The balance in 2012 seems improved in some ways, and overcompensated in others. In the previous iteration (let's call it "2010") there were several decks that were too powerful, or had the potential to be too powerful. In 2012 the balance seems to have been dialed back too much and as a result there are several decks that lack focus and a semblance of core strategy, perhaps out of fear that they would become unbalanced. For example, Ancient Depths has real purpose and is fun to play: this is an example of a good deck. Machinations on the other hand is just painfully dull. It's nowhere near as interesting as the Glaze Fiend deck in 2010-- it's just a bunch of small artifact creatures haphazardly thrown into a stack of cards. 4x
Etherium Sculptors doesn't automatically make a deck a good artifact deck.
Another issue in 2012 is land balance. I find myself constantly gasping for mana with Dragon's Roar no matter how many non-land cards I remove, and there are not enough creative means to get dragons onto the field. When I have to cycle through hands three and four times to get more than 1-3 land cards there is a problem. The amount of black spells in the deck and the lack of black lands (6!) is astonishing. Yes, it's true that most or all of them only require one black mana to cast, but in reality it's still meager (
especially if you don't edit the deck heavily, which is impossible to do while in the process of unlocking cards due to the 60 card minimum). There are also no means to search your deck for black lands to mitigate this. For these and other reasons, this is another example of a poorly conceived deck, and it really becomes apparent when you play against a deck like Ancient Depths which has fluid, well-considered method for getting big creatures onto the field.
I haven't played through with all the decks yet, but what I've seen has been, sadly, pretty bland. Here are my personal analyses of the decks I've experienced:
- Ancient Depths (Kiora Atua) - Great deck, has a purpose. Fluid. Dynamic. Fun. I don't like playing against it though because of the constant casts. Teeters on the edge of imbalance without falling off (in my opinion).
- Guardians of the Wood (Nissa Revane) - Pretty good deck, has a purpose. Could be better with more thoughtful card choices. Oscillates between good and great depending on whether or not you get key cards (I suppose this could be said about many decks in MTG, though)
- Machinations (Tezzeret) - Haphazardly assembled, boring, lacks any potential for dynamic strategy. I hated playing with it.
- Dragon's Roar (Sarkhan Vol) - Has a purpose but insufficient means to realize it. Serious land-balance issues. Relies too heavily on getting a very specific series of cards to really work, and even if you get those cards there's a high chance they're going to get canned on the battlefield before you're able to utilize them. And before you say "that's why you wait to cast them" it's already going to be too late in that case, too.
- Wielding Steel (Gideon Jura) - Not memorable, but decent enough. I enjoyed the process of unlocking it.
- Blood Hunger (Sorin Markov) - It's OK. Not nearly as fun as the non-vampire black deck in 2010 (I forget the woman's name). Obviously it's been severely neutered from the 2010 version, and rightly so. I think they may have dialed it back a hair too much, however.
Will I buy 2013? Yep. Will I buy every expansion in between? Yerp. But I think they can do better. Oh, and fix the "thinking" time in console single-player, please. Coupled with the constant loading screens it dominates the experience. It's a bit better in the PC version obviously, but there is no reason it should be loading so much and for so long.