Time to break Altruism - post builds and discussion here.

I like this, but I would recommend changing it to Push 1 since Slide won't change facing.

 

It's a very cool mechanic, but it doesn't seem to fit "altruism" too well, flavor-wise.

 

Actually, I think that would make it better. Imagine you're sliding your wizard away from an opposing warrior, but you know he has a lot of range 2 Stabs or Step attacks in his deck; You wanna stay facing that warrior so that you can still Block attacks.

 

You could modify it to be truely altruistic. When you play a holy spell on an ally you may discard a card to have that ally draw a card. This way card draw is still part of the mechanic but doesn't lead to a damaging card draw loop. Having the ability to regularly feed your other characters cards would be pretty powerful situationally and the extra discard mechanic makes it less efficient for an all priest team.

Edit: might be fidgety to implement though on further consideration.

 

Maybe push 1 for enemies -or- allies, so that you could use heals to keep a fighter at bay or something ("blind them with holy light!").

 

What are your chances of actually pulling that off on any round? Only 1 in 12 cards are Altruism, and the average yield on an Inspiration with Altruism in play is only +0.5. Without, it just cycles.

Obviously, it has the ability to become a positive feedback loop that ultimately draws your entire deck and then allows you to go on a rampage where you storm the other team and murderate them all. But we're talking about a lot of turns to set up, and if the enemy simply walks over and takes one of your dudes out in the middle, it won't go so well. More importantly, there's a tendency for extreme cycling to simply turn all your cards into Walk, leaving you modestly speedy but no more so than an Elf who happened to save a Dash from the turn before.

Demonstrating that this is broken doesn't just require demonstrating that it is theoretically possible to do, you have to show that a deck tuned to do it can actually pull it off frequently enough that it wins more than it should. It's theoretically possible to draw Sprint, Obliterating Bludgeon, and Allout Attack in your first hand and simply execute one of the opposing team members on the first round. It is equally theoretically possible for all three characters to draw such and wipe out all three opposing characters on the first round. But no one is calling for high damage attacks or sprints to be banned, because they operate through what is obviously the normal channels.

Unless I'm missing something, you come in with a 23.58% chance of having Altruism in your opening draw on a particular character. If you have three Altruisms on all three characters, you have a 55.38% chance of having an Altruism on at least one character. That's better than a coin flip, but not much. And of course, merely getting an Altruism doesn't make your combo go off necessarily, you also have to get enough card drawing going on that it can actually build.

-Frank

 

What about when you cast a holy spell on a ally they gain a card and you lose x amount of max hp something like 2 seems about right or possibly a set % so dwarfs don't have a advantage over elfs. This would both make infinite cycling impossible as well as make it feel very altruistic and come at a very real price as being one shot is easier with every spell you cast.

Not sure if its feasible withing the game without lots of complicated code but it sounds like it fixes a lot of problems while keeping it about drawing cards.

Another thing that doesn't really solve the problem but is a way to reduce it in the future is something like making each characters max hand somewhere between 6 and 8 cards.

 

We could just make Inspiration and Inspiring Presence type Psychic instead of Holy (we already have cards using Psychic as a damage type).

 

Actually, with my infinite draw deck I can often get it going on turn 1, even if I don't get altruism immediately on my priests. Generally demonic feedback/power, leadership, and the like can draw enough cards that altruism pops up sooner or later. Usually the times it fails is when the altruisms are sitting on the bottom of the decks and I have to "waste" too many inspirations without altruism. I haven't tested it a huge amount for winrate (to be honest it's a hassle for both players when I run it) but it's an almost guaranteed win when the infinite loop does work, and I can often win even if my draw chains end (since I have a huge amount of card advantage no matter what). The more important thing than winrate though is the fact that it is a super un-fun strategy to play against; once in live multiplayer we spent ten whole minutes where I would play draw cards and my opponent would pass - super long or unending chains are just no fun in an otherwise fast paced game. And the chains work more often than you might think.

 

pretty high actually.

Right, it cycles, allowing you to draw the Altruism or continue cycling until you do.

Sure, if they an take one character out in round one, that will hurt -- likely no more than it would hurt any other team -- but even losing just one of the priests isn't enough to stop it even if you haven't started cycle-building cards. You would never end up with just moves in your hand. If you look at my build I only have two movement cards in the build so when done right even if you draw those two movement cards the other 5 cards in your hand aren't going to be movement. Let's say that I do get all attacks/armor/movement cards in hand at the end of the first round. That give me such a higher chance to get things going on the following round. Sometimes it does take 3 rounds, but taking a bunch of damage or even losing on character doesn't stop me from getting enough cards to do enough damage to win.

This isn't theoretical. I've stopped playing the deck (much like others who have build similar ones) because it wins...but it takes forever and is boring -- for everyone involved. It wins much more than it should and it's based solely on the draws rather than the kind of damage it can output.

Well actually that kind of a bad example because a recent thread is asking for a cost change on all out attack for that very reason. Certainly it's possible. The problem with the cycling deck, aside from going infinite and not having any chance of losing at that point, is that it is horrible to play against. You have to sit there for 19 minutes pressing pass while the other player slowly kills you.

True, but with 20 cards out of your 36 card deck being cycling cards what are the chances that you don't get cycling cards that will cycle to get you to the Alturism. And that's only on a single character. What are the chances that 3 characters don't get enough cycle cards to push one of the characters to an Alturism. Even if somehow you can't find one on any character... what are the chances of that happening on the next round now that you've drawn so many non cycle cards?

 

I agree that atrociously long turns is a big problem whether it's broken in the sense of winning too often or not.

If it is going to be changed, I would suggest changing it so that when you use Holy Magic on an ally, they heal 2. That would incentivize you to give out holy blessings and healings, without dragging the game out.

-Frank

 

This makes it pretty indistinguishable from the normal use of Talented Healer, which also has additional uses. There would be almost no reason to use Altruism over Talented Healer if this was the case.

 

Talented Healer gives you bonuses for healing. If Altruism gave out healing for all holy cards, it would make cards like Righteous Fury be a force of healing, which would make it useful in dramatically different decks.

In any case, if the big problem is massive cycling, how about just put a turn limit in each round? If the round ends after 20 or 25 turns, then you'll never cycle up your whole deck and be able to do anything afterward. Then you'll have to discard down to 2 when the round ends and the whole problem goes away before it can start.

-Frank