I did not want to answer without checking out the stuff you linked first, discovered (to my amusement) that I’ve already investigated half of those threads some months ago.
The catch in my opinion was that, quote
Basically, Onimaru + TD opener and having the right combat trick in second hand lets Blue achieve a firm enough grip of the board for a good game to happen. In my experience so far, at least. Although it’s still much easier for Blue to screw up than for Black, I admit.
Say, in this game [MMM1] Game 10: P1 Blue (Nekoatl) vs P2 Black (FrozenStorm) - #2 by FrozenStorm, Nekoatl goes for Jail on Turn 2, while I would’ve opted for Arrest into smack your base to 16 and threaten Art Of War. I’ve played that very same opener yesterday in a local meetup, and we’ve discussed how this line makes Dark Pact unplayable, since TD ping plus single T4 AoW puts Black’s base at 8, while Black can’t really afford teching answers for a potential T3 Max Oni yet.
Yours (and Bomber’s and Eric’s and I’m probably forgetting someone else) posts provoked me to look into Blue vs Black in the first place. After reading some of your PbFs and discussions I decided that I should start with easier thing first to figure out what’s happening, before tackling Blue as P2. So, for P2 Blue, I don’t have a good enough sample size or at least a gut feeling yet, and, for echo chamber reasons, I try to insulate myself from too much of exposure. For me, P1 Blue feels “tough, but winnable with some reasonable luck”. Probably not worse than 40-60.
The standard line of teching for black I steer my opponents towards is DP+BC first, then two situational cards depending on what’s going on, then figure out whether Metamorph or Shrine+Dozers are a better choice for lategame.
I very seldomly go for Truth or Law lategame, since FSGs are too good of a consistency enabler, and I feel Blue desperately needs his combos to line up in this matchup. I do have some positive experience utilizing Censorship against Black — it denies both Dark Pact and Deteriorate+StW combos! — but the rest of Law Tech II is so bad here it makes me dead inside a bit. It might be that Law was supposed to make this matchup balanced, but it got decimated at last stage development. Not only Tech II, but I’ve read Scribes also saw some nerfs and my guess would be Community Service used to cost 4g for a long time.
I like the name 
Yeah, I guess making it a sacrifice-able upgrade could be interesting for the reasons you listed, but there are a few counter-points there, namely
- Spending 1g on something that does not affect the board is a no-no for Blue (vs Black) in the first 2-3 turns, so it might only help Blue in mittelspiel or later.
- It’s a Starter change. Every Starter change that does not affect first crucial three turns of a game is wasted opportunity.
- Lighter touch. The fewer changes we manage to make to improve things, the better; This especially is true for Starter decks, the most important part of the game bar maybe Hero cards themselves.
- Sacrificial upgrades (and buildings, for that matter) go against intuitive mechanics already established in the game — the theme of Upgrades being, well, permanent Upgrades like in StarCraft.
With all that in mind swapping Lawful Search for a Search Warrant would be somewhat low on my list of Blue changes to study.
Maybe sometime? You seem nice, but for me card games are very much about real time social interactions, and it’s so hard to see actual person through letters on the forum 