Hi everybody, your friendly neighborhood plant poster here.
I’ve seen quite a bit of some particular thing lately. It usually shows up in the reveal threads, and is accompanied by words like “meta”, " balance", “overpowered”, " trash", et cetera. It’s a set of players who are convinced the expansion will ruin the game’s balance; a resistance to change. I call it fear.
If you’re one of these posters, or someone who is afraid of these cards warping your game, worry not. Unless you don’t want new cards just for the sake of hating new cards. Then worry. They’re coming.
Why do I say worry not? Well, a lot, and I mean a LOAD, of these hyperbolic posts miss something very important: context.
Context is important. “CPG why are you digging your grave with X” misses the context; CPG has knowledge of ALL the new cards, and, this may surprise you, they also know what the already-released cards do. I saw someone complain that Drogon was too strong because Adamantite Claws exists, and that CPG obviously didn’t realize this. Is that a strong combination? Sure. Does CPG know about it? I’d bet my house on it.
You could say the same about basically any of the new cards. “Excelsious is going to win every game!” you say? Well, we also have this new toy called Concealing Shroud, and Enfeeble, and Punish, and…
Do you see how this is going?
On top of that, cards like Concealing Shroud and Enfeeble might seem very strong because of their nature as spells, but spells have particular usage conditions. Concealing Shroud is going to be awkward, if not difficult to find an ideal place to play, when it’s not saving your life. But even then, it requires you to recognize that you’re in imminent danger; you won’t even understand it’s working unless it doesn’t. Same with Enfeeble; the optimal play conditions are so narrow that they’re going to be met only against decks that play into it inherently. Additionally, it doesn’t eliminate state-based buffs, like Abyssal Juggernaut’s +X/+X.
These cards are all going to have weaknesses. I guarantee you. Duelyst is going to be fine. It looks like they’re making efforts to slow down the game, giving several factions powerful stalling tools to counterbalance the powerful sustain other factions are getting.
The devs do this for a living. They made the game you currently are on a forum for. They have the context, the hundreds, potentially thousands of playtesting man-hours. They can release 39 cards without ruining it.
Duelyst will be fine. 
. Makantor Jesus hasn’t been listening to my prayers.
