I do think that works fairly well. You can immediately get value out of dreamscape from just playing it and quince, getting one or both mirrors for 1, and creating 2 copies for 1 each, makes the 3g investment potentially worth it right on the turn its played.
1 Like
Added bonus, dreamscape hall of mirrors seems cool lorewise.
3 Likes
Might be a bit overkill, now that I think about it. Imagine dropping Quince, both Dreamscape, and a Crashbarrow on the same turn… yikes! Maybe the discount should only apply to the Mirror creation ability and not the midband copy?
1 Like
Hallucination perhaps is a “pure combo card” but i struggle to find a description of combo card that makes it and dreamscape the only such pure ones… they are hardly unique in needing another card or ability to give them any value.
Anyway, main point of this post is that dreamscape also has it’s own use as an anti-buff control spell, e.g. no now! on void stars in mine and GBudee’s most recent game on the forum. (Will link it another time)
This quality was not mentioned earlier; combined with the ongoing presence (=easier to combo) i think Dreamscape is more of a controlling card where Hallucination is a single burst… but they are still unfortunately similar 
1 Like
Oh, right, I even mentioned Dreamscape’s anti-buff value a little while ago and forgot about it. How embarrassing. Though I have to say, I think Jaina’s spells are more similar in nature than Quince’s, overall.
1 Like
Sickness and Spreading Plague share some traits with hallucination and dreamscape, might be a useful comparison to be made. Note, spreading plague combos nicely with multiple things IN SPEC. Sickness can stand completely on its own as a useful card, but then combos very nicely with orpal’s maxband. Spreading plague combos with orpal (both mid and top band), sickness, plague lab sorta, and cursed ghoul. For dreamscape, there is reteller of truths, macciatus and hallucination to combo with dreamscape. Reteller and macciatus, in spec, are kinda meh combos, cause everything except macciatus is already an illusion. Hallucination is removal, but only if you play dreamscape or another hallucination. It just works out to being a lot more clunky than disease, and spreading plague is already pretty clunky.
Turning 2 things into illusions and turning everything into illusions, as the entire effect, are definitely more similar than jainas spells, which are damage this or damage that or damage multiple. That said, Jaina’s are very similar, but that was the design philosophy, how does jaina target just the right thing? With hallucination, the players choices between the 2 are not so cut and dry, because they are more similar.
Targeting mechanics are much more common across all specs than -1/-1 runes are, however, so unless you’re playing a single-hero game, it’s not hard to find cards to target faux-Illusions with.
2 Likes
Another advantage of Dreamscape over Hallucination: if you want to kill a unit with resist, Hallucination requires you to pay the resist cost twice, whereas Dreamscape only requires a single resist payment.
In all my years of codex… Truth… Illusions… It’s never been about targeting. I have never once teched dreamscape or hallucination.
Stupid idea time: what if hallucination instead created illusions of a targeted thing? Like in starcraft! They need to last for a turn though to be useful on defence
Never too late to start. 
Just imagine the havoc it could wreak on my Law / Past shenanigans! Well, to avoid Quince being removed by Ebbflow Archon, you’d probably want a Mind-Parry Monk, but still, my latest version can even clear away untargetable stuff as long as my gold-generating combo isn’t disrupted, and Discipline pairs well with Truth in general.
Sounds very similar to Mirror Illusions copying stuff.
I’ve been lurking on this thread for a while and think some of the changes are cool! A couple of comments I wanted to make though:
-
balancing the Grey homebrew faction Dwarddd and I made has been pretty educational in trying to think of how to balance cards. One thing we have learnt is that small changes can (though don’t always) have big effects. Making lots of changes at once means that evaluating any one change is really difficult. I would bet on long odds that with so many changes proposed, a tournament with this rule set would definitely, definitely not be better balanced overall, just differently balanced. Which is fine, because working out what is OP in a new meta can be fun - but we shouldn’t try too hard for balance perfection if we are changing every spec at once, and should just et something with no one thing OBVIOUSLY super broken and run with it.
-
I wanted to point out that balance isn’t the only priority in card design. There is a really good talk by one of the high ups in designing new Magic cards I saw once and now can’t find, where he says that when making a new set, they consider a few different kinds of people - people who want to express themselves creatively (“Tommies”), people who want to be given an experience (“Tammies”) and people who love to optimise (“Spikes”) as a first three groups. Cards which try to please everyone are generally unpopular, and it is better to make cards which please one or two groups at most. Codex is mainly for and skewed towards pleasing optimisers, and optimisers love good balance because with poor balance the optimising puzzle is too easy. However, it should still have SOME cards for creatives and experience hounds. Perhaps sub-optimal but weird cards like dreamscape are for creatives - how could I use this whacky effect in a way that actually works? (I have a habit of going for weirder strats for this reason, in in-person games at least. I think dreamscape is cool!). Cards with chance built in like Rickety Mine are for experience hounds - wouldn’t it be incredible if I actually won a game with this?_. (Codex doesn’t have too many of these - it’s not really a game for Tammies). So, it really is ok to have some cards which are strictly suboptimal, as long as they’re not completely unplayable! If you don’t like them at all, they may have been designed for a different group of players than the one you are closest to. I think that any big sweeping changes to the game should try to bear this principle in mind.
3 Likes
I would add to this that I love the current Peace engine as an experience hound’s combo. Playing all the cards, drawing all the cards, and building massive sergeants etc is just really cool!
3 Likes
What fresh hell have you come up with now, Neko?
2 Likes
It also happens to be very popular with optimizers because it’s a good combo! 
[Necromancy]/Law/Past. Garth maxband fetch of a Rememberer can be used to accelerate the combo and improve reliability, Hooded Executioner can remove even invisible tech III units, Thieving Imp can completely empty my opponent’s hand after Ebbflow Archon finishes removing their units, Tax Collector can completely empty their bank, and this is completely overkill, but Prynn can maxband; get as many time runes as necessary; trash any desired units; then be delevelled by Nether Drain, unsummoned by Ebbflow Archon (stranding the trashed units forever), resummoned, and maxbanded in the same turn, because why not? Metamorph’d heroes are a potential problem for this version, however, so Neutral starter’s Brick Thief would be a more reliable finisher.
… (checks changelist) …
Infinite resources combo is still intact, muahahahaha…!
1 Like
Yuck. At least you’re not insuring Twins for the easy Tech III now.
1 Like
Another Blue change Hugh and I tried was allowing Reputable Newsman to change his restriction for 1 gold. It gives Blue a little bit more flexibility.
1 Like
Ok here’s my proposed hallucination. The wording might need cleaning up a little, but hopefully the intended effect is clear.
Hallucination (2)
Spell - Summon 
Summon 2 0/X Hallucination Illusion tokens where X is the current health of target unit or hero.
Destroy these at the start of your next upkeep.
This obviously alludes to the starcraft ability hallucinate, and gives truth some more defence.
It could also be made to target two things and create a copy of each, if you really want the double targeting for combos.
Ok go on, tear it up now
2 Likes
I was about to say that would interact oddly with chaos mirror, but it does in fact have a printed attack value, so nevermind.
Oh geez, I just realised I forgot to add an important line. Have a look again for the important end-clause.