Yeah, I get that giving the opponent an extra card is aversive. Compared to playing Arrest, both players get an additional card. If it can give you a tech break or delay something like Molting Firebird from wrecking your day then that situation would be worth it, or if you’re lower on cards yourself. Hey, maybe lack of respect for Porkhand Magistrate when you’re low on cards is part of why blue is struggling against black with the imps!
Or alternatively, if you have a reputable newsman, building inspector, or gemscout owl in play, you can give yourself a free surplus add-on.
@Penatronic I mean, snapback is an ability that’s really bad early game, and it’s a strong card. I’m not saying that Porkhand Magistrate is as strong as snapback, but that it’s situational like that.
I’m really not saying that Porkhand Magistrate is super strong, but unless we’re arguing that Arrest is too weak then it’s not clear how the Magistrate’s ability is inbalanced with Arrest if we do the math. It’s not being played has more to do with the current meta than the strength of the card.
Sure, so with what you’ve said they r pretty even. Now add:
Porkhand requires giving your opponent a turn’s notice: as well as the obvious benefit of the disable happening earlier in the game, arrest acts as a deterrent without being played (many a scavenger gold has been lost needlessly because they put it in lookout for arrest).
Your maths (points 2-4 anyway) assumes infinite porkhand taps (comparing costs/ability only based off those on the turn of the ability). This captured the whole cost of Arrest, but not the 3g for a 2/3 body you only get to use on turns you don’t use the ability of porkhand.
While i don’t know the distribution of how many exhausts a porkhand gets before it is killed, I’d argue it isn’t going to be much above 1 because of the chance of it dying before it does any (you have just spent 3g for 2/3). Then you’ve spent 4g and a card for the ability and an exhausted magistrate, compared to 4g and a card for arrest’s ability and a hero; hero > exhausted magistrate.
If you think my estimate of 1 exhaust is too low, remember that you only valued any particular exhaust as ‘pretty even’ to Arrest, so we are tending towards them being even, not gaining ground over Arrest the longer we estimate porkhand stays around.
While other arguments based on its lack of early game impact or the value of using it as an (expensive as hell) ‘surplus’ are, I agree, hard to quantify, I don’t agree that it is balanced with arrest if we do the math.
What about dropping its gold cost. Two and reducing its stats to 2/2? Makes it a little bit more useful without the text without being particularly powerful in any way.
Since we’re talking about a balance patch and not a wider attempt to shake up the meta, and since these kinds of threads tend to expand as they go on, I suggest we put a hard limit on the discussion. Let’s say we limit ourselves to changing a total of 10 cards, which changes would be top priority?
There seems to be consensus about Vandy, Garth, Deteriorate, Dark Pact, Pirate Gunship, and MoLaC all needing nerfs (though personally I think the currently tested nerf to MoLaC is going overboard).
There also seems to be agreement that Troq deserves a buff (if we are willing to overlook the careful balance of Finesse v Bashing), as does something in Law. Can we reach an agreement about 3 more cards that need to be changed, for balance’s sake?
I don’t see why I would assume infinite porkhand taps. You don’t have Arrest in your hand every turn either.
It’s the only non-illusion unit in the blue starter that has more than 1 attack. It’s the meat shield of the starter, an expensive fading argonaut. Making it 1/2 would give it a completely different role. Maybe giving it readiness would be worth considering, I’m not sure if that would be strong or not.
I think it’s more clear that buffing Porkhand Magistrate by lowering his costs would further imbalance the blue-purple matchup then actually improve the overall balance.
I think the only problem with the “10 card changes” is 5 of them that most people seem to agree with are just for nightmare. That being said, I would propose the below minimized list, “low priority” being a list to consider later.
EDITED BASED ON CONTINUED DISCUSSION:
Nerfs
Vandy
Remove resist 1 at midband
Garth
Reduce midband stats to 2/3
MoLaC
If you have no units in play, remove all runes from this
Lich’s Bargain
Base dame increased from 4 to 6
Pirate Gunship
Remove obliterate 2, increase cost to 7
Deteriorate
Increase cost to 1
Dark Pact
Increase cost to 1
Drill Sergeant
Change text to whenever you play a unit from yoru hand, put a +1/+1 counter on it
If you have no units in play, remove all runes from this ← I’d say the current tournament shows that this is an excessive nerf
Lich’s Bargain
Base dame increased from 4 to 6
Pirate Gunship
Remove obliterate 2, increase cost to 7
Deteriorate
Increase cost to 1
Dark Pact
Increase cost to 1
Drill Sergeant
Change text to whenever you play a unit from yoru hand, put a +1/+1 counter on it
Flagstone Garrison
Cost increased from 3 to 4 ← I’d be willing to get behind one of the changes to Peace, not both at once
Bird’s Nest
Trash birds when birds nest leaves play ← I’m on board, but why trash and not sacrifice (like the Hive’s Stingers)? Seems petty Let the birds give patrol benefits
Buffs
Regular-sized Rhinoceros
Gets Arrives: destroy an upgrade or ongiong spell
Torq
Increase stats to 2/4, 3/5, 4/6 ← I agree with the flavor-based arguments against these two changes
Without it being played we really can’t say if it was too much or too little.
What are the flavor issues with buffing bashing? I don’t think the balance of finesse v bashing is relevant for competitive tournament play. If you want to play finesse v bashing just don’t take the extra steps of using special rules.
Neither of my flavor-based objections to those changes had been about the Bashing vs. Finesse matchup; for both of them I referenced cards outside of that set, and if it had been about that matchup they would have been something other than flavor objections. I talked about a potential issue with the Starter Set game one time, but it was a secondary concern and even in my post I said it’s not as important since beginners wouldn’t be using these changes in the first place. It’s been several days at this point though, so I’m not surprised if you’ve forgotten.
Sorry I missed this somehow. They are fair points and I think there are a ton of options on how to improve bashing. I do think the ongoing spell hate would be a nice option somewhere in bashing to give its tech some actual value.
If you want to have ongoing spell removal and/or upgrade removal in Bashing, it seems to me like a natural enough place to put that might be on The Boot. This would make it similar to Versatile Style where it can serve multiple functions, but it wouldn’t be stepping on Discipline’s toes since The Boot is a more expensive card (so for the upgrade removal you’d still prefer the non-neutral option if you have it available) and its other effect of unit removal is completely different from anything on Versatile Style. Plus, it’s thematically fitting for a card called The Boot that already has one removal effect to gain an additional one, whereas I didn’t really see any reason for putting that on Rhino aside from “it doesn’t have an ability” which seems like a weak reason.
For Troq, I already mentioned that the change I’d be most interested in would be changing his midband to deal 1 damage to one of that opponent’s buildings, rather than to that opponent’s base, since at maxband that would let him function as a tech destroyer all on his own. If that’s not enough, I believe another suggestion that had been made years ago was to swap his midband and maxband abilities so he gets readiness sooner while saving the building damage for when it’ll be most useful.
If Bashing needs any other buffs, I think there are two important things to keep in mind about how it was intended to work:
For the purposes of customizing your codex, Bashing is intended to be something you can splash in to get a toolbox full of a variety of useful units and effects, ones that would be difficult to get at the same time another way.
As a corollary to that, any cards that are similar to cards in other specs are intentionally not quite as good as the ones in the colored specs. This is meant to be counterbalanced by neutral specs being easier to splash into a codex due to how the multicolor rules work, plus even if an individual card is stronger in a different spec choosing that spec wouldn’t give you the other cards in the Bashing toolbox.
That’s the intent for how Bashing is meant to work, and while it didn’t end up being all that strong in practice I’d prefer to preserve these ideas with any changes. So for example, if Hired Stomper is deeemd too weak (I’m not making any balance claims here one way or the other, this is just an example) then I wouldn’t want it to be buffed to a 5/3 since then it would be an exact copy of Bamstamper Lizzo except neutral instead of red…but maybe having it be a 4/4 could be fine, and give it a slightly different niche compared to its red counterpart.
Agreed that the neutral starters should generally be weaker because of how easy they are to splash, but the way it is now finesse has a lot of use in this regard and bashing has none. Beyond making bashing have some sort of niche use I don’t really have a dog in the fight as to how to achieve it. I do like the suggested boot buff. The unit roster is also very weak but I don’t have any ideas for what I would do to change them in a reasonable way.
I think if we’re talking about adding upgrade removal to a bashing spell than wrecking ball would be more thematic… maybe add in a penalty like exhausting Troq to make up for the cheaper cost.
I think Wrecking Ball is fine, but I do like Targeting Troq’s body + The Boot or Final Smash (or both) to add some Upgrade / Ongoing Spell hate. That and/or hero hate. Both would make Bashing a pretty viable splash. I don’t think there’s a “small tweaks” way to do that, though.
Here’s a suggestion for two changes:
Troq
Swap midband and maxband
Mid at 4 and max at 7
Let maxband target any building
The Boot
Cost moves to 4
new text: Select one of the following:
Destroy a Tech 0 AND a Tech 1 unit
Move an enemy hero to level 1
Destroy an Upgrade or Ongoing Spell
And yeah, move a hero to level 1 might kill them if they have damage on 'em, and that’s a perk similar to Nether Drain
(Optional: Move Final Smash’s cost to 3 or 4. 6 is crazy expensive for what it does and it’s already hard to max out Troq, even at 7)
Now Troq can really bash, that becomes a cool card to play but still not better than any other cards that do similar things, it fits the “have answers to everything” vibe of the spec… Thoughts?
