Making Vespid Light decks less appealing with new Sanctum cards

Introduction

There is a recent, very polarizing deck in Ranked right now, especially in the higher ranks. It hinges on Blade of the Creator, Crystal Vespid, Tithe Collector and Prophet of Progress to create an archetype that is very difficult to deal with, while at the same time creating a game experience that grates on many GU players.

The dev team is aware of the player sentiment around this archetype. However, they did not made any changes to Black Sheep before the Dread Awakening set was locked, which is the card that makes the deck extremely consistent. The card itself is not broken or problematic, it just facilitates so much finding the combo pieces that the archetype blew up in popularity and efficiency after the release of the Dread Awakening expansion set.

There is of course an alternative in the card Enlightenment, but it costs 1 mana more and requires discarding 2 cards from hand, which may be critical for the outcome of the match later on. Black Sheep has no such downsides and the deck is built so that there are no other creatures with strength 2 or less besides the ones necessary for the combo.

I dislike very much playing against this deck. But as a matter of creating a competitive deck in the current meta, it doesn't make sense to tech specifically against this archetype, because doing so would make one's deck weaker against everything else.

So I was thinking about what could be done to fix this without printing new cards. One solution is to add counters to the Sanctum. There are currently a few cards that would make the Vespid archetype much harder to play. Some of them could be rotated into the Sanctum, while hopefully not disturbing other archetpyes too much.

The Vespid archetype depends on Crystal Vespids, which are 1/1 creatures, to be able to clear the opponent's board. The archetype is much weaker if the player is unable to clear the opponent's board in the turn they play the combo - Tithe Collector, Crystal Vespid, some form of God healing (some times more than one healing in the same turn).

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In this scenario, here are a few cards that would disrupt this combo significantly. I left out impactful Legendaries like Commander Pyros and creatures with higher mana cost and armor, as I feel those could potentially influence the outcome of the matches more than the current selection of cards in the Sanctum.

Sign of Strife

This creature is unkillable by chip damage. If hit by a series of Vespids, it just grows in attack power while remaining at 3 health.

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Bugslayer

This creature will destroy any Vespid that is played to the board. One downside is that having this creature more easily available in matches has the potential to disrupt other archetypes as well (Zombies for example), but on the other hand that is already the case for other cards currently in the Sanctum like Gleamweaver or relic removal creatures.

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Blood Armor

Any creature with armor cannot be killed by Vespids, so this should be disruptive enough while probably in line with the power level of the cards currently in the Sanctum.

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To the Rescue!

Same as the previous card.

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Hope Lost

This card will destroy any Crystal Vespids in the hand of the opponent. It should be particularly effective after the opponent plays Black Sheep.

It also has the potential to significantly disrupt other archetypes like Mayday if made widely available to every player.

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Bronze gate

This can be annoying to deal with, but doesn't pose a direct threat as it cannot attack. It can however shield other creatures and allow the opponent to develop a board. It is not on the top of my preference list.

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Miasmic Forge

I consider this an awkward choice, but a pretty effective one.

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Exalted Hermit

A downside is that this creature can snowball very easily, especially if paired with health buffs to keep it alive.

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Skeletal Hoplite

This is a cheap, weak creature with one armor that cannot be killed by Vespids. I don't expect this card would be as effective as the previous suggestions.

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• There is also Hearts of Bronze, but I think this may be too disruptive for other matchups.

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