It happened! As announced, Historic was rebalanced on August 6th, changing the text of some cards with the aim of weakening a very specific deck: Boros Energy!
As Wizards of the Coast said, the latter began to dominate the field shortly after the release of Modern Horizons 3 and pushed out other archetypes and possible new brews that would add diversity to the format.
The confirmation of this supremacy came with the Arena Championship 6, where Boros Energy represented 58% of the metagame and even won in the hands of Wouter Noordzij. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and there was no longer any doubt: something had to change!
Was it time to ban? Not really, because here we are on MTG Arena and Historic is a digital only format, where often there is a trend not to ban cards, but to modify part of them so as to balance their power level and be able to continue playing them.
I wrote “often” because the process that leads a card to be nerfed rather than banned is not yet well defined: just think that MH3's arrival brought 20 pre-banned cards and that the entire Historic banlist has 54 cards, excluding rebalanced ones.
Negative aspects of the rebalance policy
Before diving into the analysis of what has been changed, let me say a couple of words about why I think rebalancing the cards is not the right way!
While it's true that some might appreciate being able to continue to play a certain card (even if it's no longer the same one), on the other hand this phenomenon creates confusion for those who play both Historic and Timeless on MTG Arena, finding themselves with the same cards but with slightly different effects that could lead to errors and a lost game. As long as it's a couple of played cards like A-Orcish Bowmasters and A-The One Ring you can try to remember them and pay attention, but what happens if in long run these cards become 10 or 30?
Furthermore, digitally modifying what also exists analogically, i.e. physical cards, does nothing but put an unnecessary barrier between paper players and MTG Arena's ones, treating the two games separately and making sure that each one remains in its own world. What are the benefits of this? Personally, I really can't find any!
Last but not least, there is the refund policy, since after a rebalance you are not refunded for the spent wildcards, as it happens with bans. Could this be the real reason why they prefer this path?
Guide of Souls
Change: Guide of Souls now costs 4 Energy to buff (instead of 3).
The first of the 3 nerfs we are going to analyze today, was on Guide of Souls, most likely the best Boros Energy 1-drop! It is:
- offensive, turning any creature into a flying threat;
- defensive, gaining life;
- synergistic, getting Energy without too much effort.
It wasn't hard to predict they would touch it and I personally liked the way they did it! If you really have to nerf it, you have to weaken the card just enough to discourage some players so that they maybe aim for other decks, but without making it unplayable, because otherwise it would be a joke and they would have done better to ban it.
Here, this one is on point, adding 1 more Energy to its activation, but leaving all the other characteristics unchanged.
Seen this way, someone could argue it is not a good nerf because it's too soft, but, before evaluating it, I think it's important to contextualize it together with the other two bans that we are about to see and that affect each other.
Galvanic Discharge
Change: Galvanic Discharge now generates 2 Energy (instead of 3).
While Guide of Souls now wants 1 more Energy, Galvanic Discharge produces 1 less and this already affects the overall Energy accumulation. No more surplus when killing a creature with 2 toughness, but above all it has now become impossible to kill a creature with toughness 3, without external help.
With Lightning Bolt banned in Historic, Galvanic Discharge had become a worthy replacement, to the point that almost every red deck had adopted it making the entire format heavily focused on Energy (and Suncleanser knows it!). WotC decided to stop this abuse and now the difference between before and after is almost equal to that between Shock and Lightning Bolt. “Almost” because it's always possible to get Energy in various ways and in the late game it will still be possible to knock down Jegantha, the Wellspring with only one red mana, while the problems come instead from the early game.
Izzet Wizards, in fact, is the biggest beneficiary of this change, having a long list of aggressive threats with toughness 3 the opponent must answer: A-Symmetry Sage, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student // Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar, Dreadhorde Arcanist and Balmor, Battlemage Captain.
Galvanic Discharge may not be enough anymore and, if Wizards really does start to grow in popularity again, it may be better to focus on other removals: Static Prison, Portable Hole, Fragment Reality, Prismatic Ending and return to playing Shove Aside.
I don't love this nerf and I don't think it's now in line with the power level of the format as WotC stated, but at least it's consistent with the Lightning Bolt ban and the A-Unholy Heat nerf.
Ocelot Pride
Change: Ocelot Pride now costs 1W (instead of W).
A sore point for Ocelot Pride which takes the biggest beating, remaining unchanged in the text but suffering a doubling of the mana cost. WotC makes this change in order to reduce the explosiveness and aggression of the deck and give opponents time to respond, but they do so in perhaps the worst way: by putting it in a position where it has to face competition from the many 2-drops of the format, thus making it difficult to include.
We have already had the opportunity to experience how unproductive it is to increase the mana value of a spell, as happened for example to A-Teferi, Time Raveler, A-Fires of Invention or A-Geological Appraiser, which, although legal in Historic, have basically never seen play and my prediction is A-Ocelot Pride will not end differently in the long run.
To be fair, I would have fully understood if this change had come within the first two weeks of MH3, when Ocelot Pride seemed absurd and too often difficult to handle. It was powered up by life of both Soul Warden and Leonin Vanguard, which were played in the early versions of Boros Energy, and it was helped because the format was still unprepared to deal with it by playing, for example, a midrange card like Unstable Amulet, instead of the later established Goblin Bombardment.
Later the format absorbed it well, always presenting removal in the early turns, and not giving it the chance to do much in the late game, so much so that it was often convenient to side it out, especially on the draw, in favor of a more midrange plan.
I hate this nerf and I think it goes against the spirit of card rebalancing, making it almost unplayable. With the recent Big Score and the various Special Guests, we all are suffering the lack of mythic wildcards and receiving 4 of them in exchange would have been at least a consolation prize... which of course we would have then traded with 4 mythic Frogmite!
The Lion King is untouched!
If there was a way to bet money on whether or not they would nerf Ajani, Nacatl Pariah // Ajani, Nacatl Avenger, I would have lost my house by now!
Jokes aside, it's probably the first card we all thought of when a rebalance for Boros Energy was announced and the fact that it's still unscathed is incredible.
Nothing too incisive or sophisticated, they could have just downgraded Ajani's second ability to -1, instead of 0, and that would have been something, while now, even if his surrounding environment has been modified, the core of the deck remains intact and his combo with Goblin Bombardment is still 100% working.
It must be said that WotC has been very cautious, announcing that this could be only the first wave and it would continue to monitor the Historic situation in case further changes were needed and, if I can hazard a prediction, I fear that sooner or later the nerf-hammer will be forced to hit it!
They may not have learned anything from their past mistakes and we could relive a situation like the one in Modern 2013, when Bloodbraid Elf was banned to stem the overwhelming power of Jund, only to realize a year later that the right card to ban was Deathrite Shaman. Or like in the more recent July 2019, when Bridge from Below was banned to remove the combo with Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis (along with Altar of Dementia, the opponent was milled out), to realize only a month later that they hadn't had the desired effects and banning the deck's namesake card: Hogaak!
No reverse nerf!
Okay, so we get that these new nerfs are meant to shake up the format a bit, hopefully adding diversity, but what about taking a different approach by reverting previously nerfed cards back to their original state?
Probably if they had not only removed but also added something, players would have been more stimulated to deckbuild new things and the format would have had a chance for a natural evolution.
I'm not saying that all cards are now "unnerfable" but most of them are and on the platform there are still old rebalances that are now largely outdated. This is the case of A-Cauldron Familiar, which, together with A-The Meathook Massacre, was nerfed when BG Food was the strongest deck in Historic, now more than 2 years ago, leaving us today in the paradox that absolutely legal and non-problematic cards in Pioneer are instead nerfed in Historic which has a much higher power level.
The same thing also applies for example to: A-Fires of Invention, A-Omnath, Locus of Creation, A-Lier, Disciple of the Drowned and A-Alrund's Epiphany.
A-Dragon's Rage Channeler is a strong card that would have found the perfect timing to return as 3/3 by taking advantage of Galvanic Discharge almost everywhere, while, if you really wanted to experiment and break the balance, it could have been an option even to bring back A-Orcish Bowmasters (or rebalance it again)! To be clear, this is not what I would have done or wanted, but paradoxically Orcish Bowmasters would have been the best solution to the card that was hit the hardest with these nerfs: Ocelot Pride!
That's all for today! What do you think of these rebalances? Personally, I was a little disappointed, but more by the approach WotC had than by its actual upheavals, because in the end Boros Energy just needs a little evolution and is still there, ready to rock! After all, by their own admission, they didn't want to eliminate the deck, but bring it back to the level of the others in Historic... But did they really succeed?
