In full knowledge that this thread will not go down well because I am, in Card Hunter technical terms, a bit of a **** about my opinions ... Illusory Barrier is very, very unbalanced in Death March. The most common strategy is ... draw it first turn, get your wizard out and lay it down, thus stopping your opponent from getting anywhere near you or casting any spells. Which wouldn't be that bad, but it also makes dispelling it highly difficult because you can't sight through to the middle, so even Cleansing Burst has limited use if you even draw it. Two teams who are using the normal strategy of packing their decks with Illusory Barriers wind up playing a game of "whoever draws it first and/or goes first will normally win". Call me crazy, but that's not fun or balanced. And I'm not saying I don't use this strategy, because of course I do along with everyone else. Will anyone really miss it if we just say "you can't use that one card in Death March, because the format makes it massively OP'd"? There's basically only one winning strategy in Death March right now which overpowers all others. In the interest of making the format more fun, surely ...?
I'm not so sure it's so brokenly, I aknoweledged it's power, tried it myself and in mirror match it's very frustating, yes. Then I decided to go counter with double human priest carrying command and a lot of cleansing plus a dwarf warrior and I'm faring much better I find that cleansing ray is superior to cleansing burst there, because it draws you a card. Terraforming Module is working wonders for me there.
I have 3 different teams I run on Death March just to keep things interesting. All 3 have very competitive win rates, and only one has any illusory barrier. It's a powerful card for sure. But that only means you have to build a team that accounts for it. Not necessarily one that runs it.
Smoke Bomb Seriously though, leagues just aren't made to be well-balanced for all strategies. Most of the leagues where you bring your own deck are on very constrained maps that favor very constrained sets of tactics (Triple Duel, Wicked Waterways, etc). Some of them can certainly be frustrating if you don't have a highly optimized build, but that's why there's a new one every five hours! If Illusory Barrier is giving you woes, take a break, play some ranked games, and come back a few hours later.
I don't really believe that Death March was made to be broken. That seems illogical. Would anyone argue against it being a very OP'd card in the format?
It's certainly powerful; some might even say overpowered. However: This is simply untrue. If your build isn't heavily reliant on line-of-sight, Illusory Barriers are much less detrimental. I personally don't have much trouble with them due to packing a comical amount of movement and Smoke Bombs. Terrain manipulation is one of the most common strategies in Death March, so it's important to be prepared for it.
I see what you're saying ... but I was around a long time back and remember the exact same thing being said about cold spells and Priest Draw back in the day. "Just be prepared". I think it's very important to be considering whether something being overpowered unbalances the game, and in Death March it definitely does.
Yes, it can be very frustrating to be on the receiving end of Illusory Barrier, especially if you're not prepared for it. Similar to Burfft (Burst + Buff, e.g. Fireball+ Unholy Wellspring or Savage Curse) on Wicked Waterways or Central Processing Unit. Yes, I also agree that it's quite powerful on Death March, just like other terrain effects (Flash Flood etc.) That means you have to have a plan for it, like others have already said. If you don't want to race for the Barriers, run Smoke Bombs or cleansing priest or take a look of @Robauke's Death March Rocket Charge deck. Yes, I run Illusion + Ixtli Amulet in my deck. Illusory Barrier certainly doesn't need a nerf, since it isn't dominating / warping the meta outside the narrow Death Match league. Since leagues cycle every 5 hours nowadays, I don't think league specific item ban lists are necessary.
Constructed leagues are almost always going to be narrower, strategically, than normal ranked play—and in turn, they often reward strategies that aren't particularly good in ranked.
I don't see that as a particularly compelling argument for allowing things which are blatantly OP'd to be allowed.
What they're saying is that Illusory Barrier is annoying and very strong (but not broken since it's easily countered) in Death March, doesn't mean the card should be changed, because it's not as good in the rest of the game. If we had to balance all cards as to make them "not overpowered" in specific leagues we'd have a less interesting normal ranked play environment.
