I really don't where I stand with the whole 'ban Magah Birds/70 Steps/Endless Interrogation/etc' thing. On the one hand, there are a lot of decks that seem pretty good but that never see the light of competitive play because Birds/Steps will ruin them. Sometimes I feel like we'd have a much wider array of deckbuilds winning games if we didn't have the Steps/Birds combo to worry about (or rather, lose to). This would open the competitive game up nicely for all sorts of ideas (Dark Young, Nerds, Deep Ones, Serpents, Syndicate icon denial, etc). On the other hand, I'm well aware that my argument can be boiled down to 'if we ban enough cards, Furtive Zoog* becomes the best card in the game'.

I think the crux of the issue is that the game is slowly becoming boring, thanks to a certain combo that no-one seems to be able to reliably beat and that no single card is really the problem (I mean, 70 Steps isn't that harsh and is there really a reason to justify banning a 1 costing 1 skill no icons character?). I don't really know what the solution is - sit tight and hope eventually enough cards and released that we eventually have a bunch of decks similar in power to Birds/Steps? I don't think silver bullets are the answer, but some sort of hate deck could force Birds/Steps players to adapt and create the anti-hate deck hate and thus drive deckbuilding forward.

That said, I do like the sound of the errata to make 70 Steps destroyable by both players - in a game as resource-driven as CoC, having to drain one of your own domains is a drawback. Especially given that in most cases, paying the 2 to destroy 70 Steps will leave you with two domains with 1 resource each. It would effectively set you back a turn (assuming most players are looking to play something costing 2 on their first turn, which isn't always the case).

Thankfully, my local meta doesn't seem to play much of the Birds/Steps so I guess I'm lucky enough to be able to play daft deck ideas and not lose all my games to 4 people the exact same Birds/Steps deck, so I suppose I'm not the most ardent hater of the deck.

*Insert a card name of your choice here

Didn't I fix this problem already?

Magah Birds could possibly get an erratta so the card searched out from the deck should go into the players hand instead of directly into play. This keeps the flavor of the card, the playability of the card, but keeps it from doing WAY to much at one time. Though really, it barely needs such an erratta. If the game becomes faster, then it certainly wouldn't even need that. Magah Birds are NOT the problem with the current metagame.

Endless Interrogation on the other hand is a problem. It should have the erratta that it doesn't return to the player's hand until the end of the phase. I can't possibly think of a better fix for a card. It removes its 'game breaking' ability while retaining playability. Why this hasn't been done yet is beyond me.

Descendant of Eibon is fine. Its current nerfing to Discard 2 success tokens just what the card needed. Is it still really strong? Yes. But DE is nothing more than a strong combatant at cost 3 that is hard to keep down. Not exactly the end of the world.

The Seventy Steps is a hard one for me. It should've had a cost of 3, but too late for that. I'm not so much a fan of the 'anyone can pay to destory' option, but its not bad. Banning, while ugly may be necessary. Its almost as bad as The Rip Off... an interesting card but was simply way too undercosted. This kind of mistake should've been caught in playtesting, but sometimes things slip through. My vote is to ban it and just remove the problem.

Is it worth it to do an 'Unofficial FAQ/Erratta" if the "powers that be" are... too busy with other things? I mean... 4 months and nothing. I appluade them for not knee-jerking a fix but something is telling me that isn't what happened.

Happy Holidays.

Yes! Magah Bird and Endless Steps are BANNED! And Dogs now are capped at 3!

I think you meant Endless Interrogation. Steps were not touched. However, with Birds, Endless, and Dogs (effectively) gone Steps will be used as a set-up card for control decks rather than for blitz.

Tokhuah said:

I hope you're right, but I really don't think that will be the case.

Magnus Arcanis said:

I'm glad they left Steps alone. I use it exclusively for control decks and it works very well in that capacity. There is still capacity for it to be a strong card for rush decks, but it I agree with Tok that it seems less of an issue.