Rapine blah blah blah

[CGHShawn]

Okay, so I am a bonafide Spoils nut. Ask anyone in my Meta in Iowa City. I love the game and this is coming from someone who picks up and puts down games at about the rate of 2-3 per month. Yet Spoils has that little something extra. But enough of giving T-Games the proverbial back pat for creating an excellent and interesting product. On to the buisness I intended this post for.... the most useful and overpowered card in the first edition...

RAPINE!!!

At a 2 threshold, 5 cost +sackable creature it seems a little steep on the latter two portions, but at what a benefit! Let's see here, sure you can get out a first round 8/8/3 Thief Doyen or even a 12/12/3 if you really feel you need it, but third round he's mine as is any other damn thing that threatens me at any point in the game. Simply put Rapine is... well... sick. More disgustingly it's only an uncommon. I've noticed hardly anyone in any format we play around here is going for the big killer creature and instead really sticking to the low to mid cost characters for the simple fact that they really don't feel like being beaten over the head with their own character.

Now, is this a good thing? I'm not sure. As with anything else there's a foil or three for the Rapine, but there's no other card that I can think of with momentum changing and game deciding possibilities than that little 5 cost buggar. I love him and hate him both depending on if I'm the user or the usee. However, either way I really think given how many games I have seen that card essentially win now, that someone might consider at somepoint putting a little hamstring action on it. What do I have in mind? Simple, the character you snag has to be of equal value or less to the card you sack. This does two things: first it limits the use of the card to making it being a tit-for-tat trade... (sure I got your 13/13/3thief doyen...cost 4, but I lost my 8/8/3 doyen to make that happen). Thus, those Ominous Oozings and Sneaky Mansions would hit the board more often because people are not just going to throw in cards willy nilly for the sac to the rapine in order to maybe get a better card of the same cost in return. Also it doesn't hamper the Rapine too much because you only have to match the cost of the character you're stealing, not the 8 cost Luteoderm Goliath attached to it.

I know I'm probably talking at a wall here in regards to this card due to its popularity, but it's pretty much been agreed around our Meta that it is by a long shot the most powerful single card in the game.

Of course, maybe someone else thinks otherwise. If so, I would love to hear opinions

[Brad Meine]

Oh no no no friend. You most certainly do not want to hear other opinions. What you want to hear my good sir are the voices of those sharing not just a similar opinion, but the exact opinion as your own!

So here it is!

Rapine is fricken' awesome!

Good night, people.

[Sabash]

Rapine is a good card, sure. But it's not as awesome as you say unless you build your deck such that you expect that your in play characters/items will be sub-par to your opponent's in play characters. Personally I'd rather build my deck with the expectation that it'll be a difficult decision to sac one of my in play cards.

[Arzakon]

Rapine is a good card, sure. But it's not as awesome as you say unless you build your deck such that you expect that your in play characters/items will be sub-par to your opponent's in play characters. Personally I'd rather build my deck with the expectation that it'll be a difficult decision to sac one of my in play cards.

There are always your sub-par stats characters with awesome abilities that can simply die after their good effect is complete of course.

Heist Planner, Swarm of Gnats, A card you plucked/Cata Betrayaled, Recapit Apparition, Rudo Mangod (After a punch that would kill him), Any creature with a Lutu Prototype on it.

[CGHShawn]

Okay, I can understand everyone's views on this, but when it comes down to it I guess what I'm getting at is the idea of good versus great with respect to individual cards.

As for good cards that border on great I'd definately lump in Heist Planner and Pluck. They each have a fantastic ability alone... useful. But they're kept from being great in that they definately rely on other cards, high costs for abilities, or a deck specifically built around them to make them as useful as they can be. What I mean by this is illustrated by Heist Planner.

Sure, Heist Planner gets rid of three different cards out of your opponent's deck, and, perhaps more importantly it lets you see what your opponent is playing. However, to make it truely a great card it needs to be paired with Greed and Obsession cards in order to be able to use it repeatedly. Postmortem Debenture, Remember, Forget, Quotidian Assassination, Quotidian Ejector, Resurrection Tech and others make Heist Planner great because they enable you to use him 20+ times in a single game and combo him with Incriminating Photograph and you can utterly cripple an opponent's deck within the first three rounds (of course based upon luck of the draw and mulligan). Standalone HP is a good card with the potential to be great depending on the deck it is in.

Now, what about Rapine? Rapine is simply great. One time cost of 5 with a threshold of 2 making it feasible second round especially with 1337!. Sure you have to sac a creature... umm Erotic Assassin at no cost and you can Postmortem Debenture the Assassin the same round and replay it for no cost. So in effect, Rapine is a one time cost of 5 and the sack can be nullified, making it a standalone card that can snag any creature in play at any time during your turn, or, more importantly, as a response during your opponent's turn as it is a Tactic as opposed to an item. That, my friends, is a great card. I argue, as I have been, that it's the most powerful in the game and reiterate that it is better than almost every Rare.... in both cases the exception possibly being OLHPB.

Take every factor and Rapine beats out almost every other card in most respects, and is the most all-around useful card in the game when all respects are taken as a whole. Cost, threshhold, necessity of other cards, sacrifice, playability, when it can be played, cards that can stop it etc. Hands down, Rapine wins the best card in the game award... well save for Screaming Cheese and that only because the subtext is plain hilarious "Is the Cheese screaming, Clarice?"

[Kallen000]

I disagree on best card in the game. Is it the only card that makes me cringe from Rouge when played? Yes, everytime unless I have my favorite card tactitians vacation. He look you sacked a creature and tapped out cool my turn! Or you can just be playing Arcanist and go thanks for my creature back with a simple bounce spell. Rapine is good but its high cost at 5 and sac a creature means that at points it can be usless and its not always good to trade creatures. When I think of best card in the game Im looking for a card that defines a metagame. Right now those cards are more or less shriever attack, pluck, nodes... cards along those lines. Rapine is just a contributer to those decks when all is said an done.

Is it good? Yes

Is it the best card in the game? No

[fistofgales]

I do think that Rapine is one of the more powerfull cards right now, but I dont think that it is overpowerfull or needs any kind of fix. Just like any card there are definitely ways to stop it, or turn your opponets rapine to your favor. I dont really like playing tactician vacation, it is a little defensive for me, but it sure works well against rapine, bounce is also pretty solid against it. I do agree that rapine is more powerfull than alot of the rares, but really so are shiever attack and several other cards. Additionally a big part of why people often dont play large characters like sneaky mansion etc is because with heist planner and pluck your opponet can often put out your big character more easily than you can.

TL

[CGHShawn]

Okay, cost effectiveness wise yes, Shriever attack is very good, agreed. I would rank it up close to Rapine. Pluck and HP though, as for that combo while it is insanely usefull, is still a high cost to keep going. 3 for the HP, 2 for the PLuck, 5 to pluck is a total of 10 which is a hefty price to pay and really isn't sufficiently feasible till round three playing mono-D. Even then if you are dealt with by creature removal you still have to continue feeding the 5 into Pluck to snag another creature, and every faction has creature removal in some way shape or form. While Pluck/HP combo is nice and powerful it's significantly hamstrung until midgame, by which time odds are you've been noded or raged to death. Deception is slower than both those factions and really has a hard time standing up to them. But that's getting off topic.

Rapine is feasible round 2 playing D+E with 1337! A two card combo costing you a total of 4 and a sacced creature. First round 3 drop, second round 1337! attach the extra 1 resource, sac the spitspider or whatever you played first round, and Rapine for an early game snatch against your opponent. Midgame it snags the blocker you need, the fat or covert creature your opponent has, the OLHB if your opponent tried to puch their resources etc. Late game it snags that big fatty that is keeping you from pushing things over the edge for the win. Honestly, the card is useful in almost all scenarios and since there's nothing hamstringing it at any point in the game save round 1 when your opponent likely has nothing on the board worth taking anyway, there's no reason it shouldn't go in every single D deck.

None of that, however makes it overpowered. It just makes it a great card. Agreed. What does make it sickly to the point of almost disgust is that for a simple 5 cost you can snag any creature in the game. Yes, there's the sac a creature, but G+D nullifies that as previously stated you can get around that easily with Postmortem Debenture and Erotic Assassin (both zero cost). Drop Assassin 0, Rapine 5, sack Assassin 0, Debenture Assassin 0, Play Assassin 0.

But, well, this is all just playing opinions and possibilities so no need to draw it out anymore. Just a few thoughts from my debilitated brain (Wanna touch it?).

[bic]

I was also thinking a couple of days ago about how powerful Rapine is. Then I realized that about 80% - 90% of the players here use Arcanist bounce, and alot of it.

[CGHShawn]

True, bounce Arcanist is an option, but the problem with that from a competative standpoint is it can be unreliable in a constructed format because getting a win condition in a 40 minute sanctioned match can be difficult. This is especially so with mono-R and mono-E both of which waylay Arcanist before it gets anywhere near the resources it needs to stave them off to make it to its own win. So while Arcanist is nice against Rapine, it more often than not will go not to much further in constructed. Considering I've now seen someone with mono-E swinging for 18 in the third round and many mono-R decks winning by the 5th round I kind of consider the stall/deck/denial decks to be way too slow to be an option in that format.

I orignally thought of what you're saying as well, but after trials with a bounce deck, they're just too slow to evade the beat decks more often than not.

Heh, now that I reread this I don't know what the hell my point is, but if I had to guess I would say that Rapine is again coming out on top in a way, because going mono-A against it leaves you severely exposed to faster decks which are real popular in constructed.

Now, if we're talking draft or sealed then those are completely different stories and monsters altogether.

Anywho... just more thoughts from my addled mind.