The Myriad Problems With Behemoth
I've had a severe hatred of Behemoth for as long as I can remember, but until recently I didn't put all the pieces together as to why Behemoth is as terrible as it is.
My new realization is that Behemoth forces you to run cheap kingmovers to defend against it. As we all know kingmovers are the most boring type of piece, they defend everything around them and take 10 moves to get anywhere.
Anything that isn't cheap, and anything that isn't a kingmover, is by default a disadvantage against a Behemoth user. Imagine you run say Bishops and Angels, the coverage of these pieces is very easy for Behemoths to march past, and even if you stop them from marching past, you can't trade favourably against them, so they get to march past anyways. All those cheap minions you have for trading? Useless. Behemoth demands that all armies have a specific defense prepared.
I came to this realization when I was building armies, and I would remember that one guy who runs 2 behemoth and 2 minotaur, and I'd look at my setup and realize I would literally be lost on turn one because I was running angels and a dryad etc. Then I'd remove the fun pieces from my setup and replace them with boring cheap kingmovers. Woo.
This is only one flaw, here are another bunch:
Behemoth naturally synergizes with itself because only champions can trade with it, so every additional Behemoth is even more valuable than the last. Your opponent only has so many cheap kingmovers, just run more Behemoths than they have kingmovers, easy. Run your opponent out of champions to defend themselves with and then win. Lifestone Behemoth has and continues to be a serious combo which can win guaranteed against many setups. (at least thundermage nuance exists to RPS this woo)
Behemoth is by default RPS because any given army may put many more points into their minion line that normal, and so have that many fewer points in the pieces that are actually relevant against your Behemoth onslaught.
Behemoth synergizes unbelievably with Minotaur and again will provide you with sick autowins against many setups ( at least valk/prince nuance exists to RPS this WooOoOo)
The only good thing Behemoth does is force people to actually look past threat squares a bit to make sure their pieces are defended by champions.
Oh yeah and Behemoth is a boring kingmover piece as well, to top it off.
So that is 5 horrific cons and 1 great pro. This puts the piece at a -4 value of existence.
I think for any army you create it is possible to imagine it losing to any number of things, unless it was created using something very overpowered/broken. For most people, this probably involves imagining the new army against the types of things they have recently played against, which makes sense, but also probably overestimates what the opponent is capable of in most instances. In terms of behemoth, I think there are some problems similar to what you describe, but I think the points made about RPS are double-edged:
You describe how having cheap champions is a near-mandatory advantage against behemoth, but also say that having more points in minion line is a disadvantage. For this reason, the real behemoth RPS is probably closer to dove than drake, because a heavy costed minion line will force you into having more of what you describe as the counter to behemoth.
I also cannot accept 'boring kingmove' as valid negative, so among these things the 'spam behemoth until they run out of champions' type scenario is largest problem to me, and has been proven to be hazardous in the past, but honestly I don't think that strategy is viable anymore. If it were a problem, that may be a time where a tier shift could be used for something other than buff/nerf, simply to phase out low tier behemoth and raise the champion cost threshold of what can be traded into it, which would also raise the tier of lifestones involved in attemting to spam base tier behemoths.
There is also an alternative of: behemoth
cannot be targeted by units below 5 valueThis is a sidegrade that allows, immunity to smallest champions, most minions, etc. but which would allow the heaviest minions a chance to fight against the minotaur combo, and allow someone that hates behemoth additional options for dealing with it. This change would probably also change behemoth's value.
(just to be clear this isn't a planned change, but is an option I have been considering)also null synergy - anything nulled can't attack this version of behemoth, lolalthough it's granular, i would add "except king" to the proposed sidegrade behemoth option. otherwise you get another solomater much like hauntedarmor - except without the ability to shred the "armor" prematurely.
I'm perfectly fine with greed not being able to fight behemoth though - serves you right for running him!
Also, for reference, the only cost-4 champions with attacks are envy, siren, thundermage and toad - so not a lot of "up" to this sidegrade, which I suppose is the point.
Some other suggested behemoth reworks I remember from the kong forum days include converting the full-blown immunity to a form of armor: either a "once-and-dunce" take 1 hit from any minion, or a moonfox-style "reduce value instead of dying" clause.
This change would be perfect with nullmage, basically forces anyone using nullmage to use behemoth and visa versa. Also would make behemoth able to checkmate king by itself, unless your opponent is running pride or vamp or something
While you may be more correct when speaking about absolute balance (since you're ranked 1, so arguably positioned best to know), I think most people not close to your skill do not see / play / distinguish the differences / balance in exact terms or evaluation as you do. Or shorter, weaker players find different things stronger, or harder to overcome.
I understand / assume the post is meant for base Behemoth, since that is the one most tradeable, and not Behemoth in general (all tiers). I'll refer to Behemoth as B. Quoted parts are from your original post. Numbering points for referencing them later.
Here are my opinions / reactions:
"forces you to run cheap kingmovers to defend against it" - I don't see how it forces that. It does force champions (special mentions to Bomber, Snake, partially Frostmephit), but not their moveset. Kingmovers make defense easier, but not particularly / specially vs B compared to other things. I'd argue that minions blocking their way, since they "take 10 moves to get anywhere" would be a downside to kingmove defenders vs B.
"Anything that isn't cheap, and anything that isn't a kingmover, is by default a disadvantage against a Behemoth user." No, because (1), and because some more expensive champions might be / hard for B to deal with, e.g. SK++, Pyro, or can just ignore B threat of minion kills and make bigger threats (on King, more expensive champions) themselves. I do agree, that B is giving you advantage of relatively cheap champion trader, but so do other pieces (HA, MF, ranged / magic from afar). B just has different flavor to how it helps trading champs for cheap. You could say similar 'impossible to overcome efficiently' analogy for different units with their own flavor / advantage.
"synergizes with itself". Same as (2) for units with different flavors. The more blockers (armor) you have, the sooner opponent runs out of counters, the more long range / magic ... , double traders (MF, Gemini) ... . The more you invest / build for one idea / tactic, the more you can take advantage of it generally, but get screwed harder when countered. Specialise for easy wins and easy losses, generalise for difficult wins and difficult losses. I like easy ones, because it's time efficient farm + gimmicks / total control which are very fun for me when they work. I imagine you don't like any losses, because that's the only way to be on top.
Lifestone - it is its purpose to revive what helps you win more. Do more B help you win more ? We're back at (2) + (3).
B is RPS, ranged is RPS, magic is RPS, immunities of any sort are RPS, blocking is RPS, I guess we should be used to RPS by now. Maybe they're RPS to different extents, everything can not be same, but I find there are more and worse examples of RPS than B. You're guaranteed / forced to have 7 champions (what B forces as its RPS), unlike other exmaples of RPS. Is the answer RPS enough ? Depends, RPS.
"synergizes unbelievably with Minotaur" I don't agree. Well enough to be played, yes. Many other things are synergistic, that's what we want, and build army around. I agree with main-gi's example of Phoenix + nexus here. Is some other combination of B + x + y + ... even more RPS ? Aren't we all trying to build more RPS setup to be harder to play against ?
"only good thing". Well, absolutely no, or absolutely RPS, because what is good or not for this case is 100% personal preference. It's not your business / problem, if I use threat squares or not, so (insert stfu comment that doesn't sound as aggressive :). 'The only good thing we could do in life, is remove electricity from any use by mankind, because it would force people to actually do what they have electricity do for them now, and most of it even impossible to do. Like, playing, commenting on, discussing CEO' - rephrased your view of threat squares, trying to highlight how it sounds / what it means from my pov.
"boring kingmover". Again, some find kingmovers easier to play with, so you say aye, I say nay. RPS.
In conclusion, I don't agree with anything being horrific con. The only thing that seems horrific is the "pro" that forces thing onto me / others, but that preference of yours isn't my concern :) , as it shouldn't be vice-versa.
I only have two disagreements:
I think the threat square screwery with Behemoth is not worth it. Not actually a positive.
The Behemoth Minotaur isn't an autowin, as its gameplan can only really be limited to fully clearing out a Minotaur-protected area. The classic army version has the Minotaurs on d/e. I think it's like Phoenix Nexus, it has ridiculous defending power but it takes a while to reposition to any other column, time your opponent can use to just get their pieces out of the way from it (though adding a Ranger protected by Minotaur does get ridiculous).
Behemoth's passive is actually brilliantly designed, as a new player reads it and thinks "What?! It's immune to everything?!" because they may be used to the use of "minion" as a generic unit name. Trying to sort this confusion out makes Behemoth a training moment for new players, making them learn about minions and champions without nary a word of tutorialization.
Of course, you could just have a piece that mentions minions and champions somehow, or at least not make the "noob training" piece an Epic. But this is 𝓖𝒓𝖆ｎ𝓭 𝒅𝚎𝒔𝒊𝔤𝘯 after all.
once upon a time behemoth had an entire tutorial stage devoted to it for explaining passives
In my opinion Behemoth is a piece that makes you reconsider your army, because an effective army might be defeated by Behemoth, while an army effective against Behemoth might be easily defeated by other opponents