Black Locust | Shadow Locust

[OTL]

Why not it cloaks itself from both parties when it comes into play? No more fractal abuse

[Rutarete]

Why not it cloaks itself from both parties when it comes into play? No more fractal abuse

Because then you'll be ant where is this extra damage coming from? And get confused or something.

So far my favorite proposed solution is

how about not untargetable but hard to target?

If a cost raise is stil needed then I'll put the upped at 4.

[russianspy1234]

there's also the fact that, while we don't really have much of a deckout archetype yet, this card makes such a deck impossible, and it doesn't even have to be in play to do so.

[ZephyrPhantom]

even at a cost of 4, replication cards are not hindered very much, and is utilized in other existing fractal decks.  if there is no mechanism or high cost set out to discourage or flat out prevent copying mechanics, i cannot support an N attack creature.

I expect Fractal to be the best copy card ETG will get, so going by that:

Black Locust is 4 for N | 1.
Hematite Golem is 4 for 4 | 6
Let's assume you have 1 fractal, 1 [creature] on the field, infinite quanta, and your hand is empty.
If you Fractal Hematatite Golem, you will end up with 9 4 | 6's of 36 damage for 10 36
If you fractal Black Locust, you will end up with 9 9 | 1's of 81 damage for 10 36 . Locusts start cloaked.

Black Locust is 3 for N+1 | 1.
Steel Golem is 4 for 6 | 9
If you Fractal Steel Golem, you will end up with 9 6 | 9's of 54 damage for 9 36
If you fractal Black Locust, you will end up with 9 10 | 1's of 90 damage for 9 27 . Locusts start cloaked.

Moomoose is correct in that there is too much Fractal potential to this card. Ruta did propose an Immaterial nerf to me but that comes across as thematically upsetting (Locusts already cloak and are materialized in this world), IMHO. Same goes for 'hard to target' because one-sided Immaterial tends to be tricky to implement properly as I've seen with past ideas and tends to complicate the card a bit.

I would suggest a simple nerf of the locust attack to X/2 , rounded down and removing the +1 ATK on the upped version. This gives you:

If you fractal Black Locust (unupped), you will end up with 9 4 | 1's of 36 damage for 10 36 . Locusts start cloaked.
If you fractal Black Locust (upped), you will end up with 9 4 | 1's of 36 damage for 9 27 . Locusts start cloaked.

,which is far more comparable to Hematite Golem than it is now.

[Sackett]

I think this card suffers from having too many interesting ideas on the same card.

1: It has the Swarm effect on attack.  That seems more fitting for a straight "Locust" card w/o all the additional effects.  Also, Fractal needs to be considered when pricing the card.

2: It has a mini-cloaking field.  To me this is a very interesting mechanic, but I'd suggest a tweak.  Have it cloak adjacent squares, but not itself.  Thus the cloaking field can be overcome by CC.

3: The deck and hand effects, where having the card in your deck or hand protects against certain actions.  I think this theme needs some more development but could be interesting.

I think these effects would be better developed on three separate cards instead of all being combined on one card.

[Rutarete]

I think this card suffers from having too many interesting ideas on the same card.

1: It has the Swarm effect on attack.  That seems more fitting for a straight "Locust" card w/o all the additional effects.  Also, Fractal needs to be considered when pricing the card.

2: It has a mini-cloaking field.  To me this is a very interesting mechanic, but I'd suggest a tweak.  Have it cloak adjacent squares, but not itself.  Thus the cloaking field can be overcome by CC.

3: The deck and hand effects, where having the card in your deck or hand protects against certain actions.  I think this theme needs some more development but could be interesting.

I think these effects would be better developed on three separate cards instead of all being combined on one card.

1. I kind of agree with you there. But, then I feel it might be too plain, having just swarm. But then again, maybe not.

2 &3. The mini cloaking field is not a separate idea. Originally, it was "while in the deck, your deck is cloaked" (something along that wording). But that alone was too situational, so it was expanded to include hand and field. According to the current text, the whole field should be cloaked, which I feel would be more thematic. S I would like to keep the area cloaking all in one card. I don't mind as much the swarm part being made into another idea, though the the,e of this card would probably change.

[OdinVanguard]

The way it stands now, I don't like this card...

First off: As moomoose repeatedly emphasized, the damage swarm mechanic must be employed with care. Its just too powerful when used with mitosis and fractal

Second off: This card's cloak violates both of cloak's innate balancing mechanisms. It has no duration limit. It is invisible itself, meaning there is no way to stop it without resorting to mass CC. This strongly outweighs its limited area of effect. Particularly when used with mitosis or fractal.

That said, it has very good potential.

Here's my 2 on how to balance it:
1) Change it so that it cannot be cloaked itself (e.g. add in "unaffected by cloak")
2) Make it stackable and allow player to choose which slot it plays to.

E.g.: "Stackable: Increases attack
Plays to a target ally field slot.
Cloak field: Cloaks the area its in. Cannot itself be cloaked."

These modifications are designed to force strategic thinking over brute force spamming. Particularly when used with mitosis or fractal combos.

The stacking mechanism can scale non-linearly to provide the swarm like effect of increasing damage but without the added effect of making CC harder at the same time (thereby helping to keep it balanced).
For instance, if you set its attack to scale as N^2 (where N is stack size) you will recover your swarm mechanics damage scaling wrt. number played with the caveat that all must be played to the same stack (making it vulnerable to single target CC).

Being able to choose where to play this card on the field forces you to choose between extending cloak area and increasing total damage done. This will help foster strategy over brute force usage.

A final note: To prevent quintescence abuse, immaterial should prevent further stacking. Of course, a player could still stack first then quint, but it would be a 1 shot deal.

[ZephyrPhantom]

The way it stands now, I don't like this card...

First off: As moomoose repeatedly emphasized, the damage swarm mechanic must be employed with care. Its just too powerful when used with mitosis and fractal

Second off: This card's cloak violates both of cloak's innate balancing mechanisms. It has no duration limit. It is invisible itself, meaning there is no way to stop it without resorting to mass CC. This strongly outweighs its limited area of effect. Particularly when used with mitosis or fractal.

That said, it has very good potential.

Here's my 2 on how to balance it:
1) Change it so that it cannot be cloaked itself (e.g. add in "unaffected by cloak")
2) Make it stackable and allow player to choose which slot it plays to.

E.g.: "Stackable: Increases attack
Plays to a target ally field slot.
Cloak field: Cloaks the area its in. Cannot itself be cloaked."

These modifications are designed to force strategic thinking over brute force spamming. Particularly when used with mitosis or fractal combos.

The stacking mechanism can scale non-linearly to provide the swarm like effect of increasing damage but without the added effect of making CC harder at the same time (thereby helping to keep it balanced).
For instance, if you set its attack to scale as N^2 (where N is stack size) you will recover your swarm mechanics damage scaling wrt. number played with the caveat that all must be played to the same stack (making it vulnerable to single target CC).

Being able to choose where to play this card on the field forces you to choose between extending cloak area and increasing total damage done. This will help foster strategy over brute force usage.

A final note: To prevent quintescence abuse, immaterial should prevent further stacking. Of course, a player could still stack first then quint, but it would be a 1 shot deal.

Wouldn't stacking creatures would mean only the top copy gets destroyed each time Locust is killed?

I like the idea of not letting the locust itself would be cloaked.

Also:

# Locusts	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
X/2 (Round up)	1	1	2	2	3	3	4	4	5	5	6	6
Total Damage with X/2 Locusts	1	2	6	8	15	18	28	32	45	50	66	72
X^2 Locusts, stacking (Total damage only, since there is only 1 Locust stack)	1	4	9	16	25	36	49	64	81	100	121	196

[Rutarete]

If the attack is N/2, does the current cost fit?

[Anarook]

"Forming clouds
Their shadow shrouds
Louder the tattered wings they sound
Descending down

Down they come
The swarm of locusts
Skies above Converge to choke us
Feast of souls Consume the harvest
Young and old
Suffer unto the locust"

Couldn't help myself...
In other news the cloaking of hand and deck is neat and all, but not overtly useful.
The single cloaking of itself is while useful to self of course, not what I expected.

I suggest 2 things that would probably make this both balanced and slightly more useful, but it changes the nature of the card....

1) change its stats to 1|N+1 like a typical swarm.
2) make its on field cloak covers all adjacent slots as well.

I think its a great idea to introduce a few new cloak abilities, but I agree with moose when I say a card with a built in anti CC doesn't need an attack swarm, no matter how weak it is.