INTRODUCTION
The GU Balance Team introduced Sleep 2.0 in the PTR a couple of weeks back but decided against pushing through the changes to the live server. Understandably, there were a lot of adverse effects that Sleep 2.0 will bring to the game.
But worry no more because I come bearing a better solution to balancing BWD. Best of all, this unsolicited idea is FREE! (well, maybe a card donation to complete my deck build is also appreciated).
WHY SLEEP 2.0 DIDN'T WORK?
First, let's review the disadvantages of the proposed changes on Sleep 2.0 as per IMBryn's post on discord :
The balance update we delivered this month can be undone by a huge change like this one.
The nerf would damage BWD as an archetype a little, but the proposed change shoots almost 30 cards out of the meta – mostly belonging to Deception.
The change will impact some domains more than others. For example Magic has a ton of ways to deal damage and wake things up using spells and god powers, but Magic was already favored against BWD. It’s other domains that need help to face BWD, like Nature and Light, who have way less interactions with the new mechanic.
The Core card changes we implemented to test alongside sleep 2.0 can be used in a variety of ways, like doing direct face damage to proc frenzy for Nature/War.
Overall, we think the power level of those cards can be slightly above average.
Aggro decks already make the best use of the Sanctum, with these changes, this would become even more severe.
MY PROPOSED SOLUTION TO NERFING SLEEP MECHANICS
Knowing the above complications in introducing the proposed Sleep 2.0 changes, I came up with a simple yet effective answer to balancing sleep archetypes and that is:
Make anti-sleep a creature ability.
Yeah, that's basically the crux of my proposed solution.
So let's say for the purpose of this exercise we call this ability as "Vigilance". (This creature is immune to sleep effects.)
In Magic the Gathering, Vigilance is an ability on creatures that allows the creature to attack without tapping. I just like the word as well to describe a creature that is always "awake".
Okay, some would say we already have the "Ward" ability to block sleep -- why not just make more warded creatures? Ward also blocks spells, hence, giving more of this ability to new and existing creatures will weaken a lot of archetypes and undo a lot of the balance as well.
A new sleep immune ability to creatures is more flexible and easier to balance as the GU team will be able to put out new creature cards with this ability or give them to existing creatures.
It can be given out to specific domains more than others such as Nature and Light without giving more weapons to Magic. War has relics to enable it to attack face and maybe will just require a couple of cards or so to give it a chance to win against BWD without making it too overpowered.
WHY IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER ANTI-SLEEP TECH?
Ironclad Minotaur and Svart Basilisk are the most common techs against Sleep decks. But the problem is their ability can only be used once to counter sleep. Your window to draw these cards at the right time and use them for a fatal attack is very narrow.
Also, with a plethora of ways that BWD can sleep your creatures, a single-use ability is not enough to break the sleep loop that BWD generates and which makes the game against BWD, not the most fun to play.
Including these cards as tech to sleep gives a small upside or it makes it even more of a disadvantage to other archetypes rather than using that slot for a more useful/synergistic card to your build.
Light has the best card to counter sleep with Radiant Dawn but the meta has not been too kind to Light players. But that's another problem altogether which might be resolved in the upcoming core refresh.
CARD MOCK-UPS
Just for fun, I've made some mock-up cards.
CONCLUSION
The best part of this proposed solution to sleep mechanics is it won't make BWD or Deception Sleep archetypes too weak or obsolete. Death still has the best creature removal cards in the game. It just needs to work more to win rather than just passing each turn until they reach the critical 7+ mana territory where they are almost invincible.
Let me know what you think about this idea and if you have other suggestions for the GU team to nerf sleep in the game.
May the mulligans be in your favor!
To be honest I am not bothered by BWD a lot even though I play at like mythic 1500 I do not face it much :p But still I would agree that something needs to be done. And the vigilance ability seems dope!
Yeah, there's not much BWD out there because it's a very expensive deck to build. But there are still a lot of decks with Demogorgon and I think that itself is problematic.
I really like this idea, I feel like it would be a good "just-in-case" mechanic if Sleep becomes OP that allows the GU team to print more sleep cards without having to fear that there's no counter to them.
Anyway, I don't think the sleep mechanic needs to be nerfed, but rather just the BWD deck, since it is the only deck that utilizes sleep to get such high WRs. Other than your proposed Vigilance keyword, the team could also simply buff aggro decks so BWD can't win against them 😂 Although I don't think this change would be well received...
Agree, having anti-sleep abilities might be good as well to give the GU team more freedom to put out more sleep cards and make a more exciting meta.
Ok, those card mockups are tight! I'm still too new to higher level play to give much feedback on the details of your breakdown and ideas but I appreciate how the post goes beyond saying "Here's a thing I think and why".
You give the reader some background to understand why you are talking about this and you sneak in the special treat of the card mockups which are really well done; If someone showed me these randomly and said they were made by GU I wouldn't doubt it.
Personally I'm glad overall that the sleep changes as presented for the PTR didn't go through. There were a lot of good ideas in them but some of the things they would have effected could have been too big a change, or allowed unforeseen complications. Though on a slightly selfish note, I am a sad I won't be able to use an archer to kill off my own hydra heads the round they come out; that could have been a bit of fun chaos for a while!
thanks! honestly, I think I spent too much time looking at artworks just to make those mock-up cards and it's good that it seems to be worth the effort. :)
I appreciate that the balance team didn't rush into pushing out sleep 2.0. As you suggested, there will be some ways to take advantage of being able to damage your own creature (I must admit that being able to hit your own Hydra is quite creative and could have been really fun or annoying if you're on the other side of the board).
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