With all the calls for nerfs and balancing, I thought it would be nice for a reminder of how bad it could be. So, what is your favorite (or least favorite) broken card of all time?
There just was no way you could kill an undergrowth Champion with reach, except to bounce it but it cost 12 so with green gem convertors that didn’t do much. And then came sphinx of the final word to be its best friend.
electrostatic was a close second for me only because it was a new mechanic and so few except the top players could energize realiably so when it came out it was a killer
I just saw that Avaricious Dragon has been included?
I disagree that it was nerfed. Its much more useful in the current form. It used to cost 18 and gave 3 Mana to each card you drew.
baral hands down. runaway was strong but you had more options to deal with it and games were long. with baral you would lose before you get any chance to play any counter measure
Baral define the meta pre-nerf and even Greg went “infinite” with this machine.
But I am here since a year, so every other other card I didn’t play pre-nerf.
At this time I would nerf cycling or at least new perspective and drake haven. It’s just like mirrodin cycle in paper magic with scullclamp: you have to play or you have a very tough time to go top.
I selected Baral but I think that gontis Aether heart ties with it. I lost one turn one to the PVE encounter that used it (Tezzeret in whatever AER’s PVE event was) that was not fun. Funny, but not fun.
This is a good list. The obvious choice is Baral given the grinding misery of living thru a never ending turn. However, Baral was killable with every deck I played. It was out for a long time before the brokenness began to be exploited and it lost more than it won. The Carriage and The Champion impacted the game the very first time they came into play and really required no synergy with the deck to win. I pulled the Undergrowth Champion early and felt like I had acquired the most powerful card in the game.
Carriage edges out Baral for me just slightly because Baral was a P2W mythic whereas Carriage was an uncommon.
Undergrowth Champion was one of my first mythics, I abused the hell out of him pre-nerf, but back in those days the scariest card around was Drowner of Hope, which was stupid good and dealt with UC no problem. Hixus also shut him down pretty easily. So even back in the day he was counterable and didn’t do anything to prevent people from taking turns.
I don’t remember Avaricious Dragon getting nerfed, and I’ve had one for a pretty long time. What did it do pre-nerf?
Runaway Carriage, hands down. I found an email exchange with someone from Hibernum about that the other day. It was a card with absolutely no solution.
Its funny, I had actually proposed a fairly easy solution back then. I said make it lose prevent damage when blocked AND WHEN BLOCKING (emphasis on what the change is, not for obnoxiousness). But getting rid of it all together wasn’t awful.
I’m surprised nobody has said Harness or Season’s Past, since they were also AI piloted infinite engines long before Baral
Easily Baral. Computer hit the combo and you had to quit the game. It would literally go for 10-20 minutes before the turn would end. It made the game unplayable.