Summary: After 5 days (or a week in Japan or not yet in North America) since the Set.2 release, there has been a lot of discussion about new tactics and strategies using Set.2 cards. One of the hottest topic of discussion among several different EOJ community forum in Japan is about Missionary Impossible. In this blog entry, I want all of you to be Tom Cruise.
As soon as I heard that there is one missionary creature in each of four elements, I jumped to the conclusion that these are Ninja equivalent in the Set.2. But recently Japanese EOJ players consider it is not that simple. Several Japanese EOJ players reporting difficulty playing against Missionary decks and some are stating it is even to the point Missionaries are ruining the balance of the game.
For those people who have played through Set.1 would agree that one of the greatest sales point of EOJ as a TCG is its balance. Unlike many other TCGs, EOJ Set.1 had no deck that is unbeatable or come anywhere close to it. Sure the game was lacking the depth in comparison to other major TCGs due to the lack of number of cards and game mechanics, but still Sony seemed to done really good job balancing each individual cards in the game in Set.1. Many former TCG gamers acclaimed this based on what I read.
So whether true or not “ruining the balance of the game” is somewhat disturbing statement to me since this is the biggest sales point of the game. I am by no means expert on this game and for sure not on other TCGs since the EOJ is only TCG I have ever played.
In this blog entry I have decided to summarize what I have read so far from 100+ posts over a few internet forums, and then give my take on it. Please remember that without actual card to test, all my analysis is just a hypothesis. My goal for this entry is by sharing this with readers of this blog, I am hoping someone clever than me (which I believe most of you) to speak up and say “hey. Japanese guys! Missionaries are nothing!” If nothing else, hopefully you get an idea that you will likely to see Missionary decks near future if not already.
Missionary
Before going too far, here are 4 missionary cards.
Affiliation – Church of Parmus
4/2/3/1
- You steal the exit mana of enemy Water creatures.
- Subtract 1 from the Attack of adjacent enemies for each allied Earth Missionary creature.
- Subtract 2 from the Summoning Cost of allied Earth Missionary creatures (minimum 1).
(A) N1&N2 (C) N (B) S
Affiliation – Church of Parmus
4/3/3/2
- Magic Attack
- You steal the exit mana of enemy Fire creatures.
- Add number of allied Wood missionary creatures to the mana cost of opponent’s spell casting cost.
- Subtract 2 from the Summoning Cost of allied Wood Missionary creatures (minimum 1)(A) Any 1 (C) None (B) S
Affiliation – Church of Parmus
4/2/3/2
You steal the exit mana of enemy Wood creatures.
During your Resolution Phase, your opponent loses mana equal to the number of allied Water Missionary creatures.
Subtract 2 from the Summoning Cost of allied Water Missionary creatures (minimum 1)(A) N (C) N (B) S
169. Tolicore ZealotRace – Missionary
Affiliation – Church of Parmus
4/3/3/2
- You steal exit mana of enemy Earth creatures.
- During your resolution phase, your opponent must discard cards equal to the number of allied Fire missionary creatures.
- Subtract 2 from allied Fire Missionary Creatures (minimum 1)
(A) N1 Or N2 (C) N (B) S
General Deck Construction Strategy
Since you are not sure which type of deck you are playing against with, it is natural to have 3 of each Missionaries i.e. 12 out of 30 are Missionaries.
As with Ninja deck, you want to make sure you have what you need when you need so the deck should include various ways to improve your card draws. Also as Missionaries could cost up to 4 to summon each time, I believe many would prefer including many 1 mana costing creatures rather than more expensive mana creatures in Missionary deck.
Finally, obvious is the spells for mana boosts like feast, altar and perhaps the sacrament.
Analysis
Missionary creatures have three main abilities.
1) Exit mana stealing
Personally, difference between 2 mana versus 3 is one of the biggest mana gap. So not being able to get the exit mana is surely one of the most annoying thing that can affect your tactics during the game.
2) Summoning Reduction
This is what set Missionaries apart from Ninjas. Yes. Missionaries cost 4 mana to cast and Ninjas are only 3 but wait what about this Summoning reduction thing? As stated above the biggest mana gap is between 2 and 3. Because you know you will gain 2 mana at beginning of each of your turn, if a creature’s summoning cost is 2 or less, you can be certain that you will be able to cast the creature.
In fact, this constraint of not being able to cast Ninja back to back made Ninja deck balanced or for some people a bit useless. However, this is not the case with Missionaries. Once one Missionary is out on the board, the subsequent Missionaries (assuming proper type of Missionary in the hand) can now be casted with only 2 summoning cost, which means you can essentially cast Missionaries back to back after the first Missionary without the mana constraint.
3) Combo effect
Obviously, if it’s only 1 & 2, most players have almost no trouble dealing with Missionary decks since you can avoid exit mana stealing with a bit of tactics. So what’s really special about Missionaries?
Unlike Ninja combo, which was made out of defensive abilities (= One Ninja to protect another), Missionary combo is made out of offensive abilties i.e. it directly affects opponent rather than protecting own creatures. Because the combo affects opponent, it affects the opponent as soon as second missionary creature gets casted on the board.
This fact along with the Summoning Cost reduction makes Missionary deck extremly strong deck because once the second missionary is out, destroying one creature is not enough. You know your opponent can cast another one during opponent’s next turn.
Is this Missionary Impossible?
So this is the key question. Is missionary deck so strong to the point where other decks have no chance against it? Is this really Missionary impossible? Without having actual card, there is no way to test but as obvious as it is the key to play against Missionary deck is to make sure you will not allow more than 1 Missionary at a time.
This means by all means you need to destroy a Missionary creature as soon as you see one. If you can do this, your opponent must pay 4 mana to cast a Missionary creature every time.
Although with all Missionary creatures having 3 HP, this is not as easy as it sounds. But I believe this is particularly important during early phase of game and less so as game progresses, because once you destroy a few Missionaries, you are starting to limit your opponent’s combo.
In addition, Missionaries have high activation cost and rather expensive summoning cost to be used as just 2 attack power creature. So as game progress you may have a few creatures on the board that your opponent may have difficulty destroying with just Missionaries.
So if you can prevent first few Missionaries by using all methods including fissures, altar, feast, and/or big guns like Didi, despite using up all these resources I belive you will have better chance winning the game than the person who is using the Missionary deck as the game progress.
Another useful ability to use against Missionary deck would be discard ability. Generally speaking, combo deck requires appropriate cards in the hand. So anything that can prevent or decrease the chance of Missionary deck user from having the apporiate card would do well.
Finally, if more than one Missionary are on board, you need to prioritize. Many times spell use are limited and you can control when to use (Water Missionary), and often you can wait. Also once your creatures are on the board what are the chance you reactivate them? (Fire Missionary)
For most players losing mana or cards is more severe consequence, so if you cannot kill two creatures at once, try to kill the one that has the least favorible effect to you.
Conclusion
As this has been hot topic as is, I have to agree that Missionary Deck could be very strong deck. In fact, this might be one of those deck that is easy to use for even beginners. All I can say at this point is hypothesis, but with proper tactics and decent preparation I believe Missionary deck is still beatable and I don’t think this would be the one to ruin the game balance. So what’s your take?
Consensus
Thanks for all of you who have decided to spend time typing up great comments. Here are summary from people’s comment.
1. Winny/Speed Deck will play well against Missionary Deck
2. If you are trying to make Missionary Deck, Try Cubic + Missionary Combo
3. Beating well constructed Missionary Deck would be very difficult with Set.1 cards alone
4. Focus One Missionary At a Time
Well, it sounds like general consensus is that Missionary deck is competitive deck, but is not impossible to beat.
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The thing is They hit TOO early and with 5 hp they cant be killed by monsters alone and in the start of the duel you CANT fissures AND summon because you ONLY Have 2-4 mana which means for us players who dont use Didi or Siam there are no one hit kills to a 5 hp monster. Plus like you said they reduce there allied cost so befor we can stop them the combo starts suking our mana. Set 1 cant handle that kind of game distortion. Set 2 however does balance it pretty well ( V swordsman lol )
Missionary decks are waaay too over-rated .I played against 4 of them and won against 4 of them…Speed decks tend to overwhelm them easily.
It is a very very strong deck but not unbeatable. The strongest combo is when they have the earth and water zealots on the board.
Fast/low mana decks will work against this and also hand/library destruction.
I think after more time adjusting to the cards people will find a way of beating this deck. The only problem is it’s probably going to be a very very common deck so you will play against it a lot, which ultimately may become boring. However you will learn to beat it quicker.
Add in 122. Flame Archmage to the mix (Subtract 1 from the Summoning Cost of other allied Church of Parmus ), and you are playing a mana neutral creature once the first Missionary is on the board (again limited by the actual cards on your hand). Now this would be a tough deck to battle if your opponent can get the cards out in the right order.
The only chink in the amour is the high initial casting cost:
Archmage – 5
initial missionary – (4-1) 3
total 8.
Even IF your missinorary get kille off you can still play them back to back.
I hate saying that because some set 2 guys are not using this strategy yet, but you have to add many cubics as well.
Step one: Summon cubic
You kill cubic, they get their mana back
Step two: Summon Zealot
You try to kill Zealot
Step three: summon another cubic
You then finish the Zealot or go after the cubic.
Step four: Doesn’t matter, you have two Zealot on board.
If they manage to also get any cards that allow them to fish cards from the graveyard, then those cubics come back to haunt you at will.
So cubics and Zealots…
Very interesting and more importantly informative posts.
@MissionaryPosition & Spazzfish
So it sounds like Winny/Speed deck does well against Missionary decks, which makes sense in two ways. 1) Good mixture of creatures from different element makes Missionary user hard to fully utilize mana steal ability. 2) If you can finish the game before missionary effect really start affect you, that’s optimal.
Now @Samandus & @Real Gambler
You two have brought up really interesting combo/tactics. I don’t know if you have actually had a chance to try those out, but conceptually they make sense and definitely appears to be shifting a couple gears up in Missionary deck with those strategies.
As for Archmage approach, like you said initial steps are the key. 5 mana casting requires quite bit of initial investiment.
For example, you can cast a cubic in your first turn. Opponent’s kills it. You get 4 mana on your second turn, which means you are ready to cast one of your Missionary; however, if it was a 5 mana, either you have to wait another turn by casting a cubic or other 1 mana creature Or alternatively use feast (since altar at this early stage won’t do a trick). So it does seem to take a quite bit of effort, but if you can cast it and another Missionary, I think you are golden.
Cubic approach is another interesting point. Especially, with fire cubic you can cast Zealot or Archmage.
The only thing to note with cubic is though with the color of cubic you can tell, which Zealot comes off next. Plus potentially you may end up with two missionary vs. opponent’s 3 or 4 creatures with full health since creature off the cubic won’t be able to attack.
Man, I need Set.2 cards….
Do you two mind if I post these as Combo list in individual Card Library Section? ( I will reference your ID there)
I play a ninja deck, sort of, I only put 6 ninjas in it, but with plenty of draw cards to cycle through quicker. I never normally have a problem casting ninjas back to back by flooding the field with 1 & 2 casting creatures as quickly as possible. Once there are 4 then the opponent has to kill something to stay in the game, so I have 3 mana at the start of my next turn. If I put a ninja on it’s colour then it’s very hard to kill, making the opponent go for one of the other weenie creatures and letting me have another ninja next turn. Green Lycanthrope and Flame Magus are great for my deck because I want my opponent to kill my creatures.
A missionary deck can really screw me up though because if I don’t get the exit mana then I can’t cast a ninja. I agree that a deck with the cheapest creatures with the highest hitpoints is a good way to go as the missionaries don’t do a lot of damage for the cost, and may have trouble killing things. Again, Green Lycanthrope is good because if it changes on a wood field it has 6HP. Another good card is Elven Beserker Maidens, who can get up to 5HP for 2 mana, and can be used offensively on earth to kill missionaries quicker.
I’m one of the poor soul who has paid for overnight shipping and will get his set2 cards only in many weeks. So my experience with the cubic-zealot is simply fighting them. I’ve encounter a few. You really want to kill the nasty cubics because you know what’s coming in if you don’t. So you use your firepower. Then you still get a zealot on the board.
Quite often, they also incarnate that priestess lookalike first on the first cubic, which give dodge attempt (I think a few more cards do that). Lot’s of HP so impossible to kill in one shot. Then come a cubic with dodge attempt!
I’ve also seen the cubic-zealot deck with one card that allowed them to fish those cubics back from the graveyard. So basically, they need less cubics, since they can use them, and fish them back.
Looking at set 2 cards, I can see a few great cards to beat zealots, so I think they will eventually slow down, but right now, there’s more and more zealots decks showing up, since half the time, they face set 1 cards with not much firepower.
Last thing: I went back to my discard deck because of them. Out of the 500 online games I’ve played, I likely played close to 400 game with my discard decks, and I won two third of my games. I can say they are quite decent against zealot, but it’s still not the best solution since you don’t have much firepower against cubics. And sadly, you don’t get the upper hand against set 1 cards owner anymore like they used to do since everybody know how to handle them today. Discard decks are good if the game last more than 15 turns, but quite often, with a cubic-zealot deck, you are already in deep trouble by the 15 turns…
Set 1 is having trouble with Zelots because its not prepared to deal with the mana stealing part WITH Set 2 Im sure they wont be a problem ( alot of cheap heavyhiters ) Personaly having 3 POWERFULL STACKING effects for as cheap as 2 mana just isent sitting right with me. They should eather be 5 or more to initially summon or they shouldent have the mana steal effect. Thats just my opinion.
I also have seen the zealot decks in action… set one alone is VERY difficult to win against these decks.
I lived in the netherland i have bought a box of set2. I saw the four zealot and i went crazy. Why????? I played a lot of cardgames ( magic/yugioh/pokemon ) and see that the 4 zealot when combined its verry strong alomst broken.
I use zealot/cubic combo and can say thats its verry annoying to played against this deck. From the 10 game i just lost 1. I also played against other variant of zealot but must say its not so strong against my. Im not saying i have the best decks because i dont have that. To beat a zealot decks is to focussed on 1 at the time ( thats what i do if i played against other zealot/ im not saying its the key to win).
I like to play with zealot but also love to created other decks like the undead ( 1 of my favo ), new speed biolith with scion/watchtower combo and manasteal.
I love eye, because its a verry balanced game.
keep it fair and c u online
I have discovered that biolith is quite effective against missionaries. Firstly, no missionaries can steal the exit mana of bioliths. Second, using cards like Seer Vizak’s Calamity means that it’s harder to get missionaries on their element and give them extra HP. Also, Biolith Bomber is particularly effective against all but the first missionary as their reduced summoning cost means the bomber gains +2 attack and can kill them in one hit.
@Rufus Omega,
WOW!! That’s Money!!
And I must say I LOVE EOJ. I didn’t know the summoning cost is the TRUE Summoning cost of the creature i.e. how much it was actually spent to cast the creature. I think you have came up with the answer for Missionary Deck. Biolith Bomber!!!!
The 4 missionary cards break the game. If you look at the rankings ladder you will note that only missionary decks are being played at the top. Whenever I feel like winning a game I will play my missionary deck and it never fails against non missionary decks -sort of makes it rather boring so I play weaker decks to make it fair sometimes. Strategy and cunning was rewarded with set 1 but it doesn’t matter how well you play against missionary cards. It really comes down to the cards you have rather than the experience or skill with which you play. I have played about 700 online games including about 100 with set 2 and I can safely say that you can now toss set 1 on the barbecue. Even cards like wormak biolith heir are pathetic compared to a deck with 12 missionaries. The main culprit is the white missionary who causes loss of mana equal to the number of allied blue missionaries. I mean 1 white and 2 blue- c’mon that nuetralises the benefit of having 2 dungeons each turn and dungeons cant even attack. So what is the solution then ? Well I heard one of the head huncho’s saying they were looking at increasing the mana gained at the end of each turn to 3 mana instead of 2 which would certainly make the heavy hitters more usable. The other gripe I have is that 2 rare spells namely sear visacks cleansing and benedict of juno say absolutely nothing about your turn ending once there played and yet your turn ends- quite a shock for people who trust the written word on the card. I suspect bugs are at work or maybe the programmers found it too hard to make work as the card states it should. Smacks of laziness really so they are 2 more unplayable spells you can add to your collection along with call of timeless juno and teleportation etc. I guess until sony look at restoring the balance the only thing that matters is the cards you have and not the skill with which you play them. Sure I have used biolith bomber and several tricks to thwart the progress of the missionaries but with 12 in the deck they just keep coming and if playing pure biolth is the only answer then that leaves 4 colours that are dead. A new rule was introduced to restrict the number of ritual spells to 3 so I don’t see why they cant lay down a rule to restrict decks to one of each missionary- that would certainly restore some of the value of all the rares and phantoms.
@dodos,
Thanks for the insights. You definitely seem to know what you are talking about. Many of us from US do not have access to Set.2 yet, and therefore lots of talks are pure speculation/hypothesis.
When I originally saw Missionary Posts in Japanese Forum, I got so scared and hense decided to post this hoping someone would tell me it’s no true, but apparently it is. Hmmm….
Also you have noted VERY interesting point about Cleansing and Benediction. I thought all Sorcery will ends the turn, but when I saw the print of the cards, I have noticed there was no line saying this ends your turn. So I felt like maybe these cards are much more powerful than I thought. I’m glad you told me about his.
Although I highly doubt any action will be taken by Sony, as a Official EOJ Site, I feel obligated to pass this Info to Sony especially Set.2 cards are not yet released in US.
Thanks again