I'm still new enough not to assume I can tell one way or another whether any particular issue is unbalanced by myself.
But having heard the arguements I have found the ones from the "VQs need to be nerfed" camp more convincing, so far.
A lot of the arguements supporting the VQ are logically flawed, and while I accept that the people making the arguements no doubt understand this game WAY more deeply that I do I would still like to see a concrete counter-strategy proposed.
For example the recent arguement that it is killable, and having it killed costs the owner resources (gems etc) only holds water if the expense of killing the VQ is much less than the expense the owner incurs from it's death, and I haven't seen this demonstrated.
Comparisons with the "Metagame" of many CCGs have been made:
In a CCG, if one flavour of deck is very popular, very quickly people produce decks which counter it. The popular deck has very little or no chance against a deck that knows it is coming.
I think any veteran Magic player could, if shown a deck, come up with several decks that would beat it easily, and still be competative against other tournament decks (except those designed to counter this deck...but that's what makes the Metagame). If a deck can do its own thing regardless of how you try to counter it then it is unbalanced.
So. Can the veteran Dominions players come up with a strategy, for all nations, that would beat a VQ SC strategy everytime?
The most popular example of the VQs supposed unbalance seems to be the Ermor-VQ-temple-fortress combination that Norfleet seems to have such success with. I've read that this success is largely due to the map settings which favour Ermor, and that it's down to Norfleets expertise, but pro-nerf people seem to quote this example a lot. So could we also have a concrete strategy that utterly destroys this strategy please?
Two strategies - one for the player who spots the VQ SC early in the game and wants to counter it, one for the player who spots the Temple/Fortress/VQ-SC early.
Remember - if a strategy is anticipated early enough it should be countered easily. If you can continue using a strategy despite it being anticipated perfectly by your opponent, and still hope to win against even a mediocre foe, then the strategy is unbalanced.
Two convincing strategies. If the strategy is balanced there should be a lot more than that. Worked examples, no unfair assumptions. The prize - my humble support for the VQ to remain as it is. The bigger prize - the Metagame will adjust to make VQs undesirable, until the Metagame evolves to the point where VQs are the best counter to...whatever strategy happens to be kicking *** this time next year :-)
The price of failiure? You wouldn't want to know. It's FAR too terrible
