Pointed Discussion

Balance will wreck you every day of the week, even Wednesday.

Balance is one of the best white cards of all time. On the surface, Balance appears to be the ultimate equalizer. But white's primary strength is its enchantments, and Balance leaves those alone. It also doesn't touch artifacts. This means it is relatively easy to tailor a deck around Balance. The real strength of the card, however, is its ability to destroy land. Balance is a centerpiece in many White Weenie decks, because those decks rarely play more than two or three lands at a time. Your opponent will not be able to cast best spells when landlocked by Balance.

balance is also very adaptable to different circumstances and needs, creatureless decks, decks with sac outlets, can make its effects one sided when the ability to get some benefit is built in, combine that with its very low cost and you have a winner.

Of course, what makes this card ridiculous is its two mana cost. With that, you can play it basically whenever it would benefit you. It definitely deserves a 4.5/5.

I would almost want to splash white into a Madness / Hellbent deck just so that I could combo this with One With Nothing.

Also, a Barren Glory-based deck could benefit from this, since it won't have many permanents out anyway.

I like Balance, but I find it much easier to tailor a deck to Cataclysm, as that only requires you to be prepared for low-mana spells, while your opponent will almost always be left blinking because he/she only has, at most, one of each of only four different types of permanents. Cataclysm takes care of planeswalkers too, people!

Also, it isn't restricted, so yeah.

I had a buddy who ran white with this card back in the days of Revised, and it was brutal. This is a mana-fetch deck's worst nightmare in card form.

Just use your Zuran Orb before you cast it!

Is it ironic that a card named balanced is one of the most unbalanced and broken cards ever made?

Aaron’s Random Card Comment of the Day #56, 1/12/11

There are a few patently absurd things going on with the card Balance.

1) The card itself. Few cards in the history of Magic are this powerful. It is banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage (granted, it isn’t a big player in Vintage, mostly because it is hard to predict how most decks are going to play out with regard to lands, creatures, and cards in hand). But just try playing it in a game using otherwise “normal” cards--it is a complete and utter backbreaker for only two mana.

2) The fact that it took players so long to figure out how good it was. Developer Erik Lauer, genius that he is, understood the power of Balance almost immediately back in the Alpha-Beta days (play Moxes, play Jayemdae Tome, Balance down to nothing), but in general the community didn’t grasp how broken this card was for at least a couple of years.

3) The card was reprinted multiple times, through Fourth Edition. Either Wizards didn’t understand just like players didn’t understand it, or they did and wanted to keep printing it until it was proven broken.

To point number 2, I vividly remember the day Balance was restricted (along with Fork) in April 1995, as this crazy dude Darryl Markowitz that used to play at the University of Pittsburgh Student Union was running around screaming about it. “The card is totally fair! It just makes things even! It’s even called ‘Balance!’ That’s just ridiculous!” Of course, Darryl was typically balancing multiplayer games down to zero creatures and zero cards, often after sacrificing Rukh Egg to Diamond Valley. Let me tell you, it was hard to beat decks with four Balances, even in multiplayer.

It’s possible that we could print a card with this effect again, although the playtesting would start with a cost something like .

It seems like Aaron's bolding in his comment broke something. I would put my bet on some fault in the part of the commenting code that shortens long comments.

The brave and the BOLD
sorry. Balance? Its insane. Ran into it in ME4 limited the other day and just barely survived.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!


I hope I never have to play against this...
Especially in a Penumbra deck!!!!!!!!!!!

I am very sad about this card. It should have been a perfect concept, but the ease with which it can be broken utterly ruins it. I want the name "Balance" back to use on a card that is just this strong but never in an unfair way, one that cannot be cheated to give its caster an advantage but which does counteract even the greatest advantage of his opponent. The fact that it could be broken with Moxes is hardly proof of anything, but I'd rather lose Moxes and keep this (which is what the Revised and 4th Edition designers did). However, cards like Rukh Egg and Diamond Valley are fun, so they demonstrate why this execution of the effect couldn't work. If you replaced "sacrifice" with "exile" and made a few similar tweaks, you could bring this card back as a two-mana stop sign against rush decks, and I'd be very happy.

Anything but balanced.

@ Aaron:
I love Balance as this card proves that R&D doesn't understand the meaning of balance or the (un)balancing nature of Wrath of God.

Destruction is never fair, especially when it includes lands as well, since usually you pay to play a creature. Therefore, you've earned it and there is nothing inbalanced about it. Likewise, if a weenie deck with a few lands plays against a fattie deck with many lands, it's fair that the weenie deck will have less lands and hand cards, but more (weaker) creatures.

Therefore, if someone plays a Balance or Wrath of God, the only thing he wants to achieve is an inbalance in his favor. First of all, because you decide when to play a creature and when to cast a Wrath of God (f.e. to gain card advantage when you have casted fewer creature spells). Second, you plan your deck by "wasting" a card slot for a Balance. So you hope that this card would acieve a goal.

So neither a Wrath of God, nor a Balance is an act of balance. The latter might feel a bit more balancing, since it includes hand cards, but enchantments and artifacts are ignored and that's the point where the problems come from. A combo deck or counterspell deck has nothing to lose when adding this card.

The funniest point however is that I pray since my registration that white should have less destruction spells and more bounce effects. If you compare Evacuation and Day of Judgment, which one feels more balancing, which one could be abused more and which one feels more white flavored (peaceful)?

So once R&D would recognize this and really choose to do this color-shift, you'll see that an Upheaval is a better balance than the version, Aaron suggested.

(And this would bring us to a mono-white Worldpurge and a white Time Reversal). I still have hope.

Why is everything in BOLD? Also, this is the highest-rated card i've seen yet.
@Cheza; I really hope you don't get an R&D job any time soon.

Empty your hand, sac all of your creatures to the diamond valley, sac all of your lands to zuran orb, and then hit the great equalizer... Balance. 5/5

I'm slightly surprised that Revised is the highest rated print of Balance ever. I would have expected Beta or Alpha to get that, or From the Vault maybe.

All that said, little can be said about Balance not in Aaron_Forsythe's comment or the mini-article in From the Vault: Exiled.

If you value cards as a collector AND player, then I'd say there are a good number of $20 cards I'd trade for a Balance, even the reprinted versions that actually go for much less.

I don't totally like how expensive the Beta and Alpha cards just hard-SPIKE with regard to economics, but even so, if I could get an Alpha or Beta Balance for $50, I would have to assume I was at one of those AMAZING garage sales you hear about that you never find. :P

If you like playing with historical decks (using different banned lists from different eras), then investing in 4 Balances and 4 Necropotences is an AWESOME start to a Weissman Deck. I think that would be a great way to run Archenemy Games: Let the Archenemy use different Banned/Restricted Lists from the Heroes.

Boldly balance your belligerent buddies.

@ Cheza

I like blue being the color of bounce, the reason being is bounce is noted as dimensional travel and the color of bending time and space is blue. The reason why wrath of God is white is because it is the closest color to divinity and the name fits flavorfully. Now while you argue that white has synergy with bounce answer me this, doesn't every color have good synergy with bounce? Here's just to name a few.

Blue - Augury Owl
Black - Skinrender
Red - Siege-Gang Commander
Green - Elvish Visionary

I've also read your previous posts and I do wish their was a blue version of fog because then it would be called "Mist".

Today I've made my first 11-for-1: my opponent discarded 3 cards and sacrificed 4 lands and 4 creatures, with no loss on my side. And I was topdecking. Thank you Balance.