I feel like I’ve used Drill Sergeant / Dreamscape against you effectively before, Frozen, and if not you, then definitely against someone, and on more than one occasion. Dreamscape is more efficient across multiple turns, or against large numbers of units in a single turn, but Hallucination is more efficient against 2 units if you don’t expect Quince to survive, if your opponent is running ongoing removal, or if you’re expecting to win the game by removing those 2 units, or if you’re concerned about targeted retalliation.
You don’t actually need Macciatus to make Dreamscape viable, or even Mind-Parry Monk (which, btw, is an excellent choice of unit to copy with Mirror Illusions), in fact just putting a pair of Spectral Flagbearers in your Scavenger and Technician slots is enough protection in many cases, and if you’re also using Flagstone Garrison to quickly dump Overeager Cadet, Spectral Flagbearer, and Spectral Hound, you can replay them every turn if they get killed, and rack up +1/+1 runes on Drill Sergeant at the same time.
You may have used it, but would you have lost if it was some other card from your Codex?
I will note that the combo makes it easier and faster to win, which is relevant in F2F play when you don’t have time to math out your Garrison/DS/reshuffle turns.
That’s not a reasonable question, by which I mean, to accurately answer it would be more trouble than it’s worth, if indeed it can be accurately answered at all. What I can easily say is that the Drill Sergeant sniper strategy would often be less appealing if Dreamscape didn’t exist, and that I have no intention of running Truth, and especially not Peace with Truth, under the current change list.
Yeah I’m with Eric here, I need to see a link to this game where it was instrumental in the win, and an explanation for how Judgment Day or Hallucination (or just Mirrors) would not have done the same job as well / better.
I don’t disagree that there exists a hypothetical situation in which it is demonstrably better, but I have never experienced a practical one
To a degree that’s true, but the Peace engine strategy tends to go through a growing pains phase what with the purchase of the Tech II, the Garrisons, and the Sergeants, and if the opponent is applying pressure, every gold is precious. Not to mention the price tag on Judgment Day is a considerable $10 including Bigby, and none of that advances the engine at all, plus depending on circumstances he might conflict with a different hero.
At a glance, it looks like I won a game using the Dreamscape / Sergeant combo against you here.
Be that as it may, it’s a far cry from saying that in one particular situation Dreamscape was suboptimal, than from saying that in every situation it’s suboptimal.
No, no, it’s really not. Find an actual forum game where Ds/DS was used, and I can almost certainly find an alternate tech that would still win the game.
Another point that hasn’t been mentioned is that sometimes it’s worth playing Dreamscape by itself to interfere with the opponent targeting their own units, and the Drill Sergeant combo can be tacked on as a bonus.
There’s a distinction, though, between mandatory and sub-optimal where a equally / more useful card exists.
The game you linked against me is a good example of it being especially effective, I’ll grant that.
But surely even you can say it was a clear “win more” card; you had the game already locked down (damn I inted levels to Oni hard that game, LOL! and what were those decks? were we randoming or something?).
Hallucination was enough to win the game easily AND you save a gold for more runes XD What’s wrong with making Dreamscape different / more exciting? I never really liked that it and Hallucination overlapped so much in the first place tbh
I didn’t actually read through the game I linked, nor am I especially interested in doing so, as I’ve used the combo enough times that I’m confident that it’s a good option and better than Hallucination + Sergeant sometimes. I mean, supposing I spent the time to read through it and decided that, in that particular case, Hallucination would have been $1 more efficient, that wouldn’t invalidate that there are cases where Dreamscape is more efficient.
That said, I don’t object to modifications to Dreamscape and/or Hallucination, nor do I feel it’s unreasonable to object to the two spells being so similar, even if I personally like having the option to pick whichever version seems more appropriate to a given situation. I just object to claims that Dreamscape and Drill Sergeant are never played (or are never worth playing) together, because in my experience it can be a very powerful, fun, and efficient combo… but of course your mileage may vary. If people don’t want to believe me, that’s fine… I’m not even sure I want to participate in this tournament, so I’m not motivated enough to go searching for game after game until I find one that satisfies everyone here, and besides, I don’t exclusively play on the forums, so some games I’ve played have no record to cite.
I believe you and I think it is a great combo! I’ve actually not landed them before not because I didn’t think it was good but because I didn’t know about this combo. I want to give it a try!
If we are going into detailed thoughts here, I’ll repost my initial thought on the change to Bone Collector, which is that I’d rather see it as 3/2 than 2/3. Bone Collector is similar to Hyperion, in that its attack ability means that, while facing its high attack value is a pain, the real problem is when it survives to attack twice.
I also think that giving the Owl 1 attack might be too good. Normal Owl already has niche utility blocking Nullcraft or Birds in Squad Leader, while you set up to use Circle of Life. Adding 1 attack, nerfing Birds, and letting Circle of Life fetch non-Green units, makes Owl great against anything that isn’t heavy ground pressure. If the change sticks, I’ll happily take up ol’ faithful [Balance]/Blood/Strength, and try to abuse the hell out of it.
I went through all your games that came up on a search for Dreamscape and Drill. In every case, you didn’t have to use the Dreamscape (or Hallucination), just putting DS runes on your attackers would have been sufficient (especially when you could have Haste guys)
There seems to be an obvious point skipped over here: the distinction between dreamscape and hallucination is meaningless here, because revised drill sergeant can’t target at all, so neither allow the combo.
Also, if you guys are going to get all defensive about people’s comments, why ask for our opinions on these changes?
It blows my mind that my past game plays can be judged like that. It is absolutely meaningless to say “you didn’t have to use that when you could have just done the other” because hindsight is always 20/20 and more importantly I don’t want the other.
Everyone has different views about cards and that is what makes the game fun.
If you guys want everybody to play optimally, then why don’t you just play agaist AI? You guys make it sound like we are all Alpha Gos when clearly we are just humans.
You can change the rules but you can’t change the fact that we are stupid.
I want to give it a try!