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Lightforge Discussion: Should Ticket Scalper be banned from Arena?

For those of you who missed the Lightforge yesterday, ADWCTA and Merps railed against this card for at least 40 minutes and came to the conclusion that Ticket Scalper is such a polarizing card that it ought to be banned from Arena. They have never agreed with cards being banned outside of maybe Purify, and this includes Vicious Fledgling and the Death Knights, but before even being played they want the card banned from arena.

The reason (and they can address this if I'm off) is not that its too powerful, but because its power level can fluctuate so much depending on its effect. If it kills a 4-drop and then draws two cards on top of it, it would be the best card in the game. Otherwise, its an understatted card that has soft-taunt. The fact that the times when it gets to attack generate such a strong effect lead them to not want to play Arena and wanting the card banned because of how swingy the card can be.

My thoughts: I'm doing my text writeup of the cards, and I'll pull down what I had for Scalper.

Ticket Scalper (2-): A 5/3 is not that bad on 4 by itself. Good, no, but it’s a fine play on 4. From playing a lot with Rogue, Runeforge Haunter, even in the era when people had lots of answers, it sticks on the board. And then it draws two cards as long as it hits something with 4 health or less. And, in buff classes, it can stick around and be a draw engine. I’m torn on the card. Obviously, if it hits, its insane. It’s going to hit a fair amount of the time. What’s holding it back is that it has no immediate board presence (ala DID or Phoenix or Basilisk), and that it gets a lot worse later in the game when board states get weird. I think it’s clearly at least in that 3rd bucket tier of cards that are real situationally good with minor drawbacks, with more of a “drop” presence than other cards. Some of those cards really should be in the 2nd bucket, so I’m putting it there. Now, this may be a Giggling Inventor or Vicious Fledgling situation where the potential power makes the meta develop around this card, which might artificially push it down. I think people will hate this card and complain, but it will only perform “ok.”

For me, I think I'm about 90% in agreement on where the card belongs, on the impact of the card, but in comparison to Fledgling or DKs, I think its much less problematic. Fledgling's effect was significantly stronger than Scalper's effect was, and that card single-handedly won games. Scalper, if its drawing cards, has to trade into something, so you're getting cards, but losing your 4-drop in the process, and that's a situation where its recoverable.

The DKs I thought were overblown, but I understood considering the fact that once played, there was no counter-play, and you needed to be at a massive advantage in one way or another to not die to their effect. With Scalper, people get card advantage all the time. Trading and saving removals and correct plays can easily negate the card advantage, and I've won quite a few games where my opponents were up 5 cards on me because I either had lethal set up or I was able to dictate the trades and destroy their advantage.

I don't think, at least from the card drawing aspect, that the card is going to invoke the same hatred of DKs and Flappy, since its effect is delayed. I think the card's effect itself, while certainly strong, because of the delay, is something that you can come back from and handle. Its powerful, and the variance is annoying, but there's at least choices you can make, in terms of developing on board or holding back removals in case of this card, where you can mitigate the effect, whereas with other cards once it happened you were screwed. At least with this, the effect happens one time. With Fledgling and the DKs, it was effectively a perma-effect that persisted.

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