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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day
Balancing
Act
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Balancing Act
Odyssey - Rare
2WW - SorceryEach
player chooses a number of permanents he or she
controls equal to the number of permanents
controlled by the player who controls the fewest,
then sacrifices the rest. Each player
discards cards from his or her hand the same way.
Pojo's Average
Rating -
Constructed:
2.50
(7 Reviews)
Limited: 2.79 (7 Reviews)
Reviewed January 30, 2002
Ratings are
based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst. 3 ...
average.
5 is the highest rating.
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Mason
Peatross
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I
never liked Balance when I first started playing
Magic - mostly because I didn't understand what
coming from behind was like. I didn't realize
that I could hold back on my resources and then
destroy my opponent with one card. That's the
reason Balance was too good, though. It allowed
you to win the unwinnable game - a game you
didn't really DESERVE to win, you could win.
That's ok, because Balancing Act is not Balance
- it's something else. It's a card being used in
a combo deck that puts out a fat little creature
that your opponent will have a hard time
removing, and runs behind it. That's not
something you can do in Extended, and it's not
something you'll always be able to do in
Standard, either - once people start
understanding how to play around it.
Game
Breaker Rating - Az-Zahir Hakim-esque
Limited
Rating - 5
Constructed
Rating - 2
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Robby
Hinton
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Limited:**(2 Stars)
Constructed:***(3 Stars)
In Limited, Balancing Act isn't one of my top
picks.
It jusn't isn't guaranteed to be good and is
nowhere
near what the real Balance is. In
Constructed, it
gets a little better since you can make decks
around
it, such as Balancing Tings. They do go o.k.
in
trade, though.
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Rob
Lawing
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Back
in Ott 6 they had a really broken cared like this
called "Balance" Balance was a great
card (as was the style at the time) and a staple
of many decks. Now they give us a new balance
which costs much more and has an ugly picture on
it. This card is pure ethanol in the right deck,
that is, the deck named after it, but otherwise it
is not very playable due to cost and 2x colored
mana issue. So while the old balance was a much
more utilized card in several decks, Balancing act
is a pretty limited usage card. I am glad WOTC is
paying homage to some of the old school cards
lately even if the new versions are usually just
shadows of the originals.
Rating:
Constructed generally-2, Limited-2, In it's own
namesake deck 5.0
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Andrew
Chapman |
Balancing
Act tries to pull off a balanced (no pun
intended) version of a long broken card.
Unfortunately, the choices of which permanents to
sacrifice severely weakens it, much more so that
the
upped casting cost. It has indeed saw some
high level
play as of late in the Balancing Tings deck within
type 2, but it has lacked any further play.
Expect
more uses out of this once someone comes up with
more.
In limited, I see very few situations this could
be
all that great. Still, it might be playable
if you
have drafted a particularly fast deck (meaning
this
will make your opponent discard).
Constructed rating: 3
Limited rating: 2
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Fletcher
Peatross
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When
Balancing Act first hit the spoilers, my eyes
popped out of my head. A
fixed Balance! I thought immediately it
would be a hit. But I then read
it, and re-read it, and realized that it did not
have the same power as the
original at all. Its a much different card
than it was before. So I
discarded it as playable, and went on with things.
And then Terravore,
Obliterate, and sac lands made it one of the
better decks in type 2 today.
In constructed, this card is amazing in one deck,
and very sub-par in
others. A 3 (5 in the right deck) in
constructed, and in Limited its almost
useless and would just about never make the cut in
a deck. Way too
situational, and gets a 1.5. |
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Aaron
Teare
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Limited **
Constructed **
Don't take my word as law on this cards rating...
I haven't yet got a
chance to test this card out at all. My gut
tells me it would be next to
impossible to break this card like Balance was.
Again, the best way to be
sure is to test it for yourself. If history
has taught us anything, it's
that cards like this look bad at first but when
combined with some other
innocent looking card they can form a savage
Combo. Maybe you'll be the
one to find Balancing Act's killer combo while
your testing it out!
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Scott
Gerhardt |
Balancing
Act is one of those cards I looked at and almost
instantly loved. Back when it was legal, I
was a very big fan of Balance. The game
turning ability it had was great. the
thought of getting a fixed Balance really appealed
to me. Unfortunately, it has proven to be
too much of a combo card for normal use. The
Balancing Tings deck broke it, but that's not how
I wanted to use it. Balance was a control
card, and I liked it that way. This is a
combo card. Yeah, the word
"Balance" is there, but it's not the
same. In my opinion, outside of the whack
combo deck, this card just doesn't make the cut in
constructed.
In Limited, it's uses are just that -
limited. If you're really down on permanents
in limited, you're probably losing. This
might even it up, but probably not. I would
play it, but it's a mid pick, going 6th - 8th.
Limited:
3.5
Constructed: 2.0
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DeQuan
Watson
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No Review Yet
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John
Hornberg |
I haven't really been
around Balancing Act enough to judge it really
well.
I just know that it's a sorry excuse for Balance,
but it does have a deck in
Type II right now that's really good, but easily
beaten by some sideboard
builds. So, I give it a 2.5, because I
really don't know any better.
In limited, it doesn't look like it would change
anything, even though it
has the potential to be devastating. I give
it a 3.5 on that basis, but
again, I have yet to play with one of these in
limited, or see one in a
draft, so I can't give you a great judgment.
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John B
Turpish
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No
Review Yet
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