Ah, that explains it 
2 x Fort Bonus would have been laughably weak, yeah.
One thing these new bosses do is they make the Assassin much less valuable. As itâs basically a boss-killer, I donât anticipate it seeing play when the vast majority of bosses have well over 500 Strength. The Assassin might merit a buff alongside these changes, or a rewording altogether, like just âdestroy a single unit (or one unit in a stack) in the same location as the Assassinâ. Though that might be too strong; I donât know really what the intended power level is for that card.
maybe âdestroy a single unit under X powerâ? and if all are above 500, make it do a regular 500 strength throw? Or up itâs cost a bit and raise itâs ability power along the same lines?
It would be a bit underwhelming if your 150 gold unit could just one-shot bosses reliably though (assuming they havenât grown too much).
Thanks for the suggestions @shde2e. I will change it to something along these lines so that it is clear that is based on the population size.
Did the next round of bosses just go live? All the bosses in my games just disappeared.
yep. sorry.
A thought on the Lich King:
The mana restriction coupled with growing stronger via mana usage makes it so the King often hamstrings itself. The expensive mana use makes it so players tend to not want to use mana which keeps the King from growing.
Perhaps like the kingâs growth to number of mana pools on the board that are blighted? Maybe something like +40 Power to the Lich King per blighted Mana Pool? That would 1) make protecting mana pools that much more imperative and 2) add some utility to the Pool Priestess .
Sounds like the boss is actually working pretty well then, since it causes players to actively cripple themselves. If players arenât using a lot of mana, theyâre not using many of the most effective units and abilities in the game, which is a serious disadvantage. And if youâre playing elves you pretty much rely on said abilities.
Yeah, the power works fine, but the second part (where he gains power via mana use) doesnât jive well with his crippling of the playersâ mana use. There is no real sense of time sensitivity.
Another thought could be it gains strength any time a previously unblighted mana pool would pay out. Like its drawing power from the blighted mana pools.
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I think the Queen of Liesâ power increase is a bigger problem. She can immediately pop at 3-4k strength in a 6-player game, which puts her on par with strength-focused bosses like the Lord of Purgatory.
That said, I do like Diaphanousâs alternative for the Lich King, although I would simplify it to âpower increase of 40x number of Blighted Pools every 24 hrsâ. Currently I still prefer the Lich King as-is, though; its power increase through mana use prevents players from just brute forcing through its penalty with excessive mana generation. Think of it as an additional penalty for the late-game (when his initial cost increase isnât as crippling) rather than something meant to synergize with the mana increase.
The QoL is kind of interesting because she will be much bigger in 6 player games than 2 player games. I hope it will work out that she will force co-operation a little more because players will need to assemble forces or send money to the player having to deal with her.
The Master of Coin and Lich King feel like they are double dipping. They both, get strong from use of the resource and double the cost of using the resource. I like that the Queen of Lies at least has a bit of variety; she doubles the use of a resource, but doesnât also get stronger from that (now doubled) resource. Instead, she gets stronger from another related thing, number of settlements. I think the Lich King would be better served getting stronger from mana wells in one of the fashions suggested above or from the number of times abilities are used. Maybe the Master of Coin gets stronger from the number of individual player cards on the board. Merging could be used to weaken the boss some, but I bet there would be enough different cards on the board far enough apart that you couldnât merge the boss into an gimped state.
The Trailblazers ability to teleport to nearby mana wells has me concerned. This seems like the sort of thing that could run out of control quickly. You canât get to a lot of mana pools before his ability fires off next, so it could be difficult to get ahead of him, and not necessarily in a good way. I also donât usually have enough strength to fend him off until at least a few days in (especially in experimental mode), and usually that is using fortifications somewhere. Thatâs going to let him get have his way with mana pools for a while, which might become a turn off instead of an exciting challenge that I feel like I can do something about. My only hope is compulsion or a root. Can he teleport out of those?
In all cases, I plan to gather more data by playing to see how it works out.
EDIT: I do really enjoy the new strength of the bosses though and their increasing difficulty. I think they are good ideas in principle and in practice.
That requires a moderate level of power. If sheâs too powerful, it turns from âwe need to send our neighbor resources to take her outâ into âWelp, youâre utterly screwed. Nice knowing you.â It doesnât help that she spawns near orc players, who have no CC whatsoever. Itâs even worse on large maps like Fountain, where itâs difficult for other players to get CC to them in time.
In our Nightmare Fountain game, it felt like she was too powerful off the bat during the portion of the match where none of us could spare resources because everything was on fire. Of course, balancing a boss based off settlements owned would be tricky, since thereâs a portion of the game between âhaving as many settlements as I think I can holdâ and âhaving enough spare resources to send some to another playerâ.
Perhaps as an alternative, she can gain strength per blighted settlement?
I agree that the difficulty balance is off for 2 player games vs 6 player games.
Early in a 2 player game, if each player has 3 settlements, sheâs only spawning at 900 str. In a 6 player game with the average same amount of settlements sheâs spawning with 1800, and if you bump those numbers to 5 per player sheâs hitting the field at 2400 str AND doubling the cost of settlements.
Bumping her base str by 100-200 and cutting her growth to 25 per settlement would (I think) bring things to a better place, where sheâs stronger in larger games, but unmanageable.
starting at 700 str in the scenarios above (3 settlements per player and 5) means that in a 2 person game sheâs starting at 850 (2 person) and 1150 (6 person) and 950/1450.
It seems like more balanced growth in my book.
On another note, Master of Coin and Jester King now have very similar functions, in that they both get bigger when units are deployed and thus discourage summoning troops.
The only real difference is MoCâs global ability⌠which makes him more or less just a better Jester King.
On another note: Itâs already been said, but the drastically increased str of bosses has really made the assassin a pretty useless card overall. The odds of taking out any one of these guys with a 500 str attack is pretty laughable, and certainly isnât worth my time.
Iâd love to see the power of his ability greatly increased to like 1500, while also drastically increasing his mana/gold cost (hitmen should be expensive!) and maybe even slowing him to 6/hrs a league.
Having a reliable counter to bosses is a pretty good idea, but it needs to be at least somewhat reliable, and for something so powerful, it needs to have an appropriate cost.
Perhaps the assassin could be changed to a flat percentage chance regardless of strength, but a failed attempt means death.
So, something like a 50% chance to kill a single immortal?
Huh. That seems familiar somehow⌠
Oh. On a failure he dies? Interesting. I donât know what I think of that.
The main difference is that the Jester comes into play with a strength based on all the heroes currently in play, where as the MoC will grow based on what you do after he arrives.
Another option would be for the Jester King to fling all nearby heroes back to their ownerâs hands âŚ
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[quote=âMikeLemmer, post:34, topic:5316, full:trueâ]
In our Nightmare Fountain game, it felt like she was too powerful off the bat during the portion of the match where none of us could spare resources because everything was on fire.[/quote]
In fairness, I donât think Jay wants any part of Nightmare to feel fair or balanced, and I think thatâs the right way to look at it. But yeah, we would have been totally screwed if our Trolls didnât have dragons and a Crone available to come deal with it after only a couple days.
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