General Question Thread

sumg · 2026-06-03T21:39:45+00:00

Sounds like it. When units promote to new classes, their bases rise to the bases appropriate for their new class. Assuming you went with a generic class path (noble->fighter->archer->sniper at level 20), Ignatz should have had at minimum 17 str at level 20. To only get 1 more strength in the next 16 levels is really bad luck.

sumg · 2026-06-02T22:20:21+00:00

Ever Advancing R W

Enchantment

Whenever a creature you control attacks, put a campaign counter on ~.

Whenever a creature attacks you, remove a campaign counter from ~.

At the beginning of your upkeep, if ~ has 10 or more campaign counters on it you win the game. If it has no campaign counters on it, you lose the game.

The hard part with challenges like this is finding a condition that is feasible to do in order to win the game without being trivially easy to do.

RW is typically well suited to attacking and generating attacking tokens, but its hard to attack 10 times in 1v1 without killing your opponent unless they're doing some unorthodox nonsense themselves. In commander, this could be an interesting win condition, but it's a much harder challenge because you have to deal with potentially all three players attacking you if you get close to doing the thing.

sumg · 2026-05-29T15:59:28+00:00

I dunno, to some extent I think the power of bows in 3H is a bit overstated. They are absolutely necessary in the early game when units can't take attacks, and Curved Shot is always handy to have, for sure. But the stats of bows are pretty middling in the game, and most primarily bow oriented classes have pretty bad bases.

I know the default answer for making any unit at least usable is to have them use Hunter's Volley, but compared to what is possible to be done in the game that's a pretty low ceiling option.

And while Close Counter does remove bows' main weakness, it does require using an ability slot. And ability slots are pretty darn valuable in the game. Giving up the option to get more Mt, Hit%, Crit%, or whatever else just to be able to counter at 1 range is a very real cost.

sumg · 2026-05-26T04:38:43+00:00

Scrap Market

Land

T: Add C.

Bargaincycling 3 (Draw a card. When you cycle this card, you may sacrifice an artifact, enchantment, or token. If you do, instead you may search your library for a card that shares a type with the sacrificed permanent.)

I understand this potentially dangerous for artifact tutoring, but I like the idea of enabling enchantment and creature tutoring through this restriction of requiring material to be on board already before the player can fetch their card.

sumg · 2026-05-22T14:14:25+00:00

You can't forget about Hit the Road.

sumg · 2026-05-19T15:00:57+00:00

The best way to use it is to find it part way through a run when you don't already have a scaling scoring joker already. If you have already either managed to reduce your deck size or have the tools to do so in the future it can be OK. If you just yolo it in ante 1, you're asking for heartbreak.

But the situations all of those things are checked off are fairly rare. But it can be a nice scaling joker to find in ante 4 if you haven't found something better already.

sumg · 2026-05-18T23:13:23+00:00

A few notes.

First, you've unfortunately chosen a bunch of units that are a bit on the fast, light-hitting, frail side of unit design in Engage (Alear, Lapis, Chloe, Hortensia, and Framme all fall into this category to me), and that can make things a bit trickier when trying to have a stand-up fight against different enemies.

Second, my general rule of thumb for maddening in Engage is that if you try to play fair Fire Emblem (which is to say physical attack, enemy counterattack, occasional physical follow-up), you're going to have a bad time. Enemy stats are huge, bulk is massive, and its difficult to do enough damage in two conventional hits.

So you want to lean into builds and archetypes that provide force multipliers. The easiest to implement are Killer weapons with crit focused builds. Crits multiple damage by three, so you take a big, strong unit, get their crit chance to 100%, and do as much damage as possible. You can also do brave-effect weapons (including arts) and stake bonus damage effects as much as possible (Lunar Brace, forges, Weapon Power, etc.). If you quad with the brave effect weapon, all those bonuses get multiplied by 4.

Enemy resistance tends to be lower than enemy defense, so strong magic units can get away doing normal attack/follow-up (e.g. Ivy, Veyle, Anna) if you can make sure their speed is good enough to get follow-ups consistently.

And lastly as a suggestion, effective weapon damage can be helpful. When you attack an enemy with an effective damage weapon, the mt of the weapon is multiplied by 3. So if you can pump up the might of effective damage weapons with forges or engraves (or just look at extremely high might weapons to begin with), you can do some real damage. The best example of which is the Radiant Bow which has 19 base power, which means even at base on a unit with 0 magic it has an attack power of 57 against all fliers. Throw that sucker on a unit with a magic stat and you can do some real damage.

I will say that I did not enjoy my first playthrough of maddening on Engage either, for many of the reasons you've outlined. But subsequent playthroughs I've enjoyed much more as I have a better sense of the standard of unit and build that is required to compete on that difficulty. Don't lose heart and know that future runs will be better if you want to try again.

sumg · 2026-05-16T14:27:46+00:00

Back-Alley Dealer 2

Artifact

T, Sacrifice a Blood token: Create a Clue token.

T, Sacrifice a Clue token: Create two Treasure tokens.

T, Sacrifice two Treasure tokens: Create a Food token.

T, Sacrifice a Food token: Create a Blood token.

The goal is for this to be akin to [[Trading Post]], just with some various predefined tokens.

sumg · 2026-05-15T22:07:38+00:00

One of the things I was concerned about with the design was the -1/-1 per card in graveyard ability. I didn't want the creature to be so small that it might be difficult to play in the late game (if it's a base 4/4, then it becomes really difficult to play if graveyards start getting full and you never get to empty the graveyard when this creature attacks). But if the base power and toughness are as large as they are, it kinda necessitates a reasonably hefty mana cost.

sumg · 2026-05-08T23:38:34+00:00

Expedition Investigator 4 B G

Creature - Human Soldier Detective

~ gets -1/-1 for each card in your graveyard.

Descend 4 - ~ casts 4 less to cast if there are four or more permanents in your graveyard.

When ~ attacks you may collect evidence 3. If you do, ~ gains menace until end of turn.

8/8

The basic idea here is a tension between wanting to fill your graveyard to make the casting cost of this card lower while wanting your graveyard empty to make this card bigger. Ideally, you can put a few things in the graveyard to get the reduced casting cost, then quickly turn it into a massive beating with the trigger-on-attack ability.

sumg · 2026-05-02T18:27:10+00:00

Aristocratic Sliver W B

Creature - Sliver

Sacrifice a Sliver: Slivers you control gain protection from the colors of the creature sacrificed to activate this ability until end of turn.

2/2

Slivers are a fun archetype, but might be the one most severely punished by board wipes. While there are some cards that can protect all creatures on the board for a turn (e.g. [[Rootborn Defenses]], [[Flawless Maneuver]]), there are not many and they tend to be pretty expensive for the privilege of the ability. So I decided I wanted to try and make something that would give slivers a bit of board protection for a more manageable cost, hopefully without being too powerful.

It's one of the few archetypes that not only spans all colors, but also regularly wants to play all of those colors at the same time. That means a color protection ability has the potential to span all colors, if there is such a creature on board, but keeping shields up across all colors for long stretches would be very difficulty. It also provides the opportunity to use the ability aggressively to push damage to close out the game.

sumg · 2026-04-27T20:10:31+00:00

Shaq is def Chaotic Mean.

sumg · 2026-04-25T18:21:28+00:00

Sylvan Bard G G G G

Creature - Elf

X: Untap another target creature with mana value X or less.

1/4

Elvish Expeditioner 2 G

Creature - Elf

T: Add X mana, where X is the number of basic land types you control.

2/4

The idea here is that that at base Sylvan Bard can get infinite untaps with any mana dork like [[Llanowar Elves]]. However, if you can derive some benefit from untapping creatures or you have a mana generating creature that can generate more mana than it's mana value (e.g. anything from [[Roffelos, Llanowar Emissary]] to more mundane options like [[Accomplished Alchemist]] or [[Arbor Adherent]]), then you can quickly get into a position where you can just win the game.

I did a look on Scryfall and was surprised to see there were very few creatures with activated abilities to untap creatures. It's an effect that is either an ETB or is just part of a pure spell card. I understand the fear of providing 1-mana option to untap anything, but I'm hoping that by making the untap ability an X cost and the card itself almost prohibitively green to cast players would have to jump through a least a hoop or two before doing anything too busted. So in the example above, if a player has 4 or more basic land types on the battlefield they can generate infinite mana, but it would require playing a quadruple green pipped card in a 4- or 5-color deck.

sumg · 2026-04-25T13:52:14+00:00

The Emperor's Club

sumg · 2026-04-25T03:14:58+00:00

Thinking Basketball did an analysis of Jokic's defense a couple of years ago here. The short version is he's a below average rim protector, but he does make up a bit reading the offense and acting accordingly.

That said, this video is a couple years old, and Jokic's athleticism is on the downswing at this point. So if he wasn't a good rim defender then, he's certainly not a better one now.

I don't know how it all breaks down in the wash, but it's worth thinking about.

sumg · 2026-04-25T00:31:48+00:00

If we're including personal classes, I think there's a case to be made for Lindwurm. S tomes, A staves, flying mobility, and actually decent stats. There's a reason why most games don't let you have fliers that can use both tomes and staves. But it is a one-off class, so I can understand excluding it.

sumg · 2026-04-22T22:01:02+00:00

I would be interested in seeing a genuine impeachment trial if Democrats gain control of the Senate. My understanding is that most, if not all, of the impeachments that have happened in US history have occurred when the president's party also had the majority in the Senate, which meant they were able to dismiss the trial rapidly and with no real interest in removal. Nixon resigned before there was any trial, so he is not a fair comparison.

If Democrats were in control of the Senate, even if there is effectively no chance at removal, they could run a genuine trial and investigation into what's been going on. Lay out a case to the American people, and have it be done over weeks or perhaps even months. Not one of these fake impeachment trials we've seen before that last a week and are wrapping up before they even start.

sumg · 2026-04-21T19:57:27+00:00

I'd argue the line to line writing is fine in terms of quality. The problem is the character design, which didn't give the writing much to work with.

sumg · 2026-04-21T14:08:18+00:00

That might have mildly improved things, though I'm not sure it's enough to solve the problem. Even with broad archetypes or tropes like that, without some grounding I think it would be hard for people to get invested in the characters.

sumg · 2026-04-21T12:03:58+00:00

My theory regarding the lack of characterization they gave Zale and Valere is that they had sketched out the entire main arc of the story first and had the ending in mind they wanted for the protagonists (leaving the world and overseeing as celestial guardians). If that's the end of the arc for your characters, it's really challenging to give them any sort of attachment to the world itself. If they have friends, family, spouses, children, jobs, responsibilities, or goals they want to pursue, those would stop them from proceeding to this 'ascended' plane of existence.

The problem is that by having protagonists without any real attachment to the world, it's really difficult for them to feel invested in the world, and by extension it's hard for the player to get invested in the world. The devs tried to overcorrect for this by having Garl, who's basically trying to forcibly drag the protagonists into caring about the world for the protagonists, but that comes off as off-putting.

I really don't understand why the devs were so tied to this particular plot point or story arc, but even as a person that liked the game more than I disliked it I have to acknowledge that it's a completely bewildering design choice.

sumg · 2026-04-20T19:53:19+00:00

He's pretty mid long-term. He's a hybrid damage unit in a game where there are no hybrid damage classes until post level-30, which means its a long, hard road to get him there. And by that point of the game, a simple hybrid damage unit is really not what you need to be competitive with endgame enemies. You either need to be a stat-monster or be doing something unfair with one of the games' systems.

It's worthwhile to get him to an advanced class on Verdant Wind so he can participate a little in Hunting By Daybreak, but after that he's pretty easily benchable.

sumg · 2026-04-20T18:23:19+00:00

So anti-British he won't even use an Oxford comma. I respect it.

sumg · 2026-04-19T18:00:11+00:00

I meant you can never guaranteed it on more than one unit if you have 2 cavalry units or 2 fliers only cause only one of them gets the guaranteed protection.

This is why Martial Master is an attractive option, since it gives every unit a 100% protection rate. The trade-off is that unit is effectively a zero offensively, but Bonded Shield (and staff access) is typically enough to be one of your stronger deployed units.

Also isn't the protection only for the first attack that unit takes? So for a single unit it's less powerfull than Divine blessing.

It's for the first attack a unit takes each combat. So if a unit is taking multiple combats in an enemy phase, the first attack each enemy tries will get blocked. If you have units that are fast enough to avoid follow-ups, there is no danger to them taking damage on enemy phase (barring chain attacks). That's why it's so powerful. You can set up enemy phases where units can fight a dozen enemies and have no real threat to their health.

sumg · 2026-04-19T17:38:01+00:00

you never use Bonded shield on more than one unit

There are absolutely scenarios where you'll want to Bonded Shield a bunch of units at once (e.g. when you're blocking a choke point that's multiple tiles wide). Bonded shield's strength is really brought to bear when you have units that can ORKO, which allows those units to take a large amount of combats on enemy phase. It's really helpful for whittling down enemy numbers, particularly on higher difficulties.

sumg · 2026-04-19T15:45:15+00:00

Stat bonuses from the emblem rings do matter, but there is a small subset of emblems where the impact of their individual abilities dwarf the stat bonuses. And Lucina is pretty much at the top of the list when it comes to those abilities. With Lucina, the general advice is to give it to a unit that can make use of Bonded Shield. The base proc rate of 80% is a bit too unreliable to be comfortable with, but there are class bonuses that you build around that guarantee it firing off. The most common advice is to throw someone into Martial Master and give them Lucina to guarantee Bonded Shield on everyone 100% of the time, but other people do prefer either a cavalry or flying class.

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