I strongly disagree. I think being able to target supports would be amazing and I absolutely do not want this game to become even more RNG based. It’s got enough RNG as it is with the gem board and boosters.
The problem as I see it is that they would have to rebalance all the supports and support destroyers if they do that. I’m not sure I trust them to get that right..
You mean you agree with me that you want ability to target Support then? 
I, for one, count on my angel of intervention’s fabricates as decoys for my starfield.
i tend to use decoys a lot if i can also just ups my odds a random support destruction finds it
yeah Fabricate & Investigate makes it even harder to catch that starfield Just wait, after I craft my own StarField.
is nasty as far as supports go but still got to craft it randomly so who knows if you will get it right off, still trying to get solemn recruit since the set came out and i havent yet one of the few golds i am missing from the set lol
i’m missing 12 mythics from origin sets. since you won’t get repeat. that’s 12 crafting I’ll have to do. not hard. i got enough repeats to get it.
I’m in favor of bringing it more inline with paper. Supports with subtypes, artifact, enchantment, land. Targeted spells and restrictions on them to the subtypes they were originally intended to affect. That makes it sometimes harder sometimes easier. Red will cringe at Hixus but green will be able to deal with it simply.
Except, Hixus is a creature and red is always able to knock out creatures. Hixus probably should take up a creature slot instead of a support slot and disables all creatures currently in play until he leaves, if we are trying to bring things in line with paper magic.
Either way, in paper magic artifact and enchantment removal has always been either targeted or global. I get that it’s different here since you can theoretically match enough gems to destroy a support, but in most matches you won’t hit that gem enough to remove it. Targeted removal doesn’t seem over powered, especially as was mentioned, there are times you REALLY need to hit that Hixus, Part the Waterveil, Starfield, or whatever, and if RNG isn’t on your side when you play your support removal spell, you lose. There’s already enough RNG in this game just based off how much mana you can get from matches without this also being a part. I’ve been all for targeted support removal since I started playing.
If we currently have random support removal at the 5 mana mark and global at the 24 mana mark, I don’t see why we can’t find some way to add targeted removal at the 12-15 mana level. Yes, it would be pricey, but having the ability to take out an enemy Hixus or Starfield would be well worth the price. I’m all for randomized placement of supports, but targeted support removal is just as needed as targeted creature removal and is something that you can find requests for going back a long time.
Even with targeted destruction, cards like Hixus and (especially) Starfield will still be very powerful, they’ll just be less degenerate and have more counter play options if we were to be given targeted removal at a higher mana cost. If the existing removal was made to allow targeting, the cost is so low that it would totally trash the viability of any support-heavy build, so what we need is something new that lies between the current cheap, random destruction, and the expensive board wipe option.
good point. make targeted removal cost the same as the current global removal. I think that’s a good price/performance balance.
We have cards that destroy multiple supports in red, but I would like to see that in more colors, if we can’t have targeted support removal.
It exists in white and in green too for a while. But the question is, apart from rarity perhaps, why don’t the cards see play?
Easy answer is they’re, frankly, too expensive to bring to normal matches, especially when most of the time there simply aren’t that many support gems that need destroying. Random removal is fine in most situations, but sometimes you need that berserker’s plate or true faith censor gone just as much as there’s the same need sometimes for other more powerful supports.
Creature removal isn’t random, and I think we’d all think it would be stupid if it was. Support removal shouldn’t work differently just because that’s how it’s been, and certain archetypes that had no real answer now will.
That’s still not the only option, there are more, they will be more than I mentionn too.
- Remove 1 charge from a targetted support. (To be done in conjunction with putting charges on the cards and reeavaluating them)
- For red even: Pick 2 supports, one is destroyed
i love manglehorn for support removal duty. one of the better designed and balanced cards.
There is already “destroy all token supports and creatures” which you can pack to clear the chafe and then cast your normal random removal card.
Other options might be “Destroy the support with the highest number of charges” or the least.
You can mix it up and add weird costs, “Destroy a chosen support of the enemy and lose a random non-token one of yours” which would almost work in black, though better with a creature sacrifice too.
Lots of different ways…
I’m looking forward to Ixalan just to see if Oktagon have been creative (not just in this area but other stagnant ones, like “Counter spells”)
Right, because everyone has the Masterpiece card of destroying all token supports & creatures.
I like the highest shield/charges one
these are some creative ways to improve it. let’s see what Oktagon do.
Consulate Crackdown is a rare, and destroys all your opponent’s supports. The problem, as I stated, isn’t rarity, it’s that the card costs 24 mana to cast. No one is going to take that into a normal PvP match because it simply costs too much to just cover your bases have have it “just in case”. Most encounters there are few enough supports in play or they aren’t so beneficial as to require you to clear them all off the field. It’s just those handful of matches where the fact that support removal is either incredibly expensive and global or cheap and random that’s the problem.
And yes, there are other options, but Release the Gremlins only destroys three rather than all and is still 16 mana, Hour or Revelation, Cataclysmic Gearhulk, and The Great Aurora all wipe out everything and are all mythic rare and both hurt you as much as your opponent. Shatterstorm and Maelstrom Pulse are the only two that are affordable enough to bring in to most matches, and both are locked behind masterpiece rarity.
3 demolish: 9 mana, no tokens, 24 additional gems cleared (+possible cascades)
3 violent impact: 15 mana, no tokens
RtG is a great support removal option any time there are three or more supports.