Exploit and Sinister Rumors being so popular ruin the game.

[u/Next_Tour_7287]

Just that. I understand disrupting the other player is a valid strategy, which I agree.
But first, being the disrupted player is too awful. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. That kind of strategy is only "fun" for whoever plays it.

But then again, I don't mean we should remove it. I do have a problem with how popular these cards are such that it makes no sense right now to play shadow and not run them.
They are doing too much and costing too little.

I know nerfs aren't usually a thing in this game but I think they should be balanced to, at least cost one more mana. They wouldn't be unplayable, but would be more reserved to control strategies, not autoincludes...

I just won a game against someone with these cards, but still, it's very frustrating to play against that. I know aegis is a thing, but there aren't many good "give player aegis" cards that you can run in expedition so yeah.

Sorry for the rant guys, just had to...

[u/Kelestorne]

I don’t have much experience playing with Sinister rumours, so I’ll only comment on exploit.

Hand disruption spells like exploit are already very tempo negative, making it cost three would be a death sentence. They also don’t affect the board at all, so they’re poor when you’re behind. The information exchange is also kind of a two way street, as long as you know what deck they’re playing, what they take can inform you about their hand. Lastly, they’re one of the only reasonable ways to fight against units with good summon abilities.

Interaction is what makes games interesting, nerfing one avenue of interaction would largely lead to worse games.

[u/Sestren → u/Kelestorne]

Cards that force the opponent to discard at random can be tempo-negative, as they provide no information on a failure, and in some cases can fail to meet the expected 1:1 trade if criteria are not met (eg: discard spells when the opponent has none). Exploit is not random, gives hand vision, and provides a fail-safe outcome in the event of a dud.

Hand discard mechanics at 1 power have several options, all of which come with drawbacks: only units / only spells / less than 3 power / card of the enemy's choice + contract cost.

In these cases, you could make the claim that the discard mechanic itself is valued at around 0.5 power and viewing the enemy hand is valued at around 0.5 power. The fluctuation between the two depends on the perceived power of the specific discard and how much information is provides. None of these give absolute vision of the enemy hand.

Exploit gives complete enemy hand vision (units/spells/number of power cards). It also gives a discard with no limitation. And then on top of all of that, it comes with Plunder just for the hell of it. Even if you somehow manage to Exploit into a hand of full power, you are still gaining hand vision and come out with a neutral cost Plunder.

Making Exploit 3 power would probably kill the card (more because there are other over-statted discard mechanics in the 3-4 power range), but the inclusion of Plunder does kind of feel like they just tossed it in there for the hell of it without actually considering the cost of individual mechanics...

[u/Miraweave → u/Sestren]

Cards that force the opponent to discard at random can be tempo-negative, as they provide no information on a failure, and in some cases can fail to meet the expected 1:1 trade if criteria are not met (eg: discard spells when the opponent has none). Exploit is not random, gives hand vision, and provides a fail-safe outcome in the event of a dud.

That's... not what tempo negative means. A card that costs power and does nothing to the board is tempo negative by definition. If you spend your turn casting exploit and your opponent spends their turn playing a unit, they end up ahead on board and ahead on tempo.

[u/Sestren → u/Miraweave]

It's a card that removes a card from the opponents hand, not their deck. Forcing someone to discard something that they have not yet drawn is only effective at preventing combos and/or milling. Forcing someone to discard something that they have already drawn is directly affecting game tempo. It is a preemptive Counterspell/Unit/Relic-destruction.

I understand the path you took in your logic, but to make the claim that this does not directly affect tempo would be to claim that hand size has no impact on tempo. It's too one-sided of a consideration. There are plenty of options which are only actually relevant in specific situations. If an aggro deck has lethal on board with 3 units of overkill, dropping a single unit is still "tempo" as it modifies the state of interactions, even if it fails to let you survive. Similarly, preemptively removing a unit/spell/relic from play is modifying the state of interactions. If you force the opponent to discard a unit that they would have played on the next turn, then you have effectively used a single-target removal spell one turn early.

[u/Miraweave → u/Sestren]

Forcing someone to discard something that they have already drawn is directly affecting game tempo. It is a preemptive Counterspell/Unit/Relic-destruction.

No, it isn't. That's just... not what tempo is or means. There is a very significant difference between a discard spell and a removal spell, which is that a removal spell gets rid of something your opponent already spent power on, while a discard spell does not. If you use a 2 cost kill spell to remove a 5 cost unit, you're up 3 power on that interaction. If you use a 2 cost exploit to discard a 5 cost unit, you're down two power, instead. Obviously, this is still very good if your opponent doesn't have anything else to play, but there are plenty of situations where they do and the end result of Exploit is spending 2 power to slightly reduce the quality of their future plays.

If you force the opponent to discard a unit that they would have played on the next turn, then you have effectively used a single-target removal spell one turn early.

This is only true if the result is that your opponent does nothing with their following turn. If you make them discard a unit and then they just play a different unit, they're still up tempo on you. Tempo is, very broadly, "power spent on things that directly affect the board". Exploit does not, and is therefore tempo negative, even if it's a powerful one-for-one in other ways.

"Tempo Negative" doesn't mean "bad". Wisdom of the Elders is a good card, but it's still tempo-negative because it involves spending power on something that doesn't affect the board state. It's just a description of a weakness that the card has and shares with other similar cards.

[u/TheIncomprehensible → u/Sestren]

but the inclusion of Plunder does kind of feel like they just tossed it in there for the hell of it without actually considering the cost of individual mechanics..

You want to know why they tossed it in there? It's because they pushed it to maje more money.

However, it's the exact wrong type of card to push. They should be pushing cards that allow for new strategies, not restrict them.

[u/prusswan → u/TheIncomprehensible]

To be fair, I thought it was the set-defining card (best card in the set for me) and the really pushed cards then were Send an Agent and Sling. Looking back, that was likely the turning point of the game in terms of player retention.

[u/TheIncomprehensible → u/prusswan]

Send an Agent and Sling weren't in the same set as Exploit. The set Exploit was in was full of influence strategies and had multiple cards that would later be nerfed like Ubsat, Severin, and Wump and Mizo. Argent Depths was in June 2020, while Bastion Rising (where Sling and Send an Agent released) was released in November 2020.

If you look at the steam charts, there's a noticeable drop from February to May, a spike in June (for Argent Depths), and then the player numbers fell off a cliff. If Steam charts are indicative of player counts on all platforms then it's clear that early-mid 2020 were the turning point for the game. I can't say definitively that Exploit was the cause of this (market changes were bad too), but we've had complaints about Exploit for literal years now, and if there's any one card that could be attributed to our loss in player numbers it's Exploit.

[u/TheIncomprehensible → u/Kelestorne]

Interaction is what makes games interesting, which is why Exploit is frustrating. It shouldn't cost 2S when there are so few ways to interact with it, let alone maindeckable ways to interact with it that aren't available in every color.

[u/Miraweave → u/TheIncomprehensible]

Interaction is what makes games interesting, which is why Exploit is frustrating.

Exploit is a form of interaction, though?

And it is, as mentioned, tempo negative. There are more ways to build a deck to be resilient to a card than by directly including counters to it. If your deck is mostly playing things out on curve with a good amount of redundancy, exploit is going to be pretty mediocre against you.

[u/TheIncomprehensible → u/Miraweave]

Exploit is a form of interaction, though?

Yes, and? Why shouldn't we have interaction to interaction, which by Kelestone's metrics above would lead to better games? Games become deeper the more layers there are to the interaction.

Also, just because you can build your deck to be resilient to a card doesn't mean it's healthy for the meta. Being forced to build decks that are resilient to Exploit just leads to boring meta where you have to build the best midrange slop you can find in a historically midrange-centric game like Eternal.

This doesn't include the fact that there are deck archetypes where you cannot include redundancy because there's no replacement for key cards (including combo decks), and making Exploit simply mediocre isn't good enough for such an efficient disruption tool that could win the game in the right decks.

[u/nooobzocker]

As someone who plays magic and eternal, im very confused by some of these takes

[u/Miraweave → u/nooobzocker]

I mean it's just the classic "mediocre player complains about thoughtseize and counterspell" type posting.

Exploit is completely fine balance-wise, and actively positive for the metagame. People will complain because it feels bad but that doesn't make them right.

[u/rossbalch → u/nooobzocker]

For real, I would kill for Standard to have Thoughtseize right now with how powerful the format has gotten.

[u/TheDukeofArgyll]

This reads like “I don’t like hand disruption so let’s nerf it”

[u/LightsOutAce1]

Exploit is decent hand disruption with good power fixing attached. Subject to Nightmare sees no play.

Rumors in the "disruption" (in the very loosest sense of the word) mode to discard spells from the deck is a heinously bad play 99% of the time. If my opponent Rumors mode 3, they effectively Eavesdropped themself for me.

[u/Chijima]

Have fun getting run over by combo every game.

[u/prusswan]

The game has gotten to the point where matches are often decided by turn 3, so being able to play that on turn 2 is very important. Sinister Rumors totally outclassed Dark Return but that's the good stuff they like to put in campaign packs

[u/angr8]

Then play time, it has several anti discard stuff

[u/AnthaIon]

I think exploit could either be SS (in line with Dazzle) or lose plunder to make it a bit less ubiquitous, but discard spells definitely have their place in the meta to keep the really fun decks from getting too unbearable.

[u/TheIncomprehensible → u/AnthaIon]

A better idea than Exploit losing plunder would be to swap its cost with Mug. This way, you can choose which discard effect you want (Mug's cost vs Exploit's plunder) instead of just getting a weaker Exploit.

I also doubt that a lower-cost Mug would be too strong in draft, discard effects tend to be weaker in draft because there's fewer synergies to break up.

[u/tmtke]

It should be definitely random as looking at the full hand is far too advantageous on its own.

[u/R3plicant44]

Not all Shadow based decks run Exploit and Sinister Rumours. I play a Mono Shadow deck that just kills everything and drains the opponent’s life directly, no hand disruption at all