What cards are breaking the bank?

I'm curious as to what you considered the most upsetting or game breaking card(s). So, what do you think, and how do you deal with the threat?

Or if there is something not on the list please post. I cut the list off, because I felt it was getting too long. Although, Impenetrable Nimbus , Fireball, and some others are more than qualified to be on the list.

 

I feel like Fireball deserve to be on the list. Almighty hack is too situational (just like All Out Attack) and can be removed from that list. My vote was Leadership and Cone of Cold (and fireball). The concept of those card is not OP but the power curve need adjustment.

 

I went for whirlwind enemies and Wellspring.

I'd say leadership, but I think any (and all) ability that allows for possible conditions of infinite draw illustrates an issue with the drawing/Deck management mechanic rather than an issue with the cards themselves.

 

erm, we are still in beta. That means card pool isn't as balanced as it should be. Anything that hasn't got a balanced counter is naturally unbalanced but not broken. The definition of broken refers to a mechanic which is abused outside of intended design.

Whirlwind Enemies: Immovable is a single hard counter card . Except that you need 3 immovables for full party to counter 1 x WE, which is why its unbalanced. Team moves soft counter WE. Situational at best.

Frost Jolt, Cone of Cold, Wall of Fire, Almight Hack, AoA: you gotta be kidding me.

Unholy Wellspring: Its a free bludgeon to every attack, regardless of attack type or range. No natural counter, slightly unbalanced but certainly not broken.

Leadership and Altruism: There are no anti-cyclers in card pool. Which is the reason for cycler dominance. Stun and encumber helps but are not foolproof. Perhaps its the intended design to encourage buffs and deck cycling to allow for faster, less boring games. But without natural counters, cyclers will be around for a long time, imo. Alternatively, a tonedown might work. We'll see...

 

Purge do counter altruism. But then again the problem is the scarcity of Purge. I agree that the current problem of counter play is that we can never reliably draw the counter. (Certain combo can be stacked way more than its answer card). Leadership is the answer for every situation (counter play or offensive play) which is too good of an effect.

I remember being very excited the first time I see the dog in campaign use a card that search for attack card in its deck and think about the potential of these effects in deckbuilding. The only similar effect MP card can have is Pathfinding. There are still much more room to explore this kind of effects to reliably draw counter/answer card.

 

I voted for three: Leadership, Cone Of Cold, and Unholy Wellspring. I think Winds Of War needs to be added to the list. I feel that it is much more difficult to play around than most of the cards up there.

That being said, I think that only Leadership is the only truly broken card. It is so so so easy to get exactly what you need in a Leadership build, even if you are only running one or two copies. The worst part is that it comes on a racial skill so you can build whatever comp you want and have 6 copies (assuming you don't really want Elvish Insight or Toughness). I assume that it is getting nerfed so I am not running more than two, but if it doesn't get nerfed i am changing up the comp.

Edit: formatting and repetition

 

Where is the none of the above option?

 

That sounds about right.

Edit: Does "other allies" only imply excluding the caster ?

 

Sounds like it. Personally I kind of dislike the "Other allies" abilities. In fact, all of the beneficial cards that can't be cast on self rub me the wrong way a bit. We'll see how this feels.

 

Well it certainly won't be broken after that. Compared to unholy power or dwarven cry it is pretty weak then. But it should still be playable and a good card.

 

Indeed, this is beta. Even if it were not beta balance is still a topic of concern. That being said, let me just officially say, "that I do not feel that there is any card currently that is broken." However, there are some cards which I feel deserve addressing. One example is: Leadership and the current issue players have with being able, to on the first turn, effectively draw unlimited cards. I do sense that a large portion of the Card Hunter community feels that there are some cards that cause more frustration, or devastation than others. As a result I made this thread to see what peoples thoughts and ideas on the topic are. I'm interested in finding out about how people are dealing with these cards; as well if they've been unable to effectively deal with these cards.

I originally intended to put that as an option; but I got carried away and forgot. Sorry.

 

The only one I voted for was Leadership. Yes, my 2 warrior/1 priest finds cold wizards excessively annoying. Also, the number of times whirlwind enemies has completely screwed me over earns it a place in my little book of grudges. (really though as others have already said, I think Winds of War is a lot worse because of the non-random nature). However, none of the cards on that list are really that bad. Some of them in fact rely on each other to be really effective, i.e. cold spells and wall of fire. Leadership bothers me more because of how it isn't in line with the other racial draw cards.

The usual place to see Leadership is on Human Skill cards. As a racial equivalent, I compare them to Dwarven Battle Cry and Elvish Insight. While you can make the argument that seeing your opponents cards is more powerful than cycling your own, I still think Leadership has the potential to be abused more than the other two. I'm not sure if the two card limit will change it or not, but we'll find out through trial and error - what beta is all about.

I almost voted for Cone of Cold, but then remembered that it's a FoF area effect, and if a player manages to get his caster into a position where he can freeze all three of my guys and not hit any of his... he probably deserves the resulting advantage.

A question about Unholy Wellspring - does the +4 also affect DoT stickies like burning? I could have sworn I got fried by a UW boosted fireball and then took 6 damage on the next round. If so, there's a potential combo issue.

 

Unholy Wellspring does not affect attachments. It is possible that you got hit for burn 5 if the caster had Firestarter and Kindler attached to him.

 

I don't think any of them are game breaking, but I do find Whirlwind and Whirlwind Enemies to be the most upsetting. As in, whenever one is played against me I think very, very unkind thoughts about the opponent that just played it.

 

I only voted for ‘Unholy Wellspring’ and even then I am very biased, given that i run 3 warriors.

Leadership - Now it has been nerfed i doubt we shall see much use of it at all. The card cycling deck was the only sort of deck i have seen that I couldn’t work out a counter for

Altruism - Not really sure why this is even in the list. Given that leadership has been nerfed this will really lose a lot of its power too, and it was never really as much of a problem

Whirlwind Enemies - I have probably won as many games because of my opponent playing this card as i have lost. It is a great leveller for those that have less skill. The lesser skilled players will always need random based cards to compete. Also the obvious counter is to have a few ‘team move’ cards. If a card can be countered it is not OP.

Frost Jolt - I have no problem with encumber spells. Arrogant armour, team moves and blocks deal with these nicely. Yes they are a pain, but only to those that don’t want to put counters in their decks

Cone of Cold – See above + maybe a bit too easy to get, but just get up close and personal, soon makes it a pain to use effectively.

Wall of Fire - 10 damage sounds like a lot, but reduced by armour it is really not that nasty at all. I think this is more psychological than anything else. Knowing that you are going to take 10 damage and not being able to do anything about it because you never put enough movement in your deck is demoralising to say the least

Almighty Hack - Really? The whole point of a warrior is to hit hard. If you nerf this then you might as well remove the warrior class. It is so easily countered too. From blocks, parries and movement

All Out Attack - Great when it works, but a single parry suddenly robs the attacker of two great cards (assuming they use a good attack with the AOA). Again very easy to counter, so there is no problem with it

Unholy Well – This should have a larger negative. + 4 damage for only 2 damage that can be prevented? It combos with certain spells for too well (fireball for instance). There are very few counters, very few armours stop 4 damage, never mind the original damage. Only purge can really stop it and that is only available to priests. Every race/class should have some sort of counter to every other card. I would suggest that each attack using unholy well damages the attack for 2 points, and cannot be prevented. At least this would make it a little more challenging to use well.

As for the two other suggestions :-
Fireball – I hate them, but then again i don’t think they are over powered, more like certain maps need to be looks at to stop the 1st turn gank. Once that first turn is gone then it is only a decent spell. My suggestion is that it only hits the centre target automatically, everyone else gets a 4+ save.

Impenetrable Nimbus – No problem with this one. Good spell for sure, but I tend to just stop attacking the person and wait until next turn. If it lasted longer than one turn then I’d be

 

I guess I never encountered any issues with Leadership. None of these cards are broken in my personal experience.

 

Hi!

So, I have been playing pretty seriously for months, now. I'm through single player, and have been focused entirely on multiplayer. I agree, in general, that Leadership was unfair, but I never got it to "cycle indefinitely", so am sad to see it nerfed. Ho hum. No biggie.

However:

I see Cone of Cold in this list, and I would normally vote for it, but I don't think it's the card that's broken. I think Encumber, as it presently works, is broken. Basically, any strategy that enables the player "not to play" is bad, and should be avoided at all costs. This is the age old debate against, essentially, camping. Some people will disagree and say, "camping is a valid strategy!" Maybe. I would argue that the sheer amount of game revisions (of all multiplayer games) that try and nerf straight up camping is proof enough that it's not desirable. But the counter argument would be that for an FPS, camping, pure camping, isn't really that viable anyway, so go nuts.

But in a turn based strategy game, with 1 player vs 1 player, any kind of camping pretty much destroys the game. In these kinds of games, the more choices presented to the player every turn, the more fun it is. Straight up. Good gameplay is when one player's set of choices is slightly more clever than their opponent. That's when you have a "GG." When you're presented with no choices, and you just have to click-and-wait, you feel like you're up against a "BS deck". I love this game, and yet, I've never wanted to rage quit a strategy game so many times. I've even stalled a couple times, just out of frustration, and I'm not usually such a bad sport. Given that the way the move cards work, in the first place, is counter-intuitive (bear in mind I've been playing turn based strategy games for 25 years, and I still didn't really get it until maybe three weeks ago) any additional added frustration to those cards is going to blow your retention out of the water.

Side note: You really have to figure out a way to allow the canceling of move cards. I realize that it can be gamed, but I'm sure you've solved harder problems! I've recommended the game to ALL of the hardcore players in my office, and they've all come back with "Couldn't get move cards, couldn't cancel out of a move, got other games I want to play." If this is how the hardcore feel, imagine all the lower tier (People who "love Civ") you're losing.

Right now, the meta-game is ALL about encumbers + fireballs/whirlwind. Which essentially allows horrific camping on the victory squares. This doesn't look to be as much of a problem on the new maps (hooray!), but I think it's a problem in general. The encumber system needs to be rethought, or a couple key purge abilities need to be buffed. Right now, the only way out of this meta-game nightmare is to make a specific, anti-camping deck--I have two different ones. But, right now, if I want to play online, I'm locked into those decks. Even a small thing, like not allowing encumbers to stack, would make a big difference.

If you're married to the way encumber works, another solution might be to allow a top level system of deck choosing: This is a little bit vague, but essentially, pre-match, I want the ability to see who my opponent is, and the select from pre-constructed decks. That way, if I know that I'm up against a camper, I can switch to an anti-encumber deck, and school them. But right now, since I'm locked in, the chances of me getting bored with the beta, because I literally can't use any deck that isn't anti-encumber, are higher. Which means they'll be higher in release.

Any-hoo, I don't usually write on forums, so hope this criticism felt constructive!

P.S. 80 'zas for a new character cut-out? How about 40?

 

I'd love to see that same argument when Entangling Roots deck is in fashion. It will be even more of a problem (removing player choice) than encumber could.

 

Strangely, never been too bothered by entangling roots. Could be because the range, availability, and turns they last (1, right?) are all significantly less. Compare that with the all too common cold+frost stack, that has 6/8 range, and lasts twice as long....