If people are using an item with a Battlefield Training it is in spite of it, not because it provides an advantage. It puts you at card disadvantage, using one card to move another card across party, which is effectively 2 for 1. My suggestion would be to either add a replacement card draw for the caster, or put cantrip on this so you could use the moved card immediately.
Yeah, the card is underwhelming as is. Adding a cantrip to it, would make it interesting - and potentially dangerous.
This is one of those cards that I never understood. Didn't anyone realize during alpha or beta that this card is really weak? It's situational and the range is a joke. I don't think cantrip would save it. It's the 2 for 1 aspect that I dislike the most and what should somehow be fixed.
I can see the occasions when it is useful in theory, but in practice it wasn't as useful as I had hoped. I no longer use it in SP. I prefer Leadership over it. Edit: Since I compared Leadership to its Silver counterpart, I don't think the extra range on Advanced Battlefield Training saves it.
Safe suggestion: add cantrip or cycle. Useful way to stick Resistant Hide on non-wizards, pass movement to people stuck in lava, Vampiric attacks to injured people etc. Dangerous suggestion: give a COPY of the card, without losing the original. Fits the name better (you're teaching someone to do something you know, rather than carving out a chunk of your own brain...) BUT good luck balancing the ability to double up on Firestorm or Dwarven Warcry or whatnot
That'd be great fun, but people would use it to duplicate stuff like Inspirational Thinking and then we'd be back in draw deck city. I do agree they need some help - they have uses, but losing one card in the process is just too steep a price. One idea that might work would be them drawing the card from your deck, not your hand. The silver one might just draw one card and send that to your ally and the gold one could draw say three, send one and discard two. That way you wouldn't be sure what your ally is getting, silver version would be somewhat on par with Inspiration and you wouldn't lose a card in the process.
While we're on the subject of underwhelming cards, I feel Lateral Thinking is also a terrible card for the same reasons -- you end up replacing a card you don't like with a random replacement. Leadership is so much better since it allows you to do it up to 4 times for your teammates, so you tend to get 2 useful cards from 4 bad ones.
One idea I've been considering: what if it gave a copy to each other ally and Stunned the caster? I like this. Something like: "Target draws a card from your deck." The advanced version could be: "Target 1 draws a card from Target 2's deck."
Lateral Thinking isn't supposed to be a great card, though, in the same way Shuffle isn't supposed to be a good move card. It's a last resort, and usually only found on either low level items or items with better things to offset it. You can still play it with an otherwise empty hand and lose no card advantage, at least. ---- Back on topic, I'm not really sure how to feel about Battlefield Training. In theory, it kind of preserves card advantage; You spend a card to put another card in a position of good use. It's the same effect as spending a move card to close distance to a target, or to cast a spell from a different position. Of course the weakness is that you need to already have a character in the position you want to use the transferred card from. In the age of step attack warriors being the dominant class/build, though, this rarely ever matters. Unless against multiple heavy control wizards, closing distance and adjusting positioning is a joke.
I don't agree that Lateral Thinking is supposed to be bad. It's silver quality AND rare, same as nimble strike and plenty of other quite good cards. Look at Trained Tactics. This dropped for me the other day and I just sat and stared at it for a minute. Why would anyone use this? I agree that there are all kinds of issues with battlefield training, cantrip or cycling or both could definitely help it out. With cantrip I can see some surprise situational tactical uses, and with both I could even see it being competitive. Copying a card would be cool, but I agree that it would probably be used more as draw fuel. Man it would be cool though. I think allowing a draw from someone else's deck, even if it cycled would be a little underwhelming just due to inconsistent behaviour. An interesting idea though
I was under the impression that color at least (I'm uncertain about rarity) determines item token costs by representing the estimated power level of items. Is that not true?
Unlucky Scarecrow is saying that he disagrees with how the devs categorize cards. Yes, color and rarity mean a lot in what items they can be on.
Ah, well, I definitely agree that the item classification system could probably use some work. My observations are made under the assumption that we should probably try to work within the existing system unless we expect it to change for some reason.
There are two things I know for certain; Hammer Of Bashing has six Silver-Common cards, and is a higher rarity than Bejeweled Shortsword which has four Silver-Common and two Silver-Uncommon; Two same level items with equal overall card quality, and the item with a higher item rarity has a lower overall card rarity. Therefore, rarity can't have any value. Hickory Staff is level 4, has two Bronze-Uncommon, one Bronze-Common, two Paper-Uncommon, and one Paper-Common, and is the same rarity as Reflecting Staff which is level 8 has three Bronze-Uncommon and three Paper-Uncommon. Two items of equal rarity, the level 8 one has the exact same overall card quality as the level 4 one. The only difference between them is that two of the cards with a Common rarity on the level 4 item have Uncommon rarity on the level 8 one. So is card rarity worth 4 levels difference? In my previous example, I've proved that card rarity is actually has no value and is worth no difference in level (or even item rarity) at all, therefore I don't believe it's a factor. That leaves me with the conclusion that, if Two different level items have equal overall card quality, card quality cannot influence item level and therefore has no real value. So my final conclusion is that, card quality, card rarity, and item rarity are all meaningless, and they have no bearing on an items level. If cards do indeed hold any associated "value" which determines the items level and rarity, it can only be an intristic value unique to the card itself and is not related to card quality or card rarity in any way. This is not just a "disagreement"; this is an objective discrepancy in the mechanics of the game.
It seems to me that the game values item with identical cards higher when it comes to rarity. Most of the items featuring three times the same cards have their rarity bumped compared to items containing more varied cards of similar rarity and level. That would explain the Hammer of Bashing vs Bejeweled Shortsword. Edit : That does not even really work, as the Parrying Buckler is only uncommon with 3*parry
Having exceptions to a rule, or having parts of a rule that we don't understand, doesn't mean there isn't a general rule. An easy explanation of the first example could be that having more than X copies of the same card on an item may give it a higher 'cost'. By 'cost' I mean the highest total value of cards that are allowed on an item for its level and rarity. An easy explanation for the 2nd example could be that 'Missile Block' isn't commonly found on staffs and therefore has a higher 'cost'. I would be surprised if there WASN'T some sort of cost associated with having cards cross item type. There is also a bit of variation of total 'cost' within items of the same level/rarity. I've been trying to come up with formulas for what types of cards can be found on each level/rarity type of item. Because of oddities like what you've mentioned I haven't had much success. However, it is still clear that there is a general pattern where higher quality and higher rarity cards 'cost' more. There is also a clear boundary for what rarity of card items can use based on the item's rarity: Common Items - Only uses Common/Uncommon Cards, up to 33% Uncommon Cards Uncommon Items - Only uses Common/Uncommon Cards, up to 100% Uncommon Cards Rare Items - Can use card rarity, up to 33% rare Cards (1 for 3 slot items, 2 for 6 slot items) Epic Items - Can use card rarity, up to 66% rare cards Legendary Items - Can use card rarity, up to 100% rare cards
There are 82 items with 3 slots where all of the cards match. There are only 9 items with 6 slots where all cards match (and another 6 where 5 cards match). Comparing between 3 and 6 slot items, and even between item types, may be difficult.
