I think the preemptive caution that was exercised on Soul Stealer was largely due to people already, at the time, not using expensive units because they were way to vunerable. Soul Stealer has a double effect.  Not only is your unit effectively sniped but your opponent gains a unit.  If your Decendent, or your Blood-dragon knight is stolen from you, not only are you down your finnishing unit, your opponent is up a finishing unit. This can be as game changing as a well executed Verena, so I think it is a very powerful card.  The fact that noone uses it speaks more to the lacklustre start pool of the DE's than the weakness of Soul stealer.  Starts are important.  That being said I agree it should be removed.  If the environment changes as it always does, it's not so unreasonable to re-assess the actual power of restricted cards.  It's essentially the same as assessing yet to be released cards only they have a history, and infamy, which can be fun.

All that being said what ever happened to the errata approach.  Why not just change the wording on cards to something more reasonable like they did with the bolt throwers.  Restrictions aren't fun, certainly less fun than errata's.  Ex. Change Mining Tunnels to a constant effect: When you develop you may draw a card, no stacking, not so overpowered.  …. All THAT being said, what is really so outragious about the Dwarves having the most powerful 2 cost support in the game that plays right into their theme as a dev heavy, defensive, outlast your opponent race… Mining Tunnels for Life!!  …….and ban contested village…. *cough*

rzarectz said:

Now THAT'S provocative! It's an auto-include, so maybe that's all it takes for a banning. 

HappyDD said:

I would like to see Contested Village on the restricted list, just to slow down the early game, but they are going to address its auto-include status in a different way that is also interesting.

Entropy42 said:

I heard! You get to punch your opponent once for each Contested Village in their deck before the game begins!

You keep that spoiler info to yourself, Entropy. I'm on the outside, I'm still surprised when I open a Battle Pack, it's still just like a mini-Christmas.

Entropy42 said:

I don't think that the way  you are talking about will be effective just as it isn't now. Some races have much more 1 turn economy cards than others so taking contested village away is hurting orc more than empire (huntsmen, forge).

HappyDD said:

How did you know about the unreleased punching rules?

Edit: And I would never actually release spoiler info, don't want to be the grinch who stole christmas.

Ops, didn't see you were replying to HappyDD and you can't delete posts on these forums, so this edit will have to do…

Entropy42 said:

Hmmm… How about the Grinch that stole Thanksgiving?