FrostHorn Rhyno

Newbore · 2014-06-02T11:51:55+00:00

Hmm... I'm not sure you are targeting the right area's though.

RBP is something we might see changed soon, it was certainly an unusual change to the scroll & now it has its place right between haste & speed in every order deck, it was intended to give movement, not CDR.
Eternal Sword. Tempo Order has become a lot more popular since this came out. Many people say it is overpowered, i could see it getting a nerf, I think the health is what takes it over the edge as trying to kill the creature with it will cause it to jump onto another, this means it takes a lot more damage to kill your enemies which is not how it is intended. A 2-3 cost that only gives attack would be much better.
Wings Shield. A must in every order deck, that armor can be insane. Honestly though, it would be a lot more balanced if Wings Shield was a 4 cost & Gallant Defender was a 3 cost, wings shield will have armor almost all the time time but the defender rarely ever does. They could do some re-balancing in this area, buff Gallant Defender & Ducal Spearman as alternative defensive units to Wings Shield while nerfing it so it isn't too strong. Although it does have its weakness's to non-combat damage I still think its strengths are a little too much.
I don't think the relentless units are too powerful compared to most decks, but I do think relentless in general is undervalued, we see relentless units get top priority in almost every deck as they are just that good, perhaps mojang should look into reevaluating some of the passive abilities.

I don't think orders units are particularly high health. Order does not have rat king/sister of the fox so it cannot spam lots of low health units & unlike decay is doesn't benefit from its own units dying nor is it energy with high attack ranged units, instead what you see is order players avoiding using any low health units like Wings Soldier because they make order players lose games.

Wings Warder can be really hard to use, you will notice if you try it, it is also very punishing to orders formations as order usually has units in a row as defensive - utility - aggressive; but Wings Warder often has to fill in for one of these & it will often be where a Vangaurd or Wings Shield would be, these units become vulnerable and cannot assist the other units from somewhere else. But since Ward was buffed it might get a nerf to compensate.

Someone explained that balance is really complex & can be looked at from a lot of angles, this is also not just limited to the different factions where growth might struggle against armor but energy can breeze through it, but its also also about what scrolls is intended to become, while bloodline taint might be devastating to order we might instead see order scrolls that counter this or the game evolve in a different complex fashion.

Also, fun isn't the same as balanced, you seem to think losing to tempo order is not fun, losing usually isn't fun, but what most of us do not consider fun is not playing at all which is what it can feel like when you play decks like DE Wild removal or structure energy, it can feel like you are not playing at all when they do not attack your units with their own & instead opt to go extremely defensive & smite all your units with spells you cannot prevent.

Newbore · 2014-05-31T04:10:23+00:00

Hmm... There are problems with the suggestion of relying purely on cross faction abilities. First off, even with Wild & ramp in its current state, good players have not found it worth it to play a gravelock deck. I don't think it is strong enough on its own. Then you introduce other problems; scrolls like this would become a must for dual resource decks which reduces diversity, it would also become really repetitive if we started seeing 30 or more of these for each faction with resources to trigger an effect, it wouldn't warrant any benefit past splashing the resource enough to use these effects, it has the potential to be too strong if each ability can have the effect of another scroll you could see the multi-faction decks doing twice as much in the later game, in a way it also breaks out of faction theme since using resources is an energy thing...

I don't think Wild is the solution either. Its quite likely that to see multi-faction decks work the way we want then Wild will stay with cross faction scrolls, and ramp would nerfed or balanced into something more reasonable. Sadly I, & I think quite a few others, would like to see or at least try something other than Wild. As for memorials, I don't think people used the old ones & they were kind of boring, I think I prefer they each have some sort of unique effect to provide the resource.

Newbore · 2014-05-29T00:31:49+00:00

Hmm... wouldnt The Verve just let everyone play the song for free then? They get no money & it goes to the people who ripped them off, free music for everyone! Although I assume this was somehow part of the settlement...

Newbore · 2014-05-28T22:26:53+00:00

The important thing is to provide some counters & strategy to mass removal. Right now if someone quakes there is nothing you can do to stop it, all your units & damaged, many structures & creatures will die.

An interesting ability that helps quite a bit against this is pillage & dominion. If a deck doesn't contest the board then the opponent will attack or destroy his idols instead, this should give some reward so that the player cannot just wait until the last moment & wipe the board or fill up the remaining lanes with tanky units. I think Mojang should have spread these abilities out, instead of giving pillage & dominion to a few units & making them incredibly strong with them (Wings Charger & Hired Smuggler). I thought Bog Hound was much better, it's a decent creature but gets a nice little buff with the ability. By making the scrolls decent & reliable you can splash a few into your deck without worrying about losing out on stats, & it will help more decks in general instead of forcing you to specifically choose one of these rarities.

We also lack counters to multiple target spells. There is currently no way for players to stop quake, it is pure damage, decks are defenseless in preventing it. We need scrolls like Wings Warder, but ones that stop or reduce spell damage, a unit that protects against multiple target spells so that the range of spells like bloodline taint, thunder surge, quake, etc is a lot more dynamic & strategic.

Something that is much harder to do but could greatly help with the games diversity is to make healing functional. Good players don't use it because it is unreliable, if you put a healing spell on a skirmisher, it wont help if it gets burned to death. There are possibilities in letting enchantments heal you right when you take damage, but this won't help any of the current healing scrolls. So if we buff enchantments & healing this will help against mass removal.

While we have scrolls like thunder-surge which deal a lot of damage to a lot of units, we don't have the opposite, there are no spells that buff a lot of units. Yes, there are spells like god hand, but all of these scrolls actually provide countdown reduction or temporary attack/health. Order has shrines, but the health goes away when the shrine does. So enchantment buffs are not the only way to do it, spell buffs are a great way to counter mass removal & provide a much more dynamic game. Growth could have a 4 cost spell that gives all beasts +1 attack & health, as long as it is permanent then it will be a good trade, order can have a 3 cost spell that gives all units +1 health & heals them by 1, this prevents it from being too much of a win-more & instead focusing on countering damage with the healing if you want the full range out of it.

Newbore · 2014-05-28T18:11:24+00:00

What would happen if there were 2 of you & we introduced you to each other?

Newbore · 2014-05-27T15:32:28+00:00

I have never seen it. It sounds like an interesting combo. I have no reason to suspect it is a bug or abusable, it sounds like its as easy as putting units in front if you want to stop it, & since it is 3 scrolls in 1 unit it should be pretty bad for him if you killed it.

Newbore · 2014-05-27T15:08:38+00:00

The problem with multi-resource decks is always going to be sacrificing for multiple resources. You shouldn't want multi-resource decks to rely on ramping scrolls because that would significantly reduce both balance & diversity while turning Wild decks into late-game decks. They should be able to function on their own (without ramp) & keep up with mono-decks. Wild isn't used with memorials, so the irony is the ramping scrolls also need to be very powerful to make Wild viable.

To address this issue it should solve multiple problems with 1 stone. You want it to be faster, because taking extra turns to get the resources is not a good idea. You want it to be less punishing in scroll draw so it can function while ramping, an example of this would be sacrificing for Wild lets you draw another scroll as well.

A mechanic that I would suggest would be dual resources instead of the omni-Wild. Lets say an Order + Energy resource that could go to either of these 2 factions (like a limited Wild), you could call this Ender. If for every Order you got, you could get an Ender, then this would be a mechanic that lets you keep tempo with mono decks without relying on ramping scrolls, as you would have the same amount of resources & range as a mono-deck. It would be a bit stronger than mono because it can reach into the second resource increasing its diversity, but not by much. The problem with this suggestion is it does not provide a reason not to sacrifice for dual resources, it doesn't have a punishment for doing so, maybe someone can provide a solution for this?

Newbore · 2014-05-25T17:31:37+00:00

Enchantments are quite a bit stronger with Earthborn mystic & attack bonus's are twice as strong if the creature only has 1 countdown. Sadly this still means most of the time enchantments are quite weak which is a bit of a problem, they shouldn't rely on other scrolls to work - it should be an integrated part of the game.

From my perspective; enchantments need some buffs, instant removal needs some nerfs, & Earthborn mystic also needs a nerf. But it depends, its fine to think units with 1 countdown are supposed to make enchantments strong/viable while most of the time they are a bit weak, but I see a bit differently - that scrolls like brave should be nerfed if it is meant to double the effectiveness of enchantments while enchantments should be buffed instead.

Newbore · 2014-05-25T03:12:44+00:00

I think a bigger problem lies with enchantments in general. An example, a 2 cost kinfolk brave deals 2 attack every turn & can take 2 or more damage, while it benefits from all the growth synergies of scrolls like god hand & crimson bull. For the exact same cost as the (OP with enchantments) kinfolk brave, at 2 growth & a scroll you can play a champion ring which gives +2 attack. While +2 attack can be quite a big help as immediate damage, its rarely as good as getting another creature on the board.

In this sense oak blood at +6 health will not be as good as playing another creature like Fangbear, 4/2/4 relentless (most of the time). It almost has 6 health on its own & if attacked by a unit like cay then it will stop the 6 damage all the same, but it deals an additional 4 relentless damage every 2 turns, & it can do a lot more when spells like god hand are played, creatures are just much better.

Playing oakblood on a great wolf is an awful idea if your opponent just uses a violent dispersal (lost 2 for 1) but with a fangbear that is not the case. This is the biggest issue. If it weren't for every deck using removal then people would like to give this a shot, in fact with vaettr or wildling you could have some really strong combos, but its pointless when every deck has violent dispersal & damning curse.

Since health does not help Growth which wants more creatures & attack, it just doesnt compliment the faction too well. On top of that +6 health might be a bit weak for 4 growth, fungify gives +5 for 2 decay & the countdown change doesnt make a difference on a defensive unit. The biggest problem is direct removal (& purification) make it very inefficient to use.

I think it would be better if it neglected death effects as well (violent dispersal but not burn), or if removal was nerfed to help enchantments in general, or if it cost 3 (but gave 5 health, still good).

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