I was disappointed by the underrepresention of War Pigs in the full release of Card Hunter. So I decided to remedy that. Mission accomplished. Then I decided to make the scenario worth playing and balanced the numbers better. The latter is the attached file. You can get the super-duper-too-many-pigs version by raising all counts to 10. I hope this map is at least a little satisfying.
Well, I had a blast. It's always fun to pilot the massive harm machine that is Xanthicius, and this is as fine an excuse as any. Mindless, as is to be expected, but surprisingly entertaining. Thank you for making this.
Played it. Mostly had fun! One thing I didn't really enjoy was once I'd used up my cards for the turn, the pigs kept running and dashing forever, surrounded me, and then attacked me a gazilliion times. (This especially happens if you draw Trip.) It wasn't so much a difficulty thing as a "hm, now I gotta wait for the computer to play 30 cards" thing. The other kind-of-issue with the scenario, is you can fly onto the eastern bit of land that has only one approach (from the south), drop a rockfall, and then sit back and shoot the pigs with rocks and breath without ever being attacked—all because the AI refuses to step onto difficult terrain XP
Glad folks enjoyed it! The card thing I knew, and it was particularly pointless to play when I put the full 40 pigs into the thing. "Getting attacked a gazillion times" isn't quite so annoying from a gameplay perspective as the "watching them mill around a gazillion times," because the injuries have actual meaning for your experience. As to terrain: you can bottleneck in multiple places, and I put in some Blocking Terrain to demand some skill on the player to find those places. The Difficult Terrain thing, though, is really weird. In other scenarios they'll gladly march through the stuff. And I didn't really see it happen here, but maybe that was because I put my own Rockfalls directly on the enemies, and thus of course they willingly marched on towards me. Perhaps the difference is that there are Victory Squares in my other Terrain map, and none here? Have we perhaps learned something important about the AI? Hmm . . . Anyway, if you enjoyed dissolving pigs into bacon with your Corrosive Breath, then that was my goal for the day.
Yeah corrosive breath was fun I think the AI tells itself not to go onto any player-controlled attachments except Bless?
No, 'cause the counter-example is in that other scenario I linked. It is fundamental to the gameplay that you place rocks in front of the advancing Goblins and it merely slows them down. If this is a reliable distinction, then mapmakers should be aware of it. And possibly Blue Manchu.
I am pretty sure that the Armored Pigs have the least card variety of any monster deck in the entire game. I mean, they have Bite, Mail, and some Dash. Still, love the pigs in campaign, and love them here too. Would have been more fun with a fire dragon though. Now that is makin' bacon.
Quite possibly. You'll note that I used charred graphics in the terrain. Though you could also note that there are mushrooms and flowers under Xanthicius. For fun, when I was developing this I initially used Morvin instead of Xanthicius. It turned out that his cards weren't as well-balanced with Armored Pig cards. If there were some other monster with similar abilities to the Yellow Dragon, yet with fewer HP, I could make a faster-playing version that might hold up better. Sadly I'm unaware of one.
Thanks for the suggestions. I just tested them in a map with 8 pigs and the original with the full 24. The Hell Mantis, regrettably, was a total wash. Seriously. It's only good as a support unit, given the hand after hand of Armor-discarders. And then its one defense, Horned Plates, gets destroyed in an instant and thus weakens the only other trick in its book: a small number of melee attacks that aren't enough to kill pigs. I'd already thought of the Four-Headed Hydra. The fire ability is definitely a good one thematically. However, only two cards per turn means that even a battle against 8 pigs is both risky and unexciting. Not to mention how it has no anti-Armor. And of course neither of them can maneuver like the Flying Xanthicius can. It's like . . . it's like Xanthicius was born to fight Armored Pigs . . .
No offense taken. Though I must admit, the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
