Should allies block hero attacks?

[Shadow Era]

One sticking point seems to be that the game boils down to a damage race, where you always want to target the hero with everything. Although the Weapon and Armor cards will help greatly with this, allowing your hero to attack back and even launch his own attacks, I wanted to try out something first...

If the enemy has allies in play, should your allies still be able to go straight for the hero? Or do you feel that the allies will guard the hero, and you must always target an ally if one exists and is not disabled by webs or ice?

[Ice]

You could go for something in between: Give some allies an ability that allows them to block.

[NPD]

I'm against changing the game to require you to attack allies. This will slow the game way down and since the iphone is one of your target platform I would think you would want a faster game.

Also your just shifting all characters from attacking the hero to attacking another character, which doesn't really add more decisions(should my guy attack your guy or not).

The race feel of the game right now seems to me has to do with the mage class having a lot of damage spells. I would imagine that other characters would not have as many damage spells, and therefore the games would feel much different than a race. I think that until more classes are explored we can't adequately tell if the game is all about a damage race and that change should not be made.

[kirothak]

I as well will hold off on my judgment of this until more of the heros and cards are opened up and we have weapon and armor cards. as it is right now I would say yes, but thats only with the limited cards we have in play.

My larger concern is with direct dmg cards and the lack of instant spells to stop them (as in good ol counterspell) allies attack your hero can be defended with web/freeze or direct dmg spells to take out the allies, or attacking them with your own. but there is not way to stop direct damage spells/abilities burning down your hero.

anyway I know i have been vocal about this issue, but i am going to drop it for now as it may be a non-issue. I will just wait and see what more cards bring to the game and i definitely think its to early to make a drastic change to gameplay like this since we have only played with a small fraction of the cards thus far.

[Insectosaurus]

You could go for something in between: Give some allies an ability that allows them to block.

I like the sound of that. Could lead to some interesting strategies.

[domiriel]

Yup. I agree with most of the points above. Only being able to attack the hero if no allies are present will make for a very slow game. I think one of the things you should strive to achieve here is to have this game be playable as a casual game. Not only on the iPhone, to allow us to play while taking short trips around town, waiting in line for something, etc, but even on the web, I think it will be one of the keys to its success. It is hard for me to find 1h30m to play a game, but 15-30min to rest between tasks I can manage...

I do feel we need more cards to properly assess this. Right now, you can inflict damage without any repercussions. A richer system where there is actually a risk of attacking with a certain spell or creature might work better. Making some cards playable as instant defenses/counterattacks, might help.

The trick here, I feel, will be to have a balanced game, that requires some strategy, but still making it possible to be played in a casual way. I've tried some of these TC games on the iPhone before and they all end up being extremely simple (thus, boring). Complexity is needed, but in a controlled way.

[Diamondius]

With the current defend system as it is said before it doesn't really worth attacking allies if they wont die in a single attack. Especially when heroes will get weapons and will be able to counterattack there will be a choice between hitting the hero and taking the CA damage and hitting the ally and taking the CA damage. So if u will be damaged anyway i guess that most people will stick with attacking the hero.
I believe that some kind of blockers must be introduced to the game at least if all allies wont be able to block like MTG,

[revZloco]

I agree with most of the points above. Matches do have to stay quick and I do think we have to wait to pass judgment until we are playing with a full compliment of cards and hero classes. That being said, I think what everyone is afraid of is "that guy" (you all met him in MTG) who creates a deck, strips it down to 30 or so cards puts nothing but direct damage and resource producing cards (assuming there will be cards like that) for the sole purpose of destroying a hero in 3-5 turns guaranteed. The deck becomes formulaic, everyone else builds decks to match that formula and the game becomes silly because everyone is using the same 4 cards and that's the only way they can compete. (I'm exaggerating of course, but you get the gist).

[Loanhighknight]

You could go for something in between: Give some allies an ability that allows them to block.

I like this idea. It puts a premium on an ally card that can be used for something other than swinging at your opponent's hero. (Though it's probably just been the card selection we have so far, the strategy I've been using most successfully thus far has been to put out as many allies as possible, hit the opposing hero directly, and just use spells to control the opponent's ally population. It'd be nice to have allies that had a different, but equally useful, role.)

[drakon]

I will reserve judgment as well. I think adding forced blocking will slow the game down, which wouldn't be a bad thing except that the target platform is the iPhone.

1. We don't have any item cards that the hero can use. This is definitely a game changer (as far as strategy goes).

2. I think perhaps a few allies that can block or force enemy allies to attack it first will help in this sense.