Kaitlina Starshine
Adventurer Hero
Wields a Katana
1/4 (1-2)
Readiness
2/5 (3-4)
+1 armor while patrolling
2/7 (5)
Resist 2
Level Up
(1)
Put a +1/+1 rune on Kaitlina or an Adventurer.
Counterattack
(3)
Deal 2 damage to any number of exhausted units or heroes.
Second Wind
(2)
Remove all damage and -1/-1 runes from Kaitlina.
Living Weapon
(6)
Exhaust a non-tech-3 Patroller (targets). Any number of exhausted or disabled units die.
Cleric (Adventurer)
Tech 1
(2)
1/5
Healing 2
Wizard (Adventurer)
Tech 1
(2)
0/3
Resist 1
Exhaust - Deal 2 damage to a unit
Exhaust - A unit or hero gains flying until your next upkeep
Enchanter (Adventurer)
Tech 2
(2)
0/5
Exhaust - A unit or hero gains Swift Strike.
Exhaust - Disable a unit (it doesn’t ready on the opponent’s next upkeep)
Rogue (Adventurer)
Tech 2
(3)
2/4
Boost (2) = Haste
Stealth
Swift Strike
Deals damage in the form of -1/-1 runes when attacking
Fighter (Adventurer)
Tech 2
(3)
4/4
Arrives OR Upkeep = +2 Armor until your next upkeep
Adventurer’s Guildhouse
Tech 2
(3)
6 hp
Resist 3
Healing 1
Upkeep = Put a +1/+1 rune on up to two adventurers
Exhaust = Target unit or hero becomes an adventurer
Summoner (Adventurer)
Tech 3
(4)
0/6
Untargetable
Haste
(6) and Exhaust = Put a unit from your Codex into play, it gains Haste. At the end of your turn, put it back into your Codex.
dude this spec is clearly broken.
i could rant a lot but here some of the worst stuff: 1) Counterattack
(3)
Deal 2 damage to any number of exhausted units or heroes.
super broken. u can’t kill everything after an opponent all out attack. just broken.
Second Wind
(2)
Remove all damage and -1/-1 runes from Kaitlina.
broken. She already has 7 hp. Allowing an infinite number of “crumbling runes” is OP.
Living Weapon
(6)
Exhaust a non-tech-3 Patroller (targets). Any number of exhausted or disabled units die.
Okay, do u mean only opponen’s stuff or also yours?
Cuz if is the former, is super broken.
I respect your opinion, but I think you might be judging the cards to be better than they really are.
Counterattack
Compare to Scorch
Has to be teched in vs in the starter
Scorch is more versatile
Scorch can remove blockers
Counterattack upside limited by generally few tapped creatures existing on the opponent’s side most of the time
Not saying it’s bad, I just think it’s not “broken”
Second Wind
Compare to Two Lives
Two lives saves a thing after it dies
Two lives is much more reliable
Two lives is on a stronger hero
Second Wind requires an untap with damage present and for the spell to be in hand
Living Weapon
Compare to Anarchy/Judgement Day/Rewind
Pre-existing spells hit all opponent’s targets, not just tapped targets.
Can only tap one target
Hero has to untap at max level before casting.
well, first u made her a 5 lv hero, so super fast lv up.
then she is 2/7. best defensive hero is 1/5. best overall is 4/6 with no first trait.
second, heroes have a limit of 1 +1 rune, yours have not.
No spell in game allows for 2 dmgs on multiple targets, discord gives a temp -1, and is already strong in tokens/ 1 dropper killing.
If u give her swift strike and allow infinte runes, well, imho that is just bonkers.
Kate needs more money to be pumped into her before she does pretty much anything than most of the other heros do, so you really need to skip getting her heals. That’s important.
Other cards that give +1/+1 runes will still limit what they can do for Kate. The cards that are present in faction which can put runes on her are, imho, not that great.
Hero kill is a thing, and Kate is pretty weak against it.
Discord has a lot of advantages over Counterattack, similar to above analysis.
I am not saying it’s not a good board. I just think it would fall somewhere in the middle 1/3. Average compared to the field.
Yeah, I think the problem here is the Level Up spell (and the 7hp), not the other stuff.
Deal 2 damage to each exhausted unit is 50% of the time “do nothing” and 40% of the time “finish off one thing that just attacked.” Compare to Shurakin Hail?
And an ultimate of “pay 6 to kill a single unit, plus anything else that attacked and survived” is on the strong side, but not much better than Ready or Not?
During design, I had the opinion that Level Up was much weaker than Boot Camp. I still think that.
There is internal synergy there, but that synergy gets hurt a lot by cards people use all the time anyway like Doom Grasp or Origin Story being better than 100 level ups.
I think it’s important that Level Up doesn’t draw.
Having said that, I will make her swift strike only on the defense since the idea is that she isn’t very good offensively.
The power level for a new spec has to be considered against each of the 6 mono-color options. If any of those don’t have a reasonable answer to what you’re doing (eg mono-blue, mono-red, and mono-green to a lesser extent, in this case) then it needs to be toned down.
The power level of blue is already in question compared to a set in the same expansion. I do like comparing against the field and I did make an effort to compare adventurers vs what’s already there. That being said, because I consider mono-blue the worst I will compare vs that.
Mono blue has a lot of flyers that adventurer spec is weak against. Free Speech can also make Kate a lot weaker and more easy to kill. Drill Instructor + Garrison should be a stronger game plan than anything Adventurer spec has.
I don’t think that adventurer + the other 2 neutrals would have all the game vs mono-blue.
I took Fuzz Cuddles (that nobody uses) and made it even worse offensively (and the game is all about offense). I think Cleric should be playtested before being declared too strong.
I think it’s also noteworthy that the other T1 isn’t good. Not like Fuzz Cuddles backing up Inverse Power Ninja when IPN has the potential to be very strong. It’s bad + worse at tech 1.
Maybe it could stand to drop to 1/4, but I think it’s already not that great.
I have trouble thinking of a lot of situations where I had 3 boards available where I would choose either Clerics or Wizards at tech 1. I would for sure use it if I had one board, but that isn’t saying much.
I think Cleric is, for example, much worse than Sparring Partner and Gunpoint Taxman, given that it is really hard for Cleric to kill anything other than wisps whereas those other two can seriously wreck face.
I was thinking cleric is like an Andra’s rock that could heal and you could put two in patrol.
As early t3 t4 units they will do great stalling while other units in the back can attack and heal.
I find it fun but maybe too good.
Maybe needs to be legendary ?
My main objection is that this lets you get far too much HP on the board too early.
Kaitlina, in addition to having a hard to spell name, has 4 HP at Lv. 1 and 7 HP at Lv. 5. Compare this to Rook, who also has 4 HP at Lv. 1 and 6 HP at Lv. 8. Yes, he has the Two Lives ability as well, but it’s a complete flavor failure if a (presumably human, since you didn’t specify) hero has more HP per life than the guy who’s made of stone and for whom “having the most health” is a major character trait in Yomi, Codex, and Fantasy Strike. Really, considering that she maxes at Lv. 5, a better comparison would be:
Lv. 5 Rook: 3 ATK / 5 HP, unstoppable by Patrol Zones with a single patroller.
Lv. 5 Kaitlina: 2 ATK / 7 HP, readiness, +1 armor when patrolling (so it’s actually worse than I’d realized at first!), swift strike when patrolling (this is completely ridiculous).
Similarly, Clerics have 5 HP for 2 gold at Tech I. There’s only one Tech I unit with more than 4 HP in vanila Codex, and that’s a Legendary unit with 0 ATK and 6 HP. Sure, your Clerics don’t have as much HP as Ardra’s Boulder. However, as @MVashM pointed out, you can play two of them and if they both live they can heal your units. This includes each other, making their real HP higher than 5, and your combat units, making the real offensive value of Clerics higher than their 1 ATK would suggest. Moreover, that 1 ATK is important because it means that you don’t need external support for them to hit back. Ardra’s Boulder needs to patrol in Elite or have either a Tower or Mythmaking behind it to deal any damage to units that attack it, whereas Cleric can kill 1 HP token units from anywhere in the Patrol Zone. Finally, having a Cleric (traditionally quite squishy in RPGs) with more HP than any non-legendary Tech I unit is another flavor failure.
All of the above is compounded by Level Up, which makes both your Hero and Unit that refuse to die even harder to kill and letting them hit harder. Yes, it’s weaker than Boot Camp because it doesn’t draw a card and is more limited in what it can target. However, it can target every unit and hero in your spec (for comparison, note how Finesse is themed around Virtuoso units and doesn’t have every single unit be a Virtuoso). Not only that, but your Adventurer Hero get swift strike while patrolling at max level, so any ATK boost to her is dangerously game breaking. There’s not even a limit on how many “Level Ups” a single unit or hero can get, so I’d expect a potentially viable plan with this spec would be to immediately tech both copies of Cleric at the start, followed by both copies of Level Up. If your opponent doesn’t have hard removal, bouncing spells or stealth/invisible/unstoppable units, it will be incredibly hard to break through that defense… and that’s just covering turns 3-4. There’s more I could bring up (like how you’re also letting these over-statted units and hero gain flying for a turn with no drawback if they can fit a Wizard in), but I think that’s enough examples for now.
shuriken hail does just 1 dmg and only to patrollers. that one does 2 dmgs to everything is exausted, which imo is too much. Ready or not would be similar if readied more than 1 unit.
Again, the problem is, imagine thsi spec paired with a fast one like anarchy/bloood.
Ur opponent goes all out and for a super cheap price, until t4-5 u can wipe off his board, forcing a really passive game style that goes great with red aggression. I think is OP cuz too many numbers are off the scale.
I think that Rook is a good point of comparison. I used that as a model and tried to make Kate both more defensive and worse.
Rook is a way better P1T1 play than Kate is. The extra 1 offense makes him at least twice as good. Rook is also much better as P2T1’s hero when it comes to holding off attacks from P1.
Rook has a much easier time taking advantage of his healing than Kate does. He levels slower, but he will bring a lot more pain per heal.
Rook is useful with only 2 gold poured in, Kate really needs 4 in order to be OK. Early game that’s a big deal. This equates to a free healing band for Rook.
Rook’s abilities are always maximally useful, Kate’s abilities are only good when she is patrolling.
Rook’s unstoppable and stuff makes him useful outside of his stats, Kate is only useful in terms of stats.
Rook will always survive death at max level, not so with Kate.
All those advantages and Kate gets a free “1 hp” as compensation
I think Rook is better at basically every step.
As for Clerics, it’s a decent card, I agree. I don’t think you can sit there and say that it’s better than Boulder and Fuzz so it’s too good, though. Both those cards are terrible and barely ever played.
Their healing nature limits anything they can do offensively. If they swing in and do 1 to a target, they will probably take 2 or 3 back. Maybe they can heal that, but the opponent gets a turn where they are low HP before then. If you want them to stay alive, it’s better not to attack with them at all. That effectively reduces their ATK.
As for RPGs, many of them make Clerics pretty hard to kill. D&D historically gives them HP near that of the “tank” classes and allows them to wear the strongest possible armor (plate mail, see D&D 3.5). They also tend to get spells that can up their defense even more. Maybe some games don’t follow that model, but many do. Particularly the ones including and modeled after D&D which itself is the largest game family.
I am not trying to say flavor should win over mechanics or anything. I don’t believe that at all. I just think the mechanics are more fair than people are speculating they are.
Generally, there is a tradeoff where -1 ATK equals +1 HP. Taking something like Gunpoint Taxman as a base, you can give -2 ATK and +2 HP and end up basically at 1/5 and it’s “fair”. The better card tends to be the one that doesn’t trade away it’s ATK, though. Codex is an offensive game and when you want to clear the opponent’s side (you do) it’s much better to have 3 ATK than 1.
I did consider Finesse’s theme while designing Adventurers. The finesse board has River, Fencer, Grounded Guide, Maestro, and Blademaster that benefit cards other than themselves without having to tap. That’s compared with Level Up and Adventurer’s Guildhouse from the Adventurer board.
I think that’s a fair comparison given that Adventurers have a low ATK + abilities theme. Many of the adventurers are 0/X and can’t productively attack. That’s a lot worse than something like Cloud Sprite which has high ATK and an ability that is really good both offensively and defensively.
The ability to grant flying is on a 0/3 which dies to pretty much everything at it’s tech level, for instance. I believe Wizard is too weak to actually be teched in. It does potentially allow adventurers to have some more flexibility (flavor win) and I don’t think I could get away with not including Wizards in some form.
Level up could potentially get stacked pretty high (flavor wise, Adventurers like to gain a lot of levels) but it’s just a bad card. The potential is pretty high, but I don’t think it would live up to that potential in actual gameplay. You 2, 3, or 4 for 1 the wrong way when you stack up these runes. Casting Level up requires going way down on hand size and that’s a good way to lose games. It doesn’t even bring you resilient threats when you cast it either.
Boot Camp is largely good because it can be used offensively and because it can be used on resilient defenders (like Mox). It’s also important that it only has a gold cost and not a card cost.
Level Up can’t be used on Mox without having a Tech 2 building that untaps. Instead, Level Up gets to be used on things that are each very weak to any kind of targeted kill (Doom Grasp or Undo love it when you waste cards to buff creatures, for instance, as do things like Prynn’s max band ability).
I think in theorycrafting time, Adventurers sound pretty good. I just don’t think that translates to over the board play as much as people think it does.
Shuriken Hail is meant to be use offensively and Counterattack defensively. They are kinda different cards in that respect, but it’s important to note that it’s hard to use Counterattack to increase one’s lead. In the lead, where you want to be anyway, it’s a pretty bad card.
Also, Shuriken hail will much more commonly do something and not be completely worthless. That’s a major point in Shuriken Hail’s favor, something also considered in design.
Talking about how it combos with Anarchy/Blood/etc, Adventurers combo less well with other specs than pretty much any other board. Everything is designed to be used only with it’s own faction. It doesn’t really play well with others outside of raw stats and the raw stats of Adventurers aren’t that great.
I agree that it’s slightly overtuned. It probably doesn’t need much to bring it back into line though:
Kate
Min band: 1/3
Med band: 2/4
Max band: 2/5
Level Up: Add the usual “if that unit/hero doesn’t have a +1/+1 rune”. If you’re right that leveling up a unit multiple times is a trap, then this shouldn’t have any effect on its power level.
Cleric: 1/4 - I agree that -1 ATK is worth +1 HP, so this brings it into line with Fuzz Cuddles.
In general, you seem to be underestimating the abilities you’ve given your units (e.g. Readiness and Swift Strike on Kate, Healing 2 on Cleric). I think with the above changes though, it probably works fine.
I think the goal isn’t that the Adventurers board never gets chosen. There should be some reason to actually play it.
For Level Up, going another step down that line of thought… Why not just have it cost 5, because that also won’t affect it’s power level given that it will equally as often be teched in (never).
The whole concept is that everything is just short of playable. Starting from just short of playable and then taking steps back from there is unnecessary.
How often does Healing 2 really fire for serious value? How often would Healing 1 have done the same thing? Out of the times that healing 2 is used beneficially, how many of them involve Fuzz Cuddles itself killing a 2/2? Fuzz is arguably as good as Cleric and nobody ever plays it. Healing 2 will possibly heal 2 more often as Cleric, but for less benefit to the player given how hard it is for Adventurers to productively attack.
I think it’s also worth noting that spells like Wither and Deteriorate are extra bad for Adventurers as compared to other factions. Starting attack is universally low and stat reducers are much more likely to take ATK to 0 which makes stuff really bad.
Admittedly, the only way to be certain would be to test it, but with how many people are saying that something is wrong, I’m inclined to say that you should consider some revisions.
Also, I’m reminded of Sirlin’s article about balancing Yomi:
Game Balance Myth 2: Sirlin only cares about balance.
From the outside, I can see why someone would think that because I work on games that require a lot of balance work. But the testers who work with me would laugh at this. I’m the one always pushing back on balance changes because other things are more important: good flavor (mechanics expressing the right personality), good dynamics, and elegance. I want fewer words, fewer elements, things to be as simple as we can get away with, and for characters to feel right. If you allow balance to rank higher than those things, you get a terrible feeling game. You get stuff like the huge guy made of rock having fewer hit points than the young ninja girl. If you make only balance changes that respect all the constraints I mentioned, it’s hard work but you can still have a balanced game.
That’s where my real objection is at this point. Even if you could prove that everything is as well balanced as you claim, it feels wrong. It’s not consistent with the official specs on several issues and it feels too complicated with how many abilities each thing has.
I actually did revise some things (all of which reduced power level) even though it probably wasn’t necessary.
I feel like it’s mostly fear of the unknown time atm.
I will admit you have a point that young ninja girl should probably flavor wise not have more HP than the big guy made of rock, but that’s fluff. Kate’s creature type is undeclared. If it’s that big of a deal, she doesn’t strictly have to be human. She could be somehow metallic. It’s something of a given that she would be wearing plate mail and a large metal shield anyway vs just rock skin on Rook.
The point is more that there is design space where something is more defensive and less offensive than Rook is.