Is Mock Court actually a universal guardrail, or are we overthinking it?

Phil's argument is that if every deck has to respect the possibility of a turn-one Mock Court, then Ordinary minions become a deckbuilding liability.

Zac brings up the possibility of the metagame oscillating: everyone cuts Ordinaries → Mock Court gets worse → people bring Ordinaries back → Mock Court becomes powerful again.

Where do you land? Is this healthy metagame tension, or does Mock Court warp deckbuilding too much?

Played a game yesterday where my opening hand was 2 drop, 2 drop, 3 drop.  My opponent went first and played a Court of Equity.  My hand became 4 drop, 4 drop, 4, drop.  Unsurprisingly I lost that game.

We need more Phil - that was quite awesome to listen to. I'll have to let it sit and soften up in my cerebral stew before I agree/disagree, but it was a great topic for doing exactly that.

This was a very thoughtful discussion. I feel like Court of Equity deserves to be part of this discussion as well, because even though some uniques like Plague of Frogs are just fine at 3, many others, like Aino, Balor, and Omphaloi are not when increased by two mana. I think the real question at the end of day is will we see a Court for Exceptional cards, because if that comes along, things are going to get very messy.

I’ve been saying this on the Discord ad nauseum. The other aspect to consider is deckbuilding being a pile of “good stuff” vs deckbuilding being strategically gestalt. The people playing a lot of Ordinaries are likely doing so because they fill a roll in a very specific deck strategy.  Good stuff piles usually aren’t running many Ordinaries. So now EC is also inadvertently kneecapping corner strategies that might rely on a handful of specific Ordinaries.

Mock Court was a mistake. It’s incredibly bizarre to me that EC would open up design space in Gothic for minions that summon Ordinary minions when they die only to completely hose that with Mock Court.

Your thoughts on mock court make sense and what I am going to say doesn't change that. My hot take is that EC have demonstrated that they will make sites that have hosing effects, but they have also made a variety of site removal. Players need to start treating site removal the same as aura and artifact removal - identify what will stop you from playing your deck and pick the removal that most conveniently removes it in your strategy.
My go to if I have space for a no threshold site is heirloom lost, get their site from anywhere and get around Vindictive Nation with only 1 damage

Good discussion gentlemen, I was just shopping my Dust rewards last night, looking at the mock courts, considering getting them, but the more I looked at the card text, the more I realized I didn't even want this card in the game

Exceptionals are truly Exceptional really does sum up the deck buiding experience moving forward.

In principle, Mock Court existing does somewhat read as "you should not play ordinaries", as they are a 0-cost hate card that is extremely backbreaking to any deck with a good amount of ordinaries. And as decks having a lot of ordinaries are the norm- this card as a guardrail feels like a mistake.

As for Court of Equity, I do agree that some elites/uniques are worth the tax, so the card just reads "be mindful of your elite/unique deck inclusions"

Personally, It is really hard to gauge all of the court's effects as these are dust store exclusives, and not everyone can get access to them.

Anyway, Appreciate the Great Content as always.

Mark my word theres gonna be an exceptional water site that: genesis: reactivate the genesis of a nearby water site ;)

I've been playing elementalist for a while. The ability to play all the cities, courts, and focus heavily into exceptions has made the court tax brutal when I get it in my opening. A court + a city puts me at an effective +2-3 mana up on my opponent. This isn't counting coming out with towers. Ele is gonna be nutty when these duel decks come out with all these strong one pips. The cities also lets me pay the tax for my cards so much easier than others

Mock court should have been a genesis effect and Cverflowing court should have been a a non-Genesis effect... They are really off-balance. Additionally -1 aura for having them locked behind the dust system.
Really good episode and important discussion!

My Sorcerer Gray Wolves deck I made today is basically going to lose a heavy percentage of the time if someone includes Garden of Eden and 2 mock courts for sites. Noted. 😢 will be patiently waiting on the genesis ability to “disable nearby site” or magic spell that does something similar.

i think mock court was printed as an answer to 2 things:

The power of Tokens before their printing (Necromancer dominance and Village Geomancer rising up in the meta).

And Corruptor Priest combo. Being the first infinite in the game, with one of its pieces at a Ordinary Earth card (which u can tutor with Common Sense) probably hinted at some potential future dangers for the game. Rather than change/errata or ban some of these potential future problems, why not print a card that solves them earlier in development?

Also, some ordinaries I think are still worth playing in a Mock deck imo... and its hurtful that this air piece site damages sparkmage more than it would help him currently... he really needs a little love.

im hoping my casual playgroup just never picks up courts. crazy they are dust rewards, and crazier they attack the rarity system, when in theory the rarity system already tries to keep itself in check.
i think a big problem is that many  Elites and Uniques are generically good and didn't have much of a deckbuilding cost until the courts.

God w3 got sinkhole, hamlets ablaze, castles ablaze etc etc, this site is elite,

Ive barely ever seen a Mock Court played. Even as a Necro player. Mobbed court though... I see most games! Different Meta's I guess. Still very annoying though! But doesn't actually stop you playing cards, just brings a cost you have to play around. As a comparison to Magic regarding Mock Court with deckbuilding. There's a lot of these guardrails everywhere and there are impossible matchups as a result. The sideboarding option can help but a lot of the time the best thing to do is just say 'If they have the guard rail then i'm just unlucky and I guess I lose'. Sometimes they just have it and you have an autoloss. But perhaps thats worth it because the decklist performs so much better against everything else?

I played Courts against Water Necro and it did nothing. The Necromancer just paid the extra mana and still had the enormous advantage on card quality. I will add that many great cards in Necromancer are still exceptional, Failed Mutation, Gnarled Wendigo and Daperyll Vampire. The only Court i've seen do anything meaningful is the Mobbed Court.

when Courts first dropped I completely changed my decks to be Exceptional heavy and light on Elites and Uniques. After awhile I just accepted that playing your best deck idea regardless of courts is just preferable and had better results.

tldr: I just pretend the courts don't exist 🤡👍