Wulven Apprentice - Task 2 - Voting and Results

[Airact]

Honestly, I feel balance is of lower priority at this stage. Card design primarily should be about synergy and mechanics. For actual balance, frankly, no one is capable of determining it accurately without actual play-testing (and I don't just mean using proxies with the current pool).

Maybe to touch on why NA did not take full use of options, right now, the direction they have taken is merely discarding from the deck while there are tons of ways to expand on the whole mill concept. Right now there are already several mill options so they could have added a card with an effect when you self mill. They could have made an artifact that triggers when your opponent gets milled. Milling is not even unique so they could have inspiration from other CGs and there are many other interesting mechanics out there.

Also, I think making the hero ability Mill-based may not have been the best idea since it makes him a little too one-dimensional.

To expand on this a bit:

Milling as a win condition (simply from their deck to GY until they have no cards in deck) is fine but it has to be a win condition, not something tucked on as a secondary thing. I had a discussion about this with a couple people and from those discussions it seemed like you overvalued milling key cards too hard. I think it doesn't really work that way. Sure it's cool when you mill two Tidal Waves or something but milling doesn't affect the board position and it's mostly negative card advantage for you and that's why you have to mill more for less resources in order for the card to be worth using.

When I said before that the cards seem really weak, I used this logic. You rarely mill key cards so balancing it with the mindset that it will always mill key cards is wrong.

In that sense a "mill 1" is 1/40th of his deck dead. If mill is your primary strategy, you don't really look at the opposing hero's life total but rather at his deck size as his life total. By milling 1 you dealt 1 damage to his 40 life. That sounds weak. That is weak. Of course even mill decks (because they are control most of the time) have Plan B's with their value guys bashing him to death but that happening is rare.

You can mill to disrupt also, as mentioned earlier, but you need to consistently hit his key cards if you want to do that so you need to mill more per card to hit that condition and compensate for the card loss. That or you need spot removal kind of mill (search his deck for a card and put it to his graveyard -kind of deal).


Pyrogene mentioned interesting self-mill/mill mechanics and I would agree. Cards that are castable from your graveyard, Reanimating (which is there but too conditionally I think), cards that have different effects when they go to your graveyard (either from anywhere or from your deck). Stuff like that.


But that's only how I think. I only have one vote. I favor win condition milling to disruption milling though.

[Martin JF]

Honestly, I feel balance is of lower priority at this stage. Card design primarily should be about synergy and mechanics. For actual balance, frankly, no one is capable of determining it accurately without actual play-testing (and I don't just mean using proxies with the current pool).

I definetly agree with this as well. There would probably be other cards for other classes to balance things out. Imagine throwing just the DP Hunter cards into CotC and no other DP cards. It would probably be unbalanced as well. The full set is needed to make a final call on balance.

[Lord Cyru]

Nocturnal Advantage have my vote.

Their ideas, while somewhat underpowered, are very interesting and if they were tweaked to be powerful enough to be viable,they would have huge impacts on the game that would diversify play styles, which makes the game a lot more interesting. There are also some really nice synergies. Voidgut -> xerius ability or orb of augury -> ectoplasma. The idea of milling would require another card to be truly effective though, maybe one which lets you win the game if the opponent has no cards to draw? I feel the players who purposefully take ages to make their move would drag the game out whilst they slowly bled to death.

Random Heroes seem to have a lot of great ideas, but they don't fundamentally change the way the game is played, and they don't have too much synergy. Also Cassius Bile is ludicrously strong. Drop a couple of shadow fonts and suddenly your army is very powerful indeed. Yari Scout is also far too powerful. If you have war banner or aldon or KP down, she is a 2 cost fireball or better. Quick and Deadly seems very strong when played properly, allowing you to burst down heroes with ease.

[BetrayalFender]

To expand on this a bit:

Milling as a win condition (simply from their deck to GY until they have no cards in deck) is fine but it has to be a win condition, not something tucked on as a secondary thing. I had a discussion about this with a couple people and from those discussions it seemed like you overvalued milling key cards too hard. I think it doesn't really work that way. Sure it's cool when you mill two Tidal Waves or something but milling doesn't affect the board position and it's mostly negative card advantage for you and that's why you have to mill more for less resources in order for the card to be worth using.

When I said before that the cards seem really weak, I used this logic. You rarely mill key cards so balancing it with the mindset that it will always mill key cards is wrong.

In that sense a "mill 1" is 1/40th of his deck dead. If mill is your primary strategy, you don't really look at the opposing hero's life total but rather at his deck size as his life total. By milling 1 you dealt 1 damage to his 40 life. That sounds weak. That is weak. Of course even mill decks (because they are control most of the time) have Plan B's with their value guys bashing him to death but that happening is rare.

You can mill to disrupt also, as mentioned earlier, but you need to consistently hit his key cards if you want to do that so you need to mill more per card to hit that condition and compensate for the card loss. That or you need spot removal kind of mill (search his deck for a card and put it to his graveyard -kind of deal).


Pyrogene mentioned interesting self-mill/mill mechanics and I would agree. Cards that are castable from your graveyard, Reanimating (which is there but too conditionally I think), cards that have different effects when they go to your graveyard (either from anywhere or from your deck). Stuff like that.


But that's only how I think. I only have one vote. I favor win condition milling to disruption milling though.

To expand there:

IF you look at each card milled as an extension of the oppponent's LP, then don't you also have to count the draw on their turn, and each subsequent draw/draw card they play as a -LP type sequence?

If mage plays BS, they've effectively taken up to 4lp off their life right there, and that's even before you've likely dropped a mill card.

I had thought at one point, that there was not enough mill power in this deck, but that's not entirely true. if you expect that by T5, your opponent had drawn at least 7 cards, then they have effectively cut nearly half their deck on their own means, without you playing a single card. (11-14 based off 5 turn draws and 1-4 extra cards drawn) that number jumps again with any other cards you play. So its feasible to drain half the deck of your opponent by T5, and without much difficulty. with cards like synchronize, voidgut, among others, it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to drain cards from the opp. especially with the 3cc discard 1 ally.

I'm still failing to see where this is underpowered....

[plo]

I disagree with this. I'd rather have that the cards are strong, exciting and interesting to play, rather than too weak. I'd rather have it that the game evolves slightly towards better and stronger cards, because that's progress. Of course, I don't want it to explode immediately as well. But is having a new hero that is SLIGHTLY stronger than existing ones a bad thing? I don't think so, as long as the edge really is small.

I myself would prefer much more if the cards being released would remain on the same power level. If they get progressively stronger when SE gets larger perhaps the cards from the earlier sets would get underpowered.

[iClipse]

I myself would prefer much more if the cards being released would remain on the same power level. If they get progressively stronger when SE gets larger perhaps the cards from the earlier sets would get underpowered.

Yes, they would. I mean, in ten years, do you think the game would be better off if we were STILL playing with 3cc 2/5 and 3/4 allies with the same abilities? That would be absolutely boring in my eyes. By then I'd like to play with 2cc 3/4 allies with cool effects. Basically stuff that makes the game interesting from the start on, because at 1cc you're actually able to play decent allies without being branded as 'rush/cheese/whatever'.

I don't want things to go very fast as well. But for example, introducing a 2cc 2/4 vanilla ally or a 3cc 3/5 ally with no effect. And then a year after that, introduce one with these same stats, but a small effect, or something like that. If they don't do that, the game will become extremely stale, except if they start banning older sets, but is that better?

[iClipse]

To expand there:

IF you look at each card milled as an extension of the oppponent's LP, then don't you also have to count the draw on their turn, and each subsequent draw/draw card they play as a -LP type sequence?

If mage plays BS, they've effectively taken up to 4lp off their life right there, and that's even before you've likely dropped a mill card.

Your statement is only true if the mage is actually intending to mill you. If not, then you don't count cards as lifepoints. You only do that when milling is the real strategy of your deck.

[plo]

Out of the 2 I prefer the elemental team, however I feel many cards were unbalanced:

For the elemental team:
1) Xerius: seems weak, perhaps 3 se would do
2) Mim Rickar: is weak. 5 resources and 4 se is too much, and to use him it's also required that the opponent has a fattie. If you want a fattie it'd be easier just to play your Ogloth or Kairos.

For the warrior team:
1) Cassius Bile: can make rush really troublesome.
2) Ulrich the Rich: seems too powerful.
3) Braxnorian Encampment: isn't 3cc a bit high? Why not 2cc?
4) Yari Scout: she would make Amber rush unbeatble.


Not only I prefer the balancing of NA, but I really liked Voidgut, it was perfectly designed, not only flavor-wise, but gameplay-wise.
For RH, I liked a lot the idea of tokens.

[plo]

Yes, they would. I mean, in ten years, do you think the game would be better off if we were STILL playing with 3cc 2/5 and 3/4 allies with the same abilities? That would be absolutely boring in my eyes. By then I'd like to play with 2cc 3/4 allies with cool effects. Basically stuff that makes the game interesting from the start on, because at 1cc you're actually able to play decent allies without being branded as 'rush/cheese/whatever'.

I don't want things to go very fast as well. But for example, introducing a 2cc 2/4 vanilla ally or a 3cc 3/5 ally with no effect. And then a year after that, introduce one with these same stats, but a small effect, or something like that. If they don't do that, the game will become extremely stale, except if they start banning older sets, but is that better?

I think they will never release a 2cc 2/4, as that would be strictly better than puwen. I don't know, but in the rules of the competition Gondorian said that the teams could not make cards better than others, so it does not feel to be according to their intents.
Also the fact that cards are not getting stronger does not mean that the game isn't progressing, because even so more powerful decks will be appearing over time.

[iClipse]

I think they will never release a 2cc 2/4, as that would be strictly better than puwen. I don't know, but in the rules of the competition Gondorian said that the teams could not make cards better than others, so it does not feel to be according to their intents.
Also the fact that cards are not getting stronger does not mean that the game isn't progressing, because even so more powerful decks will be appearing over time.

Well, and yet, Champion of Irum is in 80% or so of the cases a 2/4 ally or stronger for equal cost than Puwen.