Attention! Deployment Rule Change for your Consideration / Feedback

[JayKyburz]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for all the good discussion on this issue. Its really valuable to be able to bounce ideas off you guys. I don’t always get the idea right the first time, and in past you guys have come up with some great ideas that have made the game better.

@Eshal

I really wish I understood better what the design intention is here; what are the real problems that are trying to be solved. It might help in making suggestions to improve the game.

I believe there are 3 design issues that can be solved by my proposals. To be clear though, nothing is “broken”, I just have a gut feeling that the game would be more enjoyable if these things were improved.

1. The game is about your power curve growing alongside the zombie power curve. Your job is to grow your power as fast as possible, and to try and slow the growth of the zombies, so that eventually when you feel you are strong enough, you take em out. If you deploy a big hand at the start, your power start at 10 instead of at 1. This issue is not such a big deal, I just think it’s a bit of a shame you miss out on the gameplay as you grow from 1 to that first 10.

• The proposed solution doesn’t prevent you from getting to 10, it just asks you to expand your empire for a little while first. (We are only talking about 1 or 2 days max)

• Also, I said in my original post that I think the game is too easy if you start with a really good hand. What I meant was that, if you are starting at strength 10, then for the zombies to be a fun challenge they need to start at strength 10. (Which can be scary for new players).

2. When an advanced player is playing alongside newer players at the start of a game, new player will feel inadequate when they see the advanced player drop a very good hand onto the battlefield and smash the zombies before they themselves really do anything effective.

• I believe the proposed solution would “hide” these differences a little by asking the advanced player to do a little more work expanding their empire a little first.

• using the power curve example above, it would feel better if both new and advanced players started at power 1, even if the advanced player grew to power 10 much faster than the new player.

• reducing starting cash also solves this problem - but new cash only comes around every 24 hours making it even more restrictive that the proposed solution.

3. The biggest issue is that it feels wrong to me, late game, when I have heaps of gold and valour, to just drop large numbers of heroes into the path of the largest zombie horde and stop it dead in its tracks. I think the game would “feel” more right if I needed to think ahead a little more, or spread out my deployment of heroes and armies across my empire and move them into position to meet the zombies.

• the proposed solution prevents you from deploying more than one card in a town for a time. There has been a lot of talk about about how it affects the start of the game, I think this is the bigger issue.

• reducing the starting cash doesn’t solve this problem. We could make heroes much more expensive, but that has all kinds of other problems.

• I think it was Dex above who said he like this, and that saving gold and cards in your hand for these kinds of emergencies is the fun game play, and I agree it is fun. I just worry that it undermines the strategy in our strategy game a little.

@Eshal

Now think about this real carefully. You have 1 unit, and you won’t be able to train a second one for 24 hours… what do you do?

Was this in regard to limiting starting gold?

To be clear in my proposal you can deploy a hero in a town every 6 hours. So when you start you have 1 starting army, and 1 card, and you can start training an army. Move the army and hero to the nearest towns.

6-8 hours later you should have 3 towns where you can deploy 3 more cards. These 3 plus your your new trained army, and your two starting units gives you 6 different directions you can be running.

Say 12-18 hours after than you could have 9 settlements total (if you had the valour) and could in theory deploy 9 cards from your hand if you wanted.

They just can’t all be deployed in the same place at the same time.

@DrBwaa

It seems to me that dramatically reducing starting gold would be an easy way to accomplish the main objective of eliminating gigantic starting armies

I did think about it, but gold is much tougher to come by because its only paid every 24 hours.

@Bradford

I mostly agree with DrBwaa on this, and feel like you guys might be overthinking the solution. I would simply reduce the starting gold, increase the gold cost to deploy hand cards, or a combination of both.

One thing I did realise, while thinking about starting gold is that, because some races are poorer than others, some races can do a lot more with the fixed amount of starting gold.

Troll heroes are generally a bit cheaper that other heroes because trolls have no money. We might need to consider adjusting the starting cash per race.

Also, I think there are some weidley prices cards right now. Penny is doing a pass this week I think looking at the price and strengths of the wizards in particular. (where the value of their power is not well take into consideration)

@Wismac

Next option is limit the quantity of cards in a deck.

Yes, this is an option I thought about a lot. Magic the gathering has a 4 card limit. Hearthstone has a 2 card limit. (Infact, if you have been playing long enough Blight had a 4 card limit for a while too! - the code is still in there.)

These card limits are useful smoothing out the power balance between new and advanced players, and preventing game breaking combos, so they might need to be something we bring back later, or just for tournament games, but for right now I think its fun to deploy your 10 elder mages and max out your mana for your ents!

@Bradford

Edit: That being said, I think you might seriously consider a larger overhaul of the card system. It seems like a collectible card game has been grafted onto the original Blight and it doesn’t really feel like a cohesive design. Furthermore, I think it kind of misses what makes collectible card games compelling and fun. I hope I’m not coming across as mean here; I’ll write up something a little more constructive later when I’ve got the time.

I would love to read your thoughts on this. We have been trying to innovate and bind the wargame and ccg. I would love to hear where you think we could improve.

@starry_wisdom

Assuming I have any time/energy tomorrow I will have a go at1) a normal game2) a game with minimal starting gold3) a game pretending I cant recruit more than 1 card in a 6 hour block

Don’t worry about starting gold, just try only deploying one hero in any town before jumping ahead.

---

I realise now that I went about this all the wrong way in my starting post. Here is what I should have said

I have a fun new challenge mode for you to try!

You can only deploy one card per town every 6 hours. This will force you to think ahead more! If we like it we could consider making it standard!

[Dex]

@JayKyburz

Can I ask how many cards you normally take in a deck?

Usually around 27, give or take a few. Usually around twelve of those are the “essential” cards. Sometimes I want about half of them anyway, most times I want less than that; I rarely want more than half of them.

@DrBwaa

As it stands now, each player calmly sends one (maybe two if the situation is bad) hero with crowd control to the biggest threat, and four or five others to claim towns.

I actually play the opposite. I will send about 3 cards to the front line to CC, defend and capture cities up there and maybe one will stick around the start (or go backward) to claim towns. I like having this option. As it is right now, I can play a few different styles and not feel like I’m losing out on the most efficiency. If I have less starting gold, I would feel compelled to repeat the same pattern of expanding as fast as I can so I can support a decent army. That being said, I am much more in favor of limiting starting gold than having a deployment rate limiter. I also liked a lot of the suggestions here (balancing the extreme cards, even if that will lower the incentive of collecting rare cards in the first place; limiting the cards played by type; points cost on the cards; etc.)

[Dex]

@JayKyburz

There has been a lot of talk about about how it affects the start of the game, I think this is the bigger issue.

Oddly, I think my entire first post was how it affects the other stages of the game, and doesn’t touch much at all on the beginning of the game. I think this stuff does limit the beginning, but then it also limits the mid- and late-game when I would expect easy-ish production.

@JayKyburz

I think it was Dex above who said he like this, and that saving gold and cards in your hand for these kinds of emergencies is the fun game play, and I agree it is fun.

I did say something like that, but my bigger point on game fun was about being able to drop an army on the other side of the map instead of playing in spectator mode for the final 2-5 days of a game while your army moved from one side to the other. If the spawn rate is limited, you will either spend a few days marching across the map, or you will spend a few days waiting on deployment timers (kind of like starting the game all over again); either way you aren’t playing much but watching the weak side of the map finally recover and end the game (unless it gets really out of control and the front line comes to you, but those games are rare.)

[DrBwaa]

@JayKyburz

To be clear in my proposal you can deploy a hero in a town every 6 hours. So when you start you have 1 starting army, and 1 card, and you can start training an army. Move the army and hero to the nearest towns.

6-8 hours later you should have 3 towns where you can deploy 3 more cards. These 3 plus your your new trained army, and your two starting units gives you 6 different directions you can be running.

Say 12-18 hours after than you could have 9 settlements total (if you had the valour) and could in theory deploy 9 cards from your hand if you wanted.

My main concern about relying on this was the fact that it introduces a huge mechanical advantage for people who are always able to check in every six hours (or more, if one group goes through mountains now you’ve got to check in at seven hours as well, etc…). Is that not something you’re worried about?

That said, I’m looking forward to trying out the new mode and seeing how it actually plays!

[Eshal]

@JayKyburz

Was this in regard to limiting starting gold?

Yes

@JayKyburz

The game is about your power curve growing alongside the zombie power curve. Your job is to grow your power as fast as possible, and to try and slow the growth of the zombies, so that eventually when you feel you are strong enough, you take em out. If you deploy a big hand at the start, your power start at 10 instead of at 1. This issue is not such a big deal, I just think it’s a bit of a shame you miss out on the gameplay as you grow from 1 to that first 10.

I believe I actually touched on this idea in the thread where we discussed making the end game more interesting. I think one of the reasons the end game seems to fall a little flat is that zombie power curve is almost an inverse of the player power curve. That is, the stronger the players become, the weaker and fewer the zombie populations become; that is, after the players first engage the zombies. So a typical game right now is -

First 24 hours - Build strength and delay/save a few towns, low level of engagement with the zombies.

Next 24 hours - Continue to built the production base, and begin engaging the zombies. Work on making advances that slowly start to push the zombies back. Players and Zombies fairly equally matched.

Next 24 hours - Production base is solid, the focus shifts fully towards pushing the hoards back. Players and Zombies start relatively equally matched. By the end of this time it becomes clear one side or the other has the advantage

End game 24-72 hours - Either your defensive forces collapse and eventually the game is going to end in a loss, or the players gain a distinct advantage and the zombies are no longer a match for the players.

Basically, it’s those middle 48 hours where the game is most enjoyable. Right now, for the most part the players and zombies start off fairly evenly matched. Both increase up until a point and then begin to diverge. My point here is that the game is most interesting when both the players and zombies are equally matched, right now the game does a fairly good job of that during the first 48-72 hours of the game. Sure you can start the players off at a 1 and the zombies off at a 10 - but that’s not very interesting IMO. It’s better when the players and the zombies both start off at 10. What you don’t want is for the zombies to start at 10, and the players to start at 20. I want to reiterate my point, its power balance not resource balance.

@JayKyburz

When an advanced player is playing alongside newer players at the start of a game, new player will feel inadequate when they see the advanced player drop a very good hand onto the battlefield and smash the zombies before they themselves really do anything effective.

Honestly, I’ve never felt this way, even when I started with just playing the basic cards at first. Of course I also had a better grip of the strategy than most because I spent a fair amount of time replaying the tutorial levels over and over again before going multi-player. I always felt like I contributed something. I’ve played a lot of games however with new players who sit back and turtle their area building their base rather than heading out for the front lines; like you said, maybe they get discouraged because they don’t have a chance to contribute much, but I would argue that has more to do with the player than the cards or anything else. The closer you put yourself to combat the more you’re going to be in a position to contribute to the game. I understand you don’t want players dropping a 10,000 strength army on the board first go. Yes, that could get discouraging also, but that only happens because of a few cards which extend the limit on starting resources; Miners, Snake Charmers, Elder Mages, etc. Again though, the key here is balance not limiting the deployment.

@JayKyburz

The biggest issue is that it feels wrong to me, late game, when I have heaps of gold and valour, to just drop large numbers of heroes into the path of the largest zombie horde and stop it dead in its tracks. I think the game would “feel” more right if I needed to think ahead a little more, or spread out my deployment of heroes and armies across my empire and move them into position to meet the zombies.

Again this kind of goes back to point #1. The fact is that after a point the player strength and zombie strength become inverse functions of each other. Spreading the players resources is certainly a good way to build on the strategy, this is one of the reasons Iron Crown as become my favorite map, because right away it has you fighting a two front war cooperatively with other players.

I’ll try to restate my idea from the end game discussion thread here… build tension escalating the threat rather than having it simply go away. Going along with the idea of ‘Hell Gates’ I proposed. Don’t let the zombie problem simply go away; keep sending out waves of zombies even if they don’t manage to take a single town. Escalate the threat until the very end; try to match step for step the players strength curve right up until the very end of the game.

This has been a recurring theme for me, right now I don’t find much compelling with Hard/Nightmare because it all it does is start the zombies at 20 instead of 10. It doesn’t add depth to the strategy of the game it just makes the hill harder to climb. Once you’ve climbed it, the game is basically over.

[starry_wisdom]

quick reply - will do some more bits in depth later (after I have played those games

@JayKyburz

The game is about your power curve growing alongside the zombie power curve.

dragonhelm knights and cards like that make this much less true - for me its
1)establish a firewall
2)draw all zombies away from cites
3)kill with ranged attacks

I’m unsure if this is good strategy or something that needs something more fundamental to change

@JayKyburz

(We are only talking about 1 or 2 days max)

I think we are talking closer to 6-12 hours (of micromanagement max … with lots of drawbacks anyway

@JayKyburz

I believe the proposed solution would “hide” these differences a little by asking the advanced player to do a little more work expanding their empire a little first.

I disagree - without details of an example map and cards you are thinking of its hard to know if we are talking about the same thing - I think it will weaken the newer player more than the advanced ones, this is unless you consider for instance when I started having 2 essential dragonhelm knights + 2 from my deck an ‘advanced player’, if its the eldermage+high elf you are thinking of in particular (or combos like that) I think it would only delay it marginally while delaying more basic decks more

@JayKyburz

The biggest issue is that it feels wrong to me, late game, when I have heaps of gold and valour, to just drop large numbers of heroes into the path of the largest zombie horde and stop it dead in its tracks. I think the game would “feel” more right if I needed to think ahead a little more, or spread out my deployment of heroes and armies across my empire and move them into position to meet the zombies.

I never get into that situation - I want the cards early to stop the zombies and the money to push them back, its a disaster if I’ve let them get that far, also I would still be able to deploy a single hound master, wizards etc for the same effect

re deckbuilding - I think there is a good discussion to be had with it but im dont think it would solve any of these problems, maybe we should start another thread? (if I get time I will start one)

@JayKyburz

I realise now that I went about this all the wrong way in my starting post. Here is what I should have said

lets pretend this is what I heard then

@JayKyburz

I have a fun new challenge mode for you to try!

Great I love challenges and hard games and would love to have as many in the game as possible, simple ones (like this), crazy ones like don’t recruit use any cards, hard ones (like a one city challenge), I wouldn’t consider it a priority but that sounds great

@JayKyburz

If we like it we could consider making it standard!

arrrgh this sounds like a horrible mode for the base game

[Praetorian]

Jay.

If the issue is the number of elite cards that can be deployed, the simple solution would be to simply limit the number or types of cards in a deck.

Option 1:
Make it so you can only have 4 of any one type of rare, 7 of uncommon and unlimited common.

Bam. You have done two things…

1. added a bit more strategy to deck building by forcing scarcity.

2. make it so players with deep decks can only utilize some of that deck. This eliminates heavily seeding a deck and spamming elite cards.

Or…

Option 2:
Limit the number of cards at a particular scarcity that can be deployed in a settlement in a 24 hour period. Make it so you can only deploy one rare card in 24 hours, and maybe no more than 2 in 24 hours. BUT! Allow common cards to be dropped at an infinite rate. Everyone has access to common cards, so that should over advantage those with deep cars collections over much.

This would add a strategic value to the card rarities.

[Praetorian]

And I agree with everyone previous, limiting the number of cards you can drop on a single settlement isn’t a great solution. It will force us to have to pay more attention… and reduce on the attractiveness of the game to the many casual players who currently like the style of play.

[starry_wisdom]

@Dex

I also liked a lot of the suggestions here (balancing the extreme cards, even if that will lower the incentive of collecting rare cards in the first place; limiting the cards played by type; points cost on the cards; etc.)

I’m unsure how many extreme cards there are - I do wonder most the ones I like are in the common and uncommon even, and are things like the dragonhelm knight, dark witches etc, while there needs to be a balance pass I think 90%+ can be fixed just by changing cost or mana cost

@DrBwaa

My main concern about relying on this was the fact that it introduces a huge mechanical advantage for people who are always able to check in every six hours (or more, if one group goes through mountains now you’ve got to check in at seven hours as well, etc…). Is that not something you’re worried about?

I was kind of assuming that this would be followed quickly by adding a way to say claim this town as you go thought and the other option of deploy 3 cards in 24 hours idea - which is why Ive focused elsewhere

@Eshal

I think one of the reasons the end game seems to fall a little flat is that zombie power curve is almost an inverse of the player power curve.

I would agree and argue that something else should be added, what depends on what combination of
1)able to plan things to extreme levels if wished
2)sort out the unplanned disaster
a)having a feeling of we just need to survive to (x) - and doing something to shortening the game
b)having the zombie power growth at a higher rate - prolonging the meaningful part of the game - just the fact that - its too easy to control them at the moment for there to be a meaningful curve (and the fact all there power comes from cites taken means that there is an upper limit on how much power they can make), I have found control them long enough and they die out.

1 and 2 conflict somewhat with each other, a and b totally conflict with each other, its hard to know what to suggest without knowing which direction the game wants to move in, quick example ideas

1a) neutral reinfocements will arrive after (x), meaning you dont have to hunt down every last one, speeding up the end
1b) zombies get stonger over time predictably (for instance a +1 experience modifier per day
2a) random good events of some sort (its sunny today, 10days% number of bodies decay
2b) random bad events (a zombie lord rises up with extreme personal power (strength 1000days))

@Eshal

Honestly, I’ve never felt this way, even when I started with just playing the basic cards at first. Of course I also had a better grip of the strategy than most because I spent a fair amount of time replaying the tutorial levels over and over again before going multi-player. I always felt like I contributed something. I’ve played a lot of games however with new players who sit back and turtle their area building their base rather than heading out for the front lines; like you said, maybe they get discouraged because they don’t have a chance to contribute much, but I would argue that has more to do with the player than the cards or anything else. The closer you put yourself to combat the more you’re going to be in a position to contribute to the game. I understand you don’t want players dropping a 10,000 strength army on the board first go. Yes, that could get discouraging also, but that only happens because of a few cards which extend the limit on starting resources; Miners, Snake Charmers, Elder Mages, etc. Again though, the key here is balance not limiting the deployment.

the only time Ive felt it is when I have had a bunch of elder mages dropped followed by high elves followed by killing the biggest stacks - before the game started

Miners, Snake Charmers, Elder Mages - I think the rules for each of these cards needs work in some way, these were the ‘wish for more wishes’ cards i was talking about

@Eshal

I’ll try to restate my idea from the end game discussion thread here… build tension escalating the threat rather than having it simply go away. Going along with the idea of ‘Hell Gates’ I proposed. Don’t let the zombie problem simply go away; keep sending out waves of zombies even if they don’t manage to take a single town. Escalate the threat until the very end; try to match step for step the players strength curve right up until the very end of the game.

funny I was going to suggest a similar idea only I was thinking of having moving necromancers,will have to try to find that thread

@Eshal

This has been a recurring theme for me, right now I don’t find much compelling with Hard/Nightmare because it all it does is start the zombies at 20 instead of 10. It doesn’t add depth to the strategy of the game it just makes the hill harder to climb. Once you’ve climbed it, the game is basically over.

I cant say for sure, but I fear the same will be true for me quickly. unsure if that means the cards I love are too strong (dragonhelm knight, tree wisperer, but the tactics with them are fun imo)

hope this all isnt too rambely or long, probably should of waited til morning, but if I do that there is a risk it wont be typed

[Praetorian]

@JayKyburz

The proposed solution doesn’t prevent you from getting to 10, it just asks you to expand your empire for a little while first. (We are only talking about 1 or 2 days max)

On this point – a slower start is going to be worst on Trolls. I love Trolls, but ohmygod its painful at the beginning to slog around everywhere. By the time the Trolls have their second city, other races like Elves and Goblins will be on their 3rd or 4th… and thats really no fun.

I love Trolls. They are easily my favorite race because of the challenge, but that speed penalty inherent in the race is already a huge obstacle to overcome (and a reason many players shy away from the Trolls) and a slower start (without major changes to the starting maps and positions) will make that first day or so MISERABLE for Troll players.

[starry_wisdom]

@JayKyburz

I would love to read your thoughts on this. We have been trying to innovate and bind the wargame and ccg.

I probably have bits to add to this too but I am unsure if my thoughts on this would be useful or not if you are expecting to make most of your money via people buying hero coins I don’t think my views are useful, if you hope for people to buy the premium version they may be, as when I look at a game desgins I am far more bothered about trying to create the best game possible - I’m not really interested in the free to play (where it means and buy a advantages in game) models.

I fear that my sub 1 hour sleep may not make this the best time to type it though and if I’m honest I do wonder how much gibberish I type normally anyway.

[thatfrood]

I like this idea, I think there is a problem with sudden explosions of units. It seems nuts that I can have a banner out in the middle of nowhere, then suddenly explode it into having a strength of 2000. There’s a degree of planning there, but what it does functionally is have me not spend anything on heroes until I know I absolutely need them.

I also agree, though, that for certain races it would be more crippling than others, like for trolls.

If you made this change, though, I would argue you should also institute a “starter army” where in addition to choosing what cards they want in their deck, the player can also pick cards they want to start with that will appear in their starting city at the beginning of the game, spending their starting gold on them. Whatever they don’t spend becomes the gold that they start with.

This way, you can both strategize with your opening set of cards, have a faster start, and also limit the number of reinforcements a location can get in one turn.

One of the things I like most about this change is it makes banners much more useful, as they increase the number of times you can reinforce a location. (although it creates an interesting question, why can a banner reinforce out in the middle of a murky swamp, but a city that is in reinforcement cooldown can’t draw reinforcements from its neighboring city, connected to it by a road and a league away?)

edit: thought, what if when you create a banner, rather than drawing civilians from the nearest city, it instead has a mana cost ability that allows it to take 50 pop from the city it is in and carry it with it? This is both a buff and a nerf, because it can be used to save civilians in dire situations, but also limits the number of times it can reinforce based on the population it is carrying.

[MechaMarshmallow]

I feel like my opinion differs from that of many here, and I’m particularly new to this game so maybe this is something that more experienced players feel differently on, but in my opinion the original proposals for changes sound very exciting to me. Because to me, the interesting and exciting part of this game is the large scale, ‘macro’ strategic maneuvers of your troops over a large area.

Managing logistics and positioning to get your troops in the right place at the right time is what I like to play with and improve at through playing this game. However, as I earn more and more powerful cards through play I am increasingly finding that this is not how the game is played at all. Rather, after grabbing the important sites near your starting location, it seems most profitable to beeline the closest race-relevant city to the most largest manageable zombie hoard, capture it, and then dump every strong card you have on it, rendering any semblance of long term strategic planning pretty much moot as, in this game that takes time to be a core mechanic, you can instantly make an elite army pop up out of nowhere.

Even worse, if you made a strategic blunder and realise that your forces are out of position and required somewhere five leagues away, that should spell failure for you, or at least a major setback, right? Not so, as you can just poof your army out of the nether in a nearby village and not even need to redeploy your main force.

The more I’ve been learning how to utilize the cards in this way, the less fun I have been having with this game, and it’s disappointing to me because at a fundamental level I really do enjoy the game.

One thing I might propose based on the common objection that it would require people to check on more regularly - what if you could ‘queue’ up card deployments in the proposed system? Perhaps you can’t check in for 12 hours, but if you could line up two cards, or even multiple troop training actions, it could completely negate the negative effects that this change could have on the ‘feel pressured to check in more’ part of the dissenting voice.

None the less, I am very much hoping cards are changed to remove the strategy-reducing element that they currently appear to pose, whatever the solution may be.

[Eshal]

@MechaMarshmallow

However, as I earn more and more powerful cards through play I am increasingly finding that this is not how the game is played at all. Rather, after grabbing the important sites near your starting location, it seems most profitable to beeline the closest race-relevant city to the most largest manageable zombie hoard, capture it, and then dump every strong card you have on it, rendering any semblance of long term strategic planning pretty much moot as, in this game that takes time to be a core mechanic, you can instantly make an elite army pop up out of nowhere.

Honestly… I have almost never grabbed the towns closest to my starting position. I’ve always been the type to push forward first thing. I’ve seen a lot of newer players who play where they settle back and grab close by towns and the key point they seem to miss is that many of the front line towns are entirely possible to save.

That being said, there are a few maps where I would agree with you that the strategy is not very deep; maps like Queens Maul. The basic strategy is fairly easy, and it’s completely possible to win this map without claiming a single town if everyone knows what they are doing. Other maps like the Iron Crown aren’t this way at all. You definitely have to build force and strategize more.

[MechaMarshmallow]

Honestly… I have almost never grabbed the towns closest to my starting position. I’ve always been the type to push forward first thing.

I may not have been entirely clear, I was in a bit of a hurry writing that post. When I say that I mean say, a hydra pool on the map where you start next to two of them, or convenient mana wells. Taking generic towns away from the front line always seems like a losing move, unless there are no front-line towns you can reliably defend and need that gold income.

Other maps like the Iron Crown aren’t this way at all. You definitely have to build force and strategize more.

I’m excited to see these maps! I’ve only played a handful of games so far, so my experiences and opinions are not fully formed. I just had, for example, an experience earlier when I woke up and saw that 2k zombies were moving in on the position I moved 1k of my troops to overnight. I felt that I needed to move back, fairly punished for making a mistake of overextension, but then I realised that I could easily drop a bunch of cards on that spot and win the fight, then probably push on and win the game on my side of the map from that position. It was a bit of a disappointing moment for me.

[starry_wisdom]

Honestly sometimes I feel like I’m playing a different game to everyone, If I let the zombies get into melee it’s exceedingly rare, normally a tactic of last resort The idea of keeping cards in my hand which aren’t units that are movement compulsion units, ranged units or something that aids either of those is strange, I never get into that situation as the cards need to be deployed and before you the game for a while all possible moved planned out for the zombies so they wont reach a town.

Probably why playing as goblins or orcs for me feel like aliens - goblins are just worse elves - they have bows (and no movement compulsion/ rooting abilities), and orcs are just crazy, so few ranged attacks and no movement control arrrgh

[JayKyburz]

Hey thanks for showing some support for the idea @MechaMarshmallow and @thatfrood

A starting army is not a crazy idea at all, and I quite like your idea about the banners too.

I think being able to queue deployments and power power activations is a very popular request so I would like to get to it as soon as the base game is done. Perhaps before we try and launch on steam.

[Dex]

@starry_wisdom

lets pretend this is what I heard then

JayKyburz:
I have a fun new challenge mode for you to try!

Great I love challenges and hard games and would love to have as many in the game as possible, simple ones (like this), crazy ones like don’t recruit use any cards, hard ones (like a one city challenge), I wouldn’t consider it a priority but that sounds great

JayKyburz:
If we like it we could consider making it standard!

arrrgh this sounds like a horrible mode for the base game

This is the exact same thing I thought when reading his post.

I also “liked” a couple of your other posts because I agreed with them almost completely. We seem to have similar thoughts regarding gameplay.

[starry_wisdom]

I will try to get those test games in soon, it may make it obvious if the issues I think will show themselves do or don’t. may make this a far more useful discussion, will also try some starts I know on multiplayer maps to see how it impacts them

dex - also good to know at least some times I make sense to someone, I do wonder sometimes especially as often i’m writing @ 1am