Wall of text about WW and WWE

It's a bronze card with at least the impact and flexibility of those gold cards I listed. Items with gold cards take more and higher level tokens than items with bronze cards and you're lucky if you own more than one Team Run and Sprint, Team!. Whirlwind cards are almost entirely found on blue token items, many of which are as common as the day is long, Sprint, Team! and Team Run are mostly hidden away on epics and legendaries.

 

Making it rare or unique or requiring more tokens doesn't solve the problem. That just means that it's annoyingly gamebreaking less often, not that it isn't annoyingly gamebreaking.

 

Impact, yes, I'd say it has as much or more of an impact than the cards you listed. Power and flexibility I disagree with. WW and WWE are uncontrollable and thus highly inflexible spells, unlike the exacting control of the other cards listed (Sprint, team!, Team Run, Encumber spells and Winds of War). WW and WWE are one of the few spells that can place your team in a worse situation by you playing it granting not only positioning power to your opponent, but also turn and card advantage.

In general that is true, yes. (Not sure about the lucky part! )

I'm not sure what your point is here. Sure, let's say we move every WW and WWE card holding items to legendary rarity. This will not reduce the power of effect the card has on the game. The only thing it will do is delay the influx of these tactics and reserve them for the extremely lucky or those who dedicate a lot of resources to the game (time and/or money). It doesn't change the endgame at all. Your argument that Sprint, Team! and Team Run are hidden away on epics and legendaries holds no water when comparing how hard it is to put these cards in your deck and, as I think I'll show, they aren't on items that are as rare as you apparently think they are anyway.

I was stating where movement can come from based only on the items I currently have:

12x Winds Of War = 6 (all uncommon) items spending 4x 4x
18x Encumber 2 or higher cards = 6 items (4 epic, 2 Rare) spending 2x and 6x
2x Sprint, Team, 1x Retreat, 1x Team Run = 3 items (2 rare, 1 epic) spending 1x and 2x

In contrast:
9x Whirlwind Enemies = 5 items (5 rare) spending 5x

So comparing to the spell you say it should be 'as hard as' to build towards:

Winds Of War has a higher token cost but are found on uncommon items. Note that if you wanted to reduce the number from 12 to 8 you would only have to pay the 4x which would make it more in line with the cost, and number, of WWE.

Encumber cards are found on items that are more rare, and have a higher token cost. This is mostly due to having more items dedicated to them and doubling the number of cards. Reduce the number of cards to 8 and you are paying 4x which is, again, nearly the same as WWE.

Stocking up on movement cards uses one Epic item, the other two are rares, just like WWE. One and two seem to be pretty close to the WWE cost (if a little less counting one major as two minors for power concerns) but there are less of them so they will come up less often. *Note I removed the other team move cards from boots because I can't be sure what boots are or are not in the game that would fill the roll. I believe there are boots that would fill this role but I just don't have them.

So, to me, it would appear that the Encumber and Winds of War situations are on pretty even terms with WWE costs to build as it stands. Now if we look at the fact that WWE is only going to help you (let's just simplify and say) 50% of the time where the other two give you full control, yet at the same cost it would seem that WWE is weak when compared.

Comparing the movement cards' costs are harder due to the number of slots available and the lack of me having really any good boots. The question we are asking though, is how much harder is it to build the movement build over the WWE build. The cost per card is higher for the movement cards: 4 WWE would require 2 on 2 items while the 4 movement cards requires 1 and 2 on 3 items. There are a few issues with going just by cost though.

First, the movement is good in almost every situation, and for every build which includes a warrior. This does not hold true for WWE (assuming Wizard instead of warrior of course). Movement is a counter to other spells as well such as the encumber or other movement hindering, terrain or push spells. WWE is not a counter to anything else.

Most importantly I think is the effects of the card. The movement cards affect two characters without needing LOS which you have absolute control over giving you tactical advantage. WWE affects all characters without needing LOS, but is only helpful (overall, roughly) 50% of the time and can actually benefit the enemy instead.

While these cards may be counters to each other, they are by no means equivalent. I don't see the justification for making them equal cost when building decks based on this rational. I also don't think they are that far off from all of the cards you mentioned already.

 

Isn't drawin

Drawing cards from a shuffled deck kinda blows tactical planning out of the water doesn't it. Best you can do it stack the same card as often as you can for reliable draws.

 

The other unmentioned side of WWE and WW is that multiplayer is based around Victory Points... a card with unlimited range and is almost guaranteed to move your opponents off the victory square is a minimum of silver quality (it can only fail if it gets blocked).

There isn't any other card in the game with the ability to screw someone over from infinate range while they are on the VP except Volcano, a gold quality card.

 

If you see me online I'll take you up on that offer. I am not often one to pull rank, but I am normally ranked around 1500 with the deck i use. I often face WW and WWE, therefore I am pretty confident that i can hold my own on a deck that features those cards heavily.

We should start a mini vote on who would win over 3 games, see what sorts of odds we would get. You are around 200 below me, but using a deck that is considered OP, should be pretty even in theory.

What all the nay-sayers seem to forget is that these are very random cards and quite often just land you in loads of trouble. A few times i have ended up with two of my warriors within easy reach of the wizards that just tried to disrupt my plans.

 

Its not, its a description of the game as it tend to be right now and a reason why WWE is op. WWE creates opportunities for that burst to come in. WWE WILL disrupt your opponent and put them in a compromised potion. Then they get slaughtered and the game is lost.

If every game os a game of attrition. There would be leeways available to recover from WWE. Most games aren't. It only takes one bad disruption to entirely **** things up for the opponent. WWE , more than any other card, provides that opportunity. It isn't even a one time deal. If the first WWE is suboptimal, cast it again and again. You can outfit multiple WWEs.

 

I'm not sure if WWE or WW necessarily need a change (anything that shakes things up and requires adaptation is probably a good thing and some well placed randomness keeps things interesting), but I think that they should be less spammable for sure. The occasional whirlwind is usually recoverable from and sometimes fun, but if somebody uses WWE and then I use all my moves to recover and then they WWE again it's upsetting. I think that a general item revamp can fix this though - no item should have more than one whirlwind type card and I'm sure there can be power token tweaking to make having too many whirlwinds costly.

I don't think team run, sprint team, etc will be OP (or more OP) even if there's less access to whirlwind, as those cards are already rare and costly to include, and there are usually ways to prevent your mage getting surrounded even when your opponent has sprint, team.

 

You are right, you can pack a ton of WWE into a deck, just like you can pack a ton of lava in a deck or a ton of (insert any random card here). Does that make it a good idea to focus your deck on one card? No, absolutely not. What happens when your WW wizard dies because a warrior was dumped right next to him? What happens when a discard wizard is put within 3 squares and makes you dump your hand (or 8 squares if they have counterspell).

I mean yes, it can be annoying and you can lose the game to it, BUT you can lose the game to a lot of cards and a lot of strategies. If you take away one of the only ways for a wizard to deal with a high mobility team then you are just encouraging people to build more warrior comps.

 

except

1) you don't need to focus your deck on one card. Unlike other common metagame tactics. WWE doesn't need synergy to work. Its purely disruptive. It provides a huge advantage no matter what your base combat tactic for dealing dmg/survival is.

WWE gives you free chance to score huge damage or free kills. Losing it doesn't negatively impact the abilities of your team. I.e, if a lava/encumbrance mage dies, his remaining team is much weaker because they have problem getting stacking lava/encumbrance/movement control effects to achieve the tipping pt.

2) the way to remove potential pitfalls of WWE is more WWE. ****ed up a WWE? Cast it again.

The chance of that happening to your detriment is FAR lower than when it happens to his. Your group and positioning isn't messed up. He killed/force discard your wizard? Now he gets ganged up and is dead.

Again, loss of WWE capability does nothing to impact the rest of your team. Your battle plan was never ever "try to gang up and kill him" so your not worse off when it doesn't happen, its just a freebie that drops into your lap while you disrupt his positioning.

Its random chance, which is already bad for gameplay. Its also random chance that is stacked heavily in your favor, which is worse.

Just because its still possible for random chance to screw you once in a while doesnt mean you're still gaining an unfair advantage.

 

Which they are already encouraged to do because high mobility is universally useful. Again, the inclusion/exclusion/tuning of one possibly out of balance card (or contrary mechanics as with WWE) should not be controlled by the balance of another. Cascading changes are rampant when dealing with balance issues, and they should not preclude change being made. Justifying the keeping of or introduction of a card or mechanic that removes all tactics from a tactics game as a means of reducing the power of a specific underlying mechanic is folly.

Removing, or keeping WWE in the game will not change the usefulness of mobility. Keeping WWE I would say encourages high mobility because that's the only way to assure that you can deal with it--and it works against everything else too! There is no other tactic to combat WWE so the meta should shift more to the high mobility warriors with the inclusion of WWE. Without WWE you might be able to get away with being less mobile and thus not be forced to go for high mobility builds exclusively.

*Note: Before WWE started to be heavily tested it wasn't being used to counter high mobility. Historically high mobility has been the only counter to WWE, not the other way around.

 

I agree with your point that cascading changes are made in the development of a game, but the last part is not entirely true. Encumber doesn't effectively counter mobility since team pushes aren't affected by encumber. All other positioning abilities that a wizard might use move the other character up to 3 squares, which is easily recovered from with a racial move from two out of the three races in the game. Also, any non-melee block and immovable both counter WWE, though I would agree that mobility is the best option.

Also, this game is close to going live and the "meta" is still evolving. If one particular card is dominating (which WW and WWE are not dominating upper level play) then the "meta" will adapt to suit that play style and more builds will be discovered. This is the natural development of most games that have a competitive aspect to them.

I am not trying to belittle you or claim you are wrong (actually I am not even sure where you stand on this particular issue since you seem to support and oppose the card), but I think that both of these cards have a very valid place in the game and should stay there.

Now, if people wanted to talk about distribution of these cards and how it may be too cheap to put them in your deck I would be a willing participant.

 

Blocks do help against WWE, but unless all three characters block the ability, I'd say it's still not a 'counter' per se. You could have 2/3 of your characters block and still lose your other character because of WWE, additionally, the tactical positioning of your team my be nullified if only one character is moved.

Immovable, while it helps if you are already next to a target or are standing on a victory square is a hard counter for that particular character, for the team it's not a counter and can actually be detrimental if played at the wrong time. If an early Immovable comes up on a warrior, for instance, WWE is now safer for the enemy team to WWE since they know that said warrior will not be dropped next to the wizard. If, for instance, it's a balanced team, WWE on only the priest and wizard is a great option. Immovable would be much more of a counter if it was kept in hand as a block was, but as it stands you have no control over when Immovable is played and when it is played the enemy is aware of it and can adjust for it so, tactically, I wouldn't consider it counter play.

From what I've seen with the current item and card pool, the meta seems pretty stable. Even with an influx of new players I think we'll find the same top builds, and high mobility warriors being the team to beat. As far as WWE dominating, seeing as I feel the top team is high mobility warriors, there's no room for a Wizard. I will say that WWE is highly played in the 1400 range. This is likely because it has a CHANCE against the high mobility warriors, is easier to put together and can routinely beat other builds. I see it as somewhat of the poor man top deck, certainly tier 2 though.

There is nothing wrong with it being a tier 2 deck, but that's not to say that there isn't an issue with the card which I'll detail a bit in my stance below.

My stance on WW and WWE are as follows:

About the cards:

Neither WW nor WWE are over powered.​

Both remove the tactical element of the game in favor of a random element.​

Both dramatically affect the game in a negative way due to the removal of tactics.​

[Observation] The casting of WW often ends the game, one way or the other. (Often due to conceding by one of the players.)​

WWE can be abused due to planning around the effect and the number that can be cast per game.​

WW and WWE are too similar in effect to be separate cards.​

[Edit] Removal of WW/WWE will not affect the usability of high mobility in the game.​

My stance on the solution:

I would not want to remove the WWE/WW 'panic button' mechanic from the game entirely.​

I would want WW to be slightly more rare.​

I would want WWE to be removed from the game due to the dramatic effect on games in which it is played as well as being a redundant effect with WW in the game.​

 

One thing I like about WW and WWE is that they can result in positions which would otherwise never arise - and so players are forced to think about how to deal these usual situations. I think that can add some interest and variety to the game. Most of that effect would be lost if WW/WWE were changed to be a short-range maze effect.

On the other hand though, I must say it can be pretty frustrating to have several turns of carefully maneuvering into position ruined by someone using WWE. And I certainly think Whirlwind Enemies is more powerful than other bronze cards.

 

I've been spectating more and I've seen a fair number of WWE conversations in game. Some polite, others not. The general consensus on it in the games I have seen though is that nobody likes it, but many people use it simply because it is so useful.

One of the more recent quotes about it I thought pretty much nailed it:

"I don't want to win that way
but I don't want to lose that way either."

 

Thanks to the new mage-heavy meta, I've been seeing a lot more WWE and it definitely gets frustrating (especially when combined with rough terrain). I think it should just be generally less available, or require more power tokens to use (the items with more than one WW or WWE should be modified to only have one and the tokenless items with WW or WWE should be modified to no longer have the whirlwinds or to have a blue token). If it's more rare I think that will fix the problem.

 

I don't think being more rare will fix the problem, but it will reduce the symptoms which may be enough...

 

I think the two best options (and neither of these are original) would be to either make WWE a mass Maze as mentioned earlier in the thread, or else limit it to affecting enemies in line of sight of the caster, which makes sense anyway. Or give it a built-in saving throw.

 

Just chiming in here again to agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with Whirlwind except that every time it or WWE gets used, i'm annoyed and enjoying the game less regardless of whether it hurts me or helps me. High-mobility warriors are already the go-to team and these just makes them even more desirable. WW should be rarer, WWE should DIAF.

At the very least, make WWE use line of sight and give it a range of 6 or so. Another suggestion: if you want to keep the "OH ****" button functionality, make it WWA (Allies) instead. (But also make it more rare - it's too easy to use it like a poor man's team sprint.)

 

Oh man changing WWE to whirlwind allies would be amazing! Keep the (admittedly sometimes fun) random positioning, keep the 'panic button' mage escaping, but make it so it isn't so abusable with standing on the victory points and isn't so frustrating having your guys uncontrollably placed behind rough terrain over and over. This is genius!