Welcome visak13! I was absolutely into almost every single match between us because I didn't know what to expect from ya. And now it's an honor to have you in the guild, after that fight with two people locked in the unexitable places. Represent the guild well! Way better than me I guess.
Thanks! And yes it was a great match! Honestly, I came unprepared but positioning got me through really I hope that we reach beyond 1200GELO More surprises coming with the map rotation
well, the surprise is kinda negative, burst and sprint team favoring maps right now, but regardless! Good job folks, we're making progress, mostly thanks to the play of @Pyrious last month, but still. Not only that, with every day come new items from the chest loot! That usually means that everyday the game gives us a chance to try something new and I think that's been achieved! This last month was way more interesting in terms of builds - We've had a roulette purge handicap-heavy build, thousand variations of Mimetic things, basically about perfecting the use of them, as well as some Hypnotic Beacon action. We might not score high this month. We might never score high, no clue. But one thing that matters is that we give more and more cards a chance to shine and, while doing that, we think more and more outside of the box than we would. Thanks everyone for everything ya done to the guild. And... ...fight (against) the power of meta. With non-meta!
Helm Of Alacrity, Heartripper, Purge, Arrogant Armor = problem solved. Disclaimer: it is not the complete idea. Just a small part. Hope you can figure it out!
Did I expect to get crushed by something today? No, not by a long shot. Did I expect to have that happen twice to me? Absolutely not. But that's what happened. And the second crush was delivered by a fellow crazy constructor, @Killer74 - He WRECKED cano with Elven Wizards. Hats off to ya and welcome on the ship, man.
I will not be playing a lot from March, 1 to May, 31 or a bit further coz I'll be really very busy. I am taking an indefinite leave starting March, 1. :/ I hope to contribute 100 ELO this month as I have only 25 more to contribute. Was fun playing this month. All the best to you guys, esp. @Lucky Dice . May you guys crack the meta. All the best for your real lives. Hope you all prosper!
Well, we'll try, promise, pal! Hopefully you being busy doesn't mean you having to go through some incredibly annoying chores, but still - uh... have fun, I guess. And thanks for your hard work up to this point man. I knew you were the right man with the right deck!
All right, welcome @zenmonk1 to the guild! Damn that deck of yours is annoying to play against, but at the same time, I can't not be impressed by how creative this deck was. So yeah, hello and have fun in!
Yo yo, we had gotten 6TH! I know it's not a 5th, sorry to the guys that were giving it all to get us higher, especially Pyrious and visak, but - you know, we can always try next time. For now I'm happy with what we've achieved. Or you've achieved, as I was kinda low on contribution. It was either testing, or me hating my own deck - tons of different things coming together. Not to mention the maps were... ugh. Either way. I'm hoping to unite more people playing the not-standard way further this month, as well as win some or lose some with my own weird creations and I'd support ya doing that too any time of day. And... uh, I really don't know what else do I say, other than thank you all for giving everything ya got.
Uh, I was supposed to put it in Feedback/Suggestions, but I decided to kinda put it where I want - this is as close to "my thread" as it can get. Consider this to be a rant. Let's talk about Armor and Blocks. Armor is usually nice. Reducing damage from attacks is cool. And all of the additional things armors do are real fun to play with. Take my Hand Extention deck for example - I was having a blast when I was playing against @gulo gulo with his wizards. Between Mimetic Armor and Quick Reactions I was getting so many cards that it was just a blast to play with. That's not to say it's all fine and dandy. Said deck fares worse against warriors, where QR is useless. The biggest thing around the block is Reliable Mail. Y'know what, if that were with stuff like Dropped Guard, Fumble, Ill-Fitting Armor only, that kind of stuff, I think it still would be played, but not on that level. But because of the fact it's one of the easiest things to get (just take a look at Crusty Helm with no drawbacks at all, Perilous Ringmail or Dependable Mail for more vulnerable heroes), it's also one of the most played Armor cards around. Hell, even Priests have easy access to it. Blocks are cool too. Block an attack, cause yourself or your target to gain some or lose some, sometimes outright making your opponent tilt when you Unreliable Block his All Out Attack'd Pulverizing Hack after your guy had 2 failed Parry, etc. Either way, there are some of the most commonly used blocks, for good reasons too, that just stand out. For a few simple reasons - they are rather reliable and they add cycling, which I mentioned somewhere earlier. I'm talking about already mentioned Parry and Defender's Block. First one is easily one of the most accesable and most forgiving blocks - with it being on weapons in as big amounts as 2, and Parrying Buckler being only a minor token thing, it's really a pain to deal with. A single Dwarf Warrior can have up to 10 of them! That's up to 10 attacks blocked and up to 10 cards drawn! For these more worried about Wizards (rightfully so, these can, too, be some powerful beasts), there's a Defender's Block. 66% of a chance to block anything you have a vision on on anybody up to 3 tiles away from you has proven itself amazing many times before. There's a reason Aegis Of The Defender is almost a staple for a priest. Nothing like extending your firepower's... well, firepower, as well as giving yourself some cycling protection. PS. There's also Pushback Parry. Very good block against steps not named Nimble Strike and... well, everything I mentioned lower. But... let's get back to wizards for a second. Their most often seen Arcane Skill is Electroporter Novice. Easy to see why - 3 traits on a tokenless item, no doubt it'll be used. But that's not the most problematic part. You see, if it was something like... Hot Flames, Kindler, Dimensional Traveler, or, hell, even Hot Flames, Spark Inductor and Traveler, it would be far better for a very simple reason. Sparky traits are godlike for the very wrong thing. It's not because they buff electricity, I mean - who uses that? I can defend Oxha's Sparkspreader all I want, but the fact is - there are better things than electricity. Sparky traits are godlike because they grant everything that is an Arcane Magic a Hard to Block effect. And this is a huge problem. Said semi-reliable Defender's Block becomes a block with 1/3 chance to proc AT BEST. And just so happens that Arcane Magic is the one we see the most often. To throw you a few examples, Arcane Burst, Telekinesis, Gusts Of War and Winds Of War, Punishing Bolt. Notice the pattern here? Yeah. You see at least one of these on a daily basis. This is why Control can be so good, this is why Arcane Burst can be the most preferred burst to some and this is why Punishing Bolt is absurd. (HEY RANDI, I WANT 324434243 HEARTRIPPERS TOO). Arcane Magic is good enough as is. Besides, tons of things just help you anyways - Bad Luck on an opponent, frenzies for the burst, etc. So... I kinda wanted to propose a small change to both of the Sparky traits. Either one of these: Hard to Block also applies to Electric attacks, instead of Arcane. - This would make Arcane Magic more bearable, whilst giving Electricity a rather powerful buff that's basically ON electric cards anyways. But besides that, I'm going to take the poor Oxha's as an example, it would require better positioning to reliably hit multiple targets than what we currently have with burst. Arcane attacks have their damage buffed by a whopping 1/2 instead of having Hard to Block. - This solution would still keep Arcane Burst a powerful force to be reckoned with and potentially make a Punishing Bolt that more painful, but the omnipresent Control would be slightly, rightfully too, nerfed. (Speaking of control, Telekinesis is criminally too well itemized to not consider using it. Remember this sentence, it will be used later in this post.) Instead of Hard to Block 2/3 respectively, make it 1/1. - This way you can still screw with somebody's blocks, but not on the same level you currently do. Give a better chance on cards with Block Magic/Projectile - while not a direct way to nerf the hard-to-blockness of the traits, it would punish a severe spam. Stuff like Bullseye Shield would get a new life. All right, with that out of the way, let's move on to other thing that screws with Blocks - And no, I don't mean stuff like Unnerving Strike. This is one of the most balanced cards in my opinion, both in use and itemization. I want to talk about stuff that's unblockable. That's right. Violent Spin. The fact that this is often used is crystal clear. And the reason's good too - It's a well itemized card (Nova Axe, Bruising Dervish, Pergop's Slippers or Zachary's Boots - you name a slot, and there's a chance for a VSpin to be here) that just happens to have a limited amount of counters. Due to the fact of it ignoring blocks, should you happen to have any paired with no movement, your opponent can basically pretend that this block of yours doesn't exist for his next attack. The counters to the VSpin are: Being immovable (and just so happens that both Immovable and Stone Feet are both... well, not horribly itemized, but they have a way worse itemization than VSpin. And they both can be purged off, unlike the VSpin itself, which - guess what all high end just happen to have in their decks! Oh, and bonus points to Nova Axe for directly countering that with bonus 2 Purging Strikes.) Having more movement yourself (which is pretty annoying, because it basically forces you to get yourself crapton of it, be it step attacks or just... VSpins. Or already mentioned control.) Immobilizing somebody else - usually with Entangling Roots (this card is kinda sad. I gave a deck with some roots a whirl and I quickly understood why people dislike running it - purges, Team! moves and TK moving others make it a non-factor that's occasionally good on slowly popping a Force Field.) So basically, the VSpin player can have a priest with purges to counter 2 out of 3 of the card's weaknesses. "But Volta, Violent Spin is usually paired with stuff you don't want! Just take a look at the Dervish that has 4 really weak attacks along with 2 Spins!" Yeah, but the thing is - you can go around that. Let me show you an example. Imagine you're an Elven Warrior with your dirty Elven Maneuvers x2 for free. So now that you have a pseudo-martyr (giff nerf plz), you can put all the other tokens into other stuff. For example, you can go like this: Nova Axe Bruising Dervish Flashing Longspear Zachary's Boots/Pergop's Slippers This combo grants you a solid damage and 5 VSpins. And you still have a token. This, with a few changes here or there, is what I see in this meta recently. In a really, REALLY big scale. There is a reason why did I use Flashing Longspear here, I'll get to it in a second. Yeah, how can we make a VSpin more balanced? One of these could do: Change Push 2 to Slide 2. - It's not a big nerf, but oh boy, a needed one. VSpin is, due to how easy it is to position yourself, usually a warrior's version of Gusts of War. That also happens to grant you a movement. And change the facing of your opponents. This nerf would basically make the card more equal to GoW in terms of damage done on your opponent and wouldn't leave you vulnerable to any attack if you have a block in your hand. Change Push 2 to Push 1. - This would make it similar to another Gold card that allows you to get some control, Muscle Through. Unlike it, though, VSpin could be used defensively to escape from a tricky position. Push 1 would make it more defensive and easier to recover from. Keep in mind that in its current version, the move allows you to move somebody as much as a dwarven racial move! Change Move 3 to Move 1. - okay this one might be too heavy, but it would be less of a quality pick from Elven Maneuvers. It wouldn't punish somebody playing the card to control, but it would not be as much of a "get out of jail free" card as it currently is. Itemize Paralyzing Bolt. - Okay this sounds even weirder, but hear me out. Moves currently can't be removed from anybody in MP. No handicap that would remove your movement card, no attack that removes opponent's movement card, nothing. We seriously do need more of it. I used Paralyzing Bolt as an example because it's Emerald. It could be tweaked to MP, but it's a well sought thing nowadays. Now with that out of the way, let's get back to Penetrating. I think that it is a fine thing, to be able to bypass armor. It's also fitting from a logical standpoint, back in medieval people used thrusts and other powerful techniques to get through even the heaviest of armors. However, people back then didn't have what we, Cardhuntrians, have. Freaking godlike itemization of penetrating attacks. Nova Axe has no useless cards, basically. Laser Thrust is arguably the most powerful penetrating attack currently available to players. Obliterating Chop is free damage. Violent Spin is something I covered so well I'm getting sick just thinking about the damn card. Purging Strikes remove opponent's buffs and anything interrupting your Spin. Flashing Longspear is the biggest quantity of penetrating attacks on a single weapon with a Blind Rage to boot. Double-Edged Sword is probably the best standalone weapon for Impaling Stabs. Starknife, because some people actually use it, has a freaking 2+ BLOCK ANY card, a Blind Rage, three penetrating attacks and a Parry punisher in Flaring Laser. The fact that there's nothing to remove a Penetrating effect in any other way than stunning somebody with an Anvil Strike (purgable effect) or getting lucky with radiation so that your opponent gets Fright (currently non-purgable if it's a radiation coming from your side) makes the matters worse. Hell, it makes Armor a non-factor. Mix it up with the VSpin in its current state, and you don't care about blocks too. You can even move your opponent's warrior out of their comfortable range 1, just to deliver a penetrating attack to their back. And you can't do a thing about it. There's nothing that could remove the penetrating effect out of the opponent. Not even a weak Stone Feet equivalent of something that removes Penetrating from attacks against you. Nothing. There are just... whiffy blocks. So here are my suggestions for a change to these. This time, I think we could consider more than one of these, maybe not all at once. Impaling Stab becomes range 1. - It's a needed change that could potentially make a Penetrating Stab viable, so it's a best of both worlds. And I think this is the right direction - nerfing this rather than buffing Penetrating Stab in any way. You could always swap Penetrating Stab with Impaling Stab in terms of rarity, for example, and DES would still be an uncommon. Laser Thrust damage is now Minor Erratic Damage and its base damage is increased by 1. - Currently this attack is the random incarnate. It's a gold attack that can tickle you for as much as Penetrating Lunge does and give you an extra card, or it can whoop your back with more damage than Impaling Stab. This change would alter the damage range slightly. From 6-11 it would be 7-9. Besides, malfunctions rarely even harm you, if anything they usually help you. Some give you cantrip to start your next turn first, some damage everybody around you, etc. Rework the mechanism of Penetrating. - I feel like I'm going to be smacked to the face because of this, but I believe that could potentially be a solution. For example, instead of not triggering the armor, Penetrating would increase the damage of the attack by 2 for every armor that successfully reduces the damage. This way armor is still good, penetrating would still be powerful and Sundering Strike wouldn't be useless - it would remove a Cushioning Armor that could cause problems to this version of a penetrating attack. I think that's all I wanted to let out of my chest. I could move this to suggestions if needed. Right now I just wish devs could take a look at this, so I'll ping @Jon and @Flaxative here for the sake of alerting them. Consider yourself alerted.
The Perforator would like to have a word with you. It is of higher quality, after all, similarly to how Penetrating Lunge is better than Lunging Hack but at a higher level. But other than that, you do bring up a lot of good points about the best items and why they are the best.
Yeah, I meant usable weapons w/penetrating. Range 1 on penetrating attacks scares the hell out off people. Penetrating Lunge (because you probably meant to say that) is a case of worse itemization tho. But yeah, my bad. Either way, Malfunctions usually just help you more than they do hurt you, so...
The way the things are now armor have a little relevante. Only works against mages without armor removal. I agree with VS its very powerfull and a very good tech, stabs works wonders vs VS, so have range 2 negates VS
Indeed, Rock, Paper, Scissors is a vicious cycle -- Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock even moreso. Card Hunter is a system of counters. You can do crazy all you like, but just grit your teeth and bear it when taking crazy into competitive play. (And we've talked. You know I like crazy. You know I like competitive play. Ha ha ha ha, you know I like taking crazy into competitive play!) Have you considered running a tournament that (somehow) encourages crazy? Last I checked, there's no BM/CH rule against an organizer playing in his/her own tournament (although I think at least one person who did that opted out of prizes?). That came to mind just now b/c I was thinking, hey, maybe Luckimento Voltadice would enjoy casual (esp team play) matches more than the rigor of ranked play. You could make a rigorous competition with cranked up crazy. $:^ ]
I generally agree with your points. All the items/cards you mentioned are good and that's why they get played. But that said, this post doesn't really acknowledge that other metas exist. There are metas where parry-heavy warriors and stab warriors are practically non-existent. There are metas where burfft or VP dwarves take place instead. In this meta, yes, vspin is an incredible card. In other metas, vspin gets trumped very easily by burfft. That said, it's not crazy to think that people will adapt to the maps and play the appropriate cards.
i'm still salty about that last month meta tbh good job folks, we finished at 8th and somehow knocked down sorcerererererererererers (couldn't stop myself), and it's probably 90% Zenmonk's contribution this month, sorry but I wasn't really paying attention this time what can I say, lotsa things happened past month in my personal life, so I kinda pushed this game aside, but starting April 5th the internet will be back in my place (writing all that from home, came here for a weekend), good stuff will start to happen, namely I'M GOING TO STREAM STUFF, WE'RE GOING VIRAL yeah, so that's that back to the other things, I'm also thinking about hosting a small contest for the entire cardhuntria and I'm probably going to write all the stuff on paper on Monday as I won't have much stuff to do then this month seems like it's going to be even more miserable for our meta breaking, but I'm pretty sure we can make it somehow We can try that small build of mine, for example: Omniknight Level 24 Human Priest Huetotl's Firebrand Purging Mace Stargod's Raiments Quinn's Buckler Mouse Boots St Ulrich's Bones Tome Of The Martyr St Ulrich's Bones Advanced Flexibility Novice Ablution 1 x Triple Heals 2 x Mass Frenzy 1 x Cautious Sneak 1 x Purge 3 x Bless 1 x Cushioning Armor 1 x Subtle Parry 1 x Enervating Touch 2 x Fiery Stab 2 x Dodge 2 x Cleansing Ray 2 x Flanking Move 4 x Martyr Blessing 1 x Sundering Strike 2 x Leadership 1 x Slowed 2 x Holy Presence 1 x Inspiration 1 x Predictable Stab 3 x Purging Burst 2 x Purging Strike Winjerrton Level 23 Human Wizard Surging Staff Surging Staff Copper Zapping Wand Malachite Orb Malachite Orb Akon's Amulet Autowarming Spacecloak Blinking Boots Inspired Command Electroporter Novice 1 x Shuffle, Team! 7 x Big Zap 2 x Mimetic Armor 2 x Force Blast 4 x Long Spark 1 x Subtle Parry 1 x Dimensional Traveller 1 x Spark Generator 1 x Dissolve Armor 4 x Surging Bolt 1 x Resistant Hide 2 x Telepod Jaunt 4 x Surging Blast 3 x Boiling Armor 1 x Spark Inductor 1 x Inspirational Thinking Terry Crews Level 1 Human Wizard Surging Staff Surging Staff Copper Zapping Wand Malachite Orb Malachite Orb Akon's Amulet Autowarming Spacecloak Blinking Boots Inspired Command Electroporter Novice 1 x Shuffle, Team! 7 x Big Zap 2 x Mimetic Armor 2 x Force Blast 4 x Long Spark 1 x Subtle Parry 1 x Dimensional Traveller 1 x Spark Generator 1 x Dissolve Armor 4 x Surging Bolt 1 x Resistant Hide 2 x Telepod Jaunt 4 x Surging Blast 3 x Boiling Armor 1 x Spark Inductor 1 x Inspirational Thinking Just change the priest into something that won't suck and it's a brand new ground to walk on GL&HF
Double mimetic on a wiz, wanted to give that a serious try at some point. Leadershipping the melee stuff for more spells if it comes down to it, makes sense (on paper).
