Works. Though I feel Elves already get a lot of bonuses in woods. Would you consider something a bit more flavorful?
Change the Ent and Treefriends to have the keyword “Treemen.” Then make the Bard grant them something neat – like maybe a “woodland walk” where you can teleport the Bard and any Treemen in an army with him from one woods to another up to 4 leagues away. Or maybe just a POW boost for a short time (“march the woods!”) – +STR to each Treeman, perhaps?
What would be really neat is if the Bard’s bonus STR was stackable – get the band together and they can do some really cool things! More Bards = more party!
Yeah, okay, I’m just riffing here. +STR in forests is fine.
Like very much. Plays to Gobbo strengths and adds utility to the ‘rogue’ keyword.
Oh. Very cool. Be wary of its interplay with Justice and High Elf. I would like a way to get a bit more out of my Wizards, though.
Make it more flavorful? This might be where the mechanic of having to discard a card from your hand comes into play (representing a blood sacrifice). If there is a card sacrifice, make sure the bonus is worth it (since the other Winds of Change cards dont have drawbacks as of yet). Would increasing the range of Mage abilities by a league be possible? That would be a big deal… and really attractive. Just think of how useful that would be for the Wizard, High Elf, or Pool Priestess.
I’ve done a fairly quick pass to update these, but we’re still open to any ideas that you’ve got. I agree that the Woodland Bard and Blood Shaman in particular could be more interesting.
I like the idea of these guys getting tweaked but I feel like some are inherently stronger than others…
I thing the abilities being based on unit types makes a LOT more sense than race, because all races have some if not all of the unit types. It also allows people to try out “tribal” decks (an Magic the gathering term) Where people might try building a “warrior” deck, or a “mage” deck using several races but with units who all share the same subtype. However:
-Blood Shaman is easily the most powerful, as warriors tend to come in larger groups and literally every race has TONS of warriors. I dunno the exact number, but it seems like at least 30% of the units in the game have a “warrior” subtype
Pirate Captain seems kinda bad. How many rogue units are not just individual heroes? Heck how many rogues are there beyond the goblin ones? Not all that many, and most (if not all?) are singular units who wouldn’t benefit much from a boost unless it were pretty substantial.
Edit: Didn’t realize it would be a percentage based growth. That makes him a bit better… I still say though that more rogues and less warriors would balance things a bit better.
Spirit Shaman seems pretty great. Mages are plentiful, and this would give them a nice boost.
Maybe the bard could give the bonus to all “royalty” subtype units?
I’d love to see more thought put into subtypes and maybe some more streamlining of what units are what subtype, and having that affect the game more.
Maybe change a few warriors over to other types? Maybe Dragonhelm, cowardly noble and others become royalty?
Pirate Cap’n at 8 mana for 25% STR is pretty expensive for what will likely only affect a handful of generally low POW heroes. Worse, rogues all come with special abilities – so the STR buff needs to be strong enough to encourage a goblin player to risk those rogues in combat. Perhaps try it out at 50% STR buff? Thats potentially enough to make a goblin player consider throwing rogues into battle.
I have some thoughts on this – honestly I think I’m in the minority of definitely liking these cards as they are, with the +/-, I find it makes them more interesting. But I won’t have time to organize my thoughts until the morning.
I like the idea that these will be cross-race and more cooperative between players.
The Woodland Bard could definitely use the Royalty trait, that’s a good idea @thethanx! It could even do something like have Royalty earn extra Valour in combat for 12hrs.
I made the Pirate Captain do a percentage, as the majority of the Rogues are individual Heroes. 25% could potentially give the Rogue Lord a huge boost. I’ve made the Goblin Savages and the Orc Scarface Lord Rogues too.
The Blood Shaman is probably too strong compared to the others. It might just have to be a 1-2 Strength gain.
Jay suggested that the ones with the crystal balls could do something along the lines of searching through your deck for a particular card.
The Traits look like this at the moment. There is definitely room for movement between them. The Dragonhelm Knight and Cowardly Noble are “Nobles”, so the Elf could potentially buff Royalty and Nobles. The Goblin could buff Rogues and Hunters.
[quote=“IHG-BlightedPea, post:8, topic:5371”]
Jay suggested that the ones with the crystal balls could do something along the lines of searching through your deck for a particular card. [/quote]
Tutors? That could be VERY powerful. Just look at Magic for an example of how important Tutors are.
I am sympathetic to the desire to improve these cards but also kind of liked them as is so would hope we could keep some of those aspects.
I think I enjoyed two things about the cards. First, their area of effect was quite wide, 4 leagues I believe. Second, they actually had a lot of different effects that were relevant. They buffed the units of your race, which is definitely good. But they also buffed zombies of your race, which is fairly to encounter when cities of your race are blighted. They also potentially help your allies of the same race but also could hurt them by strengthening zombies of your race they are fighting or weakening mortal allies of the wrong race. And between the increased and decreased strength the relative forces on a large part of the map could change materially. This created interesting dynamics where often using the power could help in one area but hurt in another and you had to evaluate that and optimize the placement of the unit.
I definitely understand the somewhat arbitrary nature of the opposite races and the desire to make changes, but I would hope we could keep something with a wide area of effect and both benefits and harms to living and undead that keep these kind of trade offs.
My issue with the old card style was that they are so hard to use (and come with some severe penalties that can affect your’s or your ally’s units, and thus, dont ever get used).
I thought the exact same thing. I think it would be less powerful here as there are far fewer “combos” that straight up win the game once they hit the board, but I can see that as cards continue to evolve and more synergies emerge, being able to search your deck for specific cards becomes more and more powerful.
I’m not against it, but proceed with caution, and make sure it’s costly.
This is exactly what I enjoy about the current (previous?) state of these cards. They’re extremely powerful in the right situation, but more often than not they introduce interesting tradeoffs or decisions about movement, timing, and positioning, which in my opinion is what the game is all about!
If that is right then it seems like the direction is to make the power more powerful so it is worth figuring out how to create the situation to make it work. The analogy would be the Storm Friar where you need a specific situation of lots of zombies in an area with all your guys in fortifications, but when you get it right 250 strength attacks on a huge area is pretty awesome. How do we create that for these cards?
The problem is the tradeoff nature of the cards – not their power, I think. As long as there is the tardeoff, you will never know until the battlefield unfolds if the situation will be appropriate. Buildinga deck around those tradeoff cards doesnt sound like fun.
Frankly, I like @IHG-BlightedPea’s suggested changes a lot. I think it makes the cards a lot more useful across the board and more likely to see play.
Honestly the thing that is more likely to prevent me from putting these in a deck isn’t how situational the effect is at all: it’s the fact that I almost never want to draw a second one. Using a deck slot for a singleton can be a real waste on many maps, so that’s typically a much bigger factor for me.
Yes and yes! Frankly I find Storm Friar and Marsh Warden much more difficult to justify in a deck than these buff/debuff cards, and less interesting to boot. As I’m in the camp of using these cards as they are whenever I can justify it, I’d like to hear what other people think it would take to make the current effect compelling enough to be worth using.
