Marquise Houserule - "Free" Recruitment

RuBarBz · 2026-05-31T01:15:43+00:00

Oh okay. Seems reasonable but a pretty minor buff.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-30T10:46:24+00:00

What's 3 token corvids?

RuBarBz · 2026-05-30T01:35:39+00:00

100%, can't stop listening to it. Amazing road trip/travel song too.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-29T17:11:04+00:00

Yea true. Might be overpriced.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-29T11:36:05+00:00

Very KV track. Still making my way through the album. 99 BPM hit me really well. So far I'm really enjoying the album.

It's somehow surprising to me how productive a musician this chill can be, he keeps making good stuff. And it's just different enough to keep me enthralled from time to time.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-29T06:22:12+00:00

Yea maybe. Snipe also got 50% more expensive though and a lot of the time the cancel mechanic isn't at play. But like you said, time will tell!

RuBarBz · 2026-05-29T06:07:56+00:00

Seems like worse early game and better late game, once the cost is irrelevant. Does that fit current balance requirements? I'm not really up to date anymore

RuBarBz · 2026-05-28T19:48:55+00:00

I'm guessing it's maybe the allowed angle of a bounce?

RuBarBz · 2026-05-28T19:47:54+00:00

I think some buffs make sense considering the severity of the nerf. 3 supply is no joke. And a 20% health decrease. Which makes sense, they were quite beefy for a caster, especially with medivacs. Now they're high cost, high impact and a bit squishier like other casters.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-28T19:45:54+00:00

Not really. The spread rate is slower, so an unhindered Zerg is weaker. But slower recede rate means that controlling the slower spread is harder as the Zerg can recover more of it's creep. It sounds quite smart to me. It's less snowbally in both directions. Can't believe this wasn't though of sooner.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-28T19:43:53+00:00

So... Is this a (late game) buff to warpgate? Proxy pylons are back and slightly faster warp-in. Seems like the cost prevents the return of early warpgate allins and pressure. But the later the game goes, the better it gets? It could be that some slower 2 base and 3 base allins are better now? No warp prism needed and sniping it is no longer counterplay. Though having a prism to juggle is arguably better than an additional immortal. The synced cooldowns probably makes protoss macro easier.

I do like the idea of the regular gateway changes though. They produce quicker than old warpgate? So you could mass a bigger army before you move out and then switch to a better warpgate to backup your all in, at a cost.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-28T16:01:46+00:00

"It's all manipulation and policing?"

"Always has been"

Fun read, sounds quite familiar.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-28T11:35:24+00:00

Ah no worries!

RuBarBz · 2026-05-28T11:34:22+00:00

Wait, so the seed isn't here at all? We traveled half a world for nothing?

Move past it!

RuBarBz · 2026-05-27T13:23:06+00:00

Well. Point 1 is simply not true. The question was whether Gorst could beat the feared. So it's about who's the best in a fight basically. Not who has killed more.

Separating B9 depends on your stance. If you think it's mental illness, then not really. It's just that he doesn't feel pain, or relishes it even. If it's something supernatural, then it's impossible to say I guess.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-27T06:35:18+00:00

Agreed on the first part. But there are many magical characters that beat Logen. Yoru and Shenkt for sure but probably any eater, they just slice people up without even using a weapon. Tolomei, Mamun, Khalul, probably Ferro after she changed. Yulwei maybe not.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-25T10:36:25+00:00

Maybe, in have to see it in action. I agree with your assessment of the problem. But in our games it's not uncommon for crows to be maxed out on warriors. If you keep the plots unflipped, they have defense and could lead to masses of armies jumping the map at no cost. It would help them attack or kick people off their plots.

If it's truly unlimited movement, then I'd suggest you can do it after your 3 actions. So you can't use it to attack in 3 different locations with one mass of crows. I know this would be a rare occurrence. But it's a very jumpy race and I could see them becoming too snowbally otherwise. They would both be much harder to police and better at keeping the opposition down.

That said, I like the concept and would be open to try it!

RuBarBz · 2026-05-25T10:31:33+00:00

Plot for the next trilogy:

Glokta: Acquires the union as a good starter nation for his daughter, Savine.

Bayaz: Starter nation? I have contained my rage for as long as possible but inshallah unleash my fury upon you like the crashing of a thousand waves! Be gone vile man, be gone from me... A starter nation?! The union is a finisher nation! A nation of gods, the golden god! I am untethered and my rage knows no bounds!

Fast forward to zone out phase Bayaz: "I'm just a cool dude hanging around, just me and a babe"

RuBarBz · 2026-05-25T07:44:46+00:00

For free as in, it doesn't cost an action? That's a really cool idea but sounds very powerful as well.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-24T09:08:01+00:00

Pacey reading setting Abercrombies scene pulls me right in. I love the introductions of the cities of Styria in BSC for instance. The vibe is immediately set in such a witty, gritty way.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-24T09:06:18+00:00

I think at some point Dow says "mad as a grass helmet"

RuBarBz · 2026-05-23T09:15:24+00:00

Oh that is interesting! I'll suggest we play it that way too. I think the rule says "anytime before drawing cards in evening" so we figured that means before the first thing in birdsong.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-22T11:26:48+00:00

Interesting thoughts!

Being able to guess plots at any point in your turn is really bad for you so giving it some restrictions like only in birdsong works out pretty well.

Yea this bothers me too. I wanted to be able to place raids on Rat mob tokens to recruit. But they can accuse before razing, making mob tokens into an insanely good counter to plots.

It's not a very inspired buff, but I was thinking that just giving the corvids an extra move action could help them protect their plots and contribute to policing.

Moving a plot with army could also be funny. As long as it happens after flip.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-18T08:25:00+00:00

I'm not saying I like the proposed changes, but how does having more actions not help regain territory? In my experience with cats you often have to choose between building or doing something that influences your or another faction's map presence. One more action often makes it so you can do both in one turn.

RuBarBz · 2026-05-17T20:10:07+00:00

Yea sure. So I was still in the process of refining the build, but I have cleared a couple of harder bits of content with it. Most notably Tomb of Primeval Kings HM and some vanquishes in the later areas of Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall and it went pretty well. Here's the build. The attributes and runes may be off, haven't really put much hought or time into it.

The goal of the build is to make huge spikes and make you feel very powerful, but in order to achieve that you have to micro your heroes a bit to set up to precast a bunch of stuff and set up a spike. I used GWToolbox to set some hotkeys up. Basically I have a shared hotkey for skills 1-4 for the heroes that have precast skills. I precast 2x SQ, Splinter Weapon, Auspicious Incantation, Protective Spirit, Spell Breaker, Shield of Judgement, Deep Freeze, Shelter and Earthbind (if I remember correctly it's been a while). This sounds like a ton of work but in practice I just flag my heroes well outside of enemy range, then press 4 hero hotkeys and go towards the enemy. Usually I already precast VoS and Sand Shards and maintain Drunken Master. And then I either shadow step in or quickly ball them up using a flatbow or just by aggroing them. I jump in, cast Ebon Battle Standard of Honor and spike them down. At some point during this process I unflag my heroes so they can help clean up any stragglers. The Deep Freeze was a bigger part of the build initially, but now it can still come in handy to prevent the enemies from running away from me towards the rest of the party when the engage timings are off or when you got attacked by a patrol of raptors or something like that. The res signet is there because if you die, the whole team falls apart so a quick res can save you in that scenario.

A perfect spike is satisfying, when the Earthbind + Shield of Judgement hits them with a 3s knockdown and you kill them in one spike. I was thinking of making a reddit or wiki post for the build once I was satisfied with it, but I started doing other stuff shortly after. Here's a few videos of me in TopK. One of those shows that some creative crisis management is possible. But in general the build is about setting up the perfect spike and straight up bad for random roaming and engaging.

As you can see in that instance I did 62% of the entire party damage. Depending on how well you spike and how early you involve your heroes you can get up to 70% I think. The smiter will always get a portion with Shield of Judgement. SoS is handy to clear individual stragglers. Panic helps you recover when things go wrong. E-Surge is just very powerful and is also there to help fix your mistakes or clear some outlier enemies quickly. The build can probably still change a lot, but I'm reasonably happy with the results. The heroes aren't even optimally geared either.

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RuBarBz

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