Encumber is an incredibly powerful tool, especially with the wizard's easily accessible control spells and terrain attachments. Chilling Rime? Not OP. Cold Snap? Not OP. And yet, these cards are still quite strong. They offer an immense amount of utility while still putting out a respectable amount of damage. Cone Of Cold? Debatably OP. It offers the same utility as the cards above - except 2 for 2, instead of 1 for 2 or 2 for 1, and it does it in an area. This card is even more synergistic with damage boosting cards (Unholy Power, for example) due to the fact that it can hit multiple targets (which can be said for a lot of cards. Still, a factor worth considering.) Frost Jolt Doubtlessly OP. Compare this to a card like Mighty Spark. Frost Jolt just does almost as much damage, and Frost Jolt has more range. Yet it's considered a lower quality card than Mighty Spark. Which is more significant.. "Hard to Block"... Or drastically reducing (and potentially eliminating) someone's movement for two full turns. Hard to Block is situational. Its usefulness is based on whether or not your opponent has a card to block it with to begin with. Even then, this won't prevent that block from being used eventually, so long as your opponent survives long enough to be attacked again. Furthermore, all it does it make -Hard- to block, not impossible. If your opponent still manages to succeed with their block, then this effect did absolutely nothing. That being said, there is also every possibility that the card wouldn't have been lucky enough to block the card to begin with, even if your opponent has a card to block it with. Compare that to the impact of having ALL of your movement reduced by TWO for two full turns. Last I checked, having your movement reduced isn't very situational at all. It certainly isn't negligble either, considering it cuts an elf's movement in half, shortens a human's movement by 2/3, and completely eliminates dwarf movement. Now, please don't confuse overpowered with game-breaking. If you compare these cards to their peers, they are simply far more powerful. By definition, they are overpowered. The utility of encumber alone is enough for these cards to earn their place in a wizard's deck. When you add damage, range, and AoE, it starts to spin out of control. Especially when you consider the powerful items that these cards come with don't have any bad cards to pay for their value. Frost Staff Staff Of Winter Staff Of The Arctic No one that plays this game regularly can fail to notice that all of the high ranking players (the ones that use wizards) use frost spells, and for good reason. To sum it all up. - Immense utility and synergy - Still offers a respectable amount of damage and range - Encumber is incredibly powerful, all by itself.
Might want to take a look at this discussion about encumber/frost: http://www.cardhunter.com/forum/thr...orced-discard-of-movement-cards-instead.2078/
Ah. Saw that thread then when it was new but I didn't think it had evolved into a pseudo nerf-thread.
