Landmarks Could be Healthier

Do you like Landmarks?

I don't.

It's not about Powerlevel.

Low_Interactivity-Infinite_Value is not fun because in slower matches one player may not draw theirs and that leads to many NonGames.

I think Landmarks would be more fun if they naturally Crumble in 4 turns. (self-destruct)

Targon's Star Spring Landmark could be changed to:

Round End: Heal damaged allies 1. When I crumble give allies +3/+0.

Bilgewater's The Slaughter Docks could be change to:

Round Start: Toss 1. When I crumble summon a Sea Monster.

Landmarks remind me of an early online card game I used to play that had a similar unit to landmarks.  

In Might and Magic: Duel of Champions they had special ongoing effects you can play.  They were destroyable, (far easier than landmarks are) but they provided tangible long term buffs like (all units have +1/+1).  You could even have two of them in play at the same time (so for certain races, you could get +2/+2 to all units).

I don't know how I feel about landmarks because honestly,  the only one that seems broken is Star Spring.  The others don't really have "when X happens, you win".  But for some reason star spring does.  I feel like star spring just needs to have it's alternate win condition removed, and then slightly buffed.

Perhaps here is how it could go: 

At the end of the round heal all units by one.   If all units are already at full health, give the highest and lowest cost unit +1 health instead.

This way it's encouraging you to stack health, which invariably is a good strategy with soraka.  And feeds into your win condition of being able to outheal/outlast your opponent, without straight up giving you "when X amount is healed, you win". Which to me feels cheap, and honestly doesn't match up with the rest of the landmarks.

I'm still new to the game and i played only once in the Labs. I picked up the deck with The Howling Abyss and faced the discard deck with The University of Piltover. It was a really close game with my opponent always pressuring my health total and i trying to find a way to stabilize and play the landmark. We both got our landmarks on the board eventually and that's when things went wrong for my opponent and right for me. I was on the verge of defeat and the first card i got from the landmark was Miss Fortune. That straight up locked my opponent's units out of combat because they would all die to her AoE effect which helped me chip away at his health (which was still full at that point). I managed to clear his board on the next round and he was left in top deck mode with whatever random cards his landmark could generate. On the next round i got a Thresh and that gave me the win because he pulled Tryndamere out of my deck while keeping the only blocker he had out of the way. I already had a Tryndamere in play so it was enough to finish the game. His landmark did almost nothing. It just generated some low cost units and other random stuff that my opponent didn't bother playing. That's it.

There's certainly something wrong with the design of some of these cards. So far, Runeterra has felt like a much more strategic game where things are always within control of players. But adding these infinite value engines with a ton of variance is going to drag it towards the same state Hearthstone is currently in where RNG is always a thing that can determine the outcome of games.

The Howling Abyss is really unbalanced because level 2 champions are not a joke. There's a reason for their level up requirements. These cards are way too strong and it can lead to situations like the one i mentioned where two random rolls were enough to completely turn the tide of the game. The University of Piltover is even more random and can easily become a source of frustration for those playing with or against it. I'm not against randomness. It's actually the thing that hooked me to Hearthstone. But this kind of RNG isn't healthy. 

The worst thing is that these cards can't be balanced that easily. If the cards from Howling Abyss were level one champions, the card would be too weak as level one champions are underwhelming on decks that don't have any synergy with them. In its current form, it's just an easy way to cheat out random win condition cards. I doubt they will completely redesign it so they most likely will only increase it's cost if it becomes a problem. And The University of Piltover is just a casino. Sometimes you win big and sometimes you lose everything. But you never have any control over it. It's just going to be a feels bad card like Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron. Star Spring is a card that wins games by itself but you know what it does and what you should do to avoid it. It's predictable and controllable. Its numbers can be adjusted to make it slower and more fair if needed. But Howling Abyss and University of Piltover are always going to be an uncontrollable RNG fiesta. 

It's incorrect to say that Star Spring wins games by itself. Yes, it can win games by combining it with a ton of damaging and healing effects, but it can be quite hilarious to see a Star Spring doing literally nothing because the units are not getting damaged.

So, it absolutely has to be in the right deck, or it does almost nothing, and certainly doesn't win the game.