That's a very good point. I can't wait to play against some smarter AI or some other players.Originally Posted by NsKrobar
That's a very good point. I can't wait to play against some smarter AI or some other players.
Here are the problems I have with this card:
1. You actually have to put it in you deck. with a 30 card deck space(not going over the min deck building rules is a pretty well understood concept in tcg theories) there is such a limited room for cards already and you have to find room for 3 or 4 of these.
2.In order to get a decent advantage out of this card you have to build your deck around. While there have definitely been cards in other tcgs that were strong enough to build decks around(survival of the fittest,necropotence both from magic), This card is no where on that level, and I don't want to restrict my deck to the constraints of a non uber card.
3. The card provides no immediate advantage. I suppose it actually could provide immediate advantage if you played it turn 7+ but you probably played a lot of allies by then. Assuming you want to play this turn 4, what does it do for you that turn? It has no effect until your next turn and only if you have allies in hand.
4.You have to play many allies before this card is an advantage. As you said you don't lose momentum when you play portal instead of your 4 drop. The problem is both scenarios have the same result, except in the situation where you play portal you have 1 less card in your hand. If you played the ally on the 4th turn instead it could have been destroyed, but then so can portal(I'm assuming cards that kill items will exsist) so that seems irrelevant. You don't really start to gain an advantage until you play you second ally because the board starts to look different.
5.This card is definitely not an automatic "I win". I'll give you an example from the wow tcg. This a deck called ogrimmar with a card of the same name that costs nothing to put in play(It is actually a resource,but that's not important) with the ability 1: target ally can attack right away(not the exact wording of the card). So this deck also could make all its allies attack immediately. However this deck consistently loses to another ally deck called Kuma. The Kuma deck has no way to make its allies attack right and the allies in the ogrimmar deck are actually stronger all the way up the curve. So, why does Kuma win? Because instead of taking the time to make each ally have haste, it plays many guys to swarm the board. Now I realize the cards are different in that ogrimmar requires constant usage, while portal is a 1 time investment, but my point is that the deck did not win ever game that it played the card, even against other ally decks. There is no reason for me to believe that portal is an autowin card.
6.This is a mage card. This doesn't seem like a big deal at first, but since it is a mage card you have to compare it to all the other mage cards. Most of the other mage cards are good at burning the player or his allies. Burn spells have an immediate impact on the game by either damaging the other player or killing his allies. The burn spells the mage has access to, are better than ever ally we have seen so far, except plasma b. Now the amount of good allies will probably increase by a lot since we've barely seen any cards, but the burns spells are powerful enough that you won't need as many in the mage deck. The idea I have of a mage deck that uses allies would use cheap good allies(we haven't seen many of these yet but the 3/2 2 drop counts, and still hoping for the snake to be a 2/2) then use the effective burns spells to finish off the opponent. In another class, maybe portal could have been effective, but the mage class has no interaction with you own allies at all, and just isn't set up to take advantage of it.
+1, this card is very weak as is. I'd rather cast an ally on turn 4, than need to combo it with other allies before it does anything. Read my last post on the nerfed 1/2 snake for more thoughts on "haste" granting cards.
To add to what NPD said, if you put multiples in your deck because this is what your deck is built around, after you play the first one, the other copies are dead draws. Especially if you already have enough resources in play. I'd rather draw a proactive card.
Also, when played on turn 4, it doesn't do anything until turn 6... and you basically skipped your turn 4 to have an advantage on turn 6. I'd rather have pro-active turns 4, 5 and 6 than a wasted turn 4, a normal turn 5 and an advantaged turn 6.
+2, but with one caveat in mind:
Prima facie, this card doesn't seem that great, but considering all attackers have "first strike," this has more power than a mere Fires of Yavimaya.
For example, imagine that neither player has a Portal. You have a 2/1 and I play a 3/2. On your turn, you will just kill my 3/2 with your 2/1. You, however, can now safely play a bigger creature since you have no threats on my side. It becomes increasingly hard for me to get any allies off, since you presently control the table. No matter when I play a card, if you are a turn ahead of me, you will always have the attacking advantage. However, Portal
That being said, for some reason, this card doesn't make me that excited, but I'd have to see how it goes once the AI is improved and more cards are introduced.
Last edited by Narziss; 08-10-2010 at 05:59 AM.
Hmm I still don't find the card useful. Thing is that the game ends too fast for this card to actually be useful.
If i had 4 energy and Portal
I would really like to play with really decks against real opponents for a while before I truly settle my opinion on this card. At first glance, this reminded me of the myriad cards in MTG that do the same thing and never saw any play, ever (the previously mentioned Fires of Yavimaya being one ofr the few exceptions). However, the fact that allies dont deal damage back if they die when the attacker swings changes things a lot. I have noticed that once i get an ally with 3 or more damage out it usually means that the AI isnt getting another attack off because my midrange fatty will take down anything he plays before it ever gets the chance to do anything. I can see this being a major part of the strategy of the game and so a card like portal would really be amazing. That means even if you get a good attacker before me, I can just eat a turn of damage to drop this, and after next turn i'm going to wreck everything you play for the rest of the game before it can do anything.
But I could be wrong! We need to be able to test out all th cards against each other to really be able to talk about how to change them.
Now in 1.05 I find this even more useful to me. I kinda understand others not finding it useful in a way, but to me it makes the game very easy. For example, now that the AI attacks better and uses it's ability alot, maybe too much. What I do is cast portal as soon as I can while using fireball or other damage spells before if I have them. Then on turn 5 with portal out I can cast a behemoth or a combo of other allies. Then pour on the damage to the hero. Otherwise with him casting his ability all the time you never get a chance to attack with waiting till next turn. And everytime now when he wipes the board clean with his ability or a supernova if you have allies in your hand you can play them and attack before he destroys them.
The game was always very easy against the AI, and still is very easy even with it spamming its hero power. Portal
Before I always dumped this card first, but now I send it out first. Definitely needs a description change to 'Ongoing' so it is clear. I wasn't sure what the card did at first.
Just had a thought, shouldn't this have an 'Ongoing' tag on it?
This would make the card much more easy to understand.
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