Powerful new cards

There are a few new cards which are significantly more powerful than older cards of the same quality. The two that really stand to me are Investigate (obviously better than Run and Dash - which were already decent bronze cards), and Lucky Charm (which is obviously better than Block).

Of course, any card which has a vulnerability to silver is going to be powerful in the campaign - because no enemies have any silver damage in the campaign. So Creature_of_the_Night is an excellent 'black' card; and Monstrous Hide is simply a better version of Reliable Mail (and reliable mail was already pretty good). So there are a lot of new cards which are particularly powerful in the campaign... but Lucky Charm and Investigate are powerful even aside from limitations in the campaign enemies; particularly Investigate.

I suppose this is part of what Flaxative had in mind when talking about 'selective power creep'.

I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts and opinions on this kind of stuff. Are these cards setting a new high-bar for their quality level? Or are they just situationally powerful, and roughly in-line with other cards? Are there other cards that have stood out to you as very powerful for their quality level? Is this good and fair? Should there be balance changes?

 

I think a better comparison for Lucky Charm is Battleaxe Block which is a paper card. Block is just a weird card in that there's another card identical to it of a lower quality.

I think that some of the new cards being very good for SP isn't really an issue. A card like Combustible is also great for most SP modules and some cards like Nimbus totally screw with the AI while Firestorm and Volcano also deal with most modules shockingly efficiently. In a way I like that all classes are now also getting some very good SP cards, that should make the SP campaign more fun for beginning players, I think. Creature Of The Night also vastly improves the amount of items usable in Handicap Quests which is a nice bonus.

As for MP, I agree the new cards are optimized for their quality, but I think they pretty much have to be in able to keep up with others cards which are the best in their class considering the point of the expansion was to add more MP-viable cards and items into the game. Lucky Charm is powerful, but it has to be powerful to justify using over staples Defender's Block or Parry. I think another example of a card that's rather pushed is Warding Lance compared to other bronze stabs that come with drawbacks rather than a positive effect. Overall I think these cards are very good but while testing them on the test server they weren't so good that they invalidate previously staple items.

I think it's also important to keep in mind that even if a card looks good on paper its actual playability still depends on its itemization. Most CM cards are well-itemized, but I can't think of many CM items that are clearly and plainly better than items, or at least not ones that see regular play in MP.

Overall I'm happy with CM's new cards and their quality, though I would like to see some old cards that are clearly overvalued get some love, though I do recognize that having both cards above and below the power curve are an intentional game design choice by BM.

 

I think you're right about this stuff. That's most likely the key reason for having deliberate power creep. The new items need to be as-good-as, or better than the best, of the previous items to be considered for usage. And from that point of view, I think the designers have done a good job (at first glance). Cards like Lucky Charm are very powerful - but not so powerful that we'd all just stick with Ancient Heirloom Shield from now on. Prowl is clearly powerful. It's another card that I reckon is particularly good for its quality level - but it's unique effects make it difficult to compare directly to other cards. (Scamper and Leap are probably the closest matches.)

So I reckon the new cards are well designed, and fun, even if they do have some noticeable power creep. ... ... I'm not totally sold on Investigate though. I've only seen it a couple of times in multiplayer, so I can't say much about it from that point of view (except that it is viable) - but my theory-crafting tells me that it's probably undervalued. Here's a hypothetical example just to show how I'm thinking about this card: consider a team where two characters are holding Investigate, and this entire team gets hit by a Fireball. The fireball does 4 damage to everyone; but the characters with Investigate each get healed twice - so that they gain 4 hp each. The burn effect on the next round does 2 damage to everyone; but again the Investigate characters heal 4 hp each.

Investigate looks like a powerful counter to burst attacks and to burning attacks. The effects of Investigate are comparable to Reliable Mail, in that they give back 2 hp for each attack. (Obviously that 2 hp heal is wasted if you are already full hp; whereas the damage reduction from the armour is only 'wasted' if there is a 1 damage attack rather than 2+ damage. On the other hand the heal triggers from two different characters whereas armour only triggers from one; and armour can be destroyed by enemy cards, whereas nothing directly counters boost/move cards. (I suppose you could get rid of it with Memory Loss).

... anyway, as I said, this is just theory-crafting. It remains to be seen which items and cards are dominate. I'm just sharing my thoughts.

 

In SP there's Paralytic Poison and Paralyzing Bolt, but your point is good.

Speaking of SP, Creature Of The Night is a cycling trait with absolutely no drawbacks.

 

It occurs to me that Dynamic Armor is better for comparison than Reliable Mail. Dynamic Armor offers roughly the same amount of protection (it gives 1.5 average protection); and can be spent as a move 4 card, just like Investigate can. It seems to me that Dynamic Armor and Investigate have roughly similar functionality and usefulness. It's not clear which is has of the two cards has the better in-hand effect. Maybe the armour is better... but I don't think it's enough better to make up the difference from a bronze card to a gold card!

I suppose that if I think Investigate is so good, I should try to get myself a few pairs of Gumshoe's Gumshoes, and see how it works out. But I think I'll go ahead predict a nerf in the future.

 

Personally I see the only overpowered card in the new set: Monstrous Hide. Prior to it, we had only armors with average protection of 2, and the only armor with 2.5 had a serious drawback. Now we have an armor with protection 3 and no drawbacks at all! But Antimagic Skin may be even better, since auto-purging both you and the attacker is uber powerful, when your deck is ready for that, and the opponent's deck isn't.
Vengeance can be extremely powerful, especially with Sparkling Cloth Armor.
Investigate can be very powerful in a wizards battle, but otherwise it's OK since the damaged character gets nothing, and nobody wants to lose a character just to heal the other one. Modern warriors can kill in 3-4 strikes.

 

No, there are multiple armors with average reduction of at least 2.5 with no drawback: Grounding Plates: 2.67 average reduction, Barbed Platemail: 2.67 average reduction, Enchanted Mail: 2.5 average reduction.

 

Monstrous Hide also has the drawback of not preventing silver damage.

 

Every time I say that burrft is kill people tell me that it was already dead. But it's extra crispy deep fried dead now.

Vengeance is amazing. Unfortunately I only have it on three items total, but each of those items (Talissa's Trident, Captain Cedric's Vow and Silver Pitchfork) look equally amazing. I have 50k gold saved up to ransack DD and Randi's for CM items, I'm pretty much holding off on everything else right now.

 

Barbed Platemail has a roll of 4+ for armor 4, making it 2 average reduction.

 

True, I thought it was 3+.

 

Swarm Of Bats is crazy good for wizards (got it in QD today).

 

Uh Huh. A sort of Get Out Of One Attack And The Enemy's Range Free card.

 

Yeah, a pattern I think I'm seeing is wizards changing from burst cannons to having a variety of strategies that work. Cards like this make cards like punishing bolt playable again.

 

Seems like a good thing. Three Cheers for Castle Mitternacht!

 

So, "multiple" means two Did you notice that there were no items having two copies of these cards, and most of items with one copy has some bad cards to balance? Now we have Town Ravager's Hide with two Monstrous Hides and Volkov's Impenetrable Hide having only the great cards.
In fact, the game experiencing "an armor revolution" now. Previously, one can expect to meet Armor 2 on the enemies, now we have to expect 3. Plus, there are many new items with Enchanted Harness. This makes many low-damaging cards unplayable.

 

Would you buy Snitrick's Last Stand if you could? I have it at my Randimar's now (sorry for hijacking guys, I want to get Happenstance's opinion on the double-Vengeance weapon).

 

Jaysus. Is this the best CM weapon so far? I would buy that in a heartbeat for MP. It's got everything.

 

I think Final Sword is better, if you like Vengeance. And who doesn't like Vengeance?

 

It's got at least two cards I don't like - Penetrating Lunge and Wounding Block, and that's a lot for two yellow tokens.