ended up loving. I am not a big fan of "big, dumb" cards, but this card ended up being a lot more dynamic and fascinating in practice than what I had anticipated on paper. The one point nerf should help knock him off his perch of de facto "big finisher" but the card remains interesting and flavorful.

2099 of the Past

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This was one of the best performing Doom 2099 decks over the last week and it's going to be basically just as strong with 3/3 Drax and 6/11 GFS. However, you can also just straight replace those with Mercury and Hulkling to make the deck arguably more suitable for the current environment regardless of the changes!

2099 of the Future

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Fin Fang Foom

• [Old] 7/12 - On Reveal: Gain the Power of a front-row enemy card here.
• [Change] 7/12 ⇨ 7/14

I kind of hate this change. The card definitely needed help after it's last, harsh nerf, but instead of giving some slight targeting, like "highest-Power front-row enemy here," they buffed his base Power and kept the RNG. In fact, they specifically call out the RNG as desireable in their patch notes. I'm sure that level of variance helps a card like this see play, but depresses its play-rate among certain cohorts, but it certainly isn't fun for either side.

Fella

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Did someone say RNG? Foom's change is all upside in a deck like this that barely cares about the ability on the card anyway and is happy to embrace some variance.

Karen Page

• [Old] 4/5 - On Reveal: Give one of your 1, 2, and 3-Cost characters +2 Power each.
• [Change] 4/5 ⇨ 4/6

Karen Page is not a bad card, and is decidedly underrated. However, she's never quite been able to find a specific deck or combo to thrive in. This is the exact type of card for which the dreaded 1-point buff can work out. It makes her floor a little higher, shines a spotlight on her for deck-builders, and might end up being the difference between a card finding homes and being forgotten.

The Good Secretary

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There are plenty of more shenanigans-y uses for Karen (think pumping things like Agony or Lasher, or Frankie Raye), but the real question is if she can push her way into meta-relevant good cards decks. Once a card can do that, it's play rate can skyrocket.

Tombstone

• [Old] 2/3 - On Reveal: Destroy your lowest-Power card at each other location.
• [Change] 2/3 ⇨ 2/4

I'm surprised Tombstone got changed. I know he's the new card, but he's hardly the problem with his own archetype. I think Tombstone is a good card with weak payoffs. I would rather have seen those payoffs get buffed instead, but perhaps this will get people to take him for a spin.

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Again, Tombstone is a solid shenanigans card (Nimrod), but the card will really start to see more play if it can prove its value in classic Deadpool destroy, where I believe it is an upgrade over Deathlok thanks to its added flexibility and ability to target x-23 more reliably.

Apocalypse

• [Old] 6/8 - When Discarded: Put this back with +4 Power.
• [Change] 6/8 ⇨ 6/9

Other than the Daken/M.O.D.O.K. combo decks, you probably haven't faced too many Discard decks lately. Depending on what type of player you are, that may feel like a welcome reprieve, but it is important for Discard to maintain a certain level of playability as one of the keystone archetypes of the game and one that players start to get access to early. It's no secret that Discard has struggled lately. It began when Shou-Lao and Star-Lord pushed everything except themselves out of the meta, but Discard hasn't been able to work its way back in to the metagame to compete with the new decks that emerged afterwards. I'm not sure a single point is enough to do anything other than remind players that the archetype exists.

Colleen Wing

• [Old] 2/3 - On Reveal: Discard the card that costs the least from your hand.
• [Change] 2/3 ⇨ 2/4

The change to Colleen works in tandem with Apocalypse to try to bring Discard back into the metagame, but they're not entirely linked. There are plenty of decks that use Colleen that aren't Apoc Discard decks and Colleen sees play in a far wider variety of decks than Apocalypse. This change could actually be the more impactful of the two Discard changes because of that.

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If you haven't played a Zombie Power Man/Colonel deck in awhile, I recommend this, that can easily discard all of it's payoffs, plus Apoc multiple times.

Final Thoughts

Discard and Destroy are critical archetypes for the health of the game. They don't need to be tier 1 decks, but they do need to be viable for the fans of those mechanics (and those characters!). They are best when they're just there, bubbling under the surface as good, but not overbearing decks. They've been multiple steps below that recently. Does this OTA do enough for them? The changes are so slight, and I would have loved to see some more brave swings on either of those archetypes.