Watch/Ban List Updates 8/24/17

Hey all, Corey Burkhart here with an update to the ban and watch lists for Standard and Immortal.

At this time, we’re going to be adding a card to both the Standard and Immortal watchlists. That card is Lazgar’s Vengeance.

Why, specifically, is Lazgar’s Vengeance being examined more closely? Lazgar’s Vengeance is an incredibly powerful card that has the potential to force some strategies from the metagame. Because Lazgar’s hits your opponent’s face as well as their entire side of the board, it’s difficult to set up scenarios where you’re racing back against the card by charging your own Assault cards or building up a board of troops that can defend against it. It depletes the opponent’s clock on both health and board, which makes it a terrifyingly aggressive card. It can make some games feel overwhelming for the opponent, especially in “best possible draw” scenarios, and it’s a card that routinely has a large influence on the outcome of the game.

That being said, the card is interactable. Lazgar’s Vengeance costs 8 resources to play. It’s tricky for the opponent to turn this card on if you regularly remove their troops and prevent them from attacking. Some Lazgar’s decks are easier to control than others, but a proactive deck can control a Lazgar’s player relatively well, causing the card can sit in their hand, practically useless for many turns. Furthermore, shards that have access to interrupts, discards, transformation, or reversion can interact with this card a variety of ways outside of locking down the board for troops.

While we think Lazgar’s is still on the healthy side of the equation, our biggest concern is that it may crowd out certain types of decks from existing. When the decks playing Lazgar’s Vengeance are at their most prominent, it is difficult to play decks looking to utilize small to medium sized troops (Those with 4 defense or less). These are decks that are quite healthy to have in a format and are important for HEX to have around. These decks tend to be proactive, they tend to promote good play patterns, and they encourage players to interact with one another in the warzone. When these decks aren’t allowed to thrive, there is the potential for aggro, control, and combo decks to overrun this niche. Midrange decks are healthy for the meta, so we take notice when it looks like they may be crowded out completely.

For these reasons, Lazgar’s Vengeance is being added to both the Standard and Immortal watch lists. Currently, our reasoning on Lazgar’s remains the same for both formats, but we’ll track each format separately as the Standard and Immortal card pools diverge. If we need to take further action on the card or potentially remove it from a watch list in the future, we will do so. Finally, we want to emphasize that we are not banning anything at this time. Rather, as promised, we are notifying you, the players, of cards which have been flagged for an extra layer of scrutiny moving forward.

See you in the battlegrounds,

~Corey Burkhart

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