[Suggestion] Please do something about Encumber.

Can we please get some way to deal with encumber? Here's a ridiculous example:

I have a hand full of movement but still can't do anything.

Heavy encumber strategies are totally griefer decks (like land destruction in MtG). It ensures that your opponent can't do anything while slowly kill them or monopolize victory points. It's terribly un-fun to play against.

My, one suggestion is to let players discard move cards to move beyond encumber limits. So if you had a total of 2 encumber on you then you could discard a Walk (or better) when you played another move or step card to actually make the move. This way at least you could save up extra move cards and do something!

Or put Shrug It Off on more cards and make it a cantrip. Or even better, let it cycle a card.

Or put Arrogant Armor on more items. I think it's a pretty balanced card since it prevents your own stuff from sticking to you. I've only found 1 Epic item that gives this type of armor for warriors, which is equipped to my dwarf in this game but I never drew it. Even with that armor; I have a 2 out of 33 chance to draw it on my one guy; vs decks full of encumber effects… not fair odds.

Any other ideas about how to fix encumber?

 

There are 2 ways I deal with encumber. Preventative would be missile or shield blocks. Nothing quite like the surprised wizard that realizes his encumber failed and you are in their face the next move. And the other is lots of team move cards which are unaffected by encumber. Nothing better than getting heavily encumbered and than still being in that wizards face with 2 warriors.

 

I don't actually think encumber needs fixing. It's very strong, but I think it's ok for wizards to have something that's very strong. After all, wizards don't do much damage, and they have the lowest health of all classes. They need to be able to do some pretty good things to be useful, and encumber is one of those things.

As for dealing with encumbrance - there are many ways. The perhaps most powerful and versatile way is to use 'team push' moves, such as Walk, Team! and Run, Team! etc. Those kinds of cards ignore encumbrance. Purge, Shrug It Off, and Pathfinding can remove the attached cards directly, but it is also possible to remove the cards indirectly by attaching a bunch of your own cards. Characters can only have three cards attached to them at a time, so if you attach your own cards such as Healing Presence and Unholy Frenzy or whatever else you have available, you may be able to push the encumber cards off. Usually though, the easiest way to deal with encumbrance is to just use high-speed move cards, such as Dash or Sprint. (Obviously, elves have less trouble with this than dwarves.)

Remember, if the enemy wizards are spending a heap of cards to encumber you, those are cards that they aren't spending on other things. If you're able to get where you're going despite the encumbering effects, then you've essentially negated your enemy's cards and thus you have an advantage.

 

I think encumber is about right: sometimes it works, but there are lots of counters (purge, team moves, arrogant armor, sprint, wild run, shrug it off, etc.) I'd certainly be in favor of teleport ignoring encumber, and having more purge-like cards: for example removing all attachments from your team or from all players.

 

Doesn't Disenchant do exactly that? I'm not saying its easy to get or that you want it in your deck but it does exist.

 

Disenchant is more powerful than what I'm proposing (and isn't actually on any items). I would want spells removing all attachments, regardless of ownership.

 

Wizards in CH are actually not that great in terms of damage. Giving them control isn't an issue. Like people have said, it's not that difficult to counter. Team move or block or shrug it off etc.



The only issue with encumber is that you will fail hard against it if you don't prepare for it. Newer players tend make that mistake when they reach mid tier pvp for the first time. They will get used to it and learn to play around it soon enough.

 

Guys, I'm ranked around 1400: I know the counters to encumber and I'm prepared for it. I'm saying that I built my deck to deal with Encumber attacks and the tools I have aren't good enough. I played a bunch of matches over the past few days (including DRAGOON with the encumber-focused deck pictured above 3 times) but I consistently loose to decks that focus on encumber. I'd love to tune my deck to do better against it but I've already got a ton of cards that should (and do) help, for example, across all the characters in my 3 Warrior deck (2 Human, 1 Dwarf) I have:

• 1 Shuffle, Team!
• 2 Scuttle, Team!
• 1 Walk, Team!
• 1 Run, Team!
• 1 Sprint, Team!
• 2 Arrogant Armor (I would love more but the only heavy plate I've found is Emperor's Plate which I had to save big $ to buy.)
• I also have an assorted 8 block cards that should trigger on the various magic attacks (though 2 are limited by the damage amount they trigger on) and 1 Rushing Aura that also helps counter encumber.
• I include lots of extra regular move cards for all my warriors, especially my Dwarf, because I know how important they are.

I don't run Shrug It Off because the only item I have with it Apprentice Toughness is just worse than Novice Ferocity (with Charge) 90% of the time.

What about some more heavy armor options that have Arrogant Armor. Go look at the options for items that have it. There are only 2 heavy armor's that have that card which aren't Epic or Legendary (meaning hard to find/buy) and they are terrible (and still rare).

Meanwhile Sub-zero Staff is a regular rare card and has 2(!) Freeze on it along with other good encumber effects (along with Force Bolt and Maze) if enemies ever do get too close. It doesn't even require a 2 yellow tokens. How many "Powerful (6/7)" green cards like Freeze are even available to us?

Do you guys really believe encumber is fine? That's disappointing. I challenge you to play a 3 warrior deck and win against encumber heavy strategies. There should be some way to build a 3 Warrior deck to be good vs. encumber (and still good in other match-ups) right? Because I'm having trouble seeing it.

 

Some other ideas & thoughts:

What about a 1 shot armor that was just like Arrogant Armor but lacked a keep when it stopped attachments (so it would discard when triggered)? That could be put on lower tier items too.

Also how are human warriors supposed to deal with encumber effects? Dwarves have Shrug It Off and Elves have Pathfinding along with Elvish Mobility. Humans should have something that works around attachments too right?

 

So you've got a full team of warriors, and you're looking for a way to beat teams that focus countering warriors with encumber. It can be done, but clearly you're going to have trouble because warriors are what encumber is most effective against. I'd suggest you need more team moves. Perhaps you should consider using Marshall's Boots or Rhood's Boots if you can get them. And there are plenty of helm's with team push moves, such as Commander's Cap.

Humans have the best way to deal with encumber: team push. For example, I'm using Trained Command on the human in my team. With human skills like that, along with boots and helms, I'm sure you could get a lot more team push moves than you already have. -- (But team moves are one option. Another option is to focus on blocking, perhaps with things like Defender's Block or Hard To Pin Down.)

Interestingly, I defeated DRAGOON yesterday and it didn't occur to me at the time that he was using an 'encumber focused deck'. But if I'm remembering correctly, he did have three wizards, and my warrior had a lot of trouble moving... so I guess he probably was using such a deck. That was a damn close battle. It wasn't just encumber on warrior - it was also Path Of Knives giving me trouble. The warrior ended up surviving only because of the healing from Healing Blessing, and went on to kill two wizards when the Path Of Knives worn off.

I guess that's a good example for the point I was trying to make in my previous post: the wizards were pretty effective at locking down my warrior - but then the warrior, after surviving with just a slither of health, was able to dish out huge damage in just one round. So who's stronger? The wizards with encumber? Or the warrior with big attack cards?

In my team, I use 1 warrior, 1 priest, and 1 wizard because I like the versatility. I don't want there to be one type of build that hard-counters my own build (like encumber teams hard-counter stepping-warrior teams).

--

As for more ideas for cards that counter encumber... I'd be happy for teleport to ignore encumber (not because I think teleport needs a buff - but just because I think it would be more intuitive.)
Also, for a long time I've had a kind of itch telling me that there should be a card called Trudge, which just says move-2, ignores encumber. It could appear on boots and on dwarf skills or something like that. -- I'm not really sure if it's a good idea, but it's an idea has been haunting me for some time. I think I just like the name: Trudge.

 

I don't have Rhood's Boots but I did swap in Marshall's Boots. Good suggestion, thanks.

Good point on team push: I was thinking about it a bit wrong since team push doesn't affect the character that draws it though.

I'm using Command and Perfect Command on my humans and Silver Helmet, Commander's Cap, and Shifty Skin Hat as helmets. I'm lacking good helmet options with no tokens required so that's the Shifty Skin compromise.

I do have 3x Hard To Pin Down on my dwarf from the Slippery Shield and that works well when I draw and trigger it. I'm always looking for more items with that card on it.

So without switching my Dwarf to a 3rd human I'm not sure there's much I could do to add more team push, but maybe switching to 3x human is the best thing to do. I'm actually planning to switch the dwarf to a out to a life-drain focused human or elf priest when the next update comes out.

In 3 games against DRAGOON I never had that experience. I got in a few hits early and took his wizards to low/mid health and then was locked down with encumber for enough rounds for him to win. I had cards that would have turned the game around in hand many times but wasn't able to use them because of encumber or because I would close the distance and get whirlwinded away. That was epically frustrating especially since I didn't draw one of the 2 Immovables in my deck. That's another card I wish was easier to get more copies of…

I support Teleport changes for flavor reasons alone. Trudge is a great idea. I would certainly play that card.

Thanks.

PS: But what about Sub-zero Staff. Does it seem significantly overpowered?

 

Many of the top teams are 3 warrior builds. In the upper rankings I'm really starting to think that encumber is just a waste of time. It's very little damage only to have the warriors (mine or my opponents') play Sprint, Team! and other Team Move cards to stick to the wizard and kill them.

I hear Joe state that he has felt that there isn't enough answers to encumber and I'm getting a little weary of additional changes taking away the primary use for wizards currently. In mid ranked play I do think the answers to it are a bit too sparse (being on legendary items etc), but in the upper rankings they feel a bit too plentiful.

*Note I haven't done any analysis of this aspect of the game yet. This post is based purely on my impression at the rankings I've been playing at (1200-1400).

 

I think the situation in the OP is perfectly fine. The game would be broken and boring if there was no counter to all-warrior partys.
If you do not run characters that counter frost wizards (counterspell/whirlwind wizards or attachment/purge focused clerics) then you should have trouble with a melee focused party.
And if encumber was not powerful then the allwarrior party would be even more dominant than it is already.

You have to also keep in mind that wizards are supposed to get overall stronger cards than warriors/priest to balance out their lower hp.

 

Talk to Lomi, his triple warriors are consistently able to beat encumber strategies.

 

True, the damage is not the issue. It's just super aggravating having my guys stuck on the sidelines unable to even get to the VP squares. The map pictured above (Crypt Feast) is particularly frustrating because of it's layout. I do way better on Crypt Chamber and a bit better on Crypt Sluice.

Where can I get more info on the top ranked squads? Are they published somewhere? I'd love to see load outs and such.

He did say that here:

I'm in roughly the same ranking bracket at (1200-1400) and I obviously feel the same since I started this thread. I have no idea about strategies above at 15oo and up.

To be clear, I'm fine with encumber staying at its current power level as long as we get some more cards that can answer it.

Thanks for your feedback too turinturamba and Heretiick.

 

There is a thread titled MP builds that a lot of the top players have published their builds in. Too lazy to find but it was started by Lance and is easy enough to find.

Honestly, there are only a handful of players above 1500 (13 or so right now) and a lot of them are not active. Because of this top level play is really 1400+ and there aren't a whole lot of triple warrior teams up there (Lomi is the only one I can think of). There are a lot of double warrior (usually with a priest) or double wizard (usually with a step warrior)

I float between 1400-1500 (1507 right now) and play the same people over and over again so I have become pretty familiar with top builds. If you really want to know how to make 3 warriors work I can help out, but I would rather do it in PM's so I don't give up Lomi's strategy publicly without his permission.

Edit: grammar

 

All Buffs, debuffs and traits also work to some extend. Atleast in a situation shown at OPs picture.

But well, counters are bit harder to get than Encumber. Then again, if enemy has focused in encumber, he is somewhat lacking at damage. But most of the time it creates interesting tactical situations, unless warriors get unlucky and/or don't have enough options.

 

Not all strategy are supposed to be equal to all other strategies. under all circumstances. Thats not necessary for balance.

A high mobility melee group will have an advantage against a range/encumber group, while that same group would get destroyed by another melee group who focus more on damage (taking into account the map layout at the same time). Taking magic the gathering as an example, every competitive tournament deck will almost always have another competitive tournament deck against which they are significantly disadvantaged (or even outright hopeless) against. The point is to 1) estimate how many players will be using decks you're weak against and 2) roll with the losses and get your wins elsewhere.

In this way, metagame is self-adjusting.

Its not really an issue that certain builds tend to be very good vs certain other ones. Encumber doesn't seem anywhere close to unbeatable vs an unreasonable number of decks. They just do very well against certain archtypes.

 

Along with Progammer and Lance. I don't quite have the cards to do the same, but I'm generally testing some stupid deck anyway.

 

I agree with everything that's you said (and I play a MtG so I'm familiar with all of this for that game.) However, in most Magic formats if there's a dominant strategy there are alternative cards you can sideboard (or main deck) in to vastly hamper that strategy and improve your chances. (For Example: Ground Seal, Grafdigger's Cage, Rest in Peace or many other pieces of graveyard hate they've printed recently after Innistrad.)

My point is that I tried to build my deck to be good against encumber by I putting in lots of team moves and other cards strong vs encumber, yet I still felt like I had very little chance at winning. So I'm asking for more cards that work well as 'encumber hate'. This could be cards that allow you to move through encumber or cards that prevent/remove attachments. I just want more options. Trudge, as mentioned above, is a great example. It's just a walk most of the time so nothing special, but if you're encumbered it would be amazing.