What's up with blue? (bounce & steal)

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
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So, several blue cards are already being discussed.. While I don’t think any specific one alone needs to be nerfed, but could totally understand if it would, the color is oppressive as a whole, plus some changes confuse me.
This thread is specifically not meant to call for nerfs, but to discuss the color, cards, and maybe get some feedback.

Blue can draw cards like no other color.

That’s cool, that’s blue, only a bit color creep at the top level (BSZ, since it adds mana, search for lettersoup)

Blue gains straight mana or can cast for free - nothing unusual, if we look at startled awake or as foretold.. But 72 mana for sixteen (BSZ) compared to twelve mana for ten (days Undone, I don’t count the second effect because it’s neutral - good or bad, depending). Better ignore omni here.

Blue has the best board wipe and support destructible combined in one card. That’s new.

Blue has the best ramp. Better not discuss that here.

Blue has the best temp disable - okay, sleep really takes it on a new level.

All the things mentioned above boil down to just a few key cards, that definetely have an influence on the color as a whole, but my two “worst offenders” are mechanics :

Steal :
Blue was always able to steal, under certain conditions (if you have at max two creatures on the board). That has changed since several months. The current uncommon steal cards like the good old prison wallet (in bolas’s clutches) are superior by far to old older mythic solutions - ignores hexproof, board state, and destroys is you don’t take the creature. Now that’s power creep as it’s finest.

Bounce :
Like steal, bounce had conditions : you either bounce to the hand or library. Library bounce wasn’t able to target tokens, hand bounce did not cast when the enemys hand is full. Now, you just destroys creatures, giving blue the cheapest kill spells. And recently, you enlarge the enemys hand? More fair, but totally random. When I only see the card text, I have no clue what might happen.

Is it intentional to furtherly boost the already strongest color? What is the idea behind bounce and steal in the current iteration? What do you think about blue?

Tldr
Blue strong. Blue stronger. Same things are different. Me confused.

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The change to bounce and steal do destroy if there isn’t any room in hand/on board has always bothered me, since it makes powerful abilities even more so (especially the bounce, since those are usually very cheap to cast).

The problem is those abilities have been confirmed by the devs several times to be working as planned, and we can’t seem to come to a consensus as to if it is in fact a problem or not.

But yeah, blue is nuts right now

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Blue definitely has the best range and power cards in the game right now. Tag them with the 2 Bolas or Tef, it becomes illogical not to use blue if you can. Red seems to be hurting right now even though it can tap into stv, Black has good exile and kill spells, Plains seems to be balanced, and Green still has its ramp. However, they just don’t compare to blue as it covers all the bases and more than any other color. BSZ is pretty broken. Omni just took a back seat to this card.

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One thing I’ll say is that Green really doesn’t have much ramp anymore. There are just 2 spells that convert gems to green in standard, and neither of them is fantastic (although Thunderherd isn’t bad for a common)

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Arguably Blue is quite weak in finishing the game. You still win with ramp and control, but it will take longer.
But who don’t run a multi-color PW?

In fact it is a tradition that the best(or broken) cards are given to Blue, then later they will berf them. Let’s look as the very first broken Blue card should you forget:

Harbinger of the Tides (Rare, Blue) (10)
Creature - Attacker
6/6
When it enters the battlefield, choose a creature your opponent controls, it is returned to his hand and costs 9 more.

and Mizzium Meddler. Blue is just dominating all times.

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4 spells:
Thunderherd Migration (10 gems)
Grow from the Ashes (5 gems)
Animist’s Awakening (0, 5, or 10 gems)
Commune with Dinosaurs (3 gems)

Still pretty paltry compared to the Legacy Mythics, especially for the color that’s supposed to be all about mana ramp.

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It seems though that there might be a change to bounce with M19.
Exclusion Mage returns a creature even to a full hand, expanding it to hold more than 6 cards.

If this behaviour is actually a bug or a feature is unclear since it’s the only bounce in the set.

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There are very few times in this game when killing a creature is preferable to bouncing it. Cheap red aggro is the only example I can really think of. Bouncing a Captain Lannery Storm or Skinshifter really won’t buy you a lot of time at all, and bouncing a Volcanic Rambler gives your opponent another chance to accelerate ahead of you. Such strategies, though, are uncommon (not rare, just uncommon :smile: ). Red, as has been noted in this thread, is probably the weakest color in the game (when I play read, I play it for precisely two cards, Etali, and Haphazard Bombardment, and I’m pretty sure Happy Bomb is bugged and isn’t supposed to be as good as it is).

However, as soon as you get to midrange red creatures, bounce starts to pull ahead in terms of power. Bounce an Avaricious Dragon with a Perilous Voyage, and you make a decent enough profit in mana to make the exchange worthwhile. The fact that the AvDragon returns to your opponent’s hand to be recast is far less relevant in MTGPQ than it is in paper; the ratio of mana generated on a single move to card cost is way lower in MTGPQ than paper. (If there were 10 creatures in Standard as cheap and powerful as Cap’n Lannery, it might be a different story).

And, of course, there are times when bouncing a creature is preferable to killing it, because of effects that trigger when it dies. The most obvious example is Darigaaz, who is feared enough amoungst the community that he has his own thread here on the forums.

I imagine Oktagon removed the ‘5 cards or less’ clause from bounce to make the card easier to read (somewhat understandable), and because they didn’t understand why it has been put there in the first place (as with the fast token animations, which they removed from some cards that Hibernum added them to). But the change has made bounce, which was already too powerful, even more so.

Oktagon have further increased the power of some bounce cards by making them work around hexproof, like Perilous Voyage and Academy Journeymage (In Bolas’ Clutches also works around hexproof now in blue). Granted, the only highly playable hexproof creature in the game is Gaea’s Revenge, but GR sees a fair amount of play even at the very highest levels of the game, and improving blue’s ability to deal with it was a mistake.

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If bounce worked to bounce a single creature (without reinforcements) or perhaps a reinforcement only if reinforced, still requiring an open slot in hand?

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That’s not bad! It’s actually more intuitive than the current system, which is that one single copy of the creature gets bounced, and all it’s reinforcements go to the GY.

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Going to try not to write a novel.

I think bounce destroying things was made on the basis that if a card is returned to hand and not cast the following turn, something would get discarded/destroyed. But the process was simplified by destroying whatever it was that got returned.

I think bounce should return the non-token creature to hand and increase the hand size. I am unsure of how much the hand should get increased.. i am thinking only 1 or 2 cards tops (so 7-8 card hand size max). But any cards after that should be destroyed perhaps. I dont know… its really hard to say.

All i can say for certain is before when you couldn’t use bounce until their hand was reduced to 5 or less… it was terrible.

But now as others pointed out straight up destroying is a bit too powerful.

The best would be truly creating a discard phase/end phase. But this would be super complex considering: “what about cards that draw cards or fetch. Technically those too should be accommodated?”

And what happebs in regular paper MTG when a token gets bounced? I havent played in an extremely long time..

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I wouldn’t say terrible! Harbinger, Galestrike, Unsummon, Consign, Winds of Rebuke… these are all very good cards, even now!

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You know what you are right. Those cards were great in their prime. I had completely forgotten about that era. My mistake, sorry.

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So did I. I failed.

Expanding hand size and adding a discard step sounds like a fait compromise, that still is powerful, but way more reasonable than it is now.

“bounce target creature to the enemys hand. If it is reinforced at least once, bounce only one copy. If you can’t, it loses a reinforcement”.. I think this is not yet perfect, but I like the directing this is going.. Something different.

Yeah, this is basically the reason I threw a wall of text in the room. My questions about it (also, but not only in the Q&NA) usually get ignored at best, or shut down at worst.

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I feel like all of the other cards need some love and blue needs to plateau for a bit. I like blue being powerful. I like blue being, arguably, the best color . What I don’t really like is blue being the best color , objectively.

Green’s ramp is hurting , and I can’t be the only person noticing that thunderherd misses an inordinate amount of time. It’s like ‘here, have a match 5, Greg’ feels weird .

Red needs some love in the removal department. It has burn for days, but only about 2 ways to deal with a plant token.

Black is still doing its thing . Not having access to something like anguished unmaking hurts. It has 1 way to deal with supports directly, but it’s colorless and can’t hit lands.

White is white. It has decent removal options. It can deal with supports . It has decent creature options. If you love lifelink, you’re in luck. Feels like every white creature being played has it. It struggles a bit in the mana department, but gets by.

Blue is definitely weirdly strong right now, so we gotta give the other colors a bump. We’re about to see the color pie bent and twisted into oblivion with ravnica , so maybe things will level out some .

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I’ll have to echo the sentiments of some people in here, in that blue has always been ridiculous. And additionally, it has gotten even more ridiculous. Every competitive match I play is with a blue planeswalker because of how good the color is. I’ve also BSZ and all the other bombs, so I’d be silly not to abuse them.

Honestly though, I do like where blue is at, and I think a better solution than dialing it back would be to follow @HarryMason’s suggestion and bump up the other four colors. And if this ends up being the route that’s taken, objectives could then be designed to encourage the typical playing styles and strategies employed by those colors. It’s thoughts like this that I have which get me excited for Ravnica.

Also, @stikxs, I love this MCU game! Only thing is, I think most of these characters have been given enough depth and complexity that they can’t be boiled down into one single color. Anyway, here goes:

Thanos: Definitely blue, but I think he’s maybe a little white. The whole point of Infinity War is that he’s on a twisted quest for spreading balance and erasing “need.” The Azorius are pretty corrupt on Ravnica, because their power warped their understanding and implementation of The Rule of Law.

Thor: Interesting choice, pegging him as white. I think he started off very red, all about passion and feeling, but has since morphed into more of a Boros kind of feeling. He still lets his heart rule him, but he’s also got a refined sense of justice and fairness after all he’s been through.

Cap: I think he’s more white than anything else. He’s extremely rigid in his worldview of “right and wrong”, which are definitely white traits. Maybe a dash of green gets tossed in there as well, because he’s a straight-up bruiser and berserker, but I see mostly white.

Black Widow: Smart & calculating, dangerous & deadly. All traits of the Dimir. She’s an assassin, too (reformed, sure, but those are her roots), which is another Dimir hallmark. In fact, I don’t see any red in her at all, come to think on it.

Tony: I think he maybe started out as black, or even more likely black & red, but his character has arced past those two by this point. Now, I think he’s shifted over into Izzet (U/R) or Jeskai (W/U/R) territory. He’s less of a maverick now, and less individualistic, and instead has focused his intellect on the problem of keeping humanity alive. He’s had some ridiculous failures along the way, such as Ultron (the Izzet embrace failure as yet another opportunity to learn), but he’s also championed The Rule of Law as a result, in how he spearheaded the Sokovia Accords (this is why I see him as partially white). He’s arguably one of the most complex characters that the MCU has to offer, so I think making him a tri-color reflects that complexity.

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Blue just has very few weaknesses. The reason for this is because PQ is a poor translation of the paper game (which one might argue was inevitable). There are too many strategic layers that are missing from the game.

Blue has card draw, removal, mana denial and acceleration. The only thing it generally lacks are strong creatures (clearly there are some exceptions), but because we have a limit on the number of creatures in play, this weakness is minimized. Only having three creatures in play at a time also means that it’s easier for blue to control the tempo. Without a “go wide” strategy, it’s much harder to overwhelm blue or force it to make choices.

Relatedly, because of the ability to both generate and store mana in large quantities, it’s harder to attack blue by trying to overwhelm it with cost-efficient threats. That’s what makes cards like Vault so powerful. Once blue gets a Vault online, which is not hard, it’s very difficult to lose because you can no longer overwhelm them. They’ll just counter every threat you have, and draw the cards back, and fill them with full mana, all while you’re taking 3 turns to cast a creature that will immediately be neutered.

Blue isn’t supposed to destroy things. It’s supposed to control or copy or morph or weaken them. “Destroy” isn’t even one of its primary, secondary, or tertiary slices of the color pie, which you can see in this 2017 article by Mark Rosewater:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/mechanical-color-pie-2017-2017-06-05

Yet it does–and by making bounce and control ALSO kill, it removes one of blue’s only weaknesses. Cards like Harbinger are weaker than Academy Journeymage, but they were far more balanced.

Blue’s other weakness (besides having a lot of uninspiring creatures) is dealing with supports, but that only really affects a handful of planeswalkers that aren’t really played. Kiora, Bolas, Saheeli? They don’t care that blue can’t deal with supports, because their other halves can.

All the other colors have glaring weaknesses, but blue compensates for all of them. Blue lets green draw its creatures and control the board without NEEDING creatures to do so. Blue lets white draw and generate obscene mana and give it less conditional removal options. Blue lets red actually affect things permanently (control or kill) when normally red sees something with 8 toughness and says, “tinykitty.” Only blue-black retains the combined weakness, and that indeed is T2’s biggest flaw.

Basically, the answer to any problem is “just play blue”.

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Note to Oktagon:

In paper mtg, multicolored cards are generally better than monocolored, because you have to pay ALL of the different colors of mana.

In MTGPQ, you can play ANY of the colors of mana, and so card effects should be worse than their monocolored counterparts.

Does this mean the cards should be bad cards? No! For Pete’s sake, don’t look at Open Fire and think, I’ll make a card which is worse than that! Make multicolored cards have effects which are worse than the best effects in their respective colors.

Aven Wind Guide, Blood Cursed Knight: Terrible cards, no! ::frowning:
Storm the Vault, Olivia: Blatant color pie breaks, no! ::frowning:

Reflector Mage, Brutal Expulsion, Azor the Lawbringer, yes! :smile:

A thought about color weaknesses: Colors should absolutely have weaknesses, but should those weaknesses ever be absolute, rendering a color incapable of dealing with something altogether? I’d argue no, because that would render monocolored PWs unplayable in PvP.

Maybe it’s an intentional aspect of design that monocolored PWs are terrible at high levels of play? I don’t think it should be though.

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@Matthew Oh that was specifically just about power rankings lol. I don’t know anywhere near enough detail on the characters to actually define their coloring. :smiley: