I'm seeing some items with Barge on them and I don't see the value. It appears to be a melee version of Telekinesis, but melee classes already have plenty of Bash cards they can play. Why is pushing someone 2 spaces instead of 1 so much more valuable?
Also of note, it is directional and slide back is not. (Still wouldn't use this over raw damage or raw defense though)
It also allows total control of the destination. But yeah, it seems to be overvalued at items. But weirdly enough my "barge warrior" is doing ok. Allthough it's using Barbarian's Club and Colossal Hammer instead of The Pulper
I can see this having extra value in the campaign as it will cause enemies to burn their move cards and set them up for Wall of Fire.
I could see moving someone out of stab range, but there's plenty of 2+ step attacks that are popular like Vicious Thrust, and Dancing Cut.
The only use for it that I could picture was in a two-warrior arrangement - one can hit the target and then manipulate it into range for the other. I played with this a little, because I have a Barreling Club and really wanted to find some use for it. Didn't come up often enough to matter, and it's a pretty weak ability in the first place. Now if this had a range of two, call it something like "Hook." That would be really useful.
Like with most cards, Barge's usefulness is going to depend on your strat/build/playstyle. But generally speaking, control cards are very versatile and have lots of different uses. Considering the card comes attached with push 2 and the fact warriors don't really have lots of control cards, I wouldn't say it's overrated. Obviously you might still prefer to take other cards over it, and that's fine too.
It's vastly overrated. I think the rating is a relict of the time when your guys did not turn to face your attacker when attacked, so you could attack without retaliation if the other guy did not have a move card. This goes for pretty much all cards that manipulate the opponent's facing/movement. The notable exception is winds of war and to a lesser extent improved telekinesis.
The only reason why Barge is not as useful to me as it really could be is that the Push 2 movement still has to obey the "stop-next-to-enemy" rule. This means that I cannot use barge to push an enemy all the way behind the attacking warrior (to lock him in) which would have made Barge an incredibly strong card. As it is, I think it is pretty balanced.
I keep getting legendaries that would actually be legendaries if they were not filled with barges.... :/
