Balance Question and Concern

[Squirrelloid]

"Normally, I would call a strategy game (relatively) "broken" if it were to contain elements which *must* be integrated into your strategy in competetive play"

I think your definition is a little flawed. You could interpret that to be 'strategies which must be countered' - something that every strategy game has. Now, its been a *long* time since i've played Magic, but ever since just after the Black Summer you knew there were always going to be Sligh decks at every tournament, and so you had to integrate their presence into your decks strategy - either by having a way to deal with it immediately, or being able to sideboard effectively against it. Otherwise if you encountered one, you lost.

Certainly you always need to be able to counter Tarts by the time the endgame comes around, because someone might make a play for them. I wouldn't say you *have* to play tarts - there are other viable end game strategies.

Now, the set of endgame strategies seems to be fairly small. At the same time, the game doesn't necessarily need to go to the endgame either - tempo is part of the strategy. If you turtle its (at least partially) your own fault the game got to 'endgame'. Win faster, or at least try to. Also, you can identify nations likely to go for one of the degenerate strategies and kill them early, or convince others to kill them early. Engage in wars with the sole purpose of burning a rivals resources so they don't have them to use later. (Gems don't grow on trees... ok, some of them do... but mostly...)