I realize it isn't incremental but it's the only way to turn spells on arcane items into damaging attacks. I was hoping control spells coupled with movement would be enough to mimic the high volume of damage burning spells provide. I don't want to use warriors because Frenzy buffs would be better with them.
I was more responding to @PDXTai 's claims about PoK + CoF damage. I donno if Curse of Fragility works for you, but it does seem to push those numbers up a fair bit, giving you some pretty nasty burst potential. A lot of the trick, with or without warriors, is going to be balancing the number of Curses and Paths against other cards in your deck. Another thing I'm unsure of is how Whirlwind/Whirlwind Enemies works these days. My understanding is that it is essentially a mass-maze, but I can't remember if Maze and it's ilk trigger Path Of Knives effects. If you can fit them, Greenguard Boots might be a nice addition to your build, allowing you to teleport, thin the deck, and get a nice move or block. Because most of the time your wizards aren't going to be playing cards that deal more than 1 or 2 damage, you can dodge a lot of the issues inherent in Squeamish, too. I understand it's a tricky build, because there are so many things you want to do! I look forward to seeing what you come up with - a working version of this would be a lot of fun.
Maze and Whirlwind do not trigger Path of Knives. Otherwise you'd have seen a very different sort of Whirlwind deck dominating pre nerf.
Path of Knives did not work out. Too much Path of Knives and I didn't draw enough control spells. Not enough Path of Knives and Curse of Fragility did nothing. Wasn't great against wizards either.
Yeah, dunno why I thought PoK did it damage one square at a time. If it did that, one reliable mail would prevent all damage no matter how far you moved. As for CoF, burning spells, especially instant burn, are the easiest way to take advantage of it. Path of knives didn't work so maybe you could do gusts of war, firewall but that's just a control build which works better with 3 wizards or a drawbot.
Yeah, right now I'm thinking of putting together a burn wizard, fragile priest, and {spoiler} warrior.
It seemed odd to me that wizards (with burn) and priests (with drain) get a lot more synergy from fragile than warriors. Adding 2 to a 11 damage melee attack is much less useful than adding 2 to a 2 point drain. It would be fun to have some new mechanics that could take advantage of fragile for warriors. Something like "Follow up strike. Melee attack. Range 1, damage 6. If this attack is not blocked, immediately attack target again for 6 damage."
Curse Of Fragility Pros Able to fit more copies than traditional buffs Works incredibly well with the high volume of damage from burning spells Cons Short duration Worse than Frenzy buffs for melee characters Must focus all attacks on the afflicted target for maximum effect Worse than buffs for attacks that hit multiple characters
Inspiring Armor and Heavy Armor are both relatively underplayed. I think this has less to do with card quality but rather availability and token cost. Nevertheless, I've never really heavily played either card so I don't know for certain. This one is going to be pretty open-ended with only armor slots locked in. Heavy Armor will be the more interesting one card interaction-wise. Spoiler: I'm Just Big Boned Maedhel Level 20 Elf Warrior Bejeweled Shortsword Bejeweled Shortsword Blazing Shortsword Leaden Plate Mail Shield Of The Frog Angry Jack's Helmet Bouncing Boots Cautious Mobility Novice Impaling 2 x Impaler 4 x Jump Back 2 x Heavy Armor 4 x Vicious Thrust 1 x Clumsy Chop 2 x Penetrating Cut 3 x Fiery Stab 1 x Hard To Pin Down 1 x Walk, Team! 2 x Elven Maneuvers 1 x Blind Rage 1 x Scouting Run 1 x Reliable Mail 1 x Combustible 6 x Powerful Hack 1 x Thickened Mail 1 x Stab 2 x Powerful Bludgeon Khrumzorn Level 20 Dwarf Warrior Basher's Delight Basher's Delight Eixocl's Hammer Leaden Plate Mail Quinn's Buckler Crusty Helm Crazy Fast Boots Raging Battler Novice Bruising 2 x Able Bash 2 x Pressing Bash 2 x Heavy Armor 2 x Bruiser 1 x Subtle Parry 3 x Dodge 8 x Lunging Bash 1 x Obvious Maneuver 1 x Bludgeon 4 x Strong Bash 3 x Blind Rage 2 x Reliable Mail 1 x Thickened Mail 1 x Trip 1 x Hardy Mail 2 x Sprint Nerlaze Level 21 Human Priest Huetotl's Firebrand Purging Mace Mail Of The Prophet Aegis Of The Defender Mouse Boots Bleneth's Skull Purging Charm Incense Of Roiled Air Perfect Command Novice Piety 1 x Dash, Team! 1 x Triple Heals 1 x Run, Team! 1 x Cautious Sneak 1 x Purge 1 x Minor Heal 1 x Sundering Strike 2 x Purging Strike 2 x Altruism 1 x Predictable Stab 1 x Weak Chop 1 x Surestrike Blessing 2 x Fiery Stab 1 x Enervating Touch 2 x Inspiration 1 x Inspiring Armor 4 x Purging Burst 2 x Defender's Block 1 x Crafted Mail 3 x Flanking Move 6 x Mass Frenzy That's right, the Jump Back warrior is back for another go. I used Ill-Fitting Armor last time around because it was tokenless but Heavy Armor is way better as armors go. The extra damage prevention might balance out the awkwardness of having Heavy Armor with no Jump Back in hand. The dwarf is there to see how badly I'll need stuff like Energizing Move to counteract the self encumbrance. I can't really use range 2 step attacks effectively so I'm also taking this opportunity to finally see if Bash warriors are as awful unique as I think they are. Having great armor seems like a perfect fit for Bash warriors. Crazy Fast Boots is a no brainer with an encumbered dwarf. I get Sprints to actually get where I want to go and Trip doesn't do much when I plan on moving at Shuffle speed. Not great with so many Lunging Bashes though. There's also a small Dodge subtheme going on that Trip could trip up. Dodge should be better this time as just a value card. The most playable Inspiring Armor is Mail Of The Prophet in my opinion though I could test out the armor roll boosting angle with Thick Banded Mail later. I chose human to get access to command cards which aren't affected by encumber. It's possible a control wizard might be better to move people around. This build doesn't look too shabby. I'm kind of excited to see how it goes.
Inspiring armor is tough to test since you can only have one per character. I could see a 3 human vamp build with lots of leadership to try to draw the armor, but it's one use. To be honest, inspiring armor seems a little broken to me. Best case you get +1 card advantage and 3 damage prevention. Demonic power gives you +1 card advantage at the cost of 3 damage, but you get to put both cards on one character and you get to decide when you want the cards. That's worth more than the 6 health difference between the two cards to me. With heavy armor, I think you'd want to go with a bunch of healing. Make it hard to damage the warriors, then heal what you can. Raging battler seems risky since it will take a while to get that dwarf into melee range if you don't draw your sprints. You might try going 3x human with bloody command or other sprint, team! racials and maybe one of the sprint, team! helmets.
Inspiring Armor has language that means it doesn't trigger if the damage is self-inflicted - so no self-activating your armor. In fact, you'd have to be careful not to include triggers that might remove your armor without benefit - things like Firestorm and getting caught in your own AoEs don't have any place in the same deck as Inspiring Armor.
Well that didn't work out one bit. The dwarf warrior was too slow to reach victory points or even join the battle till mid game. That left the elf warrior to fend for herself. I really think you need elves to play Heavy Armor unassisted. I am going to try porting Heavy Armor into my human Sprint, Team! warriors build. They are weak to control wizards anyways so a little encumber won't do anything besides make the bad matchup worse. It should be better against the rest of the field.
The Sprint, Team! warriors has been working a lot better. It's gone 13-7 with a nightmare control wizard matchup as expected. Spoiler: Heavy Metal Track Lorgav Level 21 Human Warrior Bejeweled Shortsword Bejeweled Shortsword Blazing Shortsword Leaden Plate Mail Parrying Buckler Wenham's Leather Coif Hawkwind's Moccasins Bloody Command Novice Impaling 2 x Sprint, Team! 1 x Bloodied Block 1 x Leather Harness 1 x Stab 3 x Fiery Stab 1 x Flanking Move 2 x Heavy Armor 1 x Escaping Run 1 x Clumsy Chop 2 x Impaler 1 x Combustible 1 x Barge 4 x Vicious Thrust 2 x Powerful Bludgeon 1 x Penetrating Cut 6 x Powerful Hack 1 x Thickened Mail 2 x Dangerous Maneuver 3 x Parry Growler Level 20 Human Warrior Bejeweled Shortsword Bejeweled Shortsword Blazing Shortsword Leaden Plate Mail Parrying Buckler Wenham's Leather Coif Marmot Boots Bloody Command Novice Impaling 2 x Sprint, Team! 1 x Run 1 x Leather Harness 1 x Stab 3 x Fiery Stab 1 x Flanking Move 2 x Heavy Armor 1 x Clumsy Chop 2 x Impaler 1 x Combustible 1 x Barge 4 x Vicious Thrust 2 x Powerful Bludgeon 1 x Wild Run 1 x Penetrating Cut 6 x Powerful Hack 1 x Thickened Mail 1 x Dash 1 x Bloodied Block 3 x Parry Winsla Level 20 Human Warrior Bejeweled Shortsword Bejeweled Shortsword Blazing Shortsword Leaden Plate Mail Parrying Buckler Wenham's Leather Coif Hawkwind's Moccasins Bloody Command Novice Impaling 2 x Sprint, Team! 1 x Bloodied Block 1 x Leather Harness 1 x Stab 3 x Fiery Stab 1 x Flanking Move 2 x Heavy Armor 1 x Escaping Run 1 x Clumsy Chop 2 x Impaler 1 x Combustible 1 x Barge 4 x Vicious Thrust 2 x Powerful Bludgeon 1 x Penetrating Cut 6 x Powerful Hack 1 x Thickened Mail 2 x Dangerous Maneuver 3 x Parry The original build had Savvy Attacker for Team Walk but encumber shuts it down hard. Normally, the warriors are very dependent on Parry to survive so I was really impressed with the Heavy Armors. They also finally make Leather Harness semi respectable. Moving at dwarf speed was a little awkward at times but it also gave late game Sprint, Teams! something to do. I think I have a pretty good grasp of Heavy Armor now so I'll be giving Inspiring Armor another go.
Wow. 3 Wenham's, 3 Bloody commands and 2 hawkwinds. Are you able to use your sprints to gang up on one opponent often? Do you think the sprints catch people off guard or is it just hard to avoid a warrior that can move 8 squares?
People tend to not group up, especially when the victory points are spread out. Sluice in particular is good for first turn ambushes. Even if people know it's coming they may not have the right cards in hand to stop it.
You could try going hexagon/granwicks/eeygonnics shield and sticky slippers to give you a better chance against control wizards. That would give you two more traits for a better chance at a sprint team. You'd lose those great parries, but it seems like you wouldn't need to worry too much about melee builds since you could almost always arrange a 2 vs. 1 battle.
I have tried that before. It's still very hard to beat control wizards since you need to draw Immovable early and on the right warriors to sprint in. The slight gain in the control matchup is not worth the loss of Parry.
There is no way to almost always reliably arrange 2 vs 1 ... if nothing, other characters have some movement, step attacks etc ..
Yeah, the best way to fight control wizards is to incorporate Nimble Strikes or Dancing Cuts into your attacks but low damage attacks obviously don't work well when you are trying to take down a character in a single turn.
My internet has been dodgy the past couple days but I did get a bunch of Inspiring Armor games in last week. I tried Mail Of The Prophet, Thick Banded Mail, and Ancient Runed Breastplate. Surestrike Blessing and Rusty Armor were pretty much dead cards and the 3 damage prevention from Inspiring Armor isn't worth a card either so those two armors sort of break even on cards. Thick Banded Mail is better but Heavy Armor has it's own problems and there are better things to spend major tokens on. Also, I embarrassingly knocked off Inspiring Armor with self damage multiple times. It's very easy to forget about it. I basically added Inspiring Armor to existing builds that weren't that interesting so I won't bother posting them. I think the unaltered decks would have done better. If there is some sort of way to take advantage of Inspiring Armor I'm not seeing please let me know and I'll test it out. Otherwise, I'm ready to give my opinions on both armors.
