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Songhai is about the most frustrating thing to play against now

#1

And I think that the biggest problem is that the ranged mechanic, and also Reva’s ability to constantly create ranged minions, is inherently imbalanced. In gauntlet right now it is absolute hell to play against songhai. They have a huge amount of cheap buffs to exploit ranged advantage, Ki Beholder is a force to be reckoned with, and there just isn’t enough removal that you can possibly draft in order to deal with the most basic songhai deck. If Reva is allowed only one turn to place her minion uncontested, the game is basically over because of it. Next turn, you can be sure that the entire game will swing in her favor due to deathstrike seal, killing edge, etc…

That is just too much reward for too little risk.

I actually think that ranged would be a fine mechanic if there weren’t so many extremely cheap buffs in the game, or if those buffs couldn’t be applied to ranged. That, or the ranged keyword needs to be reworked so that it has a distance requirement.

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#2

it would be better if there were more long range dispel options other than chromatic cold and sun bloom

#3


read this for various arguements on why ranged is not op.

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#4

I play mostly gauntlet because I find it most fun, but ranged in gauntlet is exactly why it is sometimes not fun at all. Ranged is incredibly over-centralizing in the gauntlet meta. The thing is, ranged beats /every/ other value-over-time-generator with ease. Sometimes games are decided turn 1 by playing a vale hunter, the opponent not having an answer, and then win with a buff. Even without a buff, the 1 free damage in the first 3 turns has huge snowball effects on the rest of the game, most of the time at least. I always have to keep ranged minions in mind when drafting and make suboptimal picks fairly often, and guess what: picking a crossbones over a sunsteel defender just works. I always get to 12 wins if I have a good amount of ranged answers plus some provokes. That is the advice I can give: value provoke /a lot/ if you keep losing to Reva in gauntlet. There is indeed no way to answer Ki Beholder into Widowmaker into Arrow Whistler + Heartseeker, and then even more Heartseekers if you don’t lock her down at some point. Once you do that, it’s just a 1/1. But I totally agree, ranged minions are really unhealthy, very little risk and rewarding after one free hit already. I feel like only Vanar can truly punish ranged minions without having to pick suboptimal cards like True Strike in Lyonar.
I almost never have problems with ranged in constructed, but in gauntlet it sometimes feels like ‘the first one to stick a ranged minion - the game’, which is incredibly boring and frustrating to play. Shimzar did actually give more ranged minion answers than viable ranged minions, so I feel like CP is aware of it. At the same time ranged has become harder to answer because of the expansion of the card pool. I wouldn’t mind gauntlet without ranged minions/Reva’s BBS though, but that’s an unrealistic thing to happen.
I just hope there will be less and less games that go like ‘well, you summoned a ranged minion, gg’. Definitely overvalue ranged damage/dispel, rush, flying and provoke (and hard removal, but that has always been coveted in draft).

#5

like i said, we just need a neutral long range dispel like siphon or something. i realize how difficult it is to get those kinds of cards in gauntlet, but its not ranged that needs a nerf, we just need more dispels.

if we get that, all of a sudden people will complain about how weak ranged is.

#6

I have a post in the thread that you linked to.

#7

I think that the fact that the are currently a lot of ranged minions factor in too this, as I feel that the same would happen to blast minions if more were made for Vetruvian (blast is way too strong of an effect to be a neutral ability). The gauntlet part of this discussion suprised me, I hadn’t really seen how much stronger shimzar would make other factions be. Usually, Songhai isn’t the best for gauntlet due to how combo orientated it is, and lack of removal and AoE is a big impact to it in gauntlet, which is usually scarce.

Regarding the strength of ranged minions, they purposely have weaker stats to compensate for their unlimited range, and the best way to deal with them are by ranged removal, AoE, or dispel, or by trapping/pressuring your opponent into a corner. If you see a lot of Revas, I would recommend running blood tear alchemist or scorn to deal with the heart seekers.

#8

For making a similar thread myself, j sincerely believe that ranged minions must have a limitation on range, it is completely unhealthy for them to smile your stuff down with the help of buffs. It’s basically “oh I have a heartseeker. I’ll just killing edge next turn and killing everything you drop if you don’t answer it now”. It’s ridiculous. And ecenif you had some form of I direct non-spell removal. They’ll always almost certainly move the ranged minion to a far end corner, completely out of reach. I do believe that setting a range limitation for ranged (and other similar effects like four winds magi) minions and spells will fix part of the isuue about how unhealthy they are now

#9

When it comes to Gauntlet I completely agree. I always try to pick a Vale Hunter or two, the odds are really good that it’ll pay back its cost threefold.

#10

I actually think that blast is quite a bit more balanced than ranged. It definitely can be terribly annoying and swingy – mainly t1 pyromancer that takes off – but because of the positioning requirements, so long as you aren’t completely across the board from the opponent, you can usually find some way to at least force a blast minion to exchange damage with something rather than blast away. You can also easily play around it by staggering your minions across lanes.

I’d say that right now, songhai is the strongest gauntlet pick. You can literally just grab every buff / ranged minion that comes your way, and so long as you are playing in a smart way (protecting the ranged minions), you are very likely to end up at 7+ wins. Kara’s definitely close in power level to songhai right now, but I don’t think she’s quite there.

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#11

I see you didn’t die to melded boars with double saberspine seal yet.

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#12

We doing this again? every ranged minion is understated and over costed except two minions and yes those two minions belong to Songhai but Ki Beholder and heartseeker aren’t scary.

Just for perspective we have a 4/7 blast minion,The ranged minion at similar cost is 2/5 and other one is a 4/3.CP is deadly afraid to make a good Ranged minion.Ranged is so awesome that no “tier 1” build use them except the bbs.

Songhai out here on turn two double mirror melding Chakkri Avatar or doing 20 damage boars .We talking about ranged.We talking about faction that literally a strategy is dumping out damage because likelihood it will find damage to kill is high and we talking about ranged.

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#13

They’re talking about Gauntlet, not Ladder.

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#14

I myself believe that having any sort of unlimited range effect to be unhealthy when it comes to interaction, imo there needs to be a limitation of maybe 4-6 tiles so at least you can “reach” it. Maybe even spells, but that’s another story. But yeah ranged in gauntlet is definitely toxic since you cant guarantee that you will draft answers or ways to remove it.

#15

I don’t know if that makes it any better,the nature of gauntlet is random.Gauntlet isn’t trying to be balanced,Gauntlet lets you pick multiple of the same card pass the normal limit.Gauntlet doesn’t care about curve,removal or power level.

Why are people talking about balance beyond on bbs.The same way you can’t get removal for range,Is the same way you can go drafts without getting a single ranged minion.Even if you get a range minion you aren’t getting 3 of them so they aren’t guarantee you will get see it when you need it .

Gauntlet is balanced on chaos,Sometimes you get a God deck sometimes you get a Trash deck.You use your skill in picking minions to try to minimize weakness.Reva, Lilthe, Zirix and Vaath to lesser degree have inherent advantage being that their bbs always creates value and doesn’t need “a condition” to use but beyond that discussion I don’t see point in taking about minion balance unless it is syngery topic or unless card is straight trash and making the faction weaker.

Range is more valuable in Gauntlet so are snow ball cards like grow,deathwatch, Bloodmoon,Pandora, Silthar Elder, Kron, etc.Now try to consistently get them you can’t.

#16

funny thing: Yesterday i got a 12-1 gauntlet … guess who i lost to :confounded:

The “problem” with range in gauntlet is the lack of removal, but again, if your oponent is willing to sacrifice value and positioning to play range, so be it. While he summons ranged somehow lil guys, you contest for mana orbs and play bigger guys while advancing on them.

Are they stronger in gauntlet? yeah, sure, a lot more than in constructed. Does Sonhai have the more valuable range guys out there? yeah, that too. Are they a “problem”? im not sure about that.

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#17

You’re last point – that you can’t get them consistently – is wrong. It’s generally right for the other snowball cards that you mentioned, but Songhai has got so many ranged minions at common / rare that they are ubiquitous in every gauntlet pool, and then you’ve got the fact that your general is a consistent ranged-generating machine. Reva literally makes snowball units on a two turn clock for her BBS.

#18