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| Thread: Some questions about balance | |
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Tolfdo
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 11, 2006 05:48 PM |
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Edited by Tolfdo on 11 Feb 2006
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Some questions about balance
So, after reading the rules too many times to count, I finally felt like I understood everything so tried to play last night with my brother and ran into a few huge frustrations so we're hoping someone can help.
1. Our game was Chaos vs Nature. My brother, Chaos, built the spell hero to level 4 and had some great spells. When fighting against nature though, nature had two white tigers with a faster phase than anything in the chaos army (almost all chaos is slow) and attacked as a stack with 5 (3 Att + Lv 2) against the chaos hero with defense of 10 and won. The frustration was that all the time building up Chaos's hero abilities made absolutely no difference because he couldn't cast any spells due to his slower phase. My brother was so frustrated that his hero's defense and speed didn't improve at all because he was a spell caster and lost to a minuscule army.
Question: Are we missing something? It took ages to build up the hero and then to have him lose to two tigers doesn't seem right.
2. Similar question to above, it seems that whatever faction has the fastest armies will win every time against spell casters as long as they have decent attacks (nature for example). Other than never fighting until artifacts are received to change the odds (basically making a spell caster faster or more defensive), is there an alternative to this imbalance?
3. Lastly, the game seems to take ages before there's anything to do. You can walk around with your heroes as much as you want, but unless you have cards to define, there's nothing to do. Is this true? After awhile we just stopped moving and kept cycling in and out to try to get cards that would allow us to define creatures or locations, which seemed stupid. Has anyone found a better way or again, are we doing something wrong?
4. Similar to #3 above, again regarding Chaos apparent weakness, what's the benefit of stealth and scouting? In a card game, not knowing a hero is in the stack (stealth) seems of no value at all. With scouting, what's the benefit of being able to reveal more locations when the limitation is the cards you have to define, not getting to them?
5. Lastly, each pack has "wandering army" creatures that cannot be purchased in a town. In most cases, there are usually only one or two of these at a higher level. Is it possible to add these to your army and if so, how? I know you can define a creature dwelling, but if there's only one card, you can't take the one that is used to define it so what are these used for other than "flipping for guards" and money?
We very much want to make this game work as it has all the right makings (I'm a fan of all the PC games and have lost ½ my life happily playing them over the years); however, I can't figure out how to rectify the card game's imbalances.
Please can someone help? Are we missing something? Thanks in advance! Please correct me and make this game work!
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Psychobabble
Known Hero
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posted February 12, 2006 02:34 AM |
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Quote:
So, after reading the rules too many times to count, I finally felt like I understood everything so tried to play last night with my brother and ran into a few huge frustrations so we're hoping someone can help.
1. Our game was Chaos vs Nature. My brother, Chaos, built the spell hero to level 4 and had some great spells. When fighting against nature though, nature had two white tigers with a faster phase than anything in the chaos army (almost all chaos is slow) and attacked as a stack with 5 (3 Att + Lv 2) against the chaos hero with defense of 10 and won. The frustration was that all the time building up Chaos's hero abilities made absolutely no difference because he couldn't cast any spells due to his slower phase. My brother was so frustrated that his hero's defense and speed didn't improve at all because he was a spell caster and lost to a minuscule army.
This is definately a feature of the game and you must work around it. Use phase boosting artifacts (helm of command, ring of speed), defence boosting artifacts (warlord ring, strong armour, helm of command again... hint that's an awesome artifact!).
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2. Similar question to above, it seems that whatever faction has the fastest armies will win every time against spell casters as long as they have decent attacks (nature for example). Other than never fighting until artifacts are received to change the odds (basically making a spell caster faster or more defensive), is there an alternative to this imbalance?
Strong defensive units, large stacks, defense boosting artifacts, speed boosting artifacts.
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4. Similar to #3 above, again regarding Chaos apparent weakness, what's the benefit of stealth and scouting? In a card game, not knowing a hero is in the stack (stealth) seems of no value at all. With scouting, what's the benefit of being able to reveal more locations when the limitation is the cards you have to define, not getting to them?
The benefit is moving your creature to the top instead of your hero so you can move faster.
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5. Lastly, each pack has "wandering army" creatures that cannot be purchased in a town. In most cases, there are usually only one or two of these at a higher level. Is it possible to add these to your army and if so, how? I know you can define a creature dwelling, but if there's only one card, you can't take the one that is used to define it so what are these used for other than "flipping for guards" and money?
You have to define a dwelling to use them, really, and most aren't really worth it imo.
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TheFoeHammer
Known Hero
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posted February 13, 2006 08:41 PM |
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Regarding question #3 you need to seed your deck with duplicates of locations and skills you need early on. Usually you want to define and fight for an income generator early and have a skill up to show for it. Once you have it defined the duplicates become just money cards and you cycle through your deck a little faster, thus speeding up the game.
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startune
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 17, 2006 09:28 PM |
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Also, the spellcasting hero should have been on the ranged line, thus making him impossible for the Melee attacking White Tigers to hit. The White tigers should have had to hit an orc or a bandit, which should have brought up a minotaur or an Effreet, rather than the hero. By the time he can cast a level 4 spell, he should have so many minotaurs (who block when they get hit) that he should never fear a white tiger. Elves on the other hand, well, when they shoot its a bad thing. One way to protect the hero is the Robe of the Guardian. Likewise, you could add a second spell caster to the army, and let them both learn differerent spells. Or, you could add a Thief hero to the army and let him learn the Tactics skill while your spell caster is learning his magic skills. Trust me, Chaos is not underpowered. My wife runs a Chaos deck and its near impossible to beatr her.
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Jonathan Bjork
Director of Games Development
DGA Games
http://www.dgagames.com
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