Thanks for sharing your views. We've been busting our a**es last few days over here to find answers against those two decks. We've been playing lots of stuff, and basically, it comes down to a few things : Emet+Hythlo : You need to have answers for the goblin. Usually it means having a kill on Hythlodaeus, and something to answer when your opponent uses the goblin, like a Cuchulain or a Titan. Using Amaterasu on Relm is also killing the deck usually, giving you enough time to get prepared for what's coming. Mono water for instance, can face it with witch+relm, with a pirahna, for instance. given you also have cuchu, you're fine. A few decks are also capable to handle it if he just spams forward but missed the OTK if playing it, like mono earth. Even though i like the idea of combo decks, maybe we're better off without Hythlo Chaos : multiple plays are able to face chaos, even without EX. Shantotto7 might be not as effective as hoped, but if you can get a mist dragon too, you can be fine. Any EX is fine if your deck is tech'd for it. lots of deck actually can manage to beat chaos, the real issue is having everything to try not to die off the Gilgamesh (FFBE), since this is the most problematic card there. The deck also has a glaring weakness to Magissa. Magissa -> Akstar into whatever is actually GG, since Chaos will pass turn while you'll probably find another trigger and win off it. Given how both decks have answers, i don't feel we need bans, BUT they warp the other decks in a certain way to be able to face them can be unhealthy. I don't want to have so many specifics card in my deck. Also, if we go with limitations/bans, chaos to 3 of anyname in a deck is fine. Limiting WoL 4color to 1 / banning it is also enough to get read of Chaos Turbo, since the real problem is the gilga that follow. No gilga, any play that kills RAijin/Fujin is anough.
The fix for the Hythlo deck is to errata the card so it removes it and Emet from the game, instead of puts into the breakzone. The combo can still be done but it is significantly more difficult than a single Regis
I’d rather not have functional erratas for physical cards with the exception of translation errors like King of Burmecia. It’s so clunky for new players that might see a big flashy card and get excited only to be told it does something different than the card text. I just don’t see a world where the card is ever used for something healthy and not trying to be Leo’s flashier, more risky cousin, which is already a card I dislike.
I think the turbo chaos deck is fine, as theres way to deckbuild around it to beat it, as well as multiple points of interaction. I think the hythlo deck is not ok, because there is such little room for interaction with relm/clioune. I don't want to play a game where the game is decided by both players top 10 cards in deck. Theres also the case that its a nondeterministic combo that doesn't gurantee a win, so I could easily see a case where the hythlo player takes 25 minutes to not win, but then theres not enough game time left for players to finish the game before time is called.
I don’t think the Turbo Chaos deck is unbeatable but I do think it puts a massive strain on deck building, especially for two deck formats. A deck that aims to consistently turn on turn 2 with a Sephiroth built in does limit the number of decks that can play and honestly is a deck that I think checks the top 12 cards of your deck for specific answers and bursts. I think it’s really annoying that they release 110 cards and the 8 that have EX in the corner have a massive advantage in deck building because currently about 40% of your deck needs to be made up of those cards to handle it. Agreed on Hythlo in every way.
Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t feel like sets are designed with L3 and L6 in mind nearly as much, and L6 usually to me resembles Standard play without many of the answers you’d normally use against the best decks. I imagine that rotation would help with finding cards for new players and edge cases like Hythlo combo being an OTK but it would require a full restructuring of how sets are currently built and I think the format gets less interesting on the whole.
I think I would have less of a problem if every element had bursts that could do it. But because Water is by far the best at it, everyone plays it and then because every deck is playing water and 20 bursts, they start playing Lenna etc. It’s a very warping presence on the meta in a frustrating way.
chaos limited to 1 would barely affect the deck. it would simply be replaced with a searcher or spiritus and you would go 2nd instead of first maybe. the ryujin ban would hurt ff8 a little too so a limit on that 1 would be ok since then its more of a flip off 2 specials so the t1 KO is limited a bit. the issue is then how long until another card like it. Hythlodeus loop can be errrated to rfg. gets rid of regis in the deck and other recursive elements and pushes the loop much harder into finding the next copies to keep going which is far harder. which means most likely they will be warped into control variants thats designed to destroy hands and fields to make time for the next one assuming the flips werent enough of a hindrance to win Another thing you can do is keep the hythlodeus to keep loop and control variants alive but ban clione. clione is useful for monster decks too but then makes the loops more vulnerable in general at any point and then regis as an L is still viable. the issue with clione is primarily relm though. naturally drawing clione would be much more of an issue since it affects the loop too. so even banning or limiting relm would destroy most its is viability as a deck tbh. In terms of the combo taking forever once practiced you can resolve the combo in full in 5 mins. so the time isnt the issue since the loop version is all in you win or lose within 10 mins most likely, so its actually much faster in majority of games compared to midrange and control decks.
Spiritus is significantly worse than just playing chaos. If you blank spiritus with porom or cuch after they pay the 4, the chaos player gets nothing. That is basically game over right there. Spiritus being vulnerable to amat, cancel levi, and cuch overall means that it has much more counter play than the current versions. Forcing the deck to need to run worse consistency tools like spiritus would be a significant nerf to the deck.
Agreed with Dwatch - notably it also introduces a huge Amaterasu weakness to the deck. It’s completely reliant on finding chaos in a terrible deck otherwise. If you reduce the number of copies, even something like Amat on Larsa becomes game winning. That said, I think Raijin is just a mistake and I think FF8 functions without him so I’m fine with him going. And I mention it above but I don’t like erratas for physical cards except for translation errors (King of Burmecia) and immediate design oversights (Suzuhiza). I think they become clunkier to explain to new players, particularly ones that are excited about a bonkers effect, only to be told that no, actually it doesn’t work that way anymore. I think the control or casino versions looking to flip Nacht and Sephiroth and Teodor are not so significantly healthier that I want them in the game anyway if I’m being totally honest.
While I don't find anything ban-worthy from a competitive standpoint (these decks can be answered and they do not overpower the format [yet?]), I'm not a fan of the design philosophy of cards like Hythlo as they limit the pool of viable cards drastically. The power of the effect(s) combined with the ease to achieve the payoff make many other build-around cards just useless. Why bother to go through actual effort for a lesser payoff? For example, last opus, I spend quite some time on optimizing my favorite rouge deck revolving around Ardyn 20-001R. I got it to a decent power level and spoiler season got me exited for the buffs that were incoming. After reading Hythlo, I binned these hopes instantly - better payoff, easier achievement, less fun. I felt last set with the LB they really opened the format up for many decks to exist. Why they rush with the power creep on non-LB cards again now I cannot quite understand...
Yeah as of now, I don’t think they overpower the game, but I do think they’re *extremely* restrictive on what decks you’re allowed to build and have a competitive chance at a tourney. Your deck needs to - survive a 2 turn kill from Chaos and be able to stop a combo through Clione potentially and survive Knights and also have game against other control or mid range decks. And yes, you always have to prepare for the meta but the number of answers to the first two is much, much smaller than any decks we’ve seen in the game, which restricts deck building even further.
REBIRTH CARDSSSSSSSSS FINALLLLLYYYYYYYY REBIRTH CARDSSSS Cant wait for Opus 25, cant wait for opus 24 (because XVI), Hidden trails seems soooo boring compared to whats to come its insane I need to wait for the nex sets so many months.
