When used as a verb, barge means to hurry somewhere or through a place in a rude and forceful way. (Oxford English Dictionary) The purpose of the card is to move another character. It might be an opponent or one of your own, depending upon your situation.
Do you say that in a general way, this card priorizes moving, over the animus of dealing damage, something like Force Bolt or Force Blast?
Barge is better compared to cards like Telekinesis and Winds Of War since it allows you to chose where to move a character to rather than pushing them back, which means you have greater control of where the character you Barged ends up. Generally warriors (and priests) would prefer to use Violent Spin or Muscle Through to get their pushing/sliding done though, since it also lets them move closer to key objectives as well as the push/slide effect being unblockable.
What @Maniafig said. Originally it only dealt 2 damage (iirc) to encourage its use on allies. It is basically range 2 melee control. The unblockable move effects are generally preferred, particularly in PvP.
Telekinesis is a better comparison than Force Blast/Force Bolt because Barge and TK both have a sliding/pushing effect whereas the Force cards are more similar to Bash cards with their pushback effects. Push and Slide effects are affected by difficult terrain and zones of control unless the Push/Slide effect also has the Free Move/Fly/Teleport keyword.
Yes, but there is a not despicable amount of damage involved. The issue about Barge as a blockable card pushes this card into what kind of situation? Moving allies preferably? Assuming you have -for example- Reliable Mail or a good armor like that.
Unfortunately, Barge isn't very good. Let's compare it with Telekinesis. Advantages of Telekinesis: Higher range of 4 compared to 1. Has Fly while Barge doesn't. Fly is a big part of why Telekinesis is so good. Melee-only blocks are far more common than magic-only blocks. Parrying Buckler and Subtle Positioning being just two examples. Has a cheaper value of Bronze compared to Silver for Barge, indirectly leading into the next point. Telekinesis is far better itemised than Barge, with items like Luke's Iron Hand, Asmod's Telekinetic Chain, Ring Of Appropriation, Perrio's Kinetic Robes and so on, while Barge has Bynzer's Weighted Club for priests and, uh, Enormous Tree Branch for warriors? Now let's look at what Barge does better. Advantages of Barge: Does damage. However, this is not a clear advantage as when you need to use it on an ally, this is worse. Also, when you're playing a deck that controls you don't really care about damage anyway. Push instead of Slide allows you change someone's facing if you leave them on the same spot. A very niche use though. From this we can see that not only Telekinesis is far better, it is also cheaper in terms of quality. You may argue that you can't compare wizard and warrior cards but this shows there really is no point in using a control warrior when you can use a control wizard instead, especially as you can nearly stack nearly as many Telekinesis on a single wizard as Barges on two warriors. As for using Barge on your own allies, it really isn't great either. Consider than you can accomplish the same thing with a Walk on that ally, which is Paper quality rather than Silver, and it won't hurt them either. It's clear that Barge is designed to be used on enemies but unfortunately in its current state it is just far outclassed. If it's damage and cost were lowered, say, something like Ooze Barge, it may become a viable option.
In conclussion, you would not pick a weapon with -let's say- 5 or 6 barges. Do you? I guess the non existance of Barge Builds supports your idea.
I've made good use of Barge. This fact alone probably proves it's niche. $;^ b Disadvantages are clear. Here are some more advantages. Wizards are expected to have control in PvP. They could actually be more surprising without it because it's 100% expected, like having a Racial Move. Warriors (and perhaps even moreso priests) are not. Melee control is a surprise. A game of hidden knowledge (like CH) can be won/lost on surprises. Can be. Damage opponent while controlling? Nice. All Frenzy cards up its ante, and it benefits from Crusher; often, it's on items with other Melee Crushing cards, too, to further receive those benefits. Its damage amount is more than 4 and type is not Magic. This means even a solo elf wizard can wreak havoc against a flood of anti-wizard Goblins using dual Cottonwood Staffs, ignoring entire hands full of Blocks. Not speculation. That said, I'd probably only use an all-Barge weapon in Campaign. (Probably. Lol.)
Love barge and path of knives in Quickdraw though. Lot lower chance of blocks there, and if they do have a block you generally know which round it's appearing, or can trigger it with a low level attack first.
