Post-CM Feedback

That was a bug fix so that Pathfinding etc. discarded cards at all when transformed.

 

Oh, you mean, like, Inspiring Presence would create whatever Form card, and Attack or not, you'd keep it? And BVD would've had 47 new cards in his hand? If that's the case, 'kay, gotcha. (And bummer.)

Also, I was thinking Inspirational Thinking the whole time instead of Inspiring Presence. Whoops. Sorry. $:^ \

 

Yes, that was the bug.

 

I'm in a rush, but I don't wanna put this off into limbo (like a couple other posts/threads I need to do testing on and respond), thus I'll just jot down the basics.

I finally built a Walpurgis party recently. It's fun. It's strange how it slows down the game so much, even for opponents I'm used to seeing fly through cards. But anyway, seeing form after form after form, some things became (more) evident.

You don't want werewolves to get their attacks in. Even if you think you can suffer a potential Vicious Thrust from the back, the knowledge that All Out Attack might be in there (twice even) just makes you want to stay away for everything in the world. $:^ [ Between the Hide and the Mad Dog, it's often scary to try to take them out, too. You don't want them to attack, and you don't want to attack them. That's what makes them OP compared to the others. $:^ \

Vampires, ironically, tend to be the form you don't want to attack, at least from the front. Melee, front or back, you know the vamp is in range to suck it back up. Any Attack Type from the front, you know there's a good chance of reactive teleport to wherever they want for to not get hit and to suck up major damage, especially with block-evasion and/or Sneaky Suck. However, if you can just mitigate that one major issue, either by semi-safely poking first or just not targeting from the front (from range or with blocks), then these aren't too frustrating to deal with.

Spirits are special. You want to take them out. They're hard to take out in many ways. Burst, Terrain, Burning, etc., only targeted or certain buffs on non-targeted mean much to them. Then, too, Fly comes along sometimes. Meanwhile, their boons are excellent support. Doom rarely kills, but it does pressure the opp. I've now actually pulled off a Boo! succesfully, and on a werewolf with a hand full of cards at that! $E^ b (An opp also successfully got a Boo! on me, but I just purged it off and soon afterward made the winning kill.) As we all know, though, they can rarely do any real damage on their own.

Zombies are a little funny just because you really don't want Brains nor the Poison attack -- plus, you don't necessarily know what cards remained in hand from pre-undead days. $E^ J So, kind of the same as werewolves, but to a much, much lesser extent, you usually don't want them to get their attacks in -- but their defenses otherwise don't exist. I did use Zombie Shuffle to fire a Spirit Hex for a kill, though, heheh.

One reason stacked Walpurgis is fun is that with all the shifting, you get such a weird mix of cards in everyone's hands, lol.

That said, here are my thoughts on power.

Zombie's a handicap and still gets a couple decent cards anyway. Cool, okay. Much like nearly any other handicap in the game, things can be mitigated and sometimes even turned to the handicapped's favor.

Werewolves are OP. The other day, someone accidentally brought their ranked party into Golden Shrine. I was slowly winning, but then the werewolf came out, and even on *that* map, everything fell apart and I lost. Ha. Yes, Silver is their bane. That's cool. I believe there won't be much Silver counterplay because no one really wants to play the other forms. And that's sad. It's cool to see forms all over the place. In concept. People have made it clear in their deck choices, though, that werewolves are the only form really widespread desired, meaning form counter cards aren't as important.

Vampire's Kiss got majorly nerfed, and it makes sense. But maybe this specialty card could see more Vampire Form being used if it got buffed some. How about testing a compromise? Heal 2 for each point of damage, but only replace the oldest card? (Or, just for testing purposes, maybe even try Heal 1 for each point but replace the whole hand once again.)

Ohh, Spirits. $:^ [ What weird creatures they are. Much like "half the new wizard items" as @gulo gulo noted, Boo! is an awesome signature card, but has been made so situational that practically no one plays it. For a silver card, this is sad. Many, many items not being played because of Boo!. I mean, I've even tried putting Boo! in my decks just straight up -- and it's really really hard to get people to face away from a wizard for a lot of obvious reasons. It helps to have elves, but people sniff a rat (sorry, Sniffy! lol) and try to avoid letting really any char try to get behind anyone, again for obvious reasons. I seriously hope some consideration can be given on how to make Boo! viable -- but not overpowered. It's silver quality. It feels like Paper or Bronze, maybe, but I know items have already been printed with tokens and adventure loot in mind. (Meanwhile, Ancient Grudge is cool, and I won a match with it hitting for 9 damage, but again Spirits actually fight against their own Grudges.)

The fact that ppl don't really wanna play as other forms for the most part makes Shifting Block, another silver card, see very little play.

I just hate that BM put so much work into CM's forms and their counterplay (Flaring Torch is cool ha ha ha ha), and then people avoid 2/3 of the Boost Forms (often complaining about them as if they were Handicaps) which in turn makes a lot of the counterplay weaker.

Eh, spent much longer than intended. Gtg, thanks for reading! $:^ }

 

How about this as an improvement for Boo!:
Target discards their oldest Block and Armor cards. Unblockable.

Note that Boo! is the same quality as Boiling Armor and higher than War Cry (which is only available to dwarven wizards). Sure, it makes Memory Loss worthless in comparison, but currently people only play that because of Armorbane Pendant. If that's still considered too powerful for Silver, we could change "and" to "or". Or even "oldest non-Move card" if we want a counter to Ready To Strike.

EDIT: My suggestions are complete replacements of the card text, so no Fright or Dash or anything.

 

I like the feedback on playing vs and playing with forms, lots of points I agree with as well.

I think it makes sense for Walpurgis to slow enemies down, suddenly everyone on the board has one of four random forms and everyone's pulling cards, that takes some time to process, especially when there's multiple Walpurgises flying around.

I agree that Werewolves are the only form to enjoy much success so far, I suppose it's a given since their deck is rather straightforward and covers most of the Warrior basics and their innate 2 Armor effect is by far the best of the three traits. Mighty Charge can also be a lethal tool, or a great way to psyche enemies out.

I think the problem with Vampires is that Vampiric Form directly competes with Talented Healer and the card pool and 3 healing per turn it offers has a hard time competing. They get some of the staple lifesteals and Swarm of Bats, but they trade that for a big weakness to anti-form cards, the chance to draw repeated Loners (Vampiric Form in SP is a very bad idea, I know from experience ) and limited access to Frenzy cards, no armor counterplay and no way to Cantrip. The 3 healing at the start of each round is nice, but compared to Werewolves and Spirits it's just much better to prevent damage than to heal, I think that if the form were to change that would be a good place to start. Maybe something like "Whenever you would gain health, gain two additional health"?

I don't think that reverting Vampire Kiss to Heal 2 per point of damage or replacing all cards would be a good idea though, the former just synergizes way too much with Frenzy to the point they can drain 16 HP while the replace enemy hand effect is just too large an effect for a card as common as Vampire's Kiss.

Some sort of buff to Boo! would also go a long way to making Spirits and CM Wizards much better, yeah. I'm hoping the card just gets totally changed, something that doesn't involve attaching Fright.

 

Interesting idea to say discard up to two cards, one of each of armor and block. As for War Cry's cost, don't forget it's Cantrip and Range 10, too; come to think of it, why is War Cry so cheap? $8^ , Like you and Maniafig, I envision a complete change (or near complete) for Boo! to become a viable silver quality. (A simpler change might be, 4+ roll from front, no roll from back, but even that ~shaking head~ yeah I dunno. Complete change unfortunately seems more feasible.)

As for no one running Memory Loss, I know Kalin speaks hyperbolically, but fwiw I actually played with a build for a short while that ran a bunch of Memory Loss just to eat up opp cards -- including to counterplay Vengeance and Ready to Strike. Since Memory Loss and Boo! are each silver, I suppose oldest non-Move would be about the same in quality while still thematically letting the target "escape the frightener." It somehow feels lackluster, though. I mean, let's face it, it's currently a wolfsbane card (if you can just get behind one).

Oh! Hey! Sudden idea. (Already on my mind was Cantrip facing-changers being the main way to make Boo! work, but although I've considered this plenty before, this time I was thinking how the Cantrips aren't as common as Boo! due to 1. solo scarcity and 2. Talented combo needing to surface. Then, @Maniafig's post kinda drifted back into my mind, concerning Vampires...) What if Vampire's Kiss healed 1 per damage, replaced the oldest card (hand staying empty if no card), and Cantrip? Even if it dropped from 6 damage to 5?

 

Oh yes, I knew I forgot something when writing about Forms before. What do people think of Dastardly Curse becoming a Spirit card?

• Too OP?
• What card would it replace to keep the thematic (and equal) 13 cards?
• Or, would this be unnecessary if Boo! simply became viable in the first place?

(Note, each Boost Form gets two gold cards; All Out Attack and Monstrous Hide, Sneaky Suck and Swarm Of Bats, and Fly and Doom. Which one sounds short on gold card power? Right. And, Dastardly is gold quality... Meaning, agin, which to replace? Doom is such cool flavor to lose, plus it's totally viable in Campaign. It'd be something to replace Fly with Planar Travel since Fly is obviously more powerful than than the non-player PT, but I digress. I dunno. $:^ \

 

I'm obviously not any good when it comes to balancing an entire game, but I thought I'd chime in a little.

Werewolves, as it's been pointed out, are likely the most dangerous of all the forms (which makes my memories funny when spirits had Mind Muddle and Vampire's Kiss was utterly broken, which made Lycanthropic Form the most tame of the three). Their innate bonus is good, they can get Monstrous Hide easily, can get a new one if it's removed (the ease of doing that being the main factor keeping armour in check in general), their attacks are good and generally better than their nominal quality (Lunging Bite - Lunging Hack, Vicious Bite - Perforating Strike, and I'm not even talking about Mighty Charge yet), and there's always the threat of All-out Attack (against which I'm a little biased as it can allow crazy amounts of damage a little too rapidly, very reliably and can't be countered half as reliably), and of course they have excellent mobility.

As much as it pains me to admit it (I'm a huge fan of Howl), Lycanthropic Form could very well be overpowered. I had this weird idea that All-out Attack could be removed (bias alert!), Mighty Charge made a gold card (which I honestly think it would deserve) and werewolves could maybe get another bronze attack or maybe even plain old Bite. It's likely not much good at all, but I can't come up with actually good things, you know.

Ethereal Form gets a solid second place from me. Curse of Fragility is good, Unholy Curse is downright terrifying. Those cards can make the otherwise rather puny Beam of Hate worthwhile, especially that it's linear, so there's a chance that it'll be possible to hit a hiding enemy with it. Doom is nicely thematic, and while it's more than just a little unlikely to actually score a kill, it can force opponents to use a Purge or attachments on the target character, which might pay off. Ancient Grudge feels balanced, Memory Loss is decent (can do great harm and can be countered just as easily). I don't know much about the actual power - it gets second place because it feels like it might be worth playing it, Ethereal Form gets to use a few things wizards otherwise can't, or anyone else for that matter. Still, to help them a little, their list could maybe include Telekinesis? It'd give them some more utility and it sounds like something a poltergeist does.

Vampiric Form... It's not that Vampiric Form is weak, so to say (or I don't know), I just see little reason to play it. To me it seems that there's nothing Vampiric Form can do that non-form vampire priests can't do better; much of that is Talented Healer, as it's been pointed out above. Healing three points at the start of each round is a nice bonus, but does not make up for the loss of almost as much extra healing from each vampiric attack and cantrip to boot. They get Sneaky Bloodsuck more easily, as that card would otherwise require using Storge's Proboscis, which has the rather situational Wings of Faith; Sneaky Bloodsuck also has excellent synergy with Swarm of Bats, but that's all the reason I can think of. Maybe they could get an innate frenzy to unholy attacks or I don't know. Maybe even hypnotic abilities, a card that can pull enemies closer, or some terrifying gaze (attach to target, target may not block, duration 1 or until attacked) or something. I'm just coming up with weird ideas at this point.

Vampire's Kiss was also hit hard, possibly too hard, but it had to be done; healing two points per damage dealt is too powerful for the game to handle right now. As of now, though, there's similarly little reason to play it. I don't know about balance, but thematically it'd make sense to me if it attached to target, and then would attach a Vampiric Form when it expired.

Otherwise most of the cards feel nicely balanced. There's a wide variety of silver attacks out there and a nice selection of items to get them from. Hex of Dissolution is the other card that was nerfed from blatantly overpowered to hardly useful, I personally really liked someone's idea that its damage should only be increased by acid terrain laid by its caster. I don't know how hard it would be to code, but Instant Burn also makes such a distinction. It would not allow twenty-damage shenanigans, so maybe the card could be restored to its former glory (or somewhere close). Medium's Garb still feels a bit overpowered to me (even if you get bad cards from it, they're still free cards - compare Medium's Garb to Frenzy Aura). I can't really imagine a form of Fright-attaching Boo! that isn't either supremely overpowered and annoying or practically useless, either. Discarding blocks is interesting, but I don't know how it would compete with War Cry.

All in all, it's a really nice expansion that gave us quite a few new concepts to play around with.

 

Ethereal Form is useful in SP, because it blocks all damage from unbuffed Firestorm and Flash Of Agony (and half of Lava). I've been trying to use it in my own attempts at a solo elf wizard, but Combustible still hurts (I miss the days when cards like that only triggered if damage gets through armor).

Vampiric Form would be a great card on any slot other than Divine Skill.

 

I thought about that, too, Kalin, and had minimal success with it -- and this was before The Misadventures of Myx'd Mess'zh. The problem is, of course, that if the attacker is the Spirit, then you might pull off two or three such attacks with the Form armor combo because while you have the armor, you're not drawing a single Flash nor Firestorm.

 

Huh, Flash of Agony. Thinking about it, that card would actually fit spirits quite nicely both thematically and mechanically. But I don't know if them getting it would make them better or not.

 

Flash might be a little too good for spirits. Everyone is looking at card qualities for each form, is anyone looking at rarity?
------
I've been thinking some more about Boo! improvements, and today I was wondering: If Boo! is changed to something that deserves Silver quality, what happens when someone puts a lot in a deck? So I went and built a Max Boo char, and immediately noticed how low the item rarities were (peasant legal extreme build!).

Spoiler

Boo to the Max!
Level 24 Elf Wizard

Prankster's Feystaff
Prankster's Feystaff
Poltergeist Pendant
Poltergeist Pendant
Poltergeist Pendant
Terrifying Zapping Wand
Mantle Of Lingering
Skipping Boots
Dainty Silversmith
Battery

1 x Hover
3 x Arcane Curse
1 x Acid Leak
4 x Silver Bolt
1 x Reliable Hide Armor
1 x Reliable Mail
10 x Boo!
2 x Fey Silversmith
2 x Big Zap
1 x Dissolve Armor
1 x Flanking Move
1 x Healing Dash
2 x Memory Loss
1 x Skip
4 x Winds Of War
1 x Spark Inductor
​

10x Boo! + 5 traits = 32% spooky
We get damage (boosted by racial) and control from the staves, so I went with movement for the boots. Still a very fragile char, especially if we reduce the range on Boo!. May need Nimbus spam to survive.

 

Hey, btw, what's the "standard" wizard range? It's 6, right? I mean, there are some range 4 cards, and a couple range 8 and range 10, but even non-licking Burst starts at range 6, right? It's just the standard.

Any Werewolf cards come to mind? No, not the Form's innate anti-wizard Armor 2 and easy Armor 3 draws. Any card that's range 6? One that does 3 damage for every step taken, doing more damage than Rocket Charge? Oh, and while we're at it, because a Werewolf's (or warrior's 13 Howls') Mighty Charges can reach a wizard at range 6 and pull off 18 Unblockable damage in doing so, guess what one and only race of MP wizard this one-shots...

(I was actually playing human wizards for a couple days this month and getting picked off at standard wizard range with my standard wizard cards -- which Vengeance helps set up of course, even if you're carefully counting the spaces and staying out of straight lines. It just feels pointless lately.)