Nudging the tiller - balance

I’d be willing to play a mono-color game with someone if they want to test!

Another option is make Wraith:
4 cost 4/4
Deathtouch
Unstoppable when attacking Heroes
Create a 1/1 Black Skeleton when Wraith kills a unit or Hero

Surplus has never been built by the winner of a pbf game, as far as I know.
I think making it 4 gold cost, and “upkeep: gain a gold and draw a card” would be fine.

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Woah hang on, let’s just go back to 4 cost. It used to be 4 cost until it was nerfed, so there must’ve been a reason.

I think the reason was Bashing vs Finesse, but I’m not certain about that.

The Tech Lab is, by far, my most common add-on choice (and I wish I could have 2 of them simultaneously), not for picking a different Tech III, but to facilitate combos between factions. Like, with Mono-White, for example, you’ve got all these Legendary cards spread out across 3 specs, which would be perfect for Mythmaking, except you can’t have access to all of them at the same time. At best you could throw down a Morningstar Pass and rebuild your Tech Lab from turn to turn, trying to match as many of your draws as possible for the next turn. It’s kind of frustrating to think of all these epic 3-faction (or more) strategies that are just too grandiose to fit into Codex’s game mechanics, and I’ve actually been contemplating a number of variant proposals to create space for them to flourish.

To your proposal, I think that’s an incredibly desirable bonus power, well worth the $1 price tag even for single-faction builds.

It’s rare, but it does happen. I remember winning games after building a Surplus, but a forum search proves that’s only happened in physical games, if at all. I’ve definitely lost to people in PbF games where they’ve built a surplus, however, and here’s one example:

[CAWS18] Nekoatl [Discipline]/Past/Law vs Marto [Discipline]/Strength/Finesse

Yeah, @Persephone and I have barely started testing it and I already feel like it’s way too good. I’ll hold final judgement for now, but I suspect I’ll end up deciding that this would be better as a map card than as part of an add-on.

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The ability to take 1 card, wait to see what your opponent does, then tech 3 cards, feels really good and against the spirit of Codex? Especially when skipping two tech’d cards means I can essentially tech whatever I want to play next turn.

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@Persephone @Hobusu Do you think a watered down version of that ability where you can optionally tech 1 more card, but no less, is worth about $1 (on it’s own, not in addition to the Tech Lab’s normal perk). I’m tempted to crib the idea for a variant that would render the standard Tech Lab obsolete.

It might be worth it for consistency on the t3 / t4 split, but after that, probably not?

I feel like putting 3 cards into your deck early rapidly becomes a liability once you start needing higher-quality cards. Unless you’re teching a Dark Pact / Garrison / Boot Camp / Martial Mastery in the extra slot? so, maybe making the current best-er specs better isn’t a good idea.

I’m also finding the decision of how many cards to tech to be – if not difficult, then at least uncertain and time consuming. Picking the best card to tech is already a tough decision, also choosing if you want to tech a card multiplies it. Immediate probability by stuffing your deck now, at the cost of your deck becoming less responsive to modification in the future, seems difficult to judge and prone to regret; 2 vs. 3 is probably not as big a deal as 1 vs. 3.

I do wonder about an effect that let you tech an additional card, at the expense of telling your opponent what it is. There’s obviously a lot of unexplored design space around teching cards (because, unlike Dominion, Codex isn’t a game about putting cards into your deck.) A third neutral faction, Knowledge, based around that might be interesting…

“Show your opponents one of the cards you tech” might be an interesting map card, with or without “Tech an additional card every turn.”

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I’ve been thinking about the multicolor penalty (@Nekoatl, curious what your thing is) and what I don’t like about it is

  • unless you’re splashing for a early combat hero (Rook, Zane, Vandy, Grave) with t1/t2 impact you pay the upfront 1g penalty before you get any benefit from your other spec

  • hits rushdown decks harder than midrange/controllish type decks? So multicolor decks are more likely to be midrange and rushdown decks are biased towards Finesse.

  • the gold cost hits p1 and their 3-cost starter cards much more awkwardly (5g vs. 6g is a bigger deal than 7g vs 8g), specifically limiting the variety of openings to mostly just 1+2+2 or 3+2 vs. also 1+2+3 or 1+1+2+2. (except for black, which has multiple 0g cards, and to a lesser extent green if you get Prospector turn 1).

Why not: The first off-color hero or Tech I / II / III card costs an extra 1g? Slight nerf to some of the best early-game heroes, and doesn’t take effect until your board is actually multi-colored. Might be weird with Necromancy / Present having easy access to getting “free” units ~directly from Codex; might also need the Garth maxband 5g -> 4g nerf. (there aren’t any 5g black units, so it’s a little weird in the first place, but obviously intended specifically to be able to fetch 5g off-color powerhouses like Hyperion and Oversized Rhino.)

I’m really curious what’s already been tried and found not to work, because it seems like something that must have been iterated on a lot.

The biggest question is what are you using to determine “off-colour”? A colour other than the starter deck?

Yes, relative to the starter. That sort of implies [neutral] / X / Y doesn’t pay any penalty, so may or may not need to special case that. I think it might be okay if taking the neutral starter got you out of paying the extra gold?

Neutral starter is already very good. I wouldn’t want to make it any better.

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Neutral starter is versatile, but in terms of pure power, I think it’s weaker than colored starters by design. Compare Helpful Turtle to Savior Monk, for example, or Fruit Ninja to Fox Primus. (Same deal with Neutral heroes, River Montoya and Troq Bashar only have 2 abilities, whereas all other heroes have 3).

True. I guess you would say that for multicolor decks, first non-neutral pays extra, but neutral+color isn’t multicolor & so the penalty doesn’t apply.

This makes nimble fencers an even more attractive t3 play.

I have a long standing series of games vs @flagrantangles on morningstar sanctuary where we mostly play my Green vs his Blue. In my experience Blue is really good at stopping me doing some specific things, but it’s usually fairly trivial to play around or switch to an alternative strat, particularly with Green’s massive economic advantage (Rich Earth is the MVP vs Blue). This can often leave Blue with no advantage to their board state depsite spending significant resources and often with wasted Tech choices.

Outside of Newsman and Free Speech (and sometimes Spectral Flagbearer) Blue doesn’t have much to use against heroes/spells while they have a load of stuff to deal with units or exploit opponent’s strong units. They also have no answer to upgrades and ongoing spells once they hit the board. I’ve also recently been thinking that Law Tech II/spells might be overpriced due to being balanced around the additional gold from Tax Collector, which is unfortunately one of the easiest things to play around.

My solution to these issues would be something like:

  • Jurisdiction becomes Community Service but for spells
  • Tax Collector always triggers even if the opponent doesn’t float gold (they have to pay it next turn)
  • Hallucination can deal with upgrades and ongoing spells as well as kill units. Also I feel it needs card draw so Quince won’t tank your hand as much to cast Dreamscape+Hallucination.

My current working versions:

Jurisdiction - Law Magic - Spell - 2g
Look at the opponent’s hand or discard pile. You may play a non-ultimate spell from there. (You still pay its cost to play it).
If you choose an ongoing spell your Law hero can channel it until your next upkeep.

Tax Collector - Law Tech I Unit - Administrator
Arrives: Steal 1g from an opponent. If they have none, you still gain 1g and the opponent must pay 1g during next upkeep or lose the game.

Hallucination - Truth Magic - Debuff ◎
Draw a card and choose one:

  • Up to two tech 0, I, or II units are Illusions this turn. (Illusions die when they’re ◎ by spells or abilities.)
  • Destroy an upgrade or ongoing spell.

Flangles and I are going to be testing these vs my Green over the next few weeks, but in the meantime I’d be really interested in feedback, particularly from experienced Blue or Black players. Also possibly Purple players as I always felt Blue was pretty strong vs Purple.

Tagging @frozenstorm @nekoatl @zhavier @metalize to hopefully comment

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Tax collector becomes ultra powerful. That would be an always tech in any matchup for me, especially as player 1, because it almost guarantees stopping p2 from gaining the tech 2 advantage.

I’ve always thought it was a little ridiculous blue only had newsman to deal with upgrades. But flavorwise I like jurisdiction for destroying upgrades. Or generals hammer

Not sure about stealing a spell from an opponent. Kinda neat

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That Jurisdiction change seems like a harsh nerf to an already awkward & expensive spell. Searching the opponent’s cards means you either lead with Lawful Search (or other spyworks) or you risk whiffing and wasting your $2. At least with the current behavior, you know exactly what you’re getting before you commit to pay the $2, and you get a long-term benefit of (presumably) upgrading the average quality of cards in your deck. I will note that Jurisdiction is likely meant to be played alongside Insurance Agents, which make the extra cost manageable and by which point you have room for a 2nd hero to replay the newly added spell when it cycles around again…

I agree with zhavier, that Tax Collector change is a major buff to an already strong tech I pick. Peace and Truth each offer methods of returning cards to hand as well, Law offers an option for floating a card until the ideal circumstances to play it, and just knowing you’re running Tax Collectors has a deterrent effect on the opponent floating gold and patrolling as Scavenger (if you want to be really sneaky, you can tech just one Collector and leave the opponent on guard against an imagined 2nd copy). So, I really think this buff is unnecessary.

Hallucination gets a bad rap, but I think it’s actually not a bad card. If Dreamscape is in play, Hallucination is a very efficient and flexible spell to kill units with (compare to Ember Sparks which also costs $1 per unit, but is limited to only targeting patrollers; Boot Camp is a little better, except that it’s a different hero’s spell, which makes it more awkward to combo, and while Deteriorate is a competitive choice, it has a decidedly smaller effect). If the opponent has some means of killing Sirus Quince, Hallucination is also more efficient than Dreamscape to enable Illusion kills via other targeting effects, and doesn’t have the drawback of exposing your own units to being target-killed if Macciatus, the Whisperer is not yet available. Adding the card draw risks making it OP. And, while I’ve also wished Blue had some means of upgrade removal rather than just upgrade prevention, the fact is that Black, Red, and Neutral don’t have any means to deal with upgrades at all, and if they can live without upgrade removal, Blue certainly can. Btw, while Reputable Newsman can be awkward to use, mono-Blue does have tools to enhance its performance, e.g. returning it to hand and replaying it to counter some revealed opponent’s card, dumping +1/+1 runes on it to insulate it from Sacrifice the Weak and similar effects, using Eyes of the Chancellor to make it invisible…

They’re interesting ideas, but I don’t feel like they’re improvements over the current cards, balance-wise.

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