Hearthpwn

It thought that the second player getting 5 hp + 1 extra card seemed very fair for both sides. Now they are trying extra card + 1 mini-innervate which gives 1 mana on a single turn. This is terrible because the first player is ahead in mana for 10 turns, and has the initiative. The second player here is ahead on 1 turn. Am I missing something, because this seems like a nonsense idea.

There is another card called the Coin which is a 0/1/1 minion. I don't think that is a very good option either because it is not as general as 5 hp.

What do you all think?

However, there were complaints about the +5 health making cards like Molten Giant too easy to cast.

I think the mini Innervate + and extra card will work well.

They should just do what M&M:DoC have

P1 Turn1: 1 mana

P2 Turn1: 2 mana

P1 Turn2: 2 mana

P2 Turn2: 3 Mana

If Player 1 don't use his 1 turn advantage (ex. don't play a card in 1st turn), P2 can easily get tempo (in that system he shouldn't even have 1 extra card advantage).

I personally think "The Coin" is the best alternative to this, but it does put all the Aggressive decks in a de facto good position, because:

1) When THEY start normally, they put pressure effectively vs. any deck, which is put in a defensive position.
2) When THEY play second, they can still apply pressure better in the first few turns. At worst they're in a mirror match and they'll just trade evenly, if not better because they even got the extra card.

When you're a Control deck, starting first gives you nothing, since when the opponent gets "The Coin", he ends up setting up the pace of the game anyway and you have to be reactive, but you do so with one less card.

The Coin SEEMS like a good alternative to extra Health, but it really just puts Aggro and Combo decks in a better spot over all, whereas Control decks get the short end of the  stick.

Maybe I'm not looking at this right, though. Any input?

Control decks really want to play second anyway since they'll be playing reactively. Perhaps The Coin is just being played too soon and should be held until a later turn. Control is just delaying until some late-game magic can happen, so if you can use The Coin to make that happen a turn earlier it could have a bigger impact on the game vs playing a 2-mana card on turn 1 or a 3-mana card on turn 2, etc. You also keep it available for those cases where if you just had one more mana you could deal with the current situation.

The second player starts with two mana but no extra card. So the second player has the mana advantage but the first player can play a 1-drop before the second player can respond.