Hey everyone, the thrilling conclusion to our epic story/preview mashup is here. http://www.cardhunter.com/2016/09/walpurgis-night/ Check back tomorrow for details on how to get involved in our public playtest.
Nooo! Not me! Why has Joleph forsaken us? Walpurgis Night is the ultimate Screw everything card. It will disrupt literally every build in favor of a random battle, turn every fight into what is essentially a quick draw. I hope itemization will be very low, or this will be exclusively a league thing. I must say, I had completely forgotten about this card when it stopped being Flaxative's profile. Had I remembered, I would have foreseen the horror that is upon us now. On a more positive note, I am eager to playtest! (it will probably involve turning on my sacred texts in order to experiment with the black magics now available to me)
Right now I'll say Walpurgis Night should be way better then silver, but we'll see. Thanks for those well written previews, new lore is always nice. I really can't wait for this. Spoiler I guess the defeat of Jovana & Yurick now falls on the shoulders of Rudolpho the pack mule and his biped sidekick.
See, this is why you don't leave adventuring to the DM, if I was in the adventurers' boots I'd have used these new forms to completely destroy Jovana and Yurik. Maybe after enough retries to cost me some gold, but Jovana and Yurik should know the pure determination that guides Card Hunters and their uncanny ability to crawl back from defeat through emptying their purses. Even if I may not have stopped them there are still heroes who have bravely completed each quest who'll surely somehow defeat Yovana and Yurik using only drawback equipment with level 1 characters with 1 max HP without anyone dying. Those guys are literally unstoppable I think, give them a Servant and pit them against a Boulder in a 3x3 room and they'll pull through somehow. I am rather surprised that the story ends like that, seems like the status quo of Card Hunter has been irreparably altered, unlike with AotA and EttSC where the party managed to put a stop to the shenanigans going on. Of course, once everyone in the new world is acclimated to being a Vampire, Werewolf of Spirit things will eventually settle down and it's back to business as usual, sooner of later the bizarre becomes the mundane. The Wereford family of regents will be back to underpaying their Servamps and with Sprites turned into Spirits people are relieved they never have to confuse the two again and look like a fool. Meanwhile Yurik and Yovana are sitting in their castle, bored out of their mind now everyone has a special form, making them question their real identity and what makes them truly unique as they had always staked it on their form. That's another thing people can't get enough of in the new world, form puns. Vampires would soon stop ordering steaks because it always ended in a bad pun, often driven into the heart in silver form. Incorrigible, those pranksters. I suppose once all that dust is settled the adventuring party will be back in business, perhaps having to deal with insane cults who insist not everyone should be in their new cool forms and insist people go back to being boring humans, elves and dwarves. A crazy lot, those. Spirit Demons will still be summoned, Weregoblins are still Goblining and there's rumours of Space Vampire Cowboy Pirate Sea Elves invading from the sea and it's up to the party to stop them. If there's only thing to lament in this new world it's that there's somehow three new types of Elves to memorize, as if there weren't enough types already! So yeah, maybe Jovana and Yurick's new world isn't so bad in the long term, really the best option is probably to just wait for the chaos to blow over. Either way, Walpurgis Night looks like a very powerful card. Being able to force enemy players to play by your rules and have to adapt forms, unblockably even, seems like a really powerful effect, and I do wonder whether that will devalue deckbuilding, it would be a card that lets you basically say no to the decks every opponent built and force them to draw from randomized decks. Seems like a fun and useful card in SP though! Just wondering about its place in MP, and whether maybe it's just a league card after all. Here's hoping Jovana shows up in CoC with her Walpurgis Night spell ready.
I'll point out that Walpurgisnight nets your opponent +1 card over you and doesn't affect what's already in their hand. So you mess with their attachments and the two cards they draw at the beginning of the next round... But unless a Form redraws itself, that's all you've done and it's really more of a small distraction from their normal game plan than any kind of long-term change. Basically I don't think the card renders deckbuilding irrelevant, and the fact that it's card disadvantage will probably keep it from being super popular at the highest tiers. I think having one or two as disruption could work well though. Looking forward to the playtest
I was confused about the duration of the forms, I believed the card would make all characters draw form cards for the rest of the current round, all of the next round and the start of the round after. But it sounds like it only affects the rest of the round it's used and the whole of the next turn. (Or only the start of the next turn?) That's a lot less disrupting than I imagined and more in line with a Silver card. I am curious whether there'll be builds that'll use Walpurgis Night, that unblockable boardwide purge effect sounds quite nice. It seems like the sort of card that can be very rewarding under the right circumstances, using it after the enemy has applied their buffing attachments and before you have yours, that could turn that net card disadvantage into a net card advantage. I was too focused on the Form attachment to consider the possiblities for using a mass purge. I could imagine putting it in my deck depending on its itemization, even if I can't get the most out of it at least I can get a laugh out of all those figures changing form.
Sounds like a hellava plan to me! I'd love to play the test server but guess I'll have to wait to play it in SP or MP forms as I have to work and I'm starting a new college semister Monday. Looking forward though to see how this new found chaos will play out!
Sounds like a lot more randomness in general with this expansion, which is basically a punishment for people that have played a long time. My apologies, but consider me not excited.
I like the BFG-9000 of chaos being added and I have played a long time! ( I survived the full map firestorm spamming days ) I think this expansion is cool in concept and design and hopefully the play testing figures out some of the cards I think might be OP. I always liked the creative aspects of building decks here ( even though a lot of cool builds never got the items to support them since the devs were too busy making burst and vampire cleric items all the time for everyone else ). I was never a fan of being forced to play only a few builds to be a valid build. Plus a lot of the meta on some power builds is actually about exploiting bugs or balance issues and I refuse to do that. I would rather go into a gun fight with a knife and my honor. Some of the builds I have been using for years have been stuck in Purgatory/Hell for the last few expansions, but they are finally actually are getting some love with this expansion and I had actually given up hope on them ever getting any love. This is the first time since Artifacts I have been pumped for an expansion!
Oh if only, if only. But I do think the "Bat"fords would keep their name in this new vampire-friendly world. They'd just have to deal with social problems; like with cousin Hairy, who got stuck a werewolf, embarrassing the whole family.
I made a forms spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NElQ0Muowe8-Y8rp-fkEkOPxYELHyYFjp9zXbTdSvcI
By my estimation, Shifting Block, Walpurgis Night, Blight, and Acid Leak are the only cards that introduce variance. The forms all actually reduce variance.
As a casual player myself, I don't see a problem much with builds I use because I just play for fun and I don't worry so much about my ELO personally. I don't mean to offend any long time players here and I could understand the disappointment that some long time players here will have as I would feel the same about say another game I've played for a long time finally "watered down" for lack of a better term here a build that I've always found reliable but not OP.
I think Vampire's Kiss is more disruptive to builds than Walpurgis Night. Spoiler: Kissing the Rock Buffy turns The Rock into a vampire! The Rock can't be stopped! The Rock took 0 Unholy damage. Buffy recovered 0 HP. Boulder discarded Giant Boulder. Boulder discarded Rumbling Charge. Boulder discarded Rumbling Charge. Boulder discarded Flatten. Boulder drew a card. Boulder drew a card. Boulder drew a card. Boulder drew a card. The Rock plays Vampiric Form. Boulder drew a card. The Rock wants some privacy, damn it! The Rock took 6 Psychic damage. Boulder drew a card. The Rock wants some privacy, damn it! The Rock took 6 Psychic damage. Boulder drew a card. The Rock reveals monstrous vulnerabilities. Boulder drew a card. The Rock plays Vampiric Form. Boulder drew a card. The Rock wants some privacy, damn it! The Rock took 6 Psychic damage. Boulder drew a card.
HAHA! But seriously, Walpurgis Night can affect every character at the beginning of the match without vision, which will kill your card draw and strategy depending on the circumstances.
