by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

If I have to guess, your first reaction when first seeing this card was along the lines of  “HOLY $#!¬”.

Regardless of whether you thought this card was completely unplayable, broken as all hell, or just a luck-based nightmare, it’s hard not be impressed by the possibilities that this card opens. A card which such an interesting and unique effect is bound to attract attention, and more importantly its likely going to make you want to play it.

Personally, I my first reaction to this card was “WOW”, but then I sat to think about it and decided that on principle this is not a card design I can agree with, let me explain why.

Just by looking at the card and analyzing its effect, it’s rather easy to conclude that there’s three main possible results to Astral Communion’s effect on the metagame.

1. The card is unplayable

Gaining 10 mana crystals is a lot, but discarding your hard is also pretty punishing. Playing one card a turn, no matter how good your card is, will make it very hard to climb back into the game. And that’s only when you manage to draw it early, if you don’t draw it then a hand of big minions might end up dead in your hand. There is certainly an scenario where you can’t draw this card often enough, or that even when you do, it doesn’t do enough for you to actually win games. It might be either downright terrible, or just too inconsistent to provide a positive average result.

If this card is unplayable, then it is a shame, because it opens up a very interesting deck archetype, and its very frustrating to really like a card’s effect but not being to able to play it because it sucks to consistently lose to real decks.

2. The card is good, but inconsistent

But what if Astral Communion’s effect was very good and allow you to win a lot of the games in which you play it? I could imagine an scenario where Astral Communion just wins you the games when you can play it by turn 3 or 4. But you just lose when you don’t get it. The Deck overall could end up having a Tier 1 win-rate, but the victories would be decided by whether you drew the Astral or not. There are a lot of random effects on Hearthstone, but having a deck where wins and loses are decided mostly by drawing a particular card would completely undermine the competitive aspect of the game. Even if we look at the fun factor this would be problematic; sure, it can be fun to draw your perfect cards, break the game and get the win. But it’s just as boring and frustrating for your opponent to lose that game.

3. The card is absurdly broken

Or perhaps we reach a point where you can come up with an Astral Communion deck that is absurdly strong. A deck that can consistently draw communion early and just use the HUGE mana advantage to decimate all opponents. Astral Communion has a very strong effect, and while right now Hearthstone doesn’t provide the supporting cast that this beast of card needs to dominate, imagine if we had enough cards that provided good synergies for the Astral Communion to make a broken deck. It’s certainly not the scenario now, but this is one of the possible results and it isn’t really a positive one. If Astral Communion ever got to a point where it was this overpowered, it would certainly warrant a nerf.

Right now, most players would agree that the current scenario for astral scenario is Number one. The card being unplayable is probably the lesser evil here, but one has to wonder, what the upside for Astral Communion? What am I missing here? What’s the scenario where this card is both fun and balanced? Is this just designed to be a wild gimmick card?

Like Uncle Ben said: “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”. And while the Great Power of Astral Communion is a fun way to change the way you play Hearthstone, shattering some of the basic notions of the game like the mana curve is a thin line to tread.

Interestingly enough, despite not having that trigger word “Random” on its text, Astral Communion manages to be one of the biggest RNG cards in the game. If you think about it, Astral Communions deck are all about the random possibility of being able to Innervate the Communion out on turn 2 (or even 1 on the coin). And even after you get to play it, its all about your top decks. Instead of a regular game where you only depend partially on your random top decks, for Astral Communion decks the top decks are literally a life or death matter.

What do you think of Astral Communion? Do you think my assessment of the card is accurate, or do you feel like I’ve overlooked something? Let me know your thoughts using the comment section below, or just tweet at me.