The awkward thing about Even/Odd is that they probably don't function without hero power manipulation.
It can't just be one splashy late-game effect, since you'd never get there. There would be too many gaps in a good curve if you've cut out half the mana pool, so there kind of needs to be something to balance that out. So folks get stronger HPs. But they're now too strong, and so HP-based decks become the norm. Once these are the new normal, deck contents start to not matter all that much, and game-to-game things get really repetitive. So early HOF just to avoid a second year of tedium was a great idea.
If you think the problem with Genn/Baku was they forced a deck to be built around a gimmick... yikes.
The problem with Genn/Baku was that the kind of hero-power focused gameplay they encouraged was boring and repetitive. The odd/even restriction was good, actually. There were a tonne of cards which came out of the woodwork and saw play for the first time in essentially ever. Raid Leader? Seriously? That's great! What wasn't great was Button. Button. Button. Button. Button. This made all the games against odd Paladin, odd Warrior, and so forth feel the same. All they do is make dudes and that's enough. All they do is gain armor, and that's enough. The contents of the deck becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is that hero power, and that's bad.
Highlander restrictions don't do that. The consistency of the decks go down, the contents of the decks vary more with a lot more room for tech choices, and games *don't* all feel the same. It's pretty much the exact opposite of how Genn/Baku played out. Zephrys being a swiss-army-knife to do anything you need does restore *some* consistency, but he's one card out of 30.
I, for one, don't dislike the hero power stuff. I agree, odd/even went out of blizzards hands, but I feel like, it was the community that disliked the mechanic and not a broken power level. Hall of Faming those cards still was the easy and bad way to drop an otherwise interesting mechanic. I loved using cards that were okay-ish in regular decks but suddenly excelled in odd/even decks (looking at stuff like Raid Leader or Argent Commander.
And that is the essence why highlander also is great. You actually see and play cards that do not have a top tier power level but still manage to work out because it is balanced by other cards/mechanics. Remember: OG Reno singlehandedly made highlander viable for a year up until MSoG.
Don't get me wrong, I loved playing Tank Up Warrior and two-dudes Paladin. I also wish I'd gotten into Even Hunter sooner--that deck was sweet. But I also knew that playing them *for another year* would have been too much.
And yeah, I think the power level mattered a lot. Broken is a high bar to clear, but they were very strong. If they weren't strong, no one would care about the Odd/Even mechanics, they'd just play different decks. But Genn/Baku *were* very strong (and very boring), so folks felt they had to run these decks in order to compete.
For example, no one was mad that highlander decks existed between when Reno left the game and Raza/Anduin Priest dominated, because it wasn't strong enough to make anyone feel like they had to do it. It was a wacky meme style of deck, and folks were fine with that. If Odd/Even came back as essentially a wacky meme format, I don't think folks would care.
If you think the problem with Genn/Baku was they forced a deck to be built around a gimmick... yikes.
The problem with Genn/Baku was that the kind of hero-power focused gameplay they encouraged was boring and repetitive. The odd/even restriction was good, actually. There were a tonne of cards which came out of the woodwork and saw play for the first time in essentially ever. Raid Leader? Seriously? That's great! What wasn't great was Button. Button. Button. Button. Button. This made all the games against odd Paladin, odd Warrior, and so forth feel the same. All they do is make dudes and that's enough. All they do is gain armor, and that's enough. The contents of the deck becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is that hero power, and that's bad.
Highlander restrictions don't do that. The consistency of the decks go down, the contents of the decks vary more with a lot more room for tech choices, and games *don't* all feel the same. It's pretty much the exact opposite of how Genn/Baku played out. Zephrys being a swiss-army-knife to do anything you need does restore *some* consistency, but he's one card out of 30.
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The awkward thing about Even/Odd is that they probably don't function without hero power manipulation.
It can't just be one splashy late-game effect, since you'd never get there. There would be too many gaps in a good curve if you've cut out half the mana pool, so there kind of needs to be something to balance that out. So folks get stronger HPs. But they're now too strong, and so HP-based decks become the norm. Once these are the new normal, deck contents start to not matter all that much, and game-to-game things get really repetitive. So early HOF just to avoid a second year of tedium was a great idea.
Don't get me wrong, I loved playing Tank Up Warrior and two-dudes Paladin. I also wish I'd gotten into Even Hunter sooner--that deck was sweet. But I also knew that playing them *for another year* would have been too much.
And yeah, I think the power level mattered a lot. Broken is a high bar to clear, but they were very strong. If they weren't strong, no one would care about the Odd/Even mechanics, they'd just play different decks. But Genn/Baku *were* very strong (and very boring), so folks felt they had to run these decks in order to compete.
For example, no one was mad that highlander decks existed between when Reno left the game and Raza/Anduin Priest dominated, because it wasn't strong enough to make anyone feel like they had to do it. It was a wacky meme style of deck, and folks were fine with that. If Odd/Even came back as essentially a wacky meme format, I don't think folks would care.
If you think the problem with Genn/Baku was they forced a deck to be built around a gimmick... yikes.
The problem with Genn/Baku was that the kind of hero-power focused gameplay they encouraged was boring and repetitive. The odd/even restriction was good, actually. There were a tonne of cards which came out of the woodwork and saw play for the first time in essentially ever. Raid Leader? Seriously? That's great! What wasn't great was Button. Button. Button. Button. Button. This made all the games against odd Paladin, odd Warrior, and so forth feel the same. All they do is make dudes and that's enough. All they do is gain armor, and that's enough. The contents of the deck becomes irrelevant, and all that matters is that hero power, and that's bad.
Highlander restrictions don't do that. The consistency of the decks go down, the contents of the decks vary more with a lot more room for tech choices, and games *don't* all feel the same. It's pretty much the exact opposite of how Genn/Baku played out. Zephrys being a swiss-army-knife to do anything you need does restore *some* consistency, but he's one card out of 30.