Why Whirlwind is bad for the game.

A player asked me to post up my analysis on the forums, so here it is.

Whirlwind is, in my opinion, the worst designed card in the game that remains relevant in competitive play. This goes beyond any simple discussion of balance... it's an issue of what is or is not good game design. It's an issue of what's fun, and what's not. Here's why:

- A general lack of counterplay compared to any other card.
For any not familiar with the game design jargon, here's the first thing google brings up for the term "counterplay" (which means something a bit different from "counters"): http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/counter-play

Essentially, it's the idea that a mechanic in a multiplayer game should introduce interesting strategic gameplay for not only the player using it, but also the player it is being used on. Whirlwind doesn't do this. For any other single card in the game, there are many options that come into play to deal with the threat of a card.

For, say, Volcano, you can stack up team mobility and use it cautiously, OR have excessive durability and heals and choose to just take the hit to maintain your positioning on the lava, OR counterspell the mages, OR freeze the enemy so that they can't move off of their own lava OR use nimbuses, OR move the enemy onto their own spaces after they jump off of them with a Winds of War, OR use Purge the guy thinking he's okay just Hovering over the control location, just to scratch the surface. There are a lot of choices that open up for you, each with its own risks and rewards, in order to react to the Volcano.

For Nimble Strike, you can simply body-block and control space with a bruiser that's dangerous to initiate on or difficult to damage (e.g. most well-built Fighters and some clerics and wizards), or you could encumber them or use any of the many movement-wasting tactics in the game so that they can't retreat or continue pursuit... or encumber their teammates so that they can't join the now-over-extended step-mover. You could try to retreat with additional move, or decide that you can take the warrior and try to trap him, moving another ally in behind his long range charge to trap him between two of your characters. Entangling Roots even prevents players from using step moves as a point blank melee attack, let alone a step move.

For Winds of War, there's maintaining line of sight blocks at range. There's holding onto blocks (Hard to Pin is an especially effective counter... if it triggers. Weak Block is also nice) and moves instead of other cards. There's your own winds of war that can directly counteract its effect. But mostly there's being ready to reposition up to three squares if necessary, or keeping any particularly bad positioning more than 3 squares (or up to the nearest "stop" terrain) away.

For Whirlwind, its result are impossible to predict and unreasonably difficult to plan against. It possesses no reliable counters, and when it puts you in a bad spot there's often little in the way of interesting choices opened up for you to deal with it. There's no interesting choice to be made when you're put at the edge of the board behind layers of difficult terrain... you just use movement cards until you get back to somewhere relevant.

Let's examine the possibilities:
- Whirlwind can be blocked. However, this is often (though clearly not always) a point in favor of the player using whirlwind instead of the player that is blocking. Unless the entire enemy team successfully blocks, the end result of the whirlwind is almost as likely to be negative as if nobody had blocked at all (e.g. the team is separated and their formation ruined), and of course the enemy team is now left with 1-3 less blocks than they had before. Even if the entire enemy team successfully blocks, that's one global effect taking out 3 blocks... very useful. Unlike with Winds of War, Hard to Pin isn't an especially useful counter since you don't know where everyone will be until after you move.

- The enemy can be very mobile and able to recover from poor positioning. Of course, superior positioning is precisely what whirlwind is good at countering, and one whirlwind can often be the equivalent of multiple team dashes for the enemy team (and whirlwind is very spammable, so upon recovering positioning with half a dozen moves, the enemy could just use another whirlwind).

- The immovable trait has the effect of a single character successfully blocking, without wasting a block. This is a decent countermeasure, but it's definitely not a hard counter, for the same reason that blocking isn't.

- Cards that force discards (like perplexing ray or counterspell) might be able to get the card out of your enemy's hand. This of course goes for any card, and it's not specific to whirlwind... it's counterplay for mages in general. The player's behavior doesn't change because whirlwind is in the enemy's hand (indeed, the cards being discarded are typically random, and the player usually doesn't know the enemy's hand).

- Whirlwind can result in poor positioning for the user or more advantageous positioning for the enemy. However, this is not counterplay. The enemy player has made no decisions to result in his victory over the whirlwind spam, it's just a matter of dumb luck. This remains the primary weakness of whirlwind spam.

The end result is that oftentimes the player (including, often, the player using whirlwind) feels like they have too little personal control over the course of the match when whirlwind spam is introduced and that their decisions didn't matter half as much as the roll of the dice.

- A gamechanging element potentially greater than any other card that is not terribly dependent on any prior strategy or setup. It introduces a gamechanging random element so significant that it can undermine the influence of all prior strategy in the game.

The success or failure of a Firestorm, Wall of Stone, Cone of Cold, Volcano, Nimble Strike, All-Out-Attack, or Winds of War is in large part also dependent on the rest of the actions in the game up until that point. Whirlwind isn't like this. It does not care one whit for the hard-fought jockeying for positioning that happened up until that point. It moves 3-6 players an infinite number of spaces, through difficult terrain or walls (unlike any other forced move card), and can use up up to 3 enemy blocks (and still have its most common intended effect, breaking the enemy formation, still succeed), and can be spammed.

A single lucky whirlwind can almost single-handedly win the game. For instance, consider the new map where there are two rivers on the north and south side, and 3 squares of difficult terrain on each. These north and south sections of the map almost never come into play as anything other than scenery, save when whirlwind places a character in one of those locations. Each character in these locations must use a minimum of 3 movement cards (regardless of their distance) in order to leave these corners of difficult terrain. A single whirlwind can put an entire team in here, essentially taking them out of the game for multiple rounds. This can turn a game where a player had 0 stars to the enemy's 5 stars and the enemy had perfect positioning to a game where the player with 0 stars wins without any further opposition for the rest of the match. No special outmaneuvering was done here... the player just got very lucky with an element that has more potential for swinging the game than any other element of the game, such that an occasionally lucky whirlwind player can defeat far more skilled players through no particular strategic virtues of their own.

In short, it injects an overwhelming random element into the game that undermines the more strategic elements of the game.

- Whirlwind is a panic button that turns around games without requiring much in the way of strategy.
Whirlwind is not used as part of a particularly cunning plan. There is some element of strategy in choosing the right time to use a whirlwind (e.g. "is my opponent's positioning better than mine and how risky is it to change my positioning") but beyond that, the player isn't exercising any particular control on the results. They are too varied. Its primary use is simply to hit the button whenever the enemy has an advantageous position and hope that it is no longer advantageous. It's a single-card panic button that occasionally acts as a get out of jail free card and swings losing games into winning games through random positioning.

Not only is Whirlwind not interesting to play against because of a relative lack of counterplay, it's also not very interesting to use because there isn't a lot of setup for you to do beforehand to maximize its potential (unlike, say, All-Out-Attack or other swingy, "game-winning" cards).

- Balance is not the primary problem
Just to reiterate and clarify, (though I'm sure I'll still hear from people thinking I'm arguing about balance in the next few posts, such is the internet) the big problem here isn't necessarily that Whirlwind is too powerful. After all, it is a gamble and whirlwind can sometimes result in an improvement in the enemy's positioning. Since some I've talked to seem to wonder how a card that isn't overpowered (though WW, particularly WWE, may very well be) can be a problem, I will illustrate with an extreme hypothetical example. Say there was a card that, if it was in a deck, was drawn at the beginning of each match, and would cause the owner of the card to immediately lose the game 50% of the time, and would cause the opponent to lose the game the other 50% of the time. Such a card would be perfectly balanced in the sense that it does not grant either side an advantage over the other. However, this would, hopefully obviously, not be a good idea for a card to add to the game.

The problems are that Whirlwind is neither fun to use or have used against you, that Whirlwind can result in far more swingy, luck-based matches relative to those where it is not used, and that Whirlwind undermines more strategic elements of the game.

 

Agree on whirlwind being annoying. Disagree on no counter play. The fact that your opponent takes his turn right after you ww is sufficient counter play in itself. The user of whirlwind takes risk in that if whirlwind places them in a disadvantageous position, ie, mage next to warrior, then he will be punished for using whirlwind. If the whirlwind places the board in a position that both players can exploit, the opponent get to make his move first and take whatever he feels to be the best course of action. If whirlwind didn't really effect the board position of either players, ie a wash, then the user of whirlwind is punished by having one less card than his opponent.

Personally I dont like whirlwind at all but I am sure lots of people love its effect and its RNG nature. Thats fine. There is nothing wrong with that. As long as the card is not overpowered, the mere fact that is annoying and a potential source of frustration shouldn't be the basis for its removal.

 

Well said, Ludic. Couldn't agree more. Having a "randomize all figure positions" card is antithetical to the core strategic conceit of the game (i.e., team positioning). WWE is, perhaps, somewhat more defensible in this respect, though I wouldn't lose any sleep over seeing that card significantly retooled/eliminated either.

 

All of these results are utterly random and many are more gamechanging than any other single effect in the game. And how does the enemy taking their turn right after yours matter if, for example, they're put into the north or south corners of that one map I mentioned? Or if you get pushed all the way to the corner of the map?

What you're describing is not counter play. It is the user taking a risk, it is not the player countering it by making choices.

 

Because on average, random whirlwind harms you more than your opponent. How big is the board? 10x10? So 100 squares, there is only 4 corners; so the chance of that happening is small. The vast majority of time playing whirlwind will fire against the user. And there is a counter, immovable. Also to my knowledge there is no counters to heals either. Should heals be removed too?

 

This is nonsense. There are many counters to heals, whether it's map control (you don't need to kill enemies to win) or simply doing *more damage.* Also, if whirlwind, on average, harmed you more than your opponent, high win rate decks wouldn't be built around it.

 

By on average, I mean if you put it in a random deck. Of course, in carefully tuned decks, whirlwind can be used to your advantage.

If doing more damage is the counter to heals, then the counter to whirlwinds would be to pack more moves, no? So you can get back into the action after being put into a corner.

 

No. In most games, burst damage counters heals, and heals counter sustained damage. For example, an all-out-attack build counters a sustained healing build by doing damage in constrained bursts that the enemy cannot possibly heal off. But it's not "the" counter, it's one of many, many options available to the player to react to an enemy using lots of heals. I don't think this is something that anyone else will dispute, so I'm not going to spend any more time on this.

"Randomized decks" has no bearing on competitive play and is thus irrelevant.

Edit: Just had another example of the fun games Whirlwind creates. Enemy uses whirlwind, gets put in a hopeless position by it, immediately ragequits. It's a terrible experience whether it works for the enemy *or not.*

Precisely. There are three main parts to the strategy of the game: Deckbuilding, hand management, and positioning. Whirlwind undermines some of the first two (since there's no good counter for it, unlike other things, to get/keep in hand or build into your deck) and runs rampant over the third.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with this post and since removing a card is perhaps too difficult as it comes with reworking every item that has it etc i suggest that perhaps tweaking it to a everyone Maze 3 kinda thing(fly). This allow whirlwind to still have the impact and random lucky moments where if my dwarf maze 3 range towards your mage and your mage maze 3 range toward my dwarf i can obliterating and win etc.The situation i dislike about whirlwind the most is when i protected my mage perfectly with path blocking and kept far far away from your warriors and yet whirlwind place me in a corner surrounded by enemy warriors. By giving it maze 3 all it gives a feeling that you can still control the situation even in the worse case scenario you and the enemy warrior would be in the middle but you can still run back and this allows you to play around whirlwind by being around 5-6 range from the enemy only being hurt by it in the worse case scenarios.

 

I recently added Whirlwind Enemies to my wizard arsenal as counter to a 2 priest + 1 wizard Firestorm deck.
I have always used a wizard/priest/warrior team, so I think that non-canonical teams are unfair.
The card itself is not the problem, the problem is how many Whirlwinds you have in your deck.
I think 1 or 2 for all your team is acceptable. More than this can cause frustration to the other player.

 

Whirlwind/Whirlwind enemies is a card that is currently needed to counter teams that generally do not need to put movement cards into their deck (Control Wizards and Firestorm builds). I would argue that the card is mostly fine if a bit too cheap (should be upgraded to bronze/gold respectively).

Point 1 is simply wrong. Counterplay to whirlwind is using strong movement cards in the deck (team run, dash, team!, sprint, team!, Nimble Strike) and being conservative with movement. Even if you get unlucky after the whirlwind you will both have spent a card, but you should be in a much better position. If you did get lucky he will have wasted a card and you still have a strong movement card.

Point 2 is greatly overstated. Whirlwinds don't turn around losing games. Mostly because the whirlwind costs a card. Whirlwinds are offensive tools to win the war of positioning. There is of course the issue with the one new map, but that is clearly a map issue, not a general fault of whirlwind.

Point 3 seems to be mostly the same as point 2. However I disagree strongly that using whirlwind does not require skill. Sure any player can use it as a panic button and get lucky once in a while, but using the correct timing, judging your cards and your opponent's likely cards are pretty advanced skills. As is baiting out movement cards, intentionally baiting the opponent with bad positioning etc. Whirlwind allows for great mindgames if used correctly.

 

Err... no it isn't. I have an almost perfect win rate against firestorm decks and do generally well against control wizards without using whirlwind builds.

You're thinking of Maze. The card where, if you're unlucky, both players will have spent a card if movement hasn't been used up, is called Maze. Whirlwind is a different card.

You can be the most conservative user of movement ever, and it will do absolutely nothing to save you from being at a massive disadvantage (from nothing but one spammable card and luck) if you get an unlucky whirlwind knocking you behind layers of difficult terrain or putting your wizard between two warriors or pushing your team to the edge of the board repeatedly (which is actually fairly common, since there are more squares each "layer" away from the center of the board) or some other nonsense. Does it always happen? No. But such a game-defining moment should *never* happen because of dumb luck with no prior setup. Dash-team is not sufficient to counter many of the worse whirlwind positions.

This is like saying that keeping an Obliterating Bludgeon in hand is counterplay to whirlwind because if you get lucky the guy with Obliterating Bludgeon will end up right behind their character. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what counterplay is.

While having lots of movement is useful, it is in no way a hard counter, and it's certainly not good counterplay... no interesting choices are being made to punish the whirlwind spam and whirlwind spam is frequently used for the express purpose of countering the results of having strong movement. Often, whirlwind will require you to eat up multiple movement cards to get anywhere near the action again... and when you do, they can just whirlwind enemies again. And then they can do it again.

This is simply not true. I've seen a whirlwind single-handedly win an otherwise hopeless game (1 enemy left, surrounded by foes, 5 stars to 0 stars) with no chance to retaliate. With 7 move cards in hand. See the "river corners" on one of the new maps. No card should be able to make that much of a turnaround without any prior setup, regardless of how likely you believe it is or isn't (it's actually not that unlikely... whirlwind is likely to put you farther away from the center of the map rather than closer, because of the inherent nature of a square grid).

This is a core part of the problem. This shouldn't be possible.

Except none of those things actually need to happen for Whirlwind to cause a lucky, game-defining result with no prior setup

 

So far, I've only ever seen Whirlwind users completely screw themselves.

Last time, the opponent rage quit after his first Whirlwind put me in position to Obliterating Bludgeon his warrior, the second WW put my other Warrior next to his 6 hp Wizard. Dead Wizard, Victory me.

 

The key problem with whirlwind/whirlwind enemies is that the card is simply disproportionate to every other card in the game. Team runs move your team 3/4 spots. Sprint Team cards move two members of your team a great amount of distance. But Whirlwind affects all six characters on the board and does so by ignoring encumber effects or terrain that affects most other cards. Card Hunter places such a premium on tactics and board positioning that having one card throw it all out the window just seems disingenuous.

 

And all of those times are just as bad for the game as if it was working in the whirlwind-user's favor.

 

I use it only as a last resort measure when for instance my weakest character gets surrounded to face certain doom.
Even then it happens that the enemy who was right in front of him will then be behind him making his blocks useless.
Having at least one WWE in my deck usually helps out a lot when the timing permits it.
I see that in this discussion there is talk about players using this card in successful decks so apparently they do not rely only on luck there.
When opponents use this then its just another game feature that calls for fast adaption to the new situation. I like that.

One point thats been said does bother me as well. All ranged block cards get triggered here.
A better balance may be to change it so that this card does not trigger blocks. Would make sense as well since how does one block wind of that magnitude.
Drawback would be that a favored position will get broken up for (almost) sure.

 

I agree. The biggest problem with Whirlwind is that it can have a greater impact than any other single card in the game, and that this impact is random, and that this impact ignores most of the typical limiting factors of the game and prior actions completely (e.g. line of sight, encumbrance, terrain, range, stop squares, et cetera et cetera), and that this impact throws one of the biggest strategic elements of the game out the window in favor of a roll of the dice.

Sure it does. If a slot machine has a 60% payout rate, you have a wildly successful win rate. That has nothing to do with whether or not luck is a major deciding factor.

Usually what they do is just use whirlwind whenever it looks like they're going to be put in a disadvantageous position. They roll the dice and hope they get a position that is no longer a losing position. On average, a random position is going to be better than being backed in a corner, and thus the card is useful for securing a better win rate.

 

Whirlwind doesn't bother me so much since it affects all characters on the board. It's random and can go pretty much either way in terms of putting the casting player at an advantage or disadvantage. Whirlwind Enemies, on the other hand, pretty much always seems to favor the casting player in my experience. Especially in situations where the victory squares are contested or I have more characters on them at the end of the turn, and my opponent casts Whirlwind Enemies and they get the victory star. It's so annoying, and just not much fun to play against. I won't use either of the cards in multiplayer, myself.

 

Have to add one more voice to this. At first I thought whirlwind cards are ok, but I've grown to hate them with a passion. They exchange the tactics game into a coin flip where you can win any opponent just through pure luck and make their past clever moves and thinking just a waste of time. No strategy/tactics game should have a feature like this.
An opponent basing their "strategy" on coin flips will not get a GG from me.

 

One of the things I've grown to like about CH is that is beyond illogical and well into the bug-nutz crazy arena. I don't expect it to be quasi-realistic like the old Avalon-Hill wargames. I normally hate CCGs, but I like this one for some reason. Things like WW/WWE count as part of the charm, for me.

I can see how they could be really annoying in MP, though. I'd really prefer to eliminate VPs entirely and have everyone fight to the death, which should lessen some of the impact, but I suppose that would use more server time.

Your argument is very well reasoned based upon your premise, but I feel the premise may not be quite correct if you omit the bug-nutz crazy element.