On the topic of changing Blue, does anyone ever use Spectral Tiger? Iāve even managed to make Rokh really carry the game once, but Tiger is just beyond me.
Also Jurisdiction should clearly cost 1g. I think all other blue spells are fine.
Iāve used Spectral Tiger in a tournament game and won with it. Itās very nice when played on Turn 3. Jurisdiction costing one would make it far too powerful. Always havinig the right answer is very powerful in codex, and while 2 gold is alot for that, it still is used as it is such a powerful effect. Ideally I think it should be ~1.5 gold, but fractions are bad so 2 it is.
I completely disagree about jurisdiction. Iāve only ever managed to use it with free speech when quince was dead, but a 4g free speech didnāt let me do much else. Most of the time, you are far better off teching the correct answer rather than teching jurisdiction. Even at 1g, I see it more as a crutch to new players than as a really viable card.
I agree, Iāve never used Jurisdiction and never felt like itās the right move
Tech II Spectral Tiger on Turn 3? 
Could you link a game topic, please?
I mean, what sort of environment it has to be to maxband Kala on T2, not get punished, actually have Quince on your team, and somehow 5/5 Illusion Tiger being better option than either of the 4/4 Feral ones with significant upsides or even better than just spending 4g on something else and attacking with a 4/5 Kala insteadā¦
Wrong line of play 
I used Verdant Tree to build tech 2 on turn 3, and play the Tiger, link is here
EDIT: Remembered I had another game that tournament where I did the same thing, and this time the tiger didnāt just immediately dieā¦
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Ah, punishing P1T1 greed Mox into Battle Suits opener with Verdant Rush, so very delicious. Still not sure if going Feral for a 3g 4/4 invisible Tiger would not be a better choice for purposes of quick pressure, but that point is moot ā Truth is a legit strategical option, carry on. Sad to see Tiger get instagibbed by Zane, but I guess it at least kinda forced that all-in line of play for Pirate.
Game against Bob is a better showcase, since you get to put that 5 ATK to use by smacking Tech building on P2T4.
Ironically, I just had a game today where teching Tiger wouldāve been a solid move (vs. Past/Peace/Anarchy and no Boot Camp teched). I opted for Rokh and regretted not having a 5/5 body in patrol.
I guess Tiger gets a pass from meā¦ for now 
I would say that Jurisdiction is not that powerful in mono blue. Most of your spells are incredibly specific, so the flexibility is not needed, as the spells either need to be built around (Boot camp etc), or you can see them being useful a mile away and have time to tech (free speech etc). Its when its combined with specs that have spells that are more board state dependent that I could see it being too powerful at 1g. For example with Present, If my opponent has a big unit board that just swung, then Ready or Not! is a really good choice, while Now! is great when I have a big unit in hand, and TD a big unit on the field. Jurisdiction would give me the exact affect I need now, and only 1 gold seems really low for that. I do agree that 2g is steep, but I would prefer to maintain the skill in teching correctly and keep it as a niche āI donāt need that hero actualyā card, rather than a card which is an instant tech āI always have the right answer cardā and can rarely be stopped.
Maybe 
. Iāve never been the best imprest with Feralās line up at tech 2, but Iāve always had trouble properly evaluating big slow units. I generally get associated with attrition playstyles in other games, and Truth fits that for me much better. I look forward to seeing Feral Tech 2 shining, but itās not my prefered playstyle.
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Iāve went through a mental exercise of evaluating all spells in a game as Jurisdiction targets.
Iāve came to a conclusion, that, for a Jurisdiction to be a legit teching option, the following has to happen:
- You have spells in Codex that are situationally powerful, but are not flexible/versatile, or itās easier to just tech them in;
- That situational power has to beā¦ Game-turning. So much so that you might be willing to overpay 2g for it;
- The niche of those spells must not be easily predictable, otherwise youād just tech the real copies in;
- It canāt be a part of a multi-spell combo;
- It canāt be a channeled spell;
- You have SEVERAL of those spells in Codex, otherwise teching Jurisdiction is strictly worse than teching single copy of your situational spell;
- Another use-case is if you are building your entire strategy around a single spell and you really want to have a backup Bigby available since your main caster is likely to be knocked off, but donāt want to tech in 2 copies of the key spell. Iāve only came up with Free Speech and Bloodlust in this niche.
So far Iāve narrowed it down to Ready or Not, Now!, Entangling Vines, Thunderclap, Free Speech, Unphase, Assimilate, Nether Drain, Kidnapping, maaaaybe Temporal Distortion and Bloodlust.
If your gut reaction to this list is āWhy is spell XXX not part of it?ā, it means that in my opinion, itās either:
- Flexible, usually easy to find a use for, so youāre better off just teching it, i.e. Shadowblade, Bloodlust.
- Is almost never powerful enough to warrant 2g overpay, i.e. 6g Doom Grasp no thanks.
- Usually is telegraphed/predictable well before it actually becomes necessary, i.e. Free Speech, Carrion Curse, Temporal Distortion, so you tech the real copy instead.
- Is probably a part of a multi-spell combo, i.e. Hallucination or Spreading Plague.
You can see how those few spells that might make Jurisdiction worth it sorta coalesce in Present, Strength and maybe Blood or Future.
Honestly, just looking at this list of imo best use-cases for Jurisdiction, it feels like 2g Jurisdiction isā¦ extremely niche, and even in that niche is probably more of a desperation move than a winning strategy.
Now, imagining 1g Jurisdictionā¦ Makes those cases at least somewhat attractive as a real strategical option of āMaking sure to not get caught with my pants off because I canāt make a good call to commit to a single option from my toolkit of situationally powerful Geiger/Drakk spellsā.
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Shifting the focus away from Blue for a bit, Iāve noticed two cards which havenāt been mentioned here yet, which I have never seen teched in a game, let alone played:
Balanceās Chameleon: a 3/3 with Stealth for $2, this card almost feels like a Tech 1 unit. Although itās not strictly worse than Disguised Monkey (it gets to keep stealth indefinitely) or Flagstone Spy (it costs $1 less), it has way less impact than either of those.
I guess it was included in Balanceās roster as a way to give Mimics stealth? But if youāre after evasion youāre much more likely to go for flying, which is stronger and comes through the already impactful Fairie Dragon (and as mono-green you also have Behind the Ferns as cheap access to Stealth).
Ninjutsuās Flying Fox: a 3/1 flier for $2, this is strictly worse than Finesseās Cloud Sprite (usually this is the other way around, e.g. Backstabber vs. Flagstone Spy). You could argue that having the Ninja type is its advantage, but most Ninja effects have to do evasion, which is usually redundant for a flier.
The only real benefits it can get are Haste from Foxās Den Students (which requires you to have both cards in hand), and Swift Strike from Jade Fox (which only matters against anti-air and other fliers, and even then - it dies to Tower damage, which your opponent likely built when you went Ninjutsu).
Obviously these arenāt huge issues, and Balance and Ninjutsu Tech 2 are probably both fine, but itād be nice if we could think of changes that would let these cards see some play.
I think itās ok for a single card in a spec to see very little play. When a nullcraft or rook bird is in the way, getting a flyer through with stealth as a surprise could be big pretty big. I consider both of those cards you might grab pretty late into the match, if at all, and perhaps they could see a bump, but if we are looking to make changes, they should be as limited in number as possible.
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Oh I agree, these two are way down (and probably just off) the list of cards that I would actually change. Iām still curious as to what could be done in theory to help them, without making them broken.
The simplest thing for Flying Fox would be bumping it to a 3/2, but maybe an invisible flier with those stats would be too hard to handle for most specs? Iāve never seen one, so I donāt know 
@Sirlin: You say: āThe market has spoken and they are very against me changing/improving a board game over time. So no changes are planned. Improving board games had a good run, but I canāt do it when there is a massive financial penalty and massive PR penalty attached to it.ā
I take it you are still working on Fantasy Strike. However, could you see yourself or your company producing a update pack? As I would venture the guess that most people just wanted some cards reformulated or rebalanced and not a completely new edition (think of the way SFV handles updates and not SFIII).
Good luck with Fantasy Strike. I hope it will be a success!
I, for one, would be a huge supporter of a ābalancing packā style update - even if itās print and play only.
Iād love an official review of the topics that have been discussed in this thread; as the game developers/playtesters have far more insight on why things are the way they are, than we might.
I just want this game to be the best it can be, and Iām willing to pay for it.
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I think the issue has been that, in the past, thereās been a LOT of pissing and moaning about updates to Puzzle Strike in particular (and probably also Yomi), to the point where seemingly about the only way to safely do a rebalance of a board game is to be really secretive about it so that the boardgamegeek people donāt notice it until itās been out for a little while.
Maybe if Fantasy Strike the fighting game is successful enough to not only break even, but actually make money, and they can afford to do the rules-enforced digital version of Codex they want to make, maybe they can do some balance tweaks then and maybe even release an upgrade pack? Honestly, though, I think thereās definitely a once-bitten-twice-shy thing going on overall with regard to doing balance updates.
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Quick experiment: bring up Sirlin outside this forum and time how long it takes for someone to come along and ālet everyone knowā how Sirlin is crook and you shouldnāt buy his stuff. Some people treat it like a crusade to protect innocent people from him.
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@Shax: Unless I am mistaken this happened because he released new editions of the game instead of just update packs and people who backed the previous versions felt kinda ripped off. As far as I can see, people have absolutely no problem if you release a decently priced update pack for the owners of the previous versions.
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Adam Poots released KDM 1.5 to great reception and fanfare (and 12mil bucks KS campaign, cough). It included a lot of updated mechanics and new content for the base game.
Yes, there was a reasonably priced Update Pack for owners of original KDM 1.0 game.
K:DM base game costs ~250 dollars, update pack was priced at $60 at KS.
People did not feel ripped off. 
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The level of rage or happiness at a new edition really seems hard to predict. A lot of uncertainty in that market. What gamers feel is a reasonably priced upgrade kit is another difficult prediction to make.
If Codex was made by another company and they put out a <60 card upgrade pack (donāt actually know how many cards top players think need changing) for $10-15 I could see it going over well. Hard core players would be happy that the game has been improved and it is such a small price point that I could see the casuals being okay with it too.
Thereās something Iāve seen companies do and I think itās awful but Iāve never seen a company get flack for it. They make changes to the game and release an errata and then subsequent printings of the game have upgraded cards but an update pack isnāt released for people with the old printing, they just have to go by the errata.
If an errata document was made available alongside the update pack that might help some.
Nobodies more bummed about Sirlin feeling like he doesnāt fit in the board gaming design world. Maybe he doesnāt feel this way but itās the vibe I get. Either way it appears he wonāt be doing any work in the board game world for a long time. He was (is?) my favorite board game designer. I much preferred his style of releasing a solid game and then updating it as needed to keep it interesting for people that enjoy and play the game most.
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