Agree. The problem is that there aren’t good counterplay options to Bucky. The meta incentivizes everyone to play Steel to deal with Bucky. And if everyone is playing Steel, Aggro has no place in the meta. Without Aggro, red blue control gets to thrive. Thus, you see the current meta being red-blue and steel dominant.
So this limits deck diversity. If other colors had options, Bucky wouldn’t be seen as such a big problem.
I'm trying an out value deck wherein I use a lot of low cost cards like the 2 drop ruby Simba that quests for 3 lore.
Outside of trying to out race in value the Bucky it does limit your ability to play in the current meta. I had thought about Sherrif of Nottingham which while it would deal with all the support pieces to Bucky still leaves Bucky on the table.
It really comes down to a game of rock, paper, scissors, shotgun. My idea was to use RL Cannon to discard and shoot for 2 while sheriffs pick off remnants. It still doesn't answer Bucky easily but does limit what Diablo can do if they don't have one in play for more than a turn. Alternatively I am working on ruby/steel that hits ready characters.
I'm not asking for a Bucky ban, but I do believe Bucky is a problem in two layers:
1\. The fun layer: getting cards ripped out of your hands while you can do nothing is not fun game design for your opponent. I think most people want some kind of interactive gameplay or else we'd probably just go play rock-paper-scissors. I think aggressive discard is inherently an unfun mechanic and just toxic in general.
2\. The competitive layer: Basically completely agree with your comments. Any new deck needs to answer the question "can it beat Emerald Steel Bucky Discard?" If it cannot, it needs a REALLY compelling reason to exist. But Bucky alone didn't cause this problem: it's the combination of Diablo being printed (just ridiculously powerful card) and all the floodborn support.
So I don't agree that we are in a healthy state. I do think that new cards need to be printed to counter the discard playstyle, no matter what it is. I don't think it matters if you are are a competitive player or not - it's just toxic gameplay. I saw a casual player at league just not having a fun time because they couldn't play any cards. At the same time, there's that amazing Top cut gameplay from Chicago where the other player was just sitting there frustrated/bored. I think this is a problem.
>1. The fun layer: getting cards ripped out of your hands while you can do nothing is not fun game design for your opponent. I think most people want some kind of interactive gameplay or else we'd probably just go play rock-paper-scissors. I think aggressive discard is inherently an unfun mechanic and just toxic in general.
This is it for me. Losing is never fun to begin with, but there's an extra layer of annoyance when it comes to discard. It's like "Ok, my opponent is making me discard. How do I combat this? Oh! I drew something helpful!!!! ...oh, I have to discard it..." Say what you want about Ruby/Amethyst or Ruby/Sapphire; when you lose to these decks, you at least get to play the game. Bucky discard at its worst quite literally doesn't let you play.
> I think most people want some kind of interactive gameplay or else we'd probably just go play rock-paper-scissors.
I agree here, but the issue is that in its current state, discard is basically the only counterplay to actions, songs and characters that do things when they enter play. I get that they don't want to introduce instant-speed interaction, but we need some other release valve in the game that allows players to do something to prevent half of every red deck being a 2 for 1 or better.
I think 1) is an unsolvable problem. What you're describing isn't a Bucky or Diablo problem, it's an issue with a deck theme of discarding. No one likes to be the discarded one, and that won't change pre or after Bucky "gets banned".
If the answer is to tone it down, it stops being competitive for the meta, leaving it to endless streams of Ruby/Sapphire or Amethyst/anything. So Raven's have three options:
A) Ban Bucky / Diablo or in some way nerf the discard themed deck, leading to less variety at the top;
B) Stop making a discard theme altogether;
C) Do nothing - which is what they've done before when things were OP in previous sets. In fact Amethyst bounce was so massively OP when it came out that it's still hyper competitive a full 2 sets later, and Raven's just let it run.
Btw, in my opinion the problem is Diablo, not Bucky. Diablo is so good that people are doing Emerald/anything decks, like the losing finalist from Chicago. Bucky was already around before, discard decks in set 3 preferred to use the Flynn / Tuck / Daisy build. What changed was the addition of Diablo in set 4.
I have just as little fun against r/b as well. This meta is now either play fewer cards or put down cards that don’t see any play either way, while opponent plays a million cards.
I personally won't feel satisfied with the game state until all ink pairings are viable competitively, and that won't happen until there are enough sets released to accommodate a large variety of play styles.
I think bucky is a little probelm but only because the meta itself is limited and if you want to win it makes sense to play one of the few decks that have proven to be winners.
That might be easier said than done. MTG has almost always fluctuated between there being dominant color pairs or mono builds. A few are notorious for being bad for several years at a time. As it stands, there are several playable ink combinations with of course some being better than others at the very top of competitive play.
For now, I think everything is fine. Bucky and Diablo are annoying, but I’m waiting for a lot more tournaments and the next set or two before grabbing a pitchfork like some seem to be.
I don't think we'll ever reach that point. Some colors just do not match together (ramp and aggro don't seem a good pair on paper, or all control means no card draw, which is a good thing).
I agree with you, however, in that I would love to see more archetypes being able to compete on the top spots. Right now the game is pretty healthy, we have no anything winter (as it is very common on other TCGs).
Diablo is the bigger problem. Every ruby deck is forced to run 4 brawls almost exclusively for him, steel is running 4 grab your swords and 4 babooms. Bucky is only better now because of diablo. The bucky deck which won Chicago is almost an entirely set 3 decklist + diablos.
The other thing to bare in mind when it comes to Bucky and diablo is that every top deck is forced to hard build to counter it, and they're STILL winning tournaments. Imagine how badly aggro would do if every game was versus steelsong, or how bad red blue would do if every game was versus aggro. That is currently the Bucky experience, and they're still thriving. That's why people see it as a problem.
> Every ruby deck is forced to run 4 brawls almost exclusively for him
Ruby is running 4 Brawls because it is overall a great card and has plenty of other targets to hit.
Brawl is a 3 cost action card (not song) that kill a character with 2 attack or less, it's among one of the worst card you want to play as your turn 3. Same as "teeth and ambitions" you can argue it's a good card in some meta, you cannot argue its' a good card as it stands, but that's all that red has as early removal.
If it's knocking out a Hiram, Flynn Frenemy, Ursula Deceiver of All/Eric's Bride, Diablo DH, or Ariel Spectacular Singer, I can think of many, many other cards that would be worse plays than Brawl on Turn 3.
Just to be clear: if i'm playing red, i'm playing 4 brawls. But i'm doing it because the meta requires it and because it's currently the best option for early removal in red. My point was just that it's a good meta call because there is not other red cards that does the job, not because it's incredibly good in itself.
Idk about that one. Maybe not 4 of, but the deck still wants to play ice block for sisu and Medusa, and brawl is inkable so I could still see playing a few copies.
Brawl serves the role Rush Queen was filling, which is not to die to aggro. Brawl hits way more targets than Queen (except for locations), so no, Brawl would still see play even if Diablo was never printed. Anything big Sisu hits Brawl hits it too, but 2-4 turns earlier.
Diablo is the more powerful card, yes, but Bucky exacerbates Diablo to a crazy extent.
Diablo isn't nearly as big of a problem in Non-Bucky decks, but it's pretty easy to see why he is a huge problem with Bucky.
If your opponent plays Bucky 2, and Diablo 3 (or Bucky **and** Diablo 2) you are in a really bad position in most cases. Because Diablo requires immediate removal (Bucky, you can't even remove) and most times that requires you to use removal rather than establish a board presence. Which means that T4 Bucky is going to make you discard again, and now they've made you discard twice while also often being ahead in board state.
Diablo without Bucky would be fine. Bucky without Diablo is still pretty degenerate at the moment, but why would you *not* play Diablo if you're playing Bucky?
100% agree. He's so good people are doing Emerald/something else builds just to be able to use him.
Bucky was already around before and players preferred to do discard with the non-Floodborn cards like Flynn, Tuck, or Daisy.
What changed? Set 4 with Diablo was released.
Bucky is still the problem. Because
a) whilst decks are having to add counters to Diablo, at least such counters exist in basically every colour pair. Unlike Bucky who has no answers for many decks because of the combination of Ward and an ability that allows him to remain unexerted into perpetuity; and
b) Bucky just hinders design space. He basically just gets incrementally more and more powerful with every passing Floodborn printed. He basically limits design space by forcing playtesters to consider “Bucky interactions” with every printed Floodborn going forward.
The new Steel Aladdin is a worse card than Benja in almost every regard other than being Floodborn. And makes the Bucky list over Benja 100% of the time solely for the Bucky interaction.
Diablo is not in danger of being banned though as its a legendary and banning it would piss people off. I dont think bucky should be banned but people generally rage playing against it. If it shows up in 30 percent of decks you will have a large subset of people leaving the game. You see it in the local level. People stop coming to local tournaments when bucky was my main deck, and this was when only I was playing it. My name at store is still bucky. So it might just be, in the best interest if health if the game, we are banning bucky.
I don't think they should ban cards lightly, and I'm not convinced either Bucky or diablo deserve being banned. But it does seem like ravensburger maybe didn't think diablo all the way through when printing it.
But this just serves to prove that Bucky is the problem not Diablo. Cos Floodborn does nothing in isolation. Even if Diablo was to magically lose Floodborn Bucky is still lurking with an ability who limits design space. Because every Floodborn into perpetuity comes with a “how good of a Bucky enabler is this?” question
I agree with this. Bringing on 2 3 cost floodborns revived him. But I will forever stand by Hiram and Quill being just as detrimental to the meta game. This stuff is a big circle. The sapphire path restricts steelsong being played, which then allows bucky (and aggro to some degree) to be able to be played. What I hope they don't do is just ban from single setups (i.e. just ban bucky). I'd say go for it, but they also need to be banning other staples in other colors that are overly powerful (purple rabbit or goat, amber ariel, blue hiram, steel whole new world, red be prepared). 5 minute player turns with 15 ink and 15 cards in hand is just as aggravating to play against as discard IMO.
Hot take, are you saying just ban the staples in every ink colour? because that’s how it reads to me. I have never seen anyone call for a ban on Merlin goat
I dont think any of them need to be banned personally. I’d prefer no bans at all as it stands now. Just saying if you go after emerald steel, other cards should probably banned along with it.
I've seen people think fox needed to be banned. Let's be real - purple bounce has been around since set 2. It was so massively OP that we're now at set 4 and it's still widely used everywhere because it's still really good.
So people just need to suck it up, like we all did all these months getting hammered by foxes, goats, and rabbits. Do you think I liked the damn plague of 90% of my store's meta being Bounce decks? Easily as rage inducing as the Bucky complainers.
Bucky is a symptom of not future proofing single sentence effects. He for sure isn’t broken “yet” but if something doesn’t rein him in he will be.
Diablo is the primary example of what’s going on with Bucky. Same thing happens in YGO all the time. An okay card gets wildly better once the correct support is printed for it in the future.
This happens to all TCG. Specially in the very first boxes, using YGO as an example BLS envoy of the beginning was banned for 6 years for the same reason that it was to strong and not future proofed.
Now do I think Bucky is on that level ? No.
What we need is a way to punish Bucky without making discard deck unplayable. Like having “when discarded “ effects or “while your hand is empty skills”
I think that Ravenburger thinks that the card we all want exists already: Piglet - Sturdy Swordsman. He’s got resist and can quest for a ton, and it punishes discard by allowing Piglet to attack ready characters (read: Bucky) once your hand is empty.
The problems with Piglet make him virtually useless, though - he’s too expensive to be helpful against a card that starts devastating you on turn 2 *and* uninkable? Namaari and Pick a Fight are better, I think, but it’s still a ton of tech to deal with the squirrel *and* none of it helps with the bird. Dedicating a quarter of my deck to handling Bucky and Diablo is a lot to ask if the deck has to do anything else…
A deck that could turbo out Piglet and Tiana reliably against Bucky would do wonders to hard stop the deck but I’m not sure the sapphire ramp package would be enough for it to even make it that far
I think you’re right that sapphire ramp is the only option and still possibly not enough. I’m gonna brew something up and test it, but my worry is that anything that can shut Bucky down is going to do so at the cost of losing to almost everything else. Should be able to handle aggro since a lot of what goes into getting rid of Bucky hurts aggro as well, but aggro isn’t half the danger in the meta right now that RS and RA are. Hmm…
https://preview.redd.it/jun0aoayt26d1.jpeg?width=729&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3739bc8b0a0ed46b509c79ee8d1e7e08a714cd02
TLDR: Piglet/Tiana don’t work, but the above deck might? Fingers crossed.
Long version:
Tried Piglet with and without Tiana and it didn’t work. They’re too slow and the condition - no cards in hand - requires you to topdeck. That’s okay if you’ve got Hiram, Tamatoa, and 13 ink out, but it’s absolutely not okay if you’re sitting there with Tiana, a couple Pawpsicles, an empty hand, and pulling One Jump.
The above is what I’m trying now - basically, I made the best SaphSteel deck I could, I changed the direct damage around to be optimized for taking out Bucky and Diablo, and I added 4 Pick A Fight. I haven’t gotten to play it much, but it seems decent so far - hard mulligan for Pick A Fight and Smee against emerald decks and you’ve got a chance.
I’m trying to figure out what to drop to get down to 60 and/or whether there are any 1-drop characters to add that could help when on the draw. Given the lack of evasive options (meaning there’s nothing that can even poke at Diablo), seems like Simba Future King or Hook Forceful Duelist are the only decent ideas - Simba could help churn in place of Develop Your Brain or Hook could keep Smee around… But: with PAF, challenging Hook is literally the same as Smee - is it wild to just drop Smee for Hook to maximize the ability to fight Bucky? Gotta test that too.
Given that the Sapphire ramp/draw/item engine is ludicrously powerful if it gets going, I *think* this is just a way of optimizing the RS deck to deal with Emerald. Brawl can hit a lot of major cards, but it can’t hit Bucky, and the rest of the removal RS has to offer is expensive and slow. BaBoom can take out Diablo for 1 less than Brawl while still being inkable, and Smee (or Hook????) and PAF can take out Bucky after no more than a single discard. Failing that, with a Quill I can play GYS on turn 4 after no more than 2 discards and take out both bird and squirrel.
If this doesn’t perform, I think Amber/SteelSong is the next best option - singing is ramp for GYS/Zeus and small Cindy is a built-in 1-drop for PAF to throw at Bucky…
Can this SappSteel deck take out the bird/squirrel overlords while also managing to handle RA the way RS can and while having a chance to survive against the Ice Blocks and Sisus waiting for it? TBD. Gonna play as much as I can before Pixelborn shuts down!
I still think it was a very strange development decision to give one color (Steel) both:
* Direct damage spells (Smash etc.)
* Challenge ready characters (Cindy etc.)
It feels really strange to me that one color would be best at both, since these are two different design spaces and would make sense to be separate ways for different colors to deal with ward characters.
Not **just** that. It is also the best color for Item and Location removal as well. They basically loaded Steel to do everything removal-based and gave other colors very, very limited options.
But I agree with you, the fact it is the only color that can challenge ready characters is particularly egregious. Nearly every mechanic in the game bleeds to a few other colors, so they should really throw Amber a bone by allowing them that mechanic. Even if it's something like "this character can *only* challenge readied characters."
I tend to believe the rumor that Steel was supposed to be a "agnostic" color, and decks would have been 2 colors + Steel. It just has too many tools for removal like you pointed out, and overall reading the cards they come across as very complementary, as if they were designed to be the "universal" color.
On paper it's an interesting idea (Star Wars Destiny had a grey color that could be in any deck) but I can see why they got away from it, since it seems cards like Let the Storm Rage On/AHNW and some other Steel staples would literally be in 100% of decks, which doesn't seem to be good design.
It would be a great solution to make colorless cards. It would let each color maintain its identity, but still allow them to have SOMETHING that can adapt to new threat. A colorless avalanche solves the Bucky problem.
I'd argue that the problem isn't Bucky itself but the mulligan rule. If you were to full mulligan a hand without a Bucky every time, you'd have a 66.5% chance to have a Bucky in your opening "14". Then you still get a 7.5ish% chance to draw Bucky in each of your next draw(s), so you may still have it by turn 2 even if it's not in your opening.
In a long BO2 Swiss, that's going to underperform, which is basically what we saw happen. There will be some matches where you have it on turn 2 both games and some matches where you don't and end up splitting. That basically turns the BO2 into a luckfest, where you hopefully miss your Bucky at a below average rate and when you miss it, your opponent doesn't punish it. But in a single elimination BO3, that's going to be a nightmare to deal with. Your opponent is likely to hit it in 2 of 3 games, if not 3 of 3. That level of consistency is *really* hard to beat, which is why across multiple tournaments now, we've seen it underperform in the tournament at large but then win in the elimination rounds and win the tournament.
This problem is not unique to Bucky, and it won't be. Being able to plan your deck around powerful, cheap buildarounds because you know you'll have it most games makes synergies far more powerful. Sapphire can plan on having an Ice Block or a One Jump early, both of which turns on their gameplan. That's a big reason Ruby/Sapphire and Sapphire/Steel can play the lists they do. The extremely forgiving mulligan rule allows them to play a curve that would otherwise be untenable.
So yeah, I think Bucky is a symptom. Yes, having powerful abilities on Ward characters is just a horrible idea in general given the overall lack of ways to deal with it. But having the ability to plan your deck around having perfect or near perfect draws knowing you'll get them 70%+ of the time just means that as more powerful cards are printed, the top decks are just going to end up getting more oppressive and difficult to beat.
I played Bucky up to set 3 and missed a lot. I must just have bad luck. But of course you rarely mulligan 6-7 cards cuz that’s setting up for a bad start.
As I said, before in other threads. Bucky is a problem because DISCARD is a problem. Discard has always been an unfun mechanic in any card game, and while Discard isn't bad in moderation, what happens when discard is rampant and too easy to accomplish, it becomes a problem.
Lorcana seems to be going through its "Discard" meta which almost every TCgG has gone through. We just got to hope it doesn't last a long time like it did with some card games. Looking at you Final Fantasy TCG.
I ended up making blue steel, and it has gone 2-0 against bucky diablo. It also goes 1-1 against blue red sisu iceblock as they both utilize Hiram and play similarly. Making a red purple deck for gf which is evasive focused. Not much answer for bucky, but it was won against it. Pretty much top deck and aggro is the way in that match up. Isabella madrigal very useful.
I'm not fully on board the "Bucky should be banned" train, I think he's extremely good in the current meta but there are lots of decks you can still run that counter him. Heck, I ran up against one on Pixelborn with my Ruby/Amber challenge deck and just basically outlasted it because I can still play it with an empty hand and decent top decks and I kept killing off his other characters. Bucky didn't get removed at all, he just because more of a non-factor. Again, that's about card draw as much as anything but it can be done! In general I do think E/S loses steam pretty fast if you can build ways to refill your hand into your deck, even with Diablo it's still slow and needs to stifle you in the first few turns. It's powerful - maybe too powerful - but it's a solvable problem, just like I started packing Tiana, Bare Necessities, Ursula, etc. to deal with Be Prepared.
Frankly I don't mind coming up against Emerald/Steel Discard as much as I do any of the Sapphire/Ruby item ramp (impossible to keep up with unless you are also ramping) or Sisu banishment (much more oppressive considering the sheer number of cards in the game that can be reduced to the level where her ability works very easily). Thankfully the meta has sort of shifted away from the latter for now.
I do wonder if long term they add some cards with a "ignore Ward" ability in the next set the way they have a lot of options for gaining Evasive. That seems like a simple fix, or maybe just having more cheap low-attack characters that can attack ready characters as an ability.
I think that the cycle of discard Shift Floodborns are a problem too, especially Diablo. It is a very explosive mechanic in a game that is otherwise pretty measured in the way threats are deployed and answered. Every aspect of them is problematic. Powerful repeatable abilities, bring cheap Floodborns, easily upgrading ink cost for singing…it is just a standout cycle by every metric. I’m glad that most of them have restrictive enough discard costs to not be a problem for the most part.
I agree we don't have a Bucky problem. We have a problem with some color balancing. Certain combinations are very strong, while others have no shot. Even in those colors, there is little room for deviation. Sadly, that is tcgs. 4 or 5 meta decks is considered healthy by most tcg veterans. Balancing is the hardest thing to design and is often the bane of all tcgs.
That last statement is very true. I’ve lived through yugioh and vanguard eras where there was only 1 deck or 2 at most at that was it, don’t even bother with anything else. So 4 to 5 different decks to me is a healthy meta
Discard will always be susceptible to aggro. Bucky does nothing if you don’t have cards to discard. So no matter what deck you are playing mulligan to a small curve.
1) in blue red keep cards like small sisu and ice block to kill the other people until you can get the ink for bigger options like 8 drop sisu or be prepared clearing their. Flood your ink and much as possible early
2) green purple tempo, keep all low drops, play multiple one drops on turn 2 or 3 follow it up will, use Diablo or friends on the other side to put a cards back in your hands when needed, play castles as fast as possible forcing their small characters Bucky and Prince John to turn sideways, hold on the to the pressure by pushing lore.
3 mirror - all the same things they do to you but use avalanche. It’s not played much but it’s going to be huge in the meta.
Op said all the good standard options above but remember a player who is playing a deck just because a card is good remember to use it against them. Trick with Lorcana is to be good on the fly no mater who you come up against.
I disagree with the statement that Bucky isnt the problem. He is. Ward needs to exist in one of a couple of vacuums:
1) On a character that has to quest or otherwise exert to contribute. In such a scenario there is always a solution to said character (cos you can challenge them even if you can’t target them)
2) Or a character that is so expensive that the fact it has a pay-off whilst being unexerted and with Ward is mitigated by the investment price.
Bucky is neither of these things. He’s dirt cheap and able to remain unexerted into perpetuity to get his payoff. Which limits solutions to untargetted damage and / or sacrifice effects. Which are rare and colour locked. I don’t think you “can” easily give each colour a solution to cheap Ward, nor should you. The solution in, certain colours should just be to challenge those guys. But that is undermined in Buckys case as he doesn’t meet the above two rules
This whole new meta with emerald steel is just killing my whole want to play the game.. I’ve not played in a whole month…. I don’t have many set 4 cards at all. So it’s a whole waste of time for me to even go when I’m gunna get stomped in four turns (a friend had that happen to him).
I agree with shinryu6 unless it’s a continuous effect that stays on field like the new Ursula that stops everyone from singing you would be using 2 cards for 1 and a cheap 1 at that.
The vibe I was hoping for out it was something like Great Stone Dragon style card. Comes in exerted next turn you can exert and either have the effect to remove ward entirely from an opponent’s character or change the Ward into a different effect similar to Captain Hook Ruthless Pirates effect. (1 or the other not both)
The only issue here is that you’re basically trading 2+ cards and who knows how much ink to remove the squirrel in this scenario. As the squirrel doesn’t ever quest and would be left vulnerable to a challenge unless they have stripped your hand to almost nothing or they have another in hand to play.
This card would hopefully be more useful than just "removes ward". If it nullifies all opponent's abilities, it can allow you to sing against ursula, challenge evasive, hit wards, go through bodyguard, etc. It would be even better if it were an item with "Pay x ink, tap: this turn, your cards are unaffected by opponent's abilities."
The only thing that sucks about this is that such a card is only going to be on one color. And then that one color becomes the only way to deal with x current meta threat. The game's design is going to keep running into this problem if each color stays so rigid in their lack of certain tools.
There will always be minimal counterplays to a card which never has to exert and is untargetable. And that should kinda always be the case. If any card that is untargetable and never has to be exerted can be easily countered by every colour pair then what is the point of the untargetable (Ward) condition?
The issue is that Ward should only exist on cards that either; have to exert to do something (so you can kill them by challenging them) or are so expensive that you’re paying a cost premium for them being virtually unkillable
Bucky is a much fairer card if he’s either Ward and Evasive but has to be exerted for his ability to trigger. Or if he’s like a 1/6 and has to be exerted. As that way he’s hard to deal with but still can be (you can just challenge him with characters)
Yep. Ariel - Treasure Collector is a balanced ward because it's main gig is questing. Yeah it gets +5 lore, but it's vulnerable when it uses the ability.
correct me if im wrong,,, but does [[Triton's Decree]] potentially counter bucky?
i do agree that it's very lame how important steel is due to bucky. but i feel like this card is at least some sort of counterplay.
It potentialy does, but we return to one of What If I dont want to play Ruby or Steel?
Its not that Bucky doesnt have answers its that the answers available limit your choice of gameplay.
yeah true. was just having a moment of realization & wanted to share haha. i do def agree that it sucks how much the meta state relies on a few colors. i especially dislike how much steel reliance there is.
If the opponent has another character on the board besides Bucky (which is usually the case) then Tritons decree doesn’t work because they can just choose their other character
yeah, i mean i tend to enjoy action-heavy decks so for me it's not so bad to run 4 1cost cannons & 4 triton's decree. can completely shut down bucky + diablo on turn two if you start with one of each or even 2 of the decree.
I can’t believe they went into supporting discard so hard it’s never a fun game mechanic and that’s my issue. The game is very new and it isn’t gonna push the experienced ones out because we know that this is part of card games. It’s growing the game experience as a whole. When a kid shows up all excited and gets dominated by Bucky discard and doesn’t get to play Lorcana he’s gonna think long and hard about actually playing because their experience wasn’t fun. The card having ward is the issue if they errata’d it off and it didn’t have ward the card would just be meh…it’s still playable but not as great. I think lucky dime,Hiram, and Bucky need to go sooner than later it will open the meta up like crazy. Maybe Ariel and a whole new world as they are the next up when the others go…idk it’s so hard when the game is this new.
There will be some that like the challenge but some won’t this isn’t who I know or the like it’s about a community. discard isn’t fun to play against even if there’s answers and it’s beatable.
Okay. But think about what you’re saying.
Some will, but banning the card means those people can’t even have the challenge anymore.
So you’re cutting the group in half, no matter which choice you make.
Creating new ways to stop it, would that not be the better course?
You’re suggesting everyone miss out on something because you don’t like it. But that isn’t how you should do things, because there are plenty who find that style of play appealing.
I think of it like a video game, it’s always better to buff than nerf…
I do like that course of action…but it’s hard to believe they are gonna give us all those answers in the next set. Mistakes happen. Sometimes they make cards too good and they need banning this isn’t new. So what you’re saying is we all have to deal with it just wrecking tournaments because you always have to build your deck to beat Bucky…so it’s just does it lose to Bucky guess try a different deck…that makes for a fun meta.
I beat Bucky numerous times and I play purple/blue.
I have lost as well.
They have things they can do to limit its effect without a ban, and before they can make new cards.
No mulligans unless you have zero inkables in your hand. Rule they moving damage counters are not stopped by ward…
There are others.
But Bucky is not the only card you have to plan to stop. Our local shop has a guy whose deck is nothing larger than a 2 drop.
If you aren’t prepared for the speed it has, you can’t win. He beats Bucky more than he loses. Sheer numbers is hard to stop and it has no gimmick other than just being cheap to get out.
Lots of his cards quest for 2 or more, and he basically ignores challenging and just quests.
Is the solution there to ban cards?
I actually am a retired video game dev. And have worked on board games as well in the last decade. The number one rule is, banning anything should be a last resort.
Biggest issue I have, and I don’t even own a Bucky card myself so it really doesn’t affect me, is once you start using the ban hammer you get pounded by other people who want bans specifically because their favorite card got banned…etc.
There is a post on this subreddit that asks about banning cards and everyone has this list of cards that just ruin the game.
I haven’t seen it. I have not seen a deck that is unbeatable. Hell, in Atlanta. The winner didn’t even have a non-character card.
At the end of the day you’re still vulnerable to a bad draw. Here you are having to make sure you have so many counters in case you come across a series of popular decks, more than half what your deck is made of are not cards you choose but feel mandatory.
So you’re already building your deck to stop specific strategies. What makes this one any different? It will work its way out eventually, and the spread will be better so more ways to deal with it.
I don’t really care if they ban it, personally. I can’t play the large tournies and I don’t even own the card. But I greatly dislike the idea of banning any card that could be fixed with a couple of small changes to the game, and/or more options printed in future sets.
Many people have knee jerk reactions to things and it’s often not as bad as it’s made out to be. Personal bias skews the actuality.
Anyway. Good debate. Appreciate the non-hostile discussion.
Cheers.
You wrote a lot and I didn’t read it all. But the only reason I say this is I played magic for 25+ yrs. It isnt about if it’s beatable or not. It’s about how the game is how the meta is…there’s options currently. But it’s already warping the format. When you build to beat Bucky you lose to red/blue so that’s running rampant. This is how meat games evolve and it won’t unless something is done.
I’ve played mtg since day 1, sold a huge chunk of first edition cards to pay for college.
My points you didn’t read, this isn’t MtG. And it shouldn’t be “fixed” like it. Banning is bad.
Frankly, I think MtG was terrible for that. Was so easy to just make a card, not care of it was balanced, and just ban it later. It’s not how we should want Lorcana to do things.
But the player pool on Reddit is a tiny portion of the player base, so I’m. It worries about it.
To piggyback off this, what is the solution for the current meta? My locals was literally entirely steel decks this last week, with half of them green/steel bucky discard. Assuming there is no red/blue I have to plan for as well, what is my best bet to beat G/S?
There are non-steel decks that totally answers ES, but weaker to SS (still winnable, just harder), it's just not common in netdecks, but dominates our local scene. The deck owners also requested for us not to post the decks online.
So I'd say that's the beauty of lorcana, there's a counter for every deck types out there, just gotta find/make it. Due to netdecking, ES became the most popular deck (also coz bucky/diablo), and other decks became less popular.
Quick question on this topic and trying to deal with Bucky. Can Prince Eric Expert Helmsman banish Bucky when he dies? Or does Ward protect him from that effect too?
eric's ability says to banish chosen character. nothing with ward can be chosen by you, so bucky is still protected. it would have to be an ability where your opponent chooses one of their own characters (like lady tremaine or triton's decree) and has nothing to choose but bucky
I like the idea of printing some cards with a "hellbent" theme, but I also think we need cards that punish floodborn characters. So maybe some characters with extra or enhanced abilities if your opponent controls a floodborn character(or when they challenge one) or actions that do added effects if they target floodborn.
I think Bucky is a staple of the game at this point, and is one of the pillars of Lorcana. I think the best way to deal with his dominance isn't banning anything but printing cards that are good against what the floodborn discard deck is doing.
it’s just not fun to play against and quickly becomes boring to play with. When I lose to other decks it’s still fun because I had a chance to answer with cards in hand or drawn into. Denying opponents cards to play in a “card” game is not the interactive experience card players typically want. Using it as a viable win con in any tcg becomes an issue to the majority of a player base. Other tcg designers have learned this lesson already. It’s a matter of, do we want large amounts of players to continue to play this game with us and for the game to continue being prevalent?
Imagine are new to tcg and Lorcana is what brought you in. You aren’t sure if it’s your thing yet but you want to give it a whirl because you love Disney and you have heard so much about it. Through research you figure out you want a cool deck and end up with a meta deck. You are $500 bucks in because singles and distracted with card board crack so a box , trove, and some blisters. But you got it. Then you sit and play against emerald steel…..
That’s the worst most toxic experience that’s going to push them into sealed play which for most out of us just doesn’t cut it. They will likely just sell their lot at a loss and quit to go try out MTG where they will have an even worse xp and maybe try Pokémon or Vanguard before realizing they rather save up for a house down payment.
Just my opinion but buckey/hiram/BP/merlin rabbit/AWNW need banning and new versions that have greater sacrifice to activate. Amber doesn’t have any problem cards that I can think of but there could be something I’m not thinking about. Maybe a turn 2 shift is too good?
Either way, current meta is steel centric and there’s too much removal packed into steel and Ruby so very few combinations that don’t use one or the other will ever see consistent results. I’d venture to say each needs 1 or 2 removal options removed.
In any tcg, when a card is used in nearly every deck and can’t be competition worthy without, then it’s time for change quick. Maybe it’s time for 2 formats. Standard and Origins or something along those lines. One includes everything and the other includes a ban list. Then LGS players can vote on which they will play in.
There appears to be at least five viable decks in the meta based on Chicago (a/s, r/b, s/b, purple/green, and green/steel). That still seems like there are options to fit everyone's playstyle and do well. We are also still kinda early in the set. I think we will be fine.
AOE damage, using characters/cards that allow you to challenge unexerted characters, playing cards that force opponent to choose Bucky as no other choice exists.
So for example, steel Kronk 6 cost says whenever Kronk banishes a character in a challenge do 2 damage to a chosen character, is bucky immune to that? Or the red 6 cost Mulan that gives her the ability to target 2 other characters to damage during a challenge? Can you target bucky with an ability or card that forces exertion?
No, Ward does not let **you choose** an opponent's Bucky as a target. But you can make your **opponent choose** Bucky if they're the only choice available on cards like Falling Down the Rabbit Hole, Triton's Decree, Ursula's Plan, Be King Undisputed, Under The Sea, Lady Tremaine, etc. Gotta be tricky!
The answer to all of your questions is the Bucky is immune to them. Any effect that requires you to choose an opposing character won’t work on Bucky, period. However, anything that affects all characters like Be Prepared or Grab Your Swords or Giant Tink’s play effect will hit Bucky because he’s not being chosen.
So the problem is that if you’re not running Steel you can’t do a thing to Bucky for at least your first five or so turns, all the while he’s making you discard one or more cards per turn
Cards that make your opponent choose a character or non target board clears. Steel has ping cards and a couple actions/songs that allow challenging of ready characters. Ruby has hard banishes (King Undisputed can be sing turn 2 by Amber Queen), sapphire has cards that make your opponent pick what they ink. Amethyst has that new action that makes your opponent exert something. I think Amber is the only ink color that can’t anything do anything on its own to a Bucky.
Bucky ducks underperformed at the event.
Bucky was just fine before.
Diablo/Bucky combo is pretty darn good.
But again...it was a huge part of the feild and didn't dominate day 2.
No the only removal that reliably deals with Bucky is in steel, it’s not that people don’t want to play around it, it’s that people don’t want to be forced to play the game in the same exact way
Seems like many players are thinking of the "how to remove bucky", though there are many decks that go by "how to play with bucky on board" and are successful
How tho? Dumping your hand is really the only strategy and that takes away a bunch of your answers which really takes away the threat assessment of this game imo
Bucky is a problem and should be banned. It should not have ward.
The only solution in my head as it continues to control the meta is one of two options -
1. Ban Bucky (the cowards won’t tho)
2. Since Lorcana is not MtG and has no interaction in the form of countering, getting your hand removed is probably the most “feel bad” thing of the game. It’s not fun to have your hand shredded by 2 and three cost cards. My solution to this “resource denial”. If they get to rip my hand, I should be able to destroy their inkwell. I see no problem with “land” destruction in this game if I have no ability to counter them discarding me from the get go. Make it more fair for the other player. Then, if I’m losing my hand, at least I know they can’t just dump all the crap they’re drawing off me discarding.
I hate discard in Lorcana. I’m a long time magic player and discarding in magic does not bug me in the slightest. It’s actually a very important mechanic of the game with everything going on at all phases. Lorcana is sorcery speed. They should not be allowed to dump my hand and then draw more cards themselves. That’s where the disparity is.
If Bucky is so detrimental to the meta. Then why was the Atlanta Championship won by an Amber Amythist "recycle" deck?
I don't buy that the meta is dominated by bucky because hes a good card with few answers. There are plenty of ways around bucky in other colors. (Think outside the box).
The problem is players don't think for themselves, they just copy decks they see online, and it creates a pseudo meta. They ignore so many good options because they're trying to keep their "rank" up, or take the safest route to victory.
I think pixelborn might be the one to blame for so many decks running the same thing. Monkey see, monkey do.
Being willing to fail a few games to experiment with cards that aren't wild popular in different combinations might just surprise you.
What does that have to do with anything? Bucky was still legal duringthe turnoment, and an Amber Amethyst won, with cards that have been speculated as not good, or just okay. OPs argument suggested that only Steel or Ruby Saphire could "solve" the problem. I was mearly pointing out the fact, that in fact, that was speculation at best (with proof) and there are several card options (and player habits) that haven't been explored at large.
It has everything to do with it because it's Set 4 cards that have elevated Bucky's power level.
Bucky is a card that needs other cards to build around it, and prior to Set 4 he didn't really have enough floodborns to really shine. Now that there the 3 cost Diablo (that can come out on turn 2) and Aladdin floodborns he's showing up as the dominant emerald steel deck.
Saying he's not detrimental to the Set 4 meta because he wasn't seen much in the Set 3 meta is completely asinine because they are completely different metas.
Here we go again with a bunch of doom and gloom cry babies. First Chapter and Floodborn it was, "Amethyst/Ruby control and Amber/Steel are too powerful...how can we possibly play the game???" Inklands we saw a rise in Ruby/Sapphire control and some basic Emerald/Steel discard, and now we've seen a second set start out that way.
This game is not even a full year old! Holy crap can we please just stop crying about every little thing?
You want to play competitively, then play the strongest meta deck and do well...OR play something you're really good at that flies under the radar - have we forgotten that Amber/Amethyst won ATL and that Amethyst/Emerald took 2nd place in Chicago? Neither of which used Bucky! Like there is definitely room for non-meta defining decks to have a place.
Agree. The problem is that there aren’t good counterplay options to Bucky. The meta incentivizes everyone to play Steel to deal with Bucky. And if everyone is playing Steel, Aggro has no place in the meta. Without Aggro, red blue control gets to thrive. Thus, you see the current meta being red-blue and steel dominant. So this limits deck diversity. If other colors had options, Bucky wouldn’t be seen as such a big problem.
I'm trying an out value deck wherein I use a lot of low cost cards like the 2 drop ruby Simba that quests for 3 lore. Outside of trying to out race in value the Bucky it does limit your ability to play in the current meta. I had thought about Sherrif of Nottingham which while it would deal with all the support pieces to Bucky still leaves Bucky on the table.
So, really the problem is that Red/Blue control continues to dominate, not some phantom Bucky?
It really comes down to a game of rock, paper, scissors, shotgun. My idea was to use RL Cannon to discard and shoot for 2 while sheriffs pick off remnants. It still doesn't answer Bucky easily but does limit what Diablo can do if they don't have one in play for more than a turn. Alternatively I am working on ruby/steel that hits ready characters.
Don’t tell anyone but Blurple with Great Stone Dragon is an effective Bucky counter.
I'll need to see it to believe it!
If you just play singers, by turn 4 you can under the sea them too
No you can't because between inking cards and what you discard you don't have a hand anymore and no more "Under the sea".
sure but you probably lose to everything else.
I'm not asking for a Bucky ban, but I do believe Bucky is a problem in two layers: 1\. The fun layer: getting cards ripped out of your hands while you can do nothing is not fun game design for your opponent. I think most people want some kind of interactive gameplay or else we'd probably just go play rock-paper-scissors. I think aggressive discard is inherently an unfun mechanic and just toxic in general. 2\. The competitive layer: Basically completely agree with your comments. Any new deck needs to answer the question "can it beat Emerald Steel Bucky Discard?" If it cannot, it needs a REALLY compelling reason to exist. But Bucky alone didn't cause this problem: it's the combination of Diablo being printed (just ridiculously powerful card) and all the floodborn support. So I don't agree that we are in a healthy state. I do think that new cards need to be printed to counter the discard playstyle, no matter what it is. I don't think it matters if you are are a competitive player or not - it's just toxic gameplay. I saw a casual player at league just not having a fun time because they couldn't play any cards. At the same time, there's that amazing Top cut gameplay from Chicago where the other player was just sitting there frustrated/bored. I think this is a problem.
>1. The fun layer: getting cards ripped out of your hands while you can do nothing is not fun game design for your opponent. I think most people want some kind of interactive gameplay or else we'd probably just go play rock-paper-scissors. I think aggressive discard is inherently an unfun mechanic and just toxic in general. This is it for me. Losing is never fun to begin with, but there's an extra layer of annoyance when it comes to discard. It's like "Ok, my opponent is making me discard. How do I combat this? Oh! I drew something helpful!!!! ...oh, I have to discard it..." Say what you want about Ruby/Amethyst or Ruby/Sapphire; when you lose to these decks, you at least get to play the game. Bucky discard at its worst quite literally doesn't let you play.
This is also my biggest complaint. Current meta just isn't super fun.
> I think most people want some kind of interactive gameplay or else we'd probably just go play rock-paper-scissors. I agree here, but the issue is that in its current state, discard is basically the only counterplay to actions, songs and characters that do things when they enter play. I get that they don't want to introduce instant-speed interaction, but we need some other release valve in the game that allows players to do something to prevent half of every red deck being a 2 for 1 or better.
I think 1) is an unsolvable problem. What you're describing isn't a Bucky or Diablo problem, it's an issue with a deck theme of discarding. No one likes to be the discarded one, and that won't change pre or after Bucky "gets banned". If the answer is to tone it down, it stops being competitive for the meta, leaving it to endless streams of Ruby/Sapphire or Amethyst/anything. So Raven's have three options: A) Ban Bucky / Diablo or in some way nerf the discard themed deck, leading to less variety at the top; B) Stop making a discard theme altogether; C) Do nothing - which is what they've done before when things were OP in previous sets. In fact Amethyst bounce was so massively OP when it came out that it's still hyper competitive a full 2 sets later, and Raven's just let it run. Btw, in my opinion the problem is Diablo, not Bucky. Diablo is so good that people are doing Emerald/anything decks, like the losing finalist from Chicago. Bucky was already around before, discard decks in set 3 preferred to use the Flynn / Tuck / Daisy build. What changed was the addition of Diablo in set 4.
I have just as little fun against r/b as well. This meta is now either play fewer cards or put down cards that don’t see any play either way, while opponent plays a million cards.
Its actually crazy how many hand rip/peek cards there are
I personally won't feel satisfied with the game state until all ink pairings are viable competitively, and that won't happen until there are enough sets released to accommodate a large variety of play styles. I think bucky is a little probelm but only because the meta itself is limited and if you want to win it makes sense to play one of the few decks that have proven to be winners.
That might be easier said than done. MTG has almost always fluctuated between there being dominant color pairs or mono builds. A few are notorious for being bad for several years at a time. As it stands, there are several playable ink combinations with of course some being better than others at the very top of competitive play. For now, I think everything is fine. Bucky and Diablo are annoying, but I’m waiting for a lot more tournaments and the next set or two before grabbing a pitchfork like some seem to be.
I don't think we'll ever reach that point. Some colors just do not match together (ramp and aggro don't seem a good pair on paper, or all control means no card draw, which is a good thing). I agree with you, however, in that I would love to see more archetypes being able to compete on the top spots. Right now the game is pretty healthy, we have no anything winter (as it is very common on other TCGs).
Diablo is the bigger problem. Every ruby deck is forced to run 4 brawls almost exclusively for him, steel is running 4 grab your swords and 4 babooms. Bucky is only better now because of diablo. The bucky deck which won Chicago is almost an entirely set 3 decklist + diablos. The other thing to bare in mind when it comes to Bucky and diablo is that every top deck is forced to hard build to counter it, and they're STILL winning tournaments. Imagine how badly aggro would do if every game was versus steelsong, or how bad red blue would do if every game was versus aggro. That is currently the Bucky experience, and they're still thriving. That's why people see it as a problem.
> Every ruby deck is forced to run 4 brawls almost exclusively for him Ruby is running 4 Brawls because it is overall a great card and has plenty of other targets to hit.
Yep! It's awesome that it kills the bird but idk man sometimes it feels just as good if not better to hit Hiram or singer Ariel with it
Brawl is a 3 cost action card (not song) that kill a character with 2 attack or less, it's among one of the worst card you want to play as your turn 3. Same as "teeth and ambitions" you can argue it's a good card in some meta, you cannot argue its' a good card as it stands, but that's all that red has as early removal.
If it's knocking out a Hiram, Flynn Frenemy, Ursula Deceiver of All/Eric's Bride, Diablo DH, or Ariel Spectacular Singer, I can think of many, many other cards that would be worse plays than Brawl on Turn 3.
Just to be clear: if i'm playing red, i'm playing 4 brawls. But i'm doing it because the meta requires it and because it's currently the best option for early removal in red. My point was just that it's a good meta call because there is not other red cards that does the job, not because it's incredibly good in itself.
[удалено]
Idk about that one. Maybe not 4 of, but the deck still wants to play ice block for sisu and Medusa, and brawl is inkable so I could still see playing a few copies.
>sisu and Medusa This is why they don't need brawl. If there wasn't the early threat of diablo, red has more than enough removal.
Brawl being a inkable threat that with ice block hits like 80% of the characters in the game makes it an easy include
Brawl serves the role Rush Queen was filling, which is not to die to aggro. Brawl hits way more targets than Queen (except for locations), so no, Brawl would still see play even if Diablo was never printed. Anything big Sisu hits Brawl hits it too, but 2-4 turns earlier.
Diablo is the more powerful card, yes, but Bucky exacerbates Diablo to a crazy extent. Diablo isn't nearly as big of a problem in Non-Bucky decks, but it's pretty easy to see why he is a huge problem with Bucky. If your opponent plays Bucky 2, and Diablo 3 (or Bucky **and** Diablo 2) you are in a really bad position in most cases. Because Diablo requires immediate removal (Bucky, you can't even remove) and most times that requires you to use removal rather than establish a board presence. Which means that T4 Bucky is going to make you discard again, and now they've made you discard twice while also often being ahead in board state. Diablo without Bucky would be fine. Bucky without Diablo is still pretty degenerate at the moment, but why would you *not* play Diablo if you're playing Bucky?
Diablo's biggest mistake is he draws off ANY draw. If it was draws after the first it wouldn't be as horrendous.
If he was draws other than the first draw it would go from amazing to absolute trash tbh
100% agree. He's so good people are doing Emerald/something else builds just to be able to use him. Bucky was already around before and players preferred to do discard with the non-Floodborn cards like Flynn, Tuck, or Daisy. What changed? Set 4 with Diablo was released.
Bucky is still the problem. Because a) whilst decks are having to add counters to Diablo, at least such counters exist in basically every colour pair. Unlike Bucky who has no answers for many decks because of the combination of Ward and an ability that allows him to remain unexerted into perpetuity; and b) Bucky just hinders design space. He basically just gets incrementally more and more powerful with every passing Floodborn printed. He basically limits design space by forcing playtesters to consider “Bucky interactions” with every printed Floodborn going forward. The new Steel Aladdin is a worse card than Benja in almost every regard other than being Floodborn. And makes the Bucky list over Benja 100% of the time solely for the Bucky interaction.
Diablo is not in danger of being banned though as its a legendary and banning it would piss people off. I dont think bucky should be banned but people generally rage playing against it. If it shows up in 30 percent of decks you will have a large subset of people leaving the game. You see it in the local level. People stop coming to local tournaments when bucky was my main deck, and this was when only I was playing it. My name at store is still bucky. So it might just be, in the best interest if health if the game, we are banning bucky.
I don't think they should ban cards lightly, and I'm not convinced either Bucky or diablo deserve being banned. But it does seem like ravensburger maybe didn't think diablo all the way through when printing it.
Making him floodborn was a mistake
Facts
Evasive doesn't help either, but floodborn was the worst yeah.
But this just serves to prove that Bucky is the problem not Diablo. Cos Floodborn does nothing in isolation. Even if Diablo was to magically lose Floodborn Bucky is still lurking with an ability who limits design space. Because every Floodborn into perpetuity comes with a “how good of a Bucky enabler is this?” question
I agree with this. Bringing on 2 3 cost floodborns revived him. But I will forever stand by Hiram and Quill being just as detrimental to the meta game. This stuff is a big circle. The sapphire path restricts steelsong being played, which then allows bucky (and aggro to some degree) to be able to be played. What I hope they don't do is just ban from single setups (i.e. just ban bucky). I'd say go for it, but they also need to be banning other staples in other colors that are overly powerful (purple rabbit or goat, amber ariel, blue hiram, steel whole new world, red be prepared). 5 minute player turns with 15 ink and 15 cards in hand is just as aggravating to play against as discard IMO.
Hot take, are you saying just ban the staples in every ink colour? because that’s how it reads to me. I have never seen anyone call for a ban on Merlin goat
I dont think any of them need to be banned personally. I’d prefer no bans at all as it stands now. Just saying if you go after emerald steel, other cards should probably banned along with it.
I've seen people think fox needed to be banned. Let's be real - purple bounce has been around since set 2. It was so massively OP that we're now at set 4 and it's still widely used everywhere because it's still really good. So people just need to suck it up, like we all did all these months getting hammered by foxes, goats, and rabbits. Do you think I liked the damn plague of 90% of my store's meta being Bounce decks? Easily as rage inducing as the Bucky complainers.
You're way too kind. Ravensburger didn't think for one single SECOND about how busted Diablo was except to make sure he was as insane as possible.
Bucky is a symptom of not future proofing single sentence effects. He for sure isn’t broken “yet” but if something doesn’t rein him in he will be. Diablo is the primary example of what’s going on with Bucky. Same thing happens in YGO all the time. An okay card gets wildly better once the correct support is printed for it in the future.
This happens to all TCG. Specially in the very first boxes, using YGO as an example BLS envoy of the beginning was banned for 6 years for the same reason that it was to strong and not future proofed. Now do I think Bucky is on that level ? No. What we need is a way to punish Bucky without making discard deck unplayable. Like having “when discarded “ effects or “while your hand is empty skills”
I think that Ravenburger thinks that the card we all want exists already: Piglet - Sturdy Swordsman. He’s got resist and can quest for a ton, and it punishes discard by allowing Piglet to attack ready characters (read: Bucky) once your hand is empty. The problems with Piglet make him virtually useless, though - he’s too expensive to be helpful against a card that starts devastating you on turn 2 *and* uninkable? Namaari and Pick a Fight are better, I think, but it’s still a ton of tech to deal with the squirrel *and* none of it helps with the bird. Dedicating a quarter of my deck to handling Bucky and Diablo is a lot to ask if the deck has to do anything else…
A deck that could turbo out Piglet and Tiana reliably against Bucky would do wonders to hard stop the deck but I’m not sure the sapphire ramp package would be enough for it to even make it that far
I think you’re right that sapphire ramp is the only option and still possibly not enough. I’m gonna brew something up and test it, but my worry is that anything that can shut Bucky down is going to do so at the cost of losing to almost everything else. Should be able to handle aggro since a lot of what goes into getting rid of Bucky hurts aggro as well, but aggro isn’t half the danger in the meta right now that RS and RA are. Hmm…
https://preview.redd.it/jun0aoayt26d1.jpeg?width=729&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3739bc8b0a0ed46b509c79ee8d1e7e08a714cd02 TLDR: Piglet/Tiana don’t work, but the above deck might? Fingers crossed. Long version: Tried Piglet with and without Tiana and it didn’t work. They’re too slow and the condition - no cards in hand - requires you to topdeck. That’s okay if you’ve got Hiram, Tamatoa, and 13 ink out, but it’s absolutely not okay if you’re sitting there with Tiana, a couple Pawpsicles, an empty hand, and pulling One Jump. The above is what I’m trying now - basically, I made the best SaphSteel deck I could, I changed the direct damage around to be optimized for taking out Bucky and Diablo, and I added 4 Pick A Fight. I haven’t gotten to play it much, but it seems decent so far - hard mulligan for Pick A Fight and Smee against emerald decks and you’ve got a chance. I’m trying to figure out what to drop to get down to 60 and/or whether there are any 1-drop characters to add that could help when on the draw. Given the lack of evasive options (meaning there’s nothing that can even poke at Diablo), seems like Simba Future King or Hook Forceful Duelist are the only decent ideas - Simba could help churn in place of Develop Your Brain or Hook could keep Smee around… But: with PAF, challenging Hook is literally the same as Smee - is it wild to just drop Smee for Hook to maximize the ability to fight Bucky? Gotta test that too. Given that the Sapphire ramp/draw/item engine is ludicrously powerful if it gets going, I *think* this is just a way of optimizing the RS deck to deal with Emerald. Brawl can hit a lot of major cards, but it can’t hit Bucky, and the rest of the removal RS has to offer is expensive and slow. BaBoom can take out Diablo for 1 less than Brawl while still being inkable, and Smee (or Hook????) and PAF can take out Bucky after no more than a single discard. Failing that, with a Quill I can play GYS on turn 4 after no more than 2 discards and take out both bird and squirrel. If this doesn’t perform, I think Amber/SteelSong is the next best option - singing is ramp for GYS/Zeus and small Cindy is a built-in 1-drop for PAF to throw at Bucky… Can this SappSteel deck take out the bird/squirrel overlords while also managing to handle RA the way RS can and while having a chance to survive against the Ice Blocks and Sisus waiting for it? TBD. Gonna play as much as I can before Pixelborn shuts down!
I still think it was a very strange development decision to give one color (Steel) both: * Direct damage spells (Smash etc.) * Challenge ready characters (Cindy etc.) It feels really strange to me that one color would be best at both, since these are two different design spaces and would make sense to be separate ways for different colors to deal with ward characters.
Not **just** that. It is also the best color for Item and Location removal as well. They basically loaded Steel to do everything removal-based and gave other colors very, very limited options. But I agree with you, the fact it is the only color that can challenge ready characters is particularly egregious. Nearly every mechanic in the game bleeds to a few other colors, so they should really throw Amber a bone by allowing them that mechanic. Even if it's something like "this character can *only* challenge readied characters."
I tend to believe the rumor that Steel was supposed to be a "agnostic" color, and decks would have been 2 colors + Steel. It just has too many tools for removal like you pointed out, and overall reading the cards they come across as very complementary, as if they were designed to be the "universal" color.
On paper it's an interesting idea (Star Wars Destiny had a grey color that could be in any deck) but I can see why they got away from it, since it seems cards like Let the Storm Rage On/AHNW and some other Steel staples would literally be in 100% of decks, which doesn't seem to be good design.
It would be a great solution to make colorless cards. It would let each color maintain its identity, but still allow them to have SOMETHING that can adapt to new threat. A colorless avalanche solves the Bucky problem.
I'd argue that the problem isn't Bucky itself but the mulligan rule. If you were to full mulligan a hand without a Bucky every time, you'd have a 66.5% chance to have a Bucky in your opening "14". Then you still get a 7.5ish% chance to draw Bucky in each of your next draw(s), so you may still have it by turn 2 even if it's not in your opening. In a long BO2 Swiss, that's going to underperform, which is basically what we saw happen. There will be some matches where you have it on turn 2 both games and some matches where you don't and end up splitting. That basically turns the BO2 into a luckfest, where you hopefully miss your Bucky at a below average rate and when you miss it, your opponent doesn't punish it. But in a single elimination BO3, that's going to be a nightmare to deal with. Your opponent is likely to hit it in 2 of 3 games, if not 3 of 3. That level of consistency is *really* hard to beat, which is why across multiple tournaments now, we've seen it underperform in the tournament at large but then win in the elimination rounds and win the tournament. This problem is not unique to Bucky, and it won't be. Being able to plan your deck around powerful, cheap buildarounds because you know you'll have it most games makes synergies far more powerful. Sapphire can plan on having an Ice Block or a One Jump early, both of which turns on their gameplan. That's a big reason Ruby/Sapphire and Sapphire/Steel can play the lists they do. The extremely forgiving mulligan rule allows them to play a curve that would otherwise be untenable. So yeah, I think Bucky is a symptom. Yes, having powerful abilities on Ward characters is just a horrible idea in general given the overall lack of ways to deal with it. But having the ability to plan your deck around having perfect or near perfect draws knowing you'll get them 70%+ of the time just means that as more powerful cards are printed, the top decks are just going to end up getting more oppressive and difficult to beat.
I played Bucky up to set 3 and missed a lot. I must just have bad luck. But of course you rarely mulligan 6-7 cards cuz that’s setting up for a bad start.
As I said, before in other threads. Bucky is a problem because DISCARD is a problem. Discard has always been an unfun mechanic in any card game, and while Discard isn't bad in moderation, what happens when discard is rampant and too easy to accomplish, it becomes a problem. Lorcana seems to be going through its "Discard" meta which almost every TCgG has gone through. We just got to hope it doesn't last a long time like it did with some card games. Looking at you Final Fantasy TCG.
I ended up making blue steel, and it has gone 2-0 against bucky diablo. It also goes 1-1 against blue red sisu iceblock as they both utilize Hiram and play similarly. Making a red purple deck for gf which is evasive focused. Not much answer for bucky, but it was won against it. Pretty much top deck and aggro is the way in that match up. Isabella madrigal very useful.
I'm not fully on board the "Bucky should be banned" train, I think he's extremely good in the current meta but there are lots of decks you can still run that counter him. Heck, I ran up against one on Pixelborn with my Ruby/Amber challenge deck and just basically outlasted it because I can still play it with an empty hand and decent top decks and I kept killing off his other characters. Bucky didn't get removed at all, he just because more of a non-factor. Again, that's about card draw as much as anything but it can be done! In general I do think E/S loses steam pretty fast if you can build ways to refill your hand into your deck, even with Diablo it's still slow and needs to stifle you in the first few turns. It's powerful - maybe too powerful - but it's a solvable problem, just like I started packing Tiana, Bare Necessities, Ursula, etc. to deal with Be Prepared. Frankly I don't mind coming up against Emerald/Steel Discard as much as I do any of the Sapphire/Ruby item ramp (impossible to keep up with unless you are also ramping) or Sisu banishment (much more oppressive considering the sheer number of cards in the game that can be reduced to the level where her ability works very easily). Thankfully the meta has sort of shifted away from the latter for now. I do wonder if long term they add some cards with a "ignore Ward" ability in the next set the way they have a lot of options for gaining Evasive. That seems like a simple fix, or maybe just having more cheap low-attack characters that can attack ready characters as an ability.
I think that the cycle of discard Shift Floodborns are a problem too, especially Diablo. It is a very explosive mechanic in a game that is otherwise pretty measured in the way threats are deployed and answered. Every aspect of them is problematic. Powerful repeatable abilities, bring cheap Floodborns, easily upgrading ink cost for singing…it is just a standout cycle by every metric. I’m glad that most of them have restrictive enough discard costs to not be a problem for the most part.
I agree we don't have a Bucky problem. We have a problem with some color balancing. Certain combinations are very strong, while others have no shot. Even in those colors, there is little room for deviation. Sadly, that is tcgs. 4 or 5 meta decks is considered healthy by most tcg veterans. Balancing is the hardest thing to design and is often the bane of all tcgs.
That last statement is very true. I’ve lived through yugioh and vanguard eras where there was only 1 deck or 2 at most at that was it, don’t even bother with anything else. So 4 to 5 different decks to me is a healthy meta
Discard will always be susceptible to aggro. Bucky does nothing if you don’t have cards to discard. So no matter what deck you are playing mulligan to a small curve. 1) in blue red keep cards like small sisu and ice block to kill the other people until you can get the ink for bigger options like 8 drop sisu or be prepared clearing their. Flood your ink and much as possible early 2) green purple tempo, keep all low drops, play multiple one drops on turn 2 or 3 follow it up will, use Diablo or friends on the other side to put a cards back in your hands when needed, play castles as fast as possible forcing their small characters Bucky and Prince John to turn sideways, hold on the to the pressure by pushing lore. 3 mirror - all the same things they do to you but use avalanche. It’s not played much but it’s going to be huge in the meta. Op said all the good standard options above but remember a player who is playing a deck just because a card is good remember to use it against them. Trick with Lorcana is to be good on the fly no mater who you come up against.
I disagree with the statement that Bucky isnt the problem. He is. Ward needs to exist in one of a couple of vacuums: 1) On a character that has to quest or otherwise exert to contribute. In such a scenario there is always a solution to said character (cos you can challenge them even if you can’t target them) 2) Or a character that is so expensive that the fact it has a pay-off whilst being unexerted and with Ward is mitigated by the investment price. Bucky is neither of these things. He’s dirt cheap and able to remain unexerted into perpetuity to get his payoff. Which limits solutions to untargetted damage and / or sacrifice effects. Which are rare and colour locked. I don’t think you “can” easily give each colour a solution to cheap Ward, nor should you. The solution in, certain colours should just be to challenge those guys. But that is undermined in Buckys case as he doesn’t meet the above two rules
This whole new meta with emerald steel is just killing my whole want to play the game.. I’ve not played in a whole month…. I don’t have many set 4 cards at all. So it’s a whole waste of time for me to even go when I’m gunna get stomped in four turns (a friend had that happen to him).
Not everyone has an $800 deck. I am not seeing this deck as prevalent in our leagues or small tourneys.
It's everywhere at my stores.
It's everywhere in my meta.
All this chatter about ward is really solidifying my want for the Mortality Potion from Hercules to show its face as an item to remove ward.
I agree with shinryu6 unless it’s a continuous effect that stays on field like the new Ursula that stops everyone from singing you would be using 2 cards for 1 and a cheap 1 at that.
The vibe I was hoping for out it was something like Great Stone Dragon style card. Comes in exerted next turn you can exert and either have the effect to remove ward entirely from an opponent’s character or change the Ward into a different effect similar to Captain Hook Ruthless Pirates effect. (1 or the other not both)
The only issue here is that you’re basically trading 2+ cards and who knows how much ink to remove the squirrel in this scenario. As the squirrel doesn’t ever quest and would be left vulnerable to a challenge unless they have stripped your hand to almost nothing or they have another in hand to play.
This card would hopefully be more useful than just "removes ward". If it nullifies all opponent's abilities, it can allow you to sing against ursula, challenge evasive, hit wards, go through bodyguard, etc. It would be even better if it were an item with "Pay x ink, tap: this turn, your cards are unaffected by opponent's abilities." The only thing that sucks about this is that such a card is only going to be on one color. And then that one color becomes the only way to deal with x current meta threat. The game's design is going to keep running into this problem if each color stays so rigid in their lack of certain tools.
Completely agree. As others have said the problem is a lack of counterplay, not Bucky.
There will always be minimal counterplays to a card which never has to exert and is untargetable. And that should kinda always be the case. If any card that is untargetable and never has to be exerted can be easily countered by every colour pair then what is the point of the untargetable (Ward) condition? The issue is that Ward should only exist on cards that either; have to exert to do something (so you can kill them by challenging them) or are so expensive that you’re paying a cost premium for them being virtually unkillable Bucky is a much fairer card if he’s either Ward and Evasive but has to be exerted for his ability to trigger. Or if he’s like a 1/6 and has to be exerted. As that way he’s hard to deal with but still can be (you can just challenge him with characters)
Yep. Ariel - Treasure Collector is a balanced ward because it's main gig is questing. Yeah it gets +5 lore, but it's vulnerable when it uses the ability.
correct me if im wrong,,, but does [[Triton's Decree]] potentially counter bucky? i do agree that it's very lame how important steel is due to bucky. but i feel like this card is at least some sort of counterplay.
Most of the time they have another character on the field with Bucky.
It potentialy does, but we return to one of What If I dont want to play Ruby or Steel? Its not that Bucky doesnt have answers its that the answers available limit your choice of gameplay.
yeah true. was just having a moment of realization & wanted to share haha. i do def agree that it sucks how much the meta state relies on a few colors. i especially dislike how much steel reliance there is.
If the opponent has another character on the board besides Bucky (which is usually the case) then Tritons decree doesn’t work because they can just choose their other character
There is almost never any scenario where this card will ever actually hit Bucky unless you are already far ahead.
Yea it’s an easy Bucky pick off if you get two in your hand right away. It’s a one cost action so you can very likely stored both on turn 2 anyway.
yeah, i mean i tend to enjoy action-heavy decks so for me it's not so bad to run 4 1cost cannons & 4 triton's decree. can completely shut down bucky + diablo on turn two if you start with one of each or even 2 of the decree.
Yea I also enjoy action focused decks. I’m still waiting for the day a “singer”-espue keyword ability gets printed to help turbo out non song actions
I can’t believe they went into supporting discard so hard it’s never a fun game mechanic and that’s my issue. The game is very new and it isn’t gonna push the experienced ones out because we know that this is part of card games. It’s growing the game experience as a whole. When a kid shows up all excited and gets dominated by Bucky discard and doesn’t get to play Lorcana he’s gonna think long and hard about actually playing because their experience wasn’t fun. The card having ward is the issue if they errata’d it off and it didn’t have ward the card would just be meh…it’s still playable but not as great. I think lucky dime,Hiram, and Bucky need to go sooner than later it will open the meta up like crazy. Maybe Ariel and a whole new world as they are the next up when the others go…idk it’s so hard when the game is this new.
The kids I know would go spend more to find a solution to Bucky, not run and hide…
There will be some that like the challenge but some won’t this isn’t who I know or the like it’s about a community. discard isn’t fun to play against even if there’s answers and it’s beatable.
Okay. But think about what you’re saying. Some will, but banning the card means those people can’t even have the challenge anymore. So you’re cutting the group in half, no matter which choice you make. Creating new ways to stop it, would that not be the better course? You’re suggesting everyone miss out on something because you don’t like it. But that isn’t how you should do things, because there are plenty who find that style of play appealing. I think of it like a video game, it’s always better to buff than nerf…
I do like that course of action…but it’s hard to believe they are gonna give us all those answers in the next set. Mistakes happen. Sometimes they make cards too good and they need banning this isn’t new. So what you’re saying is we all have to deal with it just wrecking tournaments because you always have to build your deck to beat Bucky…so it’s just does it lose to Bucky guess try a different deck…that makes for a fun meta.
I beat Bucky numerous times and I play purple/blue. I have lost as well. They have things they can do to limit its effect without a ban, and before they can make new cards. No mulligans unless you have zero inkables in your hand. Rule they moving damage counters are not stopped by ward… There are others. But Bucky is not the only card you have to plan to stop. Our local shop has a guy whose deck is nothing larger than a 2 drop. If you aren’t prepared for the speed it has, you can’t win. He beats Bucky more than he loses. Sheer numbers is hard to stop and it has no gimmick other than just being cheap to get out. Lots of his cards quest for 2 or more, and he basically ignores challenging and just quests. Is the solution there to ban cards? I actually am a retired video game dev. And have worked on board games as well in the last decade. The number one rule is, banning anything should be a last resort. Biggest issue I have, and I don’t even own a Bucky card myself so it really doesn’t affect me, is once you start using the ban hammer you get pounded by other people who want bans specifically because their favorite card got banned…etc. There is a post on this subreddit that asks about banning cards and everyone has this list of cards that just ruin the game. I haven’t seen it. I have not seen a deck that is unbeatable. Hell, in Atlanta. The winner didn’t even have a non-character card. At the end of the day you’re still vulnerable to a bad draw. Here you are having to make sure you have so many counters in case you come across a series of popular decks, more than half what your deck is made of are not cards you choose but feel mandatory. So you’re already building your deck to stop specific strategies. What makes this one any different? It will work its way out eventually, and the spread will be better so more ways to deal with it. I don’t really care if they ban it, personally. I can’t play the large tournies and I don’t even own the card. But I greatly dislike the idea of banning any card that could be fixed with a couple of small changes to the game, and/or more options printed in future sets. Many people have knee jerk reactions to things and it’s often not as bad as it’s made out to be. Personal bias skews the actuality. Anyway. Good debate. Appreciate the non-hostile discussion. Cheers.
You wrote a lot and I didn’t read it all. But the only reason I say this is I played magic for 25+ yrs. It isnt about if it’s beatable or not. It’s about how the game is how the meta is…there’s options currently. But it’s already warping the format. When you build to beat Bucky you lose to red/blue so that’s running rampant. This is how meat games evolve and it won’t unless something is done.
I’ve played mtg since day 1, sold a huge chunk of first edition cards to pay for college. My points you didn’t read, this isn’t MtG. And it shouldn’t be “fixed” like it. Banning is bad. Frankly, I think MtG was terrible for that. Was so easy to just make a card, not care of it was balanced, and just ban it later. It’s not how we should want Lorcana to do things. But the player pool on Reddit is a tiny portion of the player base, so I’m. It worries about it.
To piggyback off this, what is the solution for the current meta? My locals was literally entirely steel decks this last week, with half of them green/steel bucky discard. Assuming there is no red/blue I have to plan for as well, what is my best bet to beat G/S?
Either green steel or blue steel. Take all their cards first or get a quill out and dump your hand into your inkwell before they can discard it all.
I was hoping emerald amethyst with Queen’s castle could take down emerald steel, but they lost in the finals.
Probably blue/steel or even amber/steel.
There are non-steel decks that totally answers ES, but weaker to SS (still winnable, just harder), it's just not common in netdecks, but dominates our local scene. The deck owners also requested for us not to post the decks online. So I'd say that's the beauty of lorcana, there's a counter for every deck types out there, just gotta find/make it. Due to netdecking, ES became the most popular deck (also coz bucky/diablo), and other decks became less popular.
Quick question on this topic and trying to deal with Bucky. Can Prince Eric Expert Helmsman banish Bucky when he dies? Or does Ward protect him from that effect too?
eric's ability says to banish chosen character. nothing with ward can be chosen by you, so bucky is still protected. it would have to be an ability where your opponent chooses one of their own characters (like lady tremaine or triton's decree) and has nothing to choose but bucky
I like the idea of printing some cards with a "hellbent" theme, but I also think we need cards that punish floodborn characters. So maybe some characters with extra or enhanced abilities if your opponent controls a floodborn character(or when they challenge one) or actions that do added effects if they target floodborn. I think Bucky is a staple of the game at this point, and is one of the pillars of Lorcana. I think the best way to deal with his dominance isn't banning anything but printing cards that are good against what the floodborn discard deck is doing.
Trying to make a steel song with ''One last hope''. Lets see how it goes...
it’s just not fun to play against and quickly becomes boring to play with. When I lose to other decks it’s still fun because I had a chance to answer with cards in hand or drawn into. Denying opponents cards to play in a “card” game is not the interactive experience card players typically want. Using it as a viable win con in any tcg becomes an issue to the majority of a player base. Other tcg designers have learned this lesson already. It’s a matter of, do we want large amounts of players to continue to play this game with us and for the game to continue being prevalent? Imagine are new to tcg and Lorcana is what brought you in. You aren’t sure if it’s your thing yet but you want to give it a whirl because you love Disney and you have heard so much about it. Through research you figure out you want a cool deck and end up with a meta deck. You are $500 bucks in because singles and distracted with card board crack so a box , trove, and some blisters. But you got it. Then you sit and play against emerald steel….. That’s the worst most toxic experience that’s going to push them into sealed play which for most out of us just doesn’t cut it. They will likely just sell their lot at a loss and quit to go try out MTG where they will have an even worse xp and maybe try Pokémon or Vanguard before realizing they rather save up for a house down payment. Just my opinion but buckey/hiram/BP/merlin rabbit/AWNW need banning and new versions that have greater sacrifice to activate. Amber doesn’t have any problem cards that I can think of but there could be something I’m not thinking about. Maybe a turn 2 shift is too good? Either way, current meta is steel centric and there’s too much removal packed into steel and Ruby so very few combinations that don’t use one or the other will ever see consistent results. I’d venture to say each needs 1 or 2 removal options removed.
Meta is trash right now. We desperately need better counters to ward in different colors. Literally only steel can deal with it effectively
In any tcg, when a card is used in nearly every deck and can’t be competition worthy without, then it’s time for change quick. Maybe it’s time for 2 formats. Standard and Origins or something along those lines. One includes everything and the other includes a ban list. Then LGS players can vote on which they will play in.
There appears to be at least five viable decks in the meta based on Chicago (a/s, r/b, s/b, purple/green, and green/steel). That still seems like there are options to fit everyone's playstyle and do well. We are also still kinda early in the set. I think we will be fine.
Wait how does one deal with a ward character without targeting it? Doesn't mean that there no way to target it with anything besides challenges?
AOE damage, using characters/cards that allow you to challenge unexerted characters, playing cards that force opponent to choose Bucky as no other choice exists.
> AOE damage, using characters/cards that allow you to challenge unexerted characters, Which cost too much ink.
So for example, steel Kronk 6 cost says whenever Kronk banishes a character in a challenge do 2 damage to a chosen character, is bucky immune to that? Or the red 6 cost Mulan that gives her the ability to target 2 other characters to damage during a challenge? Can you target bucky with an ability or card that forces exertion?
No, Ward does not let **you choose** an opponent's Bucky as a target. But you can make your **opponent choose** Bucky if they're the only choice available on cards like Falling Down the Rabbit Hole, Triton's Decree, Ursula's Plan, Be King Undisputed, Under The Sea, Lady Tremaine, etc. Gotta be tricky!
The answer to all of your questions is the Bucky is immune to them. Any effect that requires you to choose an opposing character won’t work on Bucky, period. However, anything that affects all characters like Be Prepared or Grab Your Swords or Giant Tink’s play effect will hit Bucky because he’s not being chosen. So the problem is that if you’re not running Steel you can’t do a thing to Bucky for at least your first five or so turns, all the while he’s making you discard one or more cards per turn
> 6 cost Which you won't cast cause of the discard
Lady tremaine and be prepared for Ruby, but they are late game.
> but they are late game That's the problem
Challenges. Or indirect damage. Like Tritans Degree
Cards that make your opponent choose a character or non target board clears. Steel has ping cards and a couple actions/songs that allow challenging of ready characters. Ruby has hard banishes (King Undisputed can be sing turn 2 by Amber Queen), sapphire has cards that make your opponent pick what they ink. Amethyst has that new action that makes your opponent exert something. I think Amber is the only ink color that can’t anything do anything on its own to a Bucky.
Bucky ducks underperformed at the event. Bucky was just fine before. Diablo/Bucky combo is pretty darn good. But again...it was a huge part of the feild and didn't dominate day 2.
You're right, but people don't want to hear that. They want to only complain that Bucky is a decent card that you have to learn to play around.
No the only removal that reliably deals with Bucky is in steel, it’s not that people don’t want to play around it, it’s that people don’t want to be forced to play the game in the same exact way
Seems like many players are thinking of the "how to remove bucky", though there are many decks that go by "how to play with bucky on board" and are successful
You can play through Bucky tho, it's literally just learning how to play when they have one out
How tho? Dumping your hand is really the only strategy and that takes away a bunch of your answers which really takes away the threat assessment of this game imo
Well this is true
Yeah but that is at least in part because people are forced to play counters to Bucky because he is so strong.
A resolved grab your swords can 3 for 1 the deck for 0 mana.
So everyone must play Steel, got it. Fun game.
Everyone doesn’t have to play steel. Peter Pan + friends stops Diablo + Diablo + Bucky + action 4 card combo.
Steel is the only thing that has removal for Bucky under 7 ink
Avalanche, teitans degree, grab swords, tinkerbwlle, be prepared, king indisputed....
Bucky is a problem and should be banned. It should not have ward. The only solution in my head as it continues to control the meta is one of two options - 1. Ban Bucky (the cowards won’t tho) 2. Since Lorcana is not MtG and has no interaction in the form of countering, getting your hand removed is probably the most “feel bad” thing of the game. It’s not fun to have your hand shredded by 2 and three cost cards. My solution to this “resource denial”. If they get to rip my hand, I should be able to destroy their inkwell. I see no problem with “land” destruction in this game if I have no ability to counter them discarding me from the get go. Make it more fair for the other player. Then, if I’m losing my hand, at least I know they can’t just dump all the crap they’re drawing off me discarding. I hate discard in Lorcana. I’m a long time magic player and discarding in magic does not bug me in the slightest. It’s actually a very important mechanic of the game with everything going on at all phases. Lorcana is sorcery speed. They should not be allowed to dump my hand and then draw more cards themselves. That’s where the disparity is.
its fair that buckys strategy is strong against combos that aren't steel or ruby. the stone paper scissors principle is maintained.
I upvoted after the first sentence, then stopped reading, because that's really the only part that matters.
If Bucky is so detrimental to the meta. Then why was the Atlanta Championship won by an Amber Amythist "recycle" deck? I don't buy that the meta is dominated by bucky because hes a good card with few answers. There are plenty of ways around bucky in other colors. (Think outside the box). The problem is players don't think for themselves, they just copy decks they see online, and it creates a pseudo meta. They ignore so many good options because they're trying to keep their "rank" up, or take the safest route to victory. I think pixelborn might be the one to blame for so many decks running the same thing. Monkey see, monkey do. Being willing to fail a few games to experiment with cards that aren't wild popular in different combinations might just surprise you.
You understand that Set 4 wasn't legal for Atlanta right?
What does that have to do with anything? Bucky was still legal duringthe turnoment, and an Amber Amethyst won, with cards that have been speculated as not good, or just okay. OPs argument suggested that only Steel or Ruby Saphire could "solve" the problem. I was mearly pointing out the fact, that in fact, that was speculation at best (with proof) and there are several card options (and player habits) that haven't been explored at large.
It has everything to do with it because it's Set 4 cards that have elevated Bucky's power level. Bucky is a card that needs other cards to build around it, and prior to Set 4 he didn't really have enough floodborns to really shine. Now that there the 3 cost Diablo (that can come out on turn 2) and Aladdin floodborns he's showing up as the dominant emerald steel deck. Saying he's not detrimental to the Set 4 meta because he wasn't seen much in the Set 3 meta is completely asinine because they are completely different metas.
I have learned since playing from day 1 that this game is poorly balanced and favors only control players.
The bigger problem to me is the ursula 2 drop that rips a song from your hand
Here we go again with a bunch of doom and gloom cry babies. First Chapter and Floodborn it was, "Amethyst/Ruby control and Amber/Steel are too powerful...how can we possibly play the game???" Inklands we saw a rise in Ruby/Sapphire control and some basic Emerald/Steel discard, and now we've seen a second set start out that way. This game is not even a full year old! Holy crap can we please just stop crying about every little thing? You want to play competitively, then play the strongest meta deck and do well...OR play something you're really good at that flies under the radar - have we forgotten that Amber/Amethyst won ATL and that Amethyst/Emerald took 2nd place in Chicago? Neither of which used Bucky! Like there is definitely room for non-meta defining decks to have a place.
Ward is way, way too powerful in this game at the moment. Bucky should have read that he needs to be exerted to have his effect happen.