Shield of Relativity | Shield of Relativity

[moomoose]

NAME: Shield of Relativity ELEMENT: Aether COST: 6 TYPE: Shield ATK|HP: TEXT: Shield: physical damage reduced by N/3. N is the number of creatures that attacked the shield last turn	NAME: Shield of Relativity ELEMENT: Aether COST: 7 TYPE: Shield ATK|HP: TEXT: Shield: physical damage reduced by N/2. N is the number of creatures that attacked the shield last turn

ART: moomoose IDEA: moomoose NOTES: The turn this shield is put into play, it obviously does not have any block value.  Creatures which are frozen, in stasis, or have less than or equal to 0 attack do not count as attacking creatures.  Any creature with a positive attack value and is not in stasis, frozen or otherwise able to make an attempt to attack is added to the block value of the shield. This shield is a little like hope, but it is not immaterial and it is not as easy to make your opponent swarm small creatures as it is for you to swarm RoLs.  With that in consideration, I would like to know if you think that the cost should be reduced. SERIES:

[OldTrees]

Lets see if I understand

T1: 5 Giant Frogs attack
T2: 0 Giant Frogs attack
T3: 5 Giant Frogs attack
...

T1: 1 Golden Dragon and 5 Photons attack
T2: 1 Golden Dragon (reduced by 6 attacks)
T3: 1 Golden Dragon (reduced by 1 attacks)
T4: 1 Golden Dragon (reduced by 1 attacks)
...

right?

[Malignant]

Lets see if I understand

T1: 5 Giant Frogs attack
T2: 0 Giant Frogs attack
T3: 5 Giant Frogs attack
...

T1: 1 Golden Dragon and 5 Photons attack
T2: 1 Golden Dragon (reduced by 6 attacks)
T3: 1 Golden Dragon (reduced by 1 attacks)
T4: 1 Golden Dragon (reduced by 1 attacks)
...

right?

Should be right...

Nightmare + Stupid AI + This, could be a nice combo.

[QuantumT]

Lets see if I understand

T1: 5 Giant Frogs attack
T2: 0 Giant Frogs attack
T3: 5 Giant Frogs attack
...

T1: 1 Golden Dragon and 5 Photons attack
T2: 1 Golden Dragon (reduced by 6 attacks)
T3: 1 Golden Dragon (reduced by 1 attacks)
T4: 1 Golden Dragon (reduced by 1 attacks)
...

right?

If I understand the card correctly, creatures still count as attacking regardless of whether or not they do damage. So the 5 frogs would be negated after the first attack, as the frogs would still attack the shield, they just wouldn't get through.

The cost might be ok, if anything I feel it might be a tad cheap. Definitely don't go any lower on the cost.

[AnonymousRevival]

Well, as long as it is not cumulative, it seems okay.

[moomoose]

already in notes: Any creature with a positive attack value and is not in stasis, frozen or otherwise able to make an attempt to attack is added to the block value of the shield.

they key is "attempt to attack", not "successfully attack"


T1: 5 Giant Frogs attack (first turn, no damage reduction)
T2: 5 Giant Frogs attack (shield prevents up to 5 damage each, 0 frogs do damage)
T3: 5 Giant Frogs attack (shield prevents up to 5 damage each, 0 frogs do damage)
...

T1: 1 Golden Dragon and 5 Photons attack (first turn, no damage reduction)
T2: 1 Golden Dragon and 5 Photons attack (reduced by 6 damage, dragon does 4 damage)
T3: 1 Golden Dragon and 5 Photons attack (reduced by 6 damage, dragon does 4 damage)
T4: 1 Golden Dragon and 5 Photons attack (reduced by 6 damage, dragon does 4 damage)

but if say there is a voodoo doll or a creature with antimatter on the opponents side, they do not increase the block value of the shield. so if there were:

T1: 1 Golden Dragon and 1 Photon (first turn, no damage reduction)
T2: 1 Golden Dragon and 1  Photon attack (reduced by 2 damage, dragon does 8 damage)
T3: 1 Golden Dragon and 1  antimattered Photon attack (reduced by 2 damage, dragon does 8 damage)
T4: 1 Golden Dragon and 1  antimattered Photon attack (reduced by 1 damage, dragon does 9 damage)
...

so the shield adjusts if you either kill, antimatter freeze or otherwise reduce the number of creatures with positive attack value that will attempt to do damage the previous turn.

this shield is weakest against decks with a small number of powerful creatures, especially ones with grow.  it is strong against decks which utilize swarms.  in that way it is kind of the opposite of bonewall which is strong against a small number of strong attackers, but weak against swarms. 

[QuantumT]

this shield is weakest against decks with a small number of powerful creatures, especially ones with grow.  it is strong against decks which utilize swarms.  in that way it is kind of the opposite of bonewall which is strong against a small number of strong attackers, but weak against swarms.

I do like how it kind of functions the opposite of bonewall, but I'm not sure how I feel about the mechanic in general. It seems like it could become the basis of some incredibly mean stall decks, because it's the only shield in the game that doesn't follow the idea of,

Well I need more damage, what should I do? Play more creatures!

I think I'd feel better about it if it were either something like N/2 | N/2 +1, or if it was based on the number of creatures that successfully attacked last turn.

[Ekki]

OMG, the mechanics is awesomely disturbing...
I guess the shield should block 1 per SUCCESSFUL attack, otherwise you could easily beat many AI's with nightmare and this, since they'd go on throwing its creatures, and reducing its attack

[QuantumT]

OMG, the mechanics is awesomely disturbing...
I guess the shield should block 1 per SUCCESSFUL attack, otherwise you could easily beat many AI's with nightmare and this, since they'd go on throwing its creatures, and reducing its attack

I don't think the fact that the AI is dumb should matter in discussions of balance. The AI would just have to be adjusted to be able to deal with this card.

I'm also really weary of it being an Aether card, since Aether also has Dim shield. This is because the way to beat Dim Shield is generally to build up your creatures so that you can smack them really hard in the turns they don't have it up, and this shield just takes huge advantage of that.

[Ekki]

I don't think the fact that the AI is dumb should matter in discussions of balance. The AI would just have to be adjusted to be able to deal with this card.

I'm also really weary of it being an Aether card, since Aether also has Dim shield. This is because the way to beat Dim Shield is generally to build up your creatures so that you can smack them really hard in the turns they don't have it up, and this shield just takes huge advantage of that.

Truely, didn't think about that...

Anyway, maybe it needs a weak spot other than PC and big creatures...
I mean, every shield has other limit... Like dim shield's 3 turns, permafrost "might/may" freeze, fire shield and turtle shield don't reduce the attack... This one... Maybe the high cost minds to nerf it, I guess

[Krahhl]

I like the basic idea, but it could be tweaked a bit. Maybe make the shield block N-B, where B is some number that would make it balanced. That way if B is 5, they aren't punished for having more creatures unless they have more than 5 creatures. This shield really isn't that different from most damage reducing shields. It gives bigger creatures a bigger advantage, so that a single emerald dragon (10 attack) would deal more damage than two giant frogs (5 attack each).

The difference is that the total damage reduction increases exponentially. With a diamond shield, you have 3 damage reduction per creature. So your total damage reduction is 3X, X=number of creatures (assuming all creatures have 3 or more attack). With shield of relativity, your total damage reduction is X^2, X=number of creatures (assuming all creatures have X or more attack).

If you do what I said in the first paragraph, it should be better..

Also, I think you could change the element to time.

[QuantumT]

The difference is that the total damage reduction increases exponentially. With a diamond shield, you have 3 damage reduction per creature. So your total damage reduction is 3X, X=number of creatures (assuming all creatures have 3 or more attack). With shield of relativity, your total damage reduction is X^2, X=number of creatures (assuming all creatures have X or more attack).

That's quadratic, not exponential.