Why does Death From Above Exist?

[Cosmic]

It baffles me that Wulven needs another instant-kill card when they already have Now You're Mine. Wulven are the only class to have access to two class specific instant-kill cards except for Elementals (although they are both cost 5 and Energy Discharge actually has a big cost). I'm not counting The Bigger They Are and The Harder They Fall since these are available to all classes in their respective factions.

I understand that Death from Above fills the nice niche of killing cost 4 allies, however they don't see as much play as cost 3 allies and it also kills all the same allies as Now You're Mine, while also not dealing with higher cost allies either.

You might be saying, "well you need a Wulven ally on the board". This is barely a downside as you can quite easily play Now You're Mine up until turn 5 and then you can play Death from Above and an ally at the same time (and it's very likely you'll have a cost 2 ally to play since Bloodpack Shaman can loop endlessly). Also limiting it to Wulven allies further cuts down the incentives to make non-Wulven decks. A good nerf would be to just raise the cost of Death from Above to three or four, making the downside of needing an ally an actual downside.

It's not like I'm against the inclusion of instant-kill effects in the game, it's just that I feel that you should be able to play around them or they should punish players for not accounting for them. Mind Control can be avoided or have it's effects mitigated by playing low attack allies. Tidal Wave can be mitigated in the opposite way by not playing lots of allies. The only feasible way of playing around Wulven removal is... only to play cost 5 allies once you reach turn 5? That's not a viable strategy for most decks at all. Perhaps spam more low cost allies that your opponent can remove? This strategy is pretty ineffective against Moonstalker since he can just stealth and pick them off. In reality you just have to roll the dice every time you play an ally as to whether they will have one in hand which is pretty likely as up to 20% of their deck could be those two cards.

If you compare Death from Above to Assassination, Assassination is a much better balanced card and has the reasonable drawbacks of costing 3 and exhausting the ally that killed the enemy ally (Which makes more sense flavour-wise, as the ally is performing an action as if it were attacking). I would be okay with Death from Above becoming a Wulven version of Assassination and letting it kill cost 5 and higher allies, although then this would make Now You're Mine redundant instead.

Overall(/TLDR) though, I feel that Death from Above fills a role that has already been filled and allows players to have 8 cheap instant-kill removal cards in their deck without skewing your resource curve to be incredibly late game, as opposed to the 4 they could have before Shattered Fates.

Of course I'm open to anyone that can explain to me why Death from Above should exist in it's current state.

[maxi1230]

Yes it is pretty strong in its current state.
I would also rather see it as Assasination, so it requires a unexhausted Wulven ally.

[FDL]

It's always been the most irratating Wulven class card to me. Moreso than Bloodpack Shaman.

I don't mind it that much but it makes a lot of matchups that should be harder for Wulven a lot easier.

[morbius]

Yes it is pretty strong in its current state.
I would also rather see it as Assasination, so it requires a unexhausted Wulven ally.

+1

[LucasBlitz]

Big read. All I know is that DFA is too strong but not OP. I'm fine with it tbh.

[tman507]

Agreed, this is a very annoying card. The only real reason I can see for its existence is to encourage a move away from so many solo MS or DC decks, encouraging a way of letting you kill up to a 4cc instead of just 3cc at the additional restriction of actually needing an ally. But as you say, having this ally is very easy to achieve, especially with BPS, and when you don't need like Assassination with having to have the ally unexhausted just to exhaust it with Assassination (meaning either ally sticks for a turn first or has haste) DFA is really a little too easy to use for its cost.

On a side note, I'm going to be finding a way to put more Spirit Wardens in my Human decks to help counter BPS, lol.

[Delay of Game]

Sorry, but when the OP brushes off Mind Control as being no big deal, and complains instead about Death from Above....I cannot accept this thread as valid.

Mind control is the most op card in the entire history of the universe.

This must be a troll thread...

[Index]

Mind Control is not OP

[Cosmic]

Sorry, but when the OP brushes off Mind Control as being no big deal, and complains instead about Death from Above....I cannot accept this thread as valid.

Mind control is the most op card in the entire history of the universe.

This must be a troll thread...

Mind Control was not the subject of this thread and could have a whole other thread devoted to it which would also be entirely pointless as the devs obstinately refuse to balance anything that has already gone into physical print. Any discussion of printed cards whether or not they are overpowered, is a waste of time unfortunately. At least we can still discuss Death from Above since it's in Shattered Fates.

Anyway, Mind Control can only be played on turn 5 so you can play around it and bait it out if you're clever and have a half decent deck/hand. Meanwhile you can expect to see an unavoidable combination of Death from Above and Now You're Mine from turn 2 onwards throughout the game.

[tman507]

^ Don't you guys know to not take most of what Delay of Game says seriously, lol. Especially if it has anything to do with power levels of Wulven cards, lol.