On Anthelios 8. "problematic card"

CON.

This event effectively makes masters permanents without a built-in counter or removal option. Together with liquidation, tablets and multi-master vampires, this is clearly broken or at least severely warps the metagame.

Ban it!

johannes wrote: From my point of view it should be easier to destroy events, however in return people should be allowed to play them more than once. It would also remove the problem where you build a deck around certain events and if someone else plays them first and dies you are screwed ...

It should be easier to kill events, which would make Anthelios much more reasonable--currently, you *can* kill events, just people seem to not plan on doing that much. Granted, most of the Event killing cards kind of blow:

-Not to Be: Costs a pool, you need to have it in your hand when the event hits the table.

-Emergency Preparations: Also costs a pool, also requires you to have it in hand when the event is played.

-Shattering: Requires you to be an Anarch with dementation (although it is at +2 stealth).

-Black Hand Ritual: Requires you to be Black Hand. Although it can be cycled if no events are in play for a minorly useful effect.

-The Uncoiling: Probably the best one, but is random (if there are multiple events, it might miss) and might permanently reduce your hand size.

Given that folks feel that Anthelios is as overpowered as it is, and that those Cybelle/Aksina decks with Anthelios seem to be all the rage, I'd imagine that people would be using the Uncoiling in every deck; it kills Anthelios, The Unmaskening, and Dargonboned, all of which show up all the time and are very dangerous.

I would like to see it be easier to kill Events, still, however. A master card that could kill an event after the fact would be nice. Or some more generally useful actions that do that too. I have no huge need to see them be playable more than once, even if they become easier to kill; very few decks really *need* an event to work; Unmaskening is pretty key to ally decks, but they can generally live without it. Dragonbound is often more of a bad idea than not. No deck *needs* Anthelios to be playable.

There is also Watchtower that kills events.

Lech wrote: There is also Watchtower that kills events.

Well, yes, but that requires an event in play to even put it into play. So you have already probably played Anthelios just to get the Watchtower on the table...

bakija wrote: If we change "Parity Shift" to "Anthelios" and "vote deck" to "master recursion deck", I think you'll find that you have talked yourself out of your own point...

Not at all. There is two key difference (that I have highlighted already with Parity shift) :

* Parity shift does the work of availables card (2 - 3 standards vote in one). Anthelios have an unique effect*. Being an unique effect is neither a requirement nor a proof of problematic card, but is still a good indicator of being potentially broken.

* Parity shift can be countered, delayed or made less efficient by everything that hose votes (and some other things in some circumstances). Anti-event card are very scarce and a lot less easy to use.

Anthelios have a cool and unique effect in theory, but in practice I believe it does not really work out.

some more problems I see with trying to introduce silver bullets against events...
minion cards like Black Hand Ritual aren't very reliable, because it's common for an Anthelios deck to keep a Direct Intervention in hand. then they use Anthelios to swap DI back in their hand next turn. to be fair it's not guaranteed to happen like that every time, but.... basically, Anthelios helps you counter anything that could counter Anthelios. that's not game balance!

people forget that Uncoiling will only ever burn one random event on the table. If someone's deck relies heavily on events to play their game (or ruin everyone else's) then they will definitely pay the pool to burn Uncoiling before it activates a second time.

it's too bad that Events just don't seem to play nicely with the rest of the game structure. or maybe the bad thing is that the Gehenna cards were too powerful, while other events are perfectly fine and don't deserve to be lumped together with them (e.g. NRA PAC, Bitter and Sweet Story)