Once upon a time the standard for 4 provision cards (not including engines) was that a card would maximize at 6 but for a certain condition, with it being able to be worth less then that. Prime example is the Noonwraith, being a maximum of 6 points but if it dies then it spawns 2 rats on an enemy row which is then 2 points for the enemy, so a Noonwraith's minimum value was 4 points. The first 4 prov cards to break these "rules" were some with the "bonded" tag and they'd have a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 8 (Mahakam Marauders, Cintrian Enchantress), but even so these cards aren't auto-include and only show up in certain deck designs and I honestly wouldn't mind them being nerfed to a minimum of 5 and max of 7 (esp Marauders since they're a lot more useful the Enchantresses)...
Then they came up with a 7 point Aen Elle Conqueror which had a hefty condition of Devotion so it doesn't kill itself on deploy which was also accepted.
And now we got the Fish Flapper (Bear Witcher Adept) which has a minimum of 4 (starts at 3 then immediately on the end of your turn heals to 4) but now has a maximum of 7 + further armor-up or healing up any time he's damaged which makes him a very good synergy material too. - this obviously breaks the previous set of standards of what a 4 provision card should do for you. :[
Same for when they introduced the Drummond Berserker and Bear Witcher to the pile of 5 provision cards. The 1st plays for 8 points in 2 turns for almost no condition other then that it doesn't die on the next turn. The 2nd has somewhat of a condition but then plays for instant 8 points.
Compare these to an old-school Kikimore Worker which has a maximum of 7 but at the weakness of dying on exposed and starts off with 4 armor, sure it has some rather weak way of getting more armor (which is even row locked lol in addition to being dependent on your deck) but on it's own it will never play for 8 points and is thus simply an inferior card compared to Berserker and Bear Witcher.
Also I must note how out of the 4 bronze cards that SK got with the latest expansion, ALL 4 are being used very often cause they're strong cards. Meanwhile MO got 4 cards out of which only 1 is actually being used (but still not nearly as much as SK use theirs, since SK ones can just fit in into almost any deck!) since the other 3 are pathetic. (I mean if those cards came out like 8 months ago they may have been seen as useful lol) And even ST got their Cat Witcher Adept (Rope Walker) which is just weak and also sees no play. So yeah, I cannot but notice SK being the favorite faction for the devs since they always get the strongest stuff (Cerys for example and the past expansion was also dominated by SK) and the least of nerfs.
One of these advantages on it's own doesn't make much of a difference but when you take the full sum of them then yeah it makes a significant difference.
I mean here I am trying to devise a Mage-themed deck for NR and am looking at this 7 provision gold card Sila De Tansarville (yes, I know it's a much older card but that's no excuse), and see she plays for an instant of 6 points with a maximum of 8 over 2 turns... and I am thinking well.. I know of some 5 provision bronze cards that play for that same amount (or more then that like Bear Witcher Mentor (seen him climb to insane 16 or 18 points on deploy!) or Mahakam Guard (4 prov)) so wtf lol. There's just too much inconsistencies in regards to what a card does for you for a given amount of provisions. And resolving these inconsistencies should be top priority for the devs. They shouldn't be introducing new cards if those mean that previously existing ones will be cast aside to the dustbin of history.
I completely agree with this! Being able to just 1-click import decks made by other players is making people lazy and just leads to an insane amounts of copy-paste cloned decks which hurts the diversity of games. Sure being able to share your deck is cool but if people just clone decks so easily it leads to repetitiveness like we got right now and that ends up killing the game.
Too much freedom is not good lol, imagine if kids in school had the "freedom" to chose weather they want to study and learn new things or to just throw shit at each other like monkeys, ofc they'd end up robbing themselves of education.