Hi all – wanted to test the waters on a new recurring series on game balance. The premise is that, while players can usually tell when a game is out of balance, finding proper solutions in a complex system with multiple moving parts can be harder than it seems. Oftentimes even a seemingly large problem can be solved through use of efficient, surgical changes – “target bans”, if you will – that can leave the apparent worst offenders untouched, yet still achieve the desired result. This is because the worst offenders are often symptoms of a broader problem rather than problems themselves.

As a quick bit of background, I’m a consistent top 200 NA player who peaked at #22 during the Holy Mackerel meta. I also work as a strategy consultant at a global consulting firm and have made a career out of dissecting problems to understand their root causes.

Tl;dr – Quillboars get a lot of heat for having too strong late game scaling, but the underlying issue is a core of lower-tier cards that provide strong tempo to level aggressively while also themselves providing tools to seamlessly transition into late game builds – essentially giving the tribe the endgame potential of dragons without the early-game shortcomings.

Small changes to a handful of lower-tier Quillboars – moving Sun-Bacon Relaxer to tier 2, tweaking the stats of Tough Tusk, and altering (or even removing) Necrolyte will make it harder for Quillboar compositions to roll through straight into strong endgame scaling without needing to alter the late game cards themselves. (Note: I’m excluding Bristleback Knight from this write up, since to me that card is problematic in its own right even outside the context of the broader Quillboar problem)

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The problem

Quillboars at times seem like the only viable composition, doing what other tribes do but better and faster. Why is that? Let’s investigate with a case study from another tribe.

Dragons are another tribe with very strong late game scaling. However, dragons also have a flaw: even if you can run away with the game with the right late game cards, making it to the late game with the Dragon board required to capitalize on them is challenging. This means that playing dragons is an exercise in risk-reward because it naturally puts you on a clock – you either carry a board of weaker (generally speaking) dragons through the mid-game and have lower health/fewer turns to stabilize once you get your Kalecgos, or you get the Kalecgos and have to invest a couple turns surrounding it with said dragons before the scaling kicks off. In either instance, you have to make a conscious choice to invest in a period of relative weakness to achieve later strength (or die trying).

This natural trade-off occurs because, in a well-designed game, tempo and scaling are opposing choices. It’s why cards like Savanna Highmane and Goldgrubber are both on the same tier; one provides upfront strength that falls away over time, while the other is weak to start but can become a lot stronger. That “flaw” dragons have is not a fluke, but an intentional design decision.

Quillboars are dragons if dragons didn’t have a weak early game. Many lower tier Quillboar minions allow you to both win early flights and provide resources for mid-to-late-game compositions – often simply by being viable pieces of late game boards in their own right (i.e., not needing to spend future time/money replacing them). One crucial yet underappreciated aspect of this is the ability to recycle blood gems used for early tempo for late game scaling (more on this below) – so even if you don’t keep your Quillboars themselves, you can transfer your early game investment in them into stronger units later.

So, while the surface-level problem with Quillboars is that they have both strong early and late games, the real problem is that it’s too easy to translate that early game strength directly into late game scaling – that early tempo DIRECTLY BECOMES, rather than simply facilitates, later strength in a way few other tribes can match.

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The solution

Now that we understand the core problem, we know specifically where to target changes – not Quillboar early strength or late scaling themselves, but the too-seamless ability to transition one into the other.

Let’s look at a few small changes that could address this, and in theory have cascading effects that also tone down other “problematic” minions:

Sun-Bacon Relaxer – move to tier 2

A turn one Sun-Bacon Relaxer purchase often kickstarts Quillboar early game, ready to start the tempo feedback loop with cards like Tough Tusk and Roadboar. Moving the minion up a tier (with a corresponding bump-up in baseline stats) makes it more of an investment to acquire early-game blood gems rather than “starting the game” with two on turn three, more in line with other value-oriented two-drops like Steward of Time and Freedealing Gambler. This also opens up space for Razorfen Geomancer to not be completely obsolete.

Tough Tusk – change to 4/2

Tough Tusk is a prime example of an early Quillboar that can win fights upfront while also sticking around into the late game due to its strong effect. A small hit to its health makes it less of an auto-buy for early fights, making it more in line with a card like Saurolisk that requires a little upfront synergy to really be worth the early purchase. Fewer Tough Tusks on people’s boards also is a pretty big indirect hit to Bannerboar (remember: small, targeted changes can have cascading effects if done correctly).

Necrolyte – make its effect specific to Quillboars

In my opinion, this card is the real unsung problem of the tribe. It might as well read “take your early game strength and put it on a late game minion” if you been playing Quillboars. It means you never have to decide between buffing a minion to be strong now or saving that buff for later. It’s Soul Devourer, but instead of being a vanilla demon it’s a divine shield, or cleave, or both. This might be a card that would be better off being removed entirely, but limiting the effect to only work with Quillboars would keep the power within the tribe and keep you from creating a 18/20 Cave Hydra out of thin air once you decide to transition out of your mid-game Groundshakers (again, Bristleback Knight remains a problem though).

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These are not the only changes that could work, and ultimately it will depend on how blizzard views the tribe identity – do they want it to be a slow starter with late game powerhouse potential like dragons and elementals? To have strong mid-game power that is harder to transition into game-winning strength like pirates? To be perennially useless like demons? Whatever the goal, the current iteration of Quillboars has too many tools for both a strong early and late game, and will require decisive – and likely targeted – changes for the health of the game.