4Game

With the recent qualifier, my own experience, and the experience of many others, it is clear that Alumni are back to being extremely strong. I don't like to throw around "broken" "unbeatable" etc, because that is not true, they are beatable- but the problem is the binary or "rock-paper-scissors" matchups they seem to create. I've also seen many suggestions that would completely gut the deck, which in my opinion, is not a good outcome. So what to do? I don't have a definitive solution so I thought I'd just spill my thoughts and hopefully start some discussion.

Let's take a look at the cards themselves:

Ban Ard Student and Aretuza Student are balanced, in vein with other modern Bronzes. For 4p you get a floor of 4, and a 1 per turn engine, but with the downside of needing to choose whether to take your payoff at any given moment or be greedy and let more Patience tick.

Alumni is an issue. For 6p you get a 4 point floor, but in reality, I've never seen Alumni truly brick except in their one and only poor matchup (we'll get to this later), and they can usually reach their Zeal condition with no problem. Assuming they've reached it, even at the minimum, that's 8 for 6, with the choice of whether to get boost or damage, and they usually play for much much more. Another important aspect is the carryover- winning a round with big students also means you've set up massive Alumni. But at base value, the card is balanced for its provisions.

But how? How do these cards that are, numerically, quite balanced, feel so oppressive to face and borderline impossible to beat without control?

The answer, I believe, lies in the surrounding cards. Facing two of each student and two alumni is doable with most decks. But you're never facing this, in reality, you are facing:

Two of each student from the base amount

Another student from Adalia

Another student (usually) from Chapter of Wizards' Runeword, and another from the order

Another student from Shani

That's an awful lot of 4 point units that MUST be removed in three turns or less. If one or two slip through you are finished. Also, not being able to answer Leticia + a student means the game is lost.
Because you're not facing just two Alumni either- the most common plays I've seen for Alumni decks in the final round are:

The two alumni from the base amount

Multiple orders from the same alumni with Casting Contest

Additional plays of the existing alumni with Practice Makes Perfect

Even if the alumni were kept to relatively low values, these combos mean that most decks are screwed by this point. Furthermore, the students and alumni are only the bronzes of the deck! So somewhere, you have to deal with Raffard's massive tempo as well as whatever else big cards the deck decided to bring, like the NR Duelers or Defender protecting the others.

But surely, they can't draw all of these?

This is true, you will typically face just some of these cards as Alumni can't fully cycle their deck. But you are guaranteed to face the strongest cards because of AA, the deck has alright thinning/cycling with Raffard's and Istredd, and I've even seen people using Siege Master just to proc it with only Raffard's. It is possible the Alumni player will completely brick their deck and not have students or not have big plays, but this is unlikely and also a potential lose condition for virtually any deck.

The result is that most Alumni matches, if you don't have an answer every turn, it quickly devolves into a "Master Skywalker, there are too many of them!" situation but your cards are the younglings and the alumni player is Anakin.

So, what can beat Alumni?

The only answer is control. I guess some insane meme greed might work, but alumni are also decently equipped to handle your greedy plays with a light smattering of their own control.

But even control can struggle with the massive amount of students- I think this is best summed up by a match from the last Masters in December: Kams brought a ST list that seemed entirely built to counter Alumni, with bombs, removal, even techs like Epidemic. And he still lost in the first round to BigKuKuRUzina's Alumni list.

However, things aren't as dire as this implies. The minor Raffard's nerf coupled with the power levels of factions rising across the board means that some decks can beat alumni. Milva is no longer meta but still playable and does well against the deck, ST nature can work, NG tactics does well, NG status works. Assimilate has an odd matchup, I would say it's sort of neutral but you can highroll or have insane play and pull off better Alumni than the Alumni player. SY Bounty or even midrange has the ability to quickly butcher even several students with things like Freakshow or Witch Hunter Executioner (or failing that, even Alumni's pointslam can fall to Savolla shit).

However, with the exception of SY (lol), most of these decks are mediocre in other matchups, which leads us again to the key problem:

Alumni is the very definition of binary. You either are playing a deck with little/medium/no control, and you have a very high chance of a loss. Or, you run a silver bullet deck with tons of control and completely bully out Alumni. You can usually predict the result of a game with alumni just by looking at the opposing deck, which is the epitome of unfun.

So what can be done?

In my opinion, changing the raw numbers of the students or alumni is not the solution- the answer or lose feeling will likely remain even if the points total is slightly lower. It's like how nerfing KoB by a few points does nothing.

Changing the surrounding core of duplication/replaying cards is not the solution either- this would have the unwanted consequence of gutting other NR decks which are mediocre or meme tier.

I think that something has to be done about the core issue with the students creating unstoppable carryover if unanswered. Row-locking patience is a start, but that would only make it easier for some factions to deal with them. Perhaps something like, each Alumni order banishes a student from the graveyard and uses its patience values, which would mean one or two students sticking isn't a guaranteed win, plus Alumni can't be reused a bunch of times. But honestly I'm not sure.