Discuss this article with us in our discussion group by clicking here!
A few months ago, while we didn’t issue an outright ban we asked tournament organizers to temporarily disallow using Baba in their events while we worked on some solutions to address a few complaints with the strength and mechanics of the deck. While we have always accepted and reacted to feedback from the community, we also took the unprecedented step of creating a new discussion group and asking for open input on the changes we were about to take. this is the result.
The biggest change is that Baba’s allies no longer live in the Sensei Deck. They are now main decked. On the plus side, this means that you can accelerate their deployment with cards like Z Warriors Gather and Unexpected Company to get them into play. On the down side, Baba can no longer save them from the discard pile, meaning losing an ally through combat damage or having them discarded by a card effect will necessitate running some kind of discard pile recursion. This fixes two major complaints with Baba: 1) There were very few effective counters to keep Baba in check and 2) Baba was much more forgiving in deck building standards, allowing way more counters that a more traditional deck would permit. This change both gives the opponent more ways to disrupt Baba and also forces the Baba player to consider those counters in their deck builds, as well as forcing more cards into the deck that go toward function rather than unadulterated disruption.
Some other changes were to reduce the amount of stages that her allies enter play with, preventing Baba from circumventing more defensive cards by just redirecting damage, and also making it so she can only search for allies with her power when entering combat so she can no longer stockpile allies pre-combat (unless she draws into them by natural means of course. Oh Hoi Hoi Hoi Poi lost it’s ability to shuffle back into the deck and is now just removed from the game after use, a small change but one that again forced Baba to more carefully consider her resources.
With the new changes to Baba, the old Spike the Devil-Man was just too much for a deck that could just drop Z Warriors Gather and go to town, so we removed his additional damage effects from his power and split Bandages the Mummy’s old power between itself and Spike the Devil-Man.
There is going to be one further to change to Ghost Usher, Attendant, but thanks to the community involvement we are taking a little longer with him to determine the best course of action for him. You can feel free to take part in this discussion and other virtual cards on our Facebook discussion page (all members who ask to join are accepted).
Later, BroZ!
