Bolster is okay.
The best Bolster cards can turn a neutral effect into a +1. They generally don't self trigger, so you need to commit a certain amount of slots to activators that don't directly go plus, but the activators are all decent cards, only slightly behind rate when they don't have Bolster effect to go off on.
...But.
The average Recruit card goes +1, cheats a billion mana and gets better with the more Recruit cards you have.
Why play anything else than Recruit soup?
All of the above, really. Bolster aggro can be done in FTJ and it's fine, but is really heavy on the 2 slot, and has less access to ramp, so it's a tomato-tomatoh as to what you want to do there, knowing that things like KTE and trail scourge will absolutely wreck your day.
However, for the value-grinding TJS (I.E. Aerie Steward, Ziat No Matter the Cost, etc.), there are multiple problems.
1) Not enough support from the power base. In throne, TJS has one painting and inscribed plating. That just isn't enough.
2) Greedy hoarder, Ziat, and aerie steward creates a rather rough TTJJJSS influence demand to get value grinding going.
3) Greedy hoarder is just awful. Compare/contrast mystic ascendant, and obviously riftfeeder wasp. I know it's a limited card, but it's the only bolster draw a card there is.
4) A+B demands. A bolster card without consistent bolster activations is atrocious. Aerie Steward is a 1/1 for 4 (obviously tuned to bolster on the turn you play her), Ziat is a 4/4 valor for 5 (awful statline), and greedy hoarder is a 6/6 vanilla for 6 in time with no other text. If you could bolster from the power base, that'd be one thing, but if you need another enabler to stick? That's *rough*.
5) More on the A+B demands, bolster cards need enablers to begin with, as compared to recruit which is just "slam and works".
6) The enablers are generally pretty bad on the value-grinding end. While a card like grumbo, ageless knight, or elham might be good when you're ripping multiple units per turn, when you're trying to play a singular big card per turn, these enablers fall off.
7) The payoffs just aren't worth it in most cases. Ziat and Aerie Steward might take over a game after a couple of ticks. Everyone else just doesn't really do enough over the course of a game IMO. It means you warp your deck without getting sufficiently paid.
8) The albatrosses that Aerie Steward makes cost 2. This is very much not a good thing when you want to play cards like Know Thy Enemy for "recruit chains" and Trail Scourge (because obviously) in TJS.
All in all, the issue with value bolster is that it's tough to get going, doesn't get paid enough when it does get going, and is difficult to get going again if you *do* get it going.
And in throne, if you're in Steelwarren, you just have a better strategy to do than to try and go with A+B bolster. It's called TJS archiwasp ramp. You don't need bolster's win-more-ness.
Would value-bolster be better if we had all the paintings? Sure. But we don't, and even if we did, it'd probably be a mistake to run 12 for a deck that plays 5-6 drops (depending how you see cards like Wasp/Ironthorn). And this is all with throne in mind. In expedition, well, while you're trying to set up A+B enablers, Patrice, Wasp, and Boar Riders are just dunking on you, because for whatever reason, DWD decided to obliterate aggro in expedition, which could keep ramp-to-patrice in check.
Bit too hard to enable in Expedition and too low power for Throne. Doesn't help that general FT(x) recruit bomb package is just so much better than everything else - why put in work with bolster enablers and payoffs when the payoff is still worse than just casting Patrice and Veena's Masterpiece?
> recruit bomb package
This consists of all of *two* cards: Patrice and Boar Riders. Both are obviously fair in a vacuum, but get much more overbearing when DWD broke aggro's knees multiple times in expedition which would take away the free pass of "turn 1 pass, turn 2, 3 ramp doofus, turn 4 wasp, turn 5 Patrice, turn 6 boars".
I think part of the issue is that it doesn't have enough "incidental" cards for us to take advantage of. If there were more independently-playable cards that *happened* to also trigger Bolster, we could see Bolster in a much better place, imo.
Also, bolster triggers can either generate tempo or value. The best cards with Bolster are typically the ones that generate tempo. imo the best ways to activate Bolster reliably are the type of do-nothing relics (Meditative Trance is a *perfect* example) that you don't want to play when you're trying to trigger Drans, but you don't have a high enough density of Ziats, Outfitters, and Stewards to justify playing a deck where you *commit* to triggering Bolster by playing 3 power do-nothings, because you'll easily have hands where you find reliable Bolster triggerers, without an actual Bolster card to utilize them.
Then add on the fact that every Bolster card is a unit; the easiest type of card for control decks to kill off. Like, we couldn't get *any* relics/relic weapons with Bolster?!
tl;dr Basically, DWD gave us a pile of cards with Bolster that don't work super well together, and don't have enough intrinsically playable Bolster triggerers that you'd play even without the existence of Bolster. The result is that any "Bolster deck" frequently self-destructs due to bad draws where it gets all the activators and no payoffs, all the payoffs and no activators, or it gets the right mixture of activators and payoffs, but those payoffs will often reward you in diverging ways without the raw efficiency/flexibility that would make for a good midrange build.
If DWD wants Bolster to be good, we need them to decide if they want to push the aggressive side, the controlling side, or make it so efficient/consistent that it makes for an effective midrange strategy.
>I think part of the issue is that it doesn't have enough "incidental" cards for us to take advantage of. If there were more independently-playable cards that happened to also trigger Bolster, we could see Bolster in a much better place, imo.
Yes, that's a huge part of it.
I think First Shipment is a really good step towards making a functional Bolster deck, for this reason:
It triggers any Bolster effects you have, replaces itself, draws a power to smooth your curve, and gives a honey to trigger Bolster later.
The problem is, like I outlined above: Shipment only helps the defensive/controlling half of Bolster cards. Even if you curve Young Protestor -> Dran -> First Shipment, you're still barely doing better than a mono fire deck, which doesn't need these gimmicky synergies to play a 2-attack one drop and 3-attack two drop.
Bolster is unviable as an aggro deck because Aggro lives or dies on early game consistency. For every game that you curve Protestor -> Grumbo -> Dran + Protestor and completely run over your opponent, there will be several where you're playing units that are underpowered compared to their mono fire aggro counterparts, and your deck will self destruct as a result.
And controlling Bolster sucks, because control decks need to cast their board clears, and *every* Bolster card is a unit, so you have to choose between generating the scraps value that you built your deck around, and actually playing a control game.
Tl;Dr (again) DWD, please give us better controlling Bolster layoffs. Give us relics with Bolster for more resiliency against our own and opponent's removal, and Bolster effects that do something other than summon birds or pump stats. We need more Bolsters that generate value.
(Ope, did I write a thesis again? Oh well. 🤷♂️ DWD, please buff Bolster, because I love playing slow control decks, but Bolster just doesn't generate meaningful value.)
I always fear that when something gets buffed/better, it may suddenly become "too good."
A "be careful what you wish for" situation.
But you're probably right about releasing a few more synergistic cards to help Bolster a bit.
That's a reasonable concern.
But I'd like them to make Bolster at least playable, and it seems that it's too inconsistent to work, moreso because of bad Bolster cards than bad Bolster triggerers.
Why don't we have Bolster cards that do good, controlling effects, such as hindering our opponent's hand (imagine a Bolster effect that taxes a card in their hand by 1 power, or taxes the top card of their deck by 1, or makes an opponent discard, or makes their top card have voidbound or *something* that a control deck might feasibly want to do several times in a single game), or Bolster cards that are harder to clear off the board? There's so much cool design space: Imagine a Bolster card named "Doomsday Preacher" that has Bolster: Kill all units. It's a straightforward way to give 4x more board clears to a Bolster deck, but it can also synergize with effects like Honey Balm to squeeze a little more value out of it.
Or maybe buff some of the existing Bolster units to give them **Summon and Bolster** or **Bolster and Entomb**, so you're at least guaranteed *some* value if you get an unlucky draw. Or what if Aerie Steward cost more power to play (like a 6-8 drop), but had **Bolster and Entomb:** Play an Albatross. So the opponent now has to decide whether they want to kill it immediately and guaranteed give you an Albatross now, or let it sit and hope you can't generate birds faster than they can kill you in the air. And Steelwarren Outfitter could have reduced stats/no Valor **Summon and Bolster:** Play a Justice Sigil, so it's at least guaranteed to ramp you a little bit, but if you're feeling greedy, you can try to go for more ramp. A tantalizing proposition for a control player, trying to decide whether to block now or save their Outfitter to ramp into their haymakers faster.
Long story short: I'd rather a mechanic be interesting but unplayable, rather than being boring, linear and unplayable, and that's where Bolster feels right now.
Design-wise, Bolster doesn't work because it can be triggered repeatedly. This means that to be balanced, Bolster cards have to be balanced around the instances where they are triggered multiple times. This is a necessary balance decision, since if Bolster cards were efficient when triggered only once, then it would be impossible to deal with them efficiently, and they run away with the game when they are not dealt with.
How Bolster cards are balanced makes them slow and vulnerable to removal, which are significant vulnerabilities in constructed formats (where decks are either fast or contain significant amounts of removal). The one exception to how Bolster cards are generally balanced is [Dran, Won't Back Down](https://eternalwarcry.com/cards/d/15-32/dran-wont-back-down), which sees play in Throne and is the strongest Bolster card.
Draft: it does not work because you need to draw just the right mix of cards with bolster, and cards to trigger bolster. Many of those cards are subpar without something from the other group.
Not really. You don't need mill to trigger devour, you just need the game to go on. Recruit just plain works. Nomad just plain works. Renown is also like this, and not particularly great, though a skullhaven duo with renown can go pretty far.
Understatted and overcost. Takes several turns to set up. Much easier to hunt or recruit and get immediate value. Kinda bizarre to keep one defense on creatures that rarely see play but something that's over played like Patrice and wasp get to keep their good stats. Those cards should be 1/1's.
Bolster mechanic is fine.
Once per turn (both player and opp), pretty balance.
It's not like Katra or Grumbo which lifesteal ad infinitum, or even Horngrinder.
However, Recruit is stupid. Hunt is stupider. Devour is just eating lead stupid. And this is after we had Unleash. I thought P.Sullivan was an MTG vet, how tf did he okayed these crap mechanics? Just do a beta test play with the top ranked for feedbacks first ffs, man.
Bolster is okay. The best Bolster cards can turn a neutral effect into a +1. They generally don't self trigger, so you need to commit a certain amount of slots to activators that don't directly go plus, but the activators are all decent cards, only slightly behind rate when they don't have Bolster effect to go off on. ...But. The average Recruit card goes +1, cheats a billion mana and gets better with the more Recruit cards you have. Why play anything else than Recruit soup?
Recruit also cheats influence, which imo is insane compare to other mechanics in the game.
All of the above, really. Bolster aggro can be done in FTJ and it's fine, but is really heavy on the 2 slot, and has less access to ramp, so it's a tomato-tomatoh as to what you want to do there, knowing that things like KTE and trail scourge will absolutely wreck your day. However, for the value-grinding TJS (I.E. Aerie Steward, Ziat No Matter the Cost, etc.), there are multiple problems. 1) Not enough support from the power base. In throne, TJS has one painting and inscribed plating. That just isn't enough. 2) Greedy hoarder, Ziat, and aerie steward creates a rather rough TTJJJSS influence demand to get value grinding going. 3) Greedy hoarder is just awful. Compare/contrast mystic ascendant, and obviously riftfeeder wasp. I know it's a limited card, but it's the only bolster draw a card there is. 4) A+B demands. A bolster card without consistent bolster activations is atrocious. Aerie Steward is a 1/1 for 4 (obviously tuned to bolster on the turn you play her), Ziat is a 4/4 valor for 5 (awful statline), and greedy hoarder is a 6/6 vanilla for 6 in time with no other text. If you could bolster from the power base, that'd be one thing, but if you need another enabler to stick? That's *rough*. 5) More on the A+B demands, bolster cards need enablers to begin with, as compared to recruit which is just "slam and works". 6) The enablers are generally pretty bad on the value-grinding end. While a card like grumbo, ageless knight, or elham might be good when you're ripping multiple units per turn, when you're trying to play a singular big card per turn, these enablers fall off. 7) The payoffs just aren't worth it in most cases. Ziat and Aerie Steward might take over a game after a couple of ticks. Everyone else just doesn't really do enough over the course of a game IMO. It means you warp your deck without getting sufficiently paid. 8) The albatrosses that Aerie Steward makes cost 2. This is very much not a good thing when you want to play cards like Know Thy Enemy for "recruit chains" and Trail Scourge (because obviously) in TJS. All in all, the issue with value bolster is that it's tough to get going, doesn't get paid enough when it does get going, and is difficult to get going again if you *do* get it going. And in throne, if you're in Steelwarren, you just have a better strategy to do than to try and go with A+B bolster. It's called TJS archiwasp ramp. You don't need bolster's win-more-ness. Would value-bolster be better if we had all the paintings? Sure. But we don't, and even if we did, it'd probably be a mistake to run 12 for a deck that plays 5-6 drops (depending how you see cards like Wasp/Ironthorn). And this is all with throne in mind. In expedition, well, while you're trying to set up A+B enablers, Patrice, Wasp, and Boar Riders are just dunking on you, because for whatever reason, DWD decided to obliterate aggro in expedition, which could keep ramp-to-patrice in check.
All of the above.
Bit too hard to enable in Expedition and too low power for Throne. Doesn't help that general FT(x) recruit bomb package is just so much better than everything else - why put in work with bolster enablers and payoffs when the payoff is still worse than just casting Patrice and Veena's Masterpiece?
>Bit too hard to enable in Expedition and too low power for Throne... \^ well said
If paintings were in Expedition it would be so good but unfortunately they are not
If paintings were in expedition, you'd play it in FTJ.
> recruit bomb package This consists of all of *two* cards: Patrice and Boar Riders. Both are obviously fair in a vacuum, but get much more overbearing when DWD broke aggro's knees multiple times in expedition which would take away the free pass of "turn 1 pass, turn 2, 3 ramp doofus, turn 4 wasp, turn 5 Patrice, turn 6 boars".
I think part of the issue is that it doesn't have enough "incidental" cards for us to take advantage of. If there were more independently-playable cards that *happened* to also trigger Bolster, we could see Bolster in a much better place, imo. Also, bolster triggers can either generate tempo or value. The best cards with Bolster are typically the ones that generate tempo. imo the best ways to activate Bolster reliably are the type of do-nothing relics (Meditative Trance is a *perfect* example) that you don't want to play when you're trying to trigger Drans, but you don't have a high enough density of Ziats, Outfitters, and Stewards to justify playing a deck where you *commit* to triggering Bolster by playing 3 power do-nothings, because you'll easily have hands where you find reliable Bolster triggerers, without an actual Bolster card to utilize them. Then add on the fact that every Bolster card is a unit; the easiest type of card for control decks to kill off. Like, we couldn't get *any* relics/relic weapons with Bolster?! tl;dr Basically, DWD gave us a pile of cards with Bolster that don't work super well together, and don't have enough intrinsically playable Bolster triggerers that you'd play even without the existence of Bolster. The result is that any "Bolster deck" frequently self-destructs due to bad draws where it gets all the activators and no payoffs, all the payoffs and no activators, or it gets the right mixture of activators and payoffs, but those payoffs will often reward you in diverging ways without the raw efficiency/flexibility that would make for a good midrange build. If DWD wants Bolster to be good, we need them to decide if they want to push the aggressive side, the controlling side, or make it so efficient/consistent that it makes for an effective midrange strategy.
>I think part of the issue is that it doesn't have enough "incidental" cards for us to take advantage of. If there were more independently-playable cards that happened to also trigger Bolster, we could see Bolster in a much better place, imo. Yes, that's a huge part of it.
I think First Shipment is a really good step towards making a functional Bolster deck, for this reason: It triggers any Bolster effects you have, replaces itself, draws a power to smooth your curve, and gives a honey to trigger Bolster later. The problem is, like I outlined above: Shipment only helps the defensive/controlling half of Bolster cards. Even if you curve Young Protestor -> Dran -> First Shipment, you're still barely doing better than a mono fire deck, which doesn't need these gimmicky synergies to play a 2-attack one drop and 3-attack two drop. Bolster is unviable as an aggro deck because Aggro lives or dies on early game consistency. For every game that you curve Protestor -> Grumbo -> Dran + Protestor and completely run over your opponent, there will be several where you're playing units that are underpowered compared to their mono fire aggro counterparts, and your deck will self destruct as a result. And controlling Bolster sucks, because control decks need to cast their board clears, and *every* Bolster card is a unit, so you have to choose between generating the scraps value that you built your deck around, and actually playing a control game. Tl;Dr (again) DWD, please give us better controlling Bolster layoffs. Give us relics with Bolster for more resiliency against our own and opponent's removal, and Bolster effects that do something other than summon birds or pump stats. We need more Bolsters that generate value. (Ope, did I write a thesis again? Oh well. 🤷♂️ DWD, please buff Bolster, because I love playing slow control decks, but Bolster just doesn't generate meaningful value.)
I always fear that when something gets buffed/better, it may suddenly become "too good." A "be careful what you wish for" situation. But you're probably right about releasing a few more synergistic cards to help Bolster a bit.
That's a reasonable concern. But I'd like them to make Bolster at least playable, and it seems that it's too inconsistent to work, moreso because of bad Bolster cards than bad Bolster triggerers. Why don't we have Bolster cards that do good, controlling effects, such as hindering our opponent's hand (imagine a Bolster effect that taxes a card in their hand by 1 power, or taxes the top card of their deck by 1, or makes an opponent discard, or makes their top card have voidbound or *something* that a control deck might feasibly want to do several times in a single game), or Bolster cards that are harder to clear off the board? There's so much cool design space: Imagine a Bolster card named "Doomsday Preacher" that has Bolster: Kill all units. It's a straightforward way to give 4x more board clears to a Bolster deck, but it can also synergize with effects like Honey Balm to squeeze a little more value out of it. Or maybe buff some of the existing Bolster units to give them **Summon and Bolster** or **Bolster and Entomb**, so you're at least guaranteed *some* value if you get an unlucky draw. Or what if Aerie Steward cost more power to play (like a 6-8 drop), but had **Bolster and Entomb:** Play an Albatross. So the opponent now has to decide whether they want to kill it immediately and guaranteed give you an Albatross now, or let it sit and hope you can't generate birds faster than they can kill you in the air. And Steelwarren Outfitter could have reduced stats/no Valor **Summon and Bolster:** Play a Justice Sigil, so it's at least guaranteed to ramp you a little bit, but if you're feeling greedy, you can try to go for more ramp. A tantalizing proposition for a control player, trying to decide whether to block now or save their Outfitter to ramp into their haymakers faster. Long story short: I'd rather a mechanic be interesting but unplayable, rather than being boring, linear and unplayable, and that's where Bolster feels right now.
Design-wise, Bolster doesn't work because it can be triggered repeatedly. This means that to be balanced, Bolster cards have to be balanced around the instances where they are triggered multiple times. This is a necessary balance decision, since if Bolster cards were efficient when triggered only once, then it would be impossible to deal with them efficiently, and they run away with the game when they are not dealt with. How Bolster cards are balanced makes them slow and vulnerable to removal, which are significant vulnerabilities in constructed formats (where decks are either fast or contain significant amounts of removal). The one exception to how Bolster cards are generally balanced is [Dran, Won't Back Down](https://eternalwarcry.com/cards/d/15-32/dran-wont-back-down), which sees play in Throne and is the strongest Bolster card.
Draft: it does not work because you need to draw just the right mix of cards with bolster, and cards to trigger bolster. Many of those cards are subpar without something from the other group.
I mean...That's true for a lot of things in Draft though. Right?
Not really. You don't need mill to trigger devour, you just need the game to go on. Recruit just plain works. Nomad just plain works. Renown is also like this, and not particularly great, though a skullhaven duo with renown can go pretty far.
Bolster has it worse than any of the other current mechanics, I think.
Understatted and overcost. Takes several turns to set up. Much easier to hunt or recruit and get immediate value. Kinda bizarre to keep one defense on creatures that rarely see play but something that's over played like Patrice and wasp get to keep their good stats. Those cards should be 1/1's.
Nerf boar riders to a 3/3 would help too. Expedition could use a shake-up.
Bolster mechanic is fine. Once per turn (both player and opp), pretty balance. It's not like Katra or Grumbo which lifesteal ad infinitum, or even Horngrinder. However, Recruit is stupid. Hunt is stupider. Devour is just eating lead stupid. And this is after we had Unleash. I thought P.Sullivan was an MTG vet, how tf did he okayed these crap mechanics? Just do a beta test play with the top ranked for feedbacks first ffs, man.