Is "The Royal Guard" rare-worthy, and why?

Target Inhumans character you control gets +2 ATK / +2 DEF while attacking this turn and has flight this turn.

Yeah, I'm pretty confused about this one as well - and my only logical explanation is that with It's Slobberin' Time at a common level UDE was just trying to prevent a situation where both The Royal Guard and It's Slobberin' Time were widely available in a limited format.


Plus the Royal Guard is technically a semi-superior It's Clobberin' Time which was a rare. The loss of +1/+1 is offset pretty well with flight.

well... the FF have It's Clobberin' Time...
...and i'm sure they'd rather have flight than the extra +1/+1.

Sigh. Say it with me folks:

Any card can be rare. It doesn't have to make sense.

But there has to be a reason why the card was rare to begin with - whether it be for limited balance purposes or for other more nefarious reasons.

The original poster was just inquiring what it was the UDE did to determine that this card warranted being given a rare slot.

If the card worked on defense then we could use the "it would be too good in limited as a common" argument but I don't think that's the case. Strange.

BTW, this might just be me but I am finding it really difficult to get +3/+3 out of It's Slobberin' Time. It usually seems to be little more than a bad team-stamped From the Shadows.

I would think the "while attacking this turn" aspect as well as the "has flight" part would be pretty useful. Looking at it as being one less than the +3/+3 potentially provided by It's Sloberin Time (Keep in mind It's Clobberin Time was a rare), seems not to take into consideration that flight and for the turn are pretty significant factors, in particular with Quicksilver being an Inhuman and Exploiting the Flaw being another rare Inhumans plot twist.

That's my point. It doesn't need to warrant it. Every set has a handful of baffling rares, and trying to justify them is an excercise in futility.

I usually am able to get It's Slobberin' Time off without any difficulty. Are you picking up locations in your draft (especially those with Terraform)? There are a lot of generic locations that are well worth a look (as well as those that are team-stamped but have a generic effect) - that make It's Slobberin' Time a lot easier to get off.

Every Rare has a reason for being a rare that was determined in house by UDE. Even though we may be baffled by their choices, there was a logical thought process that stated that "this card will be a rare". The reason why we are so baffled by them is because we naturally (due to Magic and other games) think that rare = power. This isn't always the case. Even if trying to justify why a rare is a rare is an excercise in futility, it seems to me that stating a blanket "rare cards are rare for no reason" seems to deny the simple fact that there was a reason that they were made rare and that logically if we take a look at different balancing and effect reasons we should be able to at least begin to see where UDE was coming from in making rare cards rare.

For example, 8 drops are almost always uniformally rare. Now this is horrible when you are opening a box of cards and get 8 copies of Black Adam, but it makes sense in limited when the chances of an 8 drop being played are slim to none. Therefore logically speaking you wouldn't want to give the card a higher ratio because it would increase the number of "dead cards" per limited set.

Secondly, search effects are almost always uncommon/rare. There are some exceptions to this rule, but when balancing limited, generic and team-specific search effects are extremely powerful (and worthy of a first pick nearly every time). These are given a lower frequency for balancing reasons as well as to provide a "chase" set of cards that UDE knows will get people to buy a specific set.



These are just a couple of examples and I would argue that if you took a look at any specific card ultimately you can begin to decipher a reason why it was made Rare based on other cards in the set as well as keeping in mind different formats.

I may be off my rocker, but I don't believe it's an excercise in futility.




(Plus it's a Thursday (which is my Friday) and that means that I am wasting time at work and need something to discuss ;))

There's also instances where they made a card that is perfectly balanced as an uncommon in the limited format as a rare to make people buy more packs. Enemy of my Enemy is an example, so is Royal Guard(to a MUCH lesser extent as far as generating incentives to buy packs, but an Inhumans deck might want a playset).

For the most part, the rares are based on limited play.

Which, honestly, still confounds me about Teen Titans Go!...

Well, keep in mind cards like EomE would *crush* in multiples in sealed play. I have yet to find a card that's a rare in the more recent sets that I disagree with being rare based on Limited play (though tossing EomE into Hobby Leagues would be a nice maneuver).

Comparing it to 'It's Slobberin Time!' isn't very accurate. 'It's Slobberin Time' has a built in drawback before the +3 Atk is enabled, you have to earn the effect. 'Royal Guard' would be brutal as a common in draft. A +2 +2 that only Inhuman drafters could take, would be silly. The interaction with Cosmic Surge alone, makes Royal Guard that much better in this set. Has there ever been a team stamped plot twist that effects combat that much that was common? I don't love the card because of it's rare status, if it were a common it would vastly improve my opinion of Inhumans as a sealed team.

Black Magic springs immediately to mind. I'm sure there have been others. (Not to mention the straightforward curve jumpers like Crime & Punishment and Head Shot.)