Hero Changes and Tuning

Bummer, because I’ve got a 4.2K Jester King inbound at game start with nothing but a few pokey Dwarves to keep him at bay. Now I’ve got to capture an Elvin town and pray for a couple of Tree Whisperers…

Thanks,
Sparkster

Okay, there are a bunch of changes coming !!!

The Woodland Bard and Pirate Captain, now draws a random Mage/Rogue card from your deck and automatically deploys at the Bard/Captain for no Gold.

The Spirit/Blood Shamans now affect all the races, with bonus/minus for Orc/Goblin/Troll or Human/Elf/Dwarf.

The area of effect cards now do an attack that scales with the population of the target, so it is effectively a small attack on each individual in an army.

Other changes:

Elves
Beserker - is now a Rogue

Goblins
Little Wizard - Gold cost: 200, Mana cost: 9
Charming Rogue - draw 3 cards from deck, Gold cost: 175, Mana cost: 6

Trolls
Serpent Charmer - Mana cost: 8
Troglodytes - Restore: 12 hrs

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i think the descriptions on the cards are confusing, why have the “damage x X when X is number of units” when they are heroes and can’t be combined?

They should read, “the population of the target”

How is everyone finding these new AoE cards?

I’ve found the Storm Friar to be awesome in the midst of huge stacks of Zs. I haven’t had much luck with the Rune Dancer. The Marsh Warden has been good if there is a big stack of Zs in the swamp. I haven’t tried the Dark Forest Witch yet.

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Yeah, the Rune Dancer is a disappointment, so I never deploy him any more. Been looking for an opportunity to use the Storm Friar yet, but haven’t been playing a lot of recent games with Humans…

-Sparkster

Yeah Storm friar is currently awesome against large stacks, but the whole thing has sort of neutralized the AOE units ability to clean up individual units (like a single goblin)

I wonder if it would make sense if there was a base attack, followed by the current growth pattern?

Even if it was a small amount, it would allow the AoE units to still deal with that 1 goblin who’s creeping around.

Example: Storm friar does an attack thats 12+(# of units x2).

Also point of clarification: when these abilities are deciding how much damage they deal, does look at all the units on that node, or specifically units grouped together?

In other words, can I effectively reduce the damage my units take by ungrouping them before I launch an attack?

I think there could be a place for both old- and new-style AoEs in the game. Old-style is more useful against small stacks, new-style against large.

One of my favorite cards was the old-style Dark Forest Witch. The ability to sweep many small stacks from the map was not only convenient on a meta-level by shortening the drawn-out clean up phase, it was also just plain fun and satisfying to use.

2 Likes

I strongly agree. I think including a mix of the old- and new-style AoE attacks is the way to go. Not only does that leave more room for strategic variety, but it makes the different types of attack more exciting on their own!

I’d also like to go on record and say that in my opinion, Blighted Dragons should not be changed to use a new-style AoE attack. Dragons are, and should be, Hero-butchering monsters! The old-style AoE was what made them so fearsome; changing them to the new style would make them a minor nuisance at best.

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I didn’t even consider that they would be changed, but I concur. Leave dragons be, they’re perfect(ly terrifying).

The new style is a Mana-generating lawnmower. DFWs + TWs + GMs == Mauled Ground Troops + Huge Mana!

I agree (though DFW was always a wonderful mana farm), but using it this way makes it feel less like an AoE ability and more like a special, scaling single-target ranged attack that generates Mana. Not that there’s anything wrong with that at all! I just think there’s a lot more room in the game space for different sorts of ranged attacks, and limiting AoEs to scaling and single-target to flat values is a pretty needless, arbitrary limitation in my opinion. I would love to see single-target abilities that scale like the new AoE effects do, and some flat damage AoE abilities come back. I think there’s a place for all the different variations, because they’ll all end up in different strategic roles.

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I upped the Rune Dancer’s attack strength to 6 (from 3), so he should smash smaller zombies, like Goblins, if he can catch them!

He can just wait until they walk into his swamp…

Good improvement. He was another overly weak hero.

How is everyone feeling about the Little Wizard? Is he still too powerful? I did increase his Gold and Mana cost, but I have an idea for a “drawback”, similar to the High Elf and Blind Justice. All Heroes in the 3 league area (that he draws his power from) will have a 10% chance to be returned to their owner’s deck. Gold and population will be returned.

I hate to see him nerfed further because he’s just so fun, but I also think he’s still too powerful. Mass LWs is far and away the most effective Goblin strategy in every situation right now, and any card that dominates the meta like that probably needs a nerf.

I also really like that particular drawback for him (so long as there’s a clear indicator in the event log when your heroes get bounced!). I think it’s big enough that his costs could even come back down.

I vote YES.

Yes, I think his costs could come back down with the drawback added.

I think that the drawback would scale well as his power does, if you only have a few Heroes in range, you are likely to not lose any, but as it goes up you would risk losing some of the Heroes that you really need. You might also have to think carefully about which Heroes you will put in his range to power him.

Right, that’s why I like it so much. It doesn’t hurt his already-limited early game, but as he gets stronger, he weakens the rest of your army proportionally more. He might even bounce your other, yet-unused wizards from his stack… plus, more Goblin tricksyness! Overall I think this would be a great addition.

I feel like as long as the bounced heroes refund their costs when returned, this would be a great little quirk.
“For my first trick, I’m going to nuke that stack of zombie orcs. Then for my second trick, I’ll make half my army disappear!”

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I’m also in favor of this nerf HOWEVER I think something @DrBwaa said raises a more interesting/broader issue:

I remember hearing talks of limiting the number of copies of a single card a player puts in their deck, and I think this is maybe something to consider. Literally EVERY CCG I’ve ever played does this and for the exact reason that @DrBwaa suggests… sometimes a good card is just too good when you can run a billion of them.

Dealers are similar. I don’t have a ton, but I’ve seen @Aran pull off some pretty silly shenanigans in large games by being able to generate an insane amount of gold by having more than 2 in play.

I think if cards were limited in a certain sense, a lot of these balance problems would be moot. Lil Wizard wouldn’t be so tough if I couldn’t drop 4 pennons in a row followed by a wiz.

Just a thought.