Guest posts by RoKetha

25

Card Ideas and Art / HERO CARDS by Scaredgirl

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:50 pm »

I honestly don't like this idea at all.

Most of these are literally unkillable without either Gravity Pull or 4 Thunderbolts. They would turn the game into a simple race to play the hero first.

Additionally, with these cards in play, it would be absolute suicide not to include Eternity in every deck in existence.

There's also a big imbalance within the cards themselves. Even though you did say that these aren't balanced, the fire hero is still completely inferior to the earth one, the darkness one is literally an automatic win if played early with a graveyard, and the clockmaker is far too weak compared to the others unless you can PU these in which case it's an auto-win like most of the rest. I'd like to see you try to balance a set of abilities that range from "kill everything your opponent has" to "do massive damage while slowly killing everything your opponent has" to "become invincible in three turns or so."

Adding super-powerful unique cards only enhances the luck aspect of the game and reduces the possible deck variety since you need to be able to counter them or you WILL lose.

26

Card Ideas and Art / card ideas by raggy #2

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:50 pm »

Time Warp is phenomenally broken - every deck would just run Mark of Time and have six of these babies as well as Electrum Hourglasses and Sundials, for more card advantage than you can shake a stick at. It needs the cost revising upwards or perhaps have it draw only a single card (still powerful, but less broken).

Otherwise these suggestions aren't bad, though.

The fact that you think a one-use card that allows you to pay to draw one card--the card that you would have gotten instead of it had you not included the first card in the first place--would be powerful completely invalidates any arguments you could possibly make.

"oh my god he can draw 3 cards in one turn" is not a big freaking deal when you consider that if you look at it like that, one of those cards does absolutely nothing but cost you quanta. All it does is let you pay 1 quantum to get a 1 card advantage. Yes, it's strong, but so are the majority of spell cards in the game.

I'm not sure how to explain this any other way. Okay, lets say I have 10 cards in my deck. I draw Time Warp (9 cards) and play it (7 cards). For one draw, I have just gone three cards into my deck, and three cards closer to my shiny dragon that is sitting on the bottom.

The advantage lies in drawing through your deck phenomenally fast, not in card advantage for cards held in-hand.

Again: If you simply did not have the Time Warp in your deck, you would have had a deck of 9 cards, drawn one, and had 8, and without the 1 time quantum cost. You don't draw some blank card in place of Time Warp that does nothing and was only serving to make you take longer to reach the last card, you draw the one that would have been after it.

27

Random, Normal and Elder / The Rainbow deck w/ Mark of Life just pulled an epic maneuver

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:50 pm »

Sadly I wasn't able to get a screen of it since it was a spell...

He reflected Holy Light off his own Emerald Shield onto me.

I was Mark of Time and thanked him politely for the healing.

Apparently Heal works through shields since it's not targeted, but Holy Light does not.

28

Trio & Quartet / The AMAZING Flames of Eternity

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:50 pm »

"Cheaper card is always faster to play. Always."

That logic is completely wrong in this situation though.

You don't get ANYTHING by playing a Fire Spirit one turn earlier than a Spectre, unless you have an Empathic or Feral Bond. It isn't "faster" or anything.

Fire Spirits have ZERO ATTACK. They don't do anything until the second turn, and only then if you spend the third quantum on it.

Fire Spectres have two attack. They do the same damage as your Fire Spirit would have done, for the same cost, even if you are forced to wait an extra turn for the third quantum, and they cost the same amount of quanta to be able to do anything. But if you already have the third quantum when you got the Spectre, it will be stronger than the Spirit would have been. It's like you were able to play the Spirit one turn in the past, for the same cost.

There is, again, absolutely nothing faster or cheaper about Fire Spirits other than if they are being Reverse Time'd every time you play them, which is the case here and is why it might be a more viable option. But you could do better by just including a Photon... one extra card for double the number of higher-power attacking creatures and double the growth speed isn't exactly a bad trade-off.

29

Duo-Decks / Death/Fire

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:50 pm »

Needs creature control or Bonds will counter poison and all your creatures end up dead.

Or is this an AI3 deck?

30

Issue Archive / Mutants keeping natural abilities.

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:50 pm »

Your second bug is actually just a result of how Burrow works. Simply being burrowed doesn't halve the attack of the creature; rather, using the Burrow ability does.

For example, if you play a Devourer, play Eclipse, and then burrow it, it will be 1/3, but if you play the Devourer, burrow it, and then play Eclipse it will be 2/3.

31

Off-Topic Discussions / Socialism and "fairness"

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:50 pm »

obligatory "lol maplestory"

Anyway, the whole national "idea" that capitalism is infallible and socialism is some kind of evil is pretty obviously flawed... we're starting to see the effects of "too much capitalism" now as rich individuals and greedy banks have, in their completely capitalist pursuit of profit, caused a severe economic collapse. We've also seen a constantly widening class gap for some time and a severe lag in the US' ability to keep up with education as private education charges more and more for administration costs while providing the same or less actual education (see Harvard), and public education is left to flounder as the state governments focus on things with more immediate payoffs.

As for socialism, it's become attached to "government-controlled or monitored" so heavily that it's pretty much all the right wing has to include in propaganda now to completely freeze any bill the left proposes--there's always something like this that the out-of-power party ends up pulling, but it's probably the worst now it's ever been with the current media power. Gonna make a healthcare reform that doesn't benefit every drug company and private insurer out there pretty much impossible to pass.

32

Card Ideas and Art / Nerf Bonewall

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:49 pm »

Gonna say this again: no shield should make you completely invincible. Phase Shield is probably too strong as well, but at least it can be destroyed. Bone Wall would be totally fine if it only blocked about 6 damage or one hit, whichever is less, per bone, because then both strong creatures and mass weenies can kill it.

And yeah, he read your list of counters which basically came down to "kill all his creatures and overwhelm him while he does absolutely nothing to prevent this because obviously the other player isn't actively doing anything." Yeah, you can PU an Oty and add another Heavy Armor if you're a rainbow. They can then congeal/bolt/gravity pull/reverse time/PU it right back at you. Or perhaps they saved an extra armor in case that happened. Or maybe they have an Eagle's Eye ready to start hitting it. Or maybe they had both that and a Fallen Elf that can immediately deal with it. No one's going to just roll over and die if you play one card everyone uses at them.

You didn't even mention the one real counter for it, Momentum, but I guess that's because it doesn't make a huge difference with Sundials.

33

Card Ideas and Art / Nerf Bonewall

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:49 pm »

It's weakness is it can be destroyed without any permanent-affecting cards. You can save your steals/deflags for important cards like weapons and graveyards.

Worst case scenario- it's a speedbump. Just keep playing your deck like you would normally and it will fall. No strategy changes are needed to deal with it 95% of the time.

Uh-huh. You say that if you have FFQ or Boneyard and good creature control, and they don't have a Rain of Fire to wipe all that. If you have a small, fast deck with a few dragons for damage, or something with Growth/Ablaze? Yeah, right, that Bone Wall will hold forever. Doesn't matter if you keep four 51/51 forest spirits alive if they can kill two of their own fireflies or skeletons each turn. But hey, mass weenies doesn't always work either since they just stall with other means until they can play a Bone Wall and Rain of Fire on the same turn and suddenly have 40 shields.

34

Rainbow Decks / Uzra's Anti-control.

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:49 pm »

I like the idea of having Fire Lances. What about having 2-3 Fire Towers? Maybe not..

Well suppose I have 3 fire lances and no fire towers.  I need 110 fire quantum to deal 100 damage. I can either replace a quantum tower with a fire tower, or a quantum tower with another fire lance (going one swap at a time).  4 fire lances decreases the number of fire quantum I need in order to do 100 damage from 110, to 91.  This means I have to wait for 19 less quantum.  With ~38 quantum towers It would take me, on average, ~ 6 turns to get 19 quantum of any one color.  So adding a 4th fire lance means I save ~6 turns. If instead I add a fire tower, do I save more or less than 6 turns?  I won't bother to calculate it exactly because for one it seems intuitively that I would save less than 6 turns.  Adding a 5th lance means I need 73 (21+21+21+21+18 = 102) instead of 91.  Which is now 18 less quantum.  In short, more lances is better than fire towers.  It is only after the 6th lance that a fire tower would be the best option to decrease the number of turns before the opponents death.

There is one flaw in this logic and it is that you are limited to 7 cards in your hand at once. If you draw too many fire lances early and have to hold them for the entire game, you could end up having to discard one at some point anyway. After all, you definitely want to save the plagues more for a key moment, you don't always want to play a sundial right away, and you don't want to play the photon before you need it to avoid decking.

35

Trio & Quartet / The AMAZING Flames of Eternity

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:49 pm »

Upgraded Fire Spectres cost more.

Fire spectres don't cost more than fire spirits except for anti-decking and immolation reasons (which are enough here I guess, if you're worried about losing pillars and the game going on long enough for you to deck out) and are usually a lot stronger...

Either way you are spending 3 fire quanta for a 2 attack creature, 3 for a 4 attack creature, 4 for a 6 attack creature, etc. The only difference is that spectres are always a step ahead.

Since you have to wait until at least turn 4 to play them (Anubis will almost never come into play until turn 3 or later, makes the fire spirit immortal on turn 4 at best, or 5 if it does itself first), and since you have more fire pillars than fire spirits, it's safe to say you usually won't be able to play the fire spirit a turn earlier than a spectre--the only situation where this happens is when you draw your first fire pillar after you can play your anubis and have a fire spirit in your hand.

If you can play a spectre the same turn as a spirit, it does 2 more damage every round... that really adds up.
If you can play the spirit one turn earlier than you would have played the spectre, they do equal damage: 2 on the second turn, 4 on the third, etc.

36

Trio & Quartet / The AMAZING Flames of Eternity

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:49 pm »

I tried almost this exact deck before and I found it too slow (though I used some Cremations, Momentum, Ray of Light and Rain of Fire... the RoLs have the added effect of making sundials usable if you get one very early, before you need to kill it right away). By the time you have an Anubis, a Spectre, and an Eternity or two in play you're already down to about 40 HP most of the time. I mean, they could practically play Morning Glory on turn 2 and nothing else and still win.

How in the world are Fire Spectres better unupgraded though, other than as anti-decking--which won't matter at all here since you have 4 fire towers?

Fire Spirit is 0/2, pays 1 fire for +2/+0 -- after one turn it's 2/2 for 3 fire
Fire Spectre is 2/3, pays 1 fire for +2/+0 -- as soon as it's played it's 2/3 for 3 fire

The only difference is that Fire Spectre has 1 more HP and takes one fewer turn to have the same attack.