@Gingrich Yurr and I just caught the Loot Fairy at The Metallic Monstrosity. I'd lately been playing The Misadventures of Myx'd Mess'zh: Solo Elf Wizard in low level stuff so much that I was torn between my usual meleer with Automatic Shield and other goodies vs. a high-level elf wiz. (It's not like I hadn't beaten the adventure with her before. That's how she's level 19. ~shrug~) We went out on a limb. He brought Mungo, his human warrior, and I brought Myx'd. I thank @Duke Tresnor and Aloyzo for Spritastrophe! It's the perfect staff to stack in battles 1 & 2! $E^ J Between Adaptable, Brutes, and repeated Hear Them Outs, it's indeed Epic, ha ha ha ha. For the third battle, Gingrich and I built a bit differently. I don't know just how much Violent Spin he equipped, but we focused on control. This might be the first time I specifically, optimally built to have the robots destroy each other: Because of this, I finally 100% realized a little fact I'd only half-noticed in times past: (In case a reader can't see the pics, the alt text is that my optimal wiz has control x14, cantrip moves x6, Escaping Run, traits x6, bursts x4, situational junk cards x5 (with Leadership support), a completely unspent, and a spent on a item.) You can get fully dedicated control arcane items, but not items! However, before any players start asking a certain maladroit wizard about level 21 Rare control devices, QUESTION: is this a conscious decision written in BM's 10+ pages of design guidelines to lack such items (so as to not compete with the Epic and Legendary s (not to mention nearly focused tokenless)? Or, was it just somehow overlooked? And/Or, was Boo! supposed to be enough of a control-of-sorts that Frightening Wand was your answer to control -- and at only Common at that? Spoiler: I tried. Fwiw, I considered staves to get more control, but the closest to what I'd want was Prankster's Feystaff, but too many on-the-verge-of-dead cards for the deck, and that current Boo!, eesh. The Frightening Wand harbors similar issue. I said to Gingrich, I hate that these items became so unplayable*; I'm just certain that this is 100% the opposite of what BM intended for these common rarity CM options. (Even if I had a Gusting Feystaff, its not-as-productive cards mixed with a tokenless arcane skill might not have been as efficient/reliable anyway.) Therefore, if I didn't have Staff Of The Inferno, Hotglass Staff would've done almost as nicely; Combustible's the only card I seriously sought from them anyway, clearly. * I don't wanna go off topic, but I want to disclaim, I've tried building specifically with Boo! in mind, and it's just hard to viably split up the party to surround the enemy, including with tricks up my sleeve. I also lamented to Gingrich that I missed out on getting to play its OP version which needed the nerf. On a fun side note, we finished the last battle with only 1 HP missing, and that was when Myx'd unnecessarily hit a camera and Mungo with Gusts Of War. We totally could've 1-HP'd it. Overall, the battle was pretty funny. For a few rounds, we had the flimsiest character standing between (and adjacent to!) the 40 HP sentries with 15 HP charged shots, and they simply wouldn't attack, walk, or anything but pass -- until we brought our warrior tank out from behind a wall. They're just so intent on that target. Ha ha ha ha. Thanks as always, Bob
Is trait cycling really that useful? I probably would have gone with Searing Pain or Staff Of The Fire God to get burst 2. I actually use Volcano a lot on that map because their default move is their only move.
@Kalin, trait cycling is scarily useful. Once, @Punf I believe it was casualed with me. (I don't think it was @Pyrious. So many P names! lol) He maxed out a 1/1/1 dwarf party with traits; I can't recall what my party's point was, but I recall I had a bunch of traits, too; clearly, this was no serious test, although we were curious to see what a maxed trait party would look like in battle, ha ha. He accidentally found that the cycling -- and we each hit the draw limit at least once in the game iirc -- concentrated the rest of the deck so much, it barely mattered whether he were drawing from triple boost Skills or multiple Demonic Revenges, he still dug up his useful cards every round. Having 36 non-trait cards vs. maxed-out 16 non-trait cards .. which do you think will find your sought-after cards faster? $;^ J Non-joke-build-wise, this is why Assegai warriors can be so aggressive, doing well in this past rotation's open terrain (winter maps): 12 strong attacks out of *not 36* cards (1/3 attacks) but out of *30* (2/5 attacks) .. *before* other traits (let's say 6 more for easy math, thus out of *24* cards (1/2 attacks!!). Sure, 1/9 of the time, you'll lose a card, but literally 1/2 of your real deck is *strong* attacks. Since I'm no expert player, I searched the forum for Flax saying all traits are secretly a bronze. Look at these treasures I dug up! $E^ J (These come from a guy who co-created a different card game with the current reputation of professional testers across the country not being able to break its balance.) Then, sometime later: (note, emphasis in original) Then, sometime later again, answering Inkfingers' statements about Squeamish: Bronze, Silver minus, Bronze... Yeah, Combustible was literally part of my strategy. Before I'd decided, I told Gingrich that I was considering a high-powered staff for the sake of a couple more control cards vs. having Firestorm be utterly dead, and he said he could bring Leadership. (Which, incidentally, meant more cycling.) Sold! $E^ b
(And, @Kalin, for the record, Searing + Inferno would've given me 5 dead cards and 5 useful out of 10, whereas Inferno x2 gave me 4 dead cards and 4 useful out of 8. That's not a far cry from one another, but yay, Inferno x2 giving me 2 fewer cards to wade through while drawing my actual strategy, weaving figure eights and manipulating everyone's locations for our safety and their destruction. Plus, I once had to move out of my own way to lob an Ember Burst or two; I would've hated to've had to also deal with Fireball's extra expansion. You make a good point, though, that Searing sounds comparatively decent if one planned to damage them more directly, lol. $E^ D ...barring trying to keep the warrior out of the way of the hits, too...) -- EDIT -- (Nonetheless, I didn't realize they had no other movement, thus yeah, Volcano spam would cinch that level, too. Excellent point, there!) I eventually realized my diagram above didn't even highlight the four control Arcane Items being , none , despite my having two more s available just for that cause. $:^ P
Yeesh, I sound inconsistent don't I. Let me try to clarify my most recent approach to trait balancing. Traits on skill items are worth a bit less than traits on other items, because skill items are expected to have traits. That means that traits in other slots thin your deck relative the normal configuration of 1-3 traits/skill item. I would say that a trait on a skill item with no effects besides "Trait." should be approximately Bronze, while a similar trait on a non-skill item should be approximately Silver-. Sometimes we put the same card in both skill and non-skill items, so it's more art than science, but I hope that this distinction helps illuminate why sometimes a trait is worth one quality and sometimes it's worth another. tl;dr skill items are supposed to have a lot of traits on them; non-skill items aren't
Going back to the original title, I would argue that Hypnotic Beacon is a control card, making items like Command Stone, Confusotron 500 and Pipes Of Hamelin major token control options... On the trait point, I recently did a few drawback quests that I had missed along the way…. They are so easy now with all the Creature Of The Night available!
Don't worry, Flaxative. Although I wondered a little about the change in statements, the main gist stayed the same. Thank you much for clarifying, though. ~nodnod~ And to mckeen, yes, the actual topic at hand: I looked at randomizing options like items that include Maze, Whirlwind / Enemies, and Hypnotic Beacon, but those are more .. let's say .. disruption than control. I love a good Hypno Beacon, making fun and effective use of it during Wicked Waterways recently $;^ J heheh, but I'm not actually controlling any positioning, generally speaking. For that particular battle, I certainly wouldn't want to randomize the robots' locations! $:^ J
Actually, it affects them when they turn to face and draw their laser card, so 75% of the time they end up facing the wrong way!
Ha! Right! That's pretty funny, wasn't thinking of that. Nevertheless, the goal was to cantrip-juggle them into annihilating nearly everything for us with touching us at all, lol (Auto Block on Mungo aside). Worked like a non-random charm. $}^ J
