Welcome back, feathers!
I don’t think there are any balance suggestions that are commonly agreed on. There’ve been various balance suggestions given to make Black vs. Blue less lopsided, some of which FrozenStorm and Nekoatl have recently been testing out here.
Quick summary of that thread so far
First, two “useful overkill” changes, which didn’t end up feeling like overkill:
- Black is not allowed to play Vandy, or her spells. Much closer than normal Black due to reduced early Vandy pressure, but probably still advantaged to Black, due to the efficiency of its starter. Illustrated just how good Orpal is, when you don’t have both of the other Black heroes to overshadow him.
- Black is not allowed to play Garth, or his spells. Still a very oppressive game from Black, to the point that Nekoatl decided Orpal is the more dangerous partner for Vandy, since he can suppress a lot of important cards for Blue/Peace and can constantly threaten Death and Decay. Less nasty than normal Black, but nastier than without Vandy.
They’ve also started another set that tries to make the starter and Vandy less cost-efficient terrors:
- Gold penalties for Black: Dark Pact, Deteriorate, and Pestering Haunt cost 1 gold; Metamorphosis only grants one +1/+1 rune to heroes instead of two; Vandy now has 4/6 level bands, and gets the Resist 1 as topband instead of sparkshot, midband still grants the fetch ability. Still in progress.
There’s also been a suggestion (from Sirlin, I think?) to replace Flagstone Spy’s gold steal with discarding a card of your choice from the opponent’s hand, amongst others, but I don’t think they’ve been tested yet, at least on the forum.