On reflection - and reading through the thread’s further comments - I think this status effect is too much as is. Its far too intrusive.
- It doesn’t make much sense thematically - one troop is frozen and I can no longer use the board properly? Seems like something that should be more localized.
- It forces the afflicted player to play badly - kind of self-explanatory with the inability to make use of 4-/5-matches but the need to get rid of them anyway. But it also becomes a question of whether you want to keep that troop alive at all if its having a debilitating effect on your gameplay - if its in front and its preventing you from chaining things, would you let it get hit by skulls a couple times so you could continue? I realize it probably lasts 3-4 turns on average but the thought crossed my mind…
- It ironically also makes the OTHER player play badly - if my enemy has this cursed troop stopping them getting extra turns and vacuuming up mana, I’m sure as hell not going to wipe it out the first chance I get while its still having that effect
Instead of just locking down everything, this could be something that functions on the afflicted troop’s abilities and/or mana colors. So if you have a frozen Goblin King, it doesn’t give you extra turns for brown and green, but it will for the other four colors. Not entirely sure how that would work for transformers i.e. Valkyrie being frozen should lock up red, yellow and blue? More likely it would just be red and yellow unless she uses her ability in which case no extra turns can be gained from matching tons of blue or any ensuing cascades’ extra turn matches.
At any rate, keeping it localized to the afflicted troop/s allows people to play around it in ways other than running Herdmaster or Sheggra’s Heart whenever they have to deal with this.
Also, I am completely fine with this countering goblins, but being such a hard counter to an entire goblin team is not ideal. Localizing the effect would be healthier.