A few unclear/problematic cards

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Clemens
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A few unclear/problematic cards

Post by Clemens » Tue Oct 25, 2016 15:04

I went through the HoN cards we currently have and found a few unclear/problematic cards.

Fair Trading port:
At the level 3 advantage what happens to exess resource cards of opponents? Are they destroyed or just temporary unavailable? Who chooses which resource cards can be used?
Also right now it's phrased "can only have", which could suggest that players having fewer resource cards get additional ones.

Recession:
If I can only draw one card am I forced to play a resource card? If I have no cards in hand that would mean I have to draw one card and instantly play it as a resource.

City Council:
As all parts of the name double as subtypes this creature is also a city. All effects that affect cities would also affect this creature.

Debt Collector:
I would generally suggest that the rules should clarify, that unless stated otherwise produced power is generic/factionless.

Tomb of Nobles:
There is no indication how removing cards for advantage works.

Treachery:
Disciplines are not a part of the ARC (I personally do not know the ARCs history, I would suspect it's a remain of previous rules versions)
ngoeminne
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Re: A few unclear/problematic cards

Post by ngoeminne » Tue Oct 25, 2016 15:57

Hi Clemens,

You're absolutely right, the House Of Nobles cards are unclear and problematic, the cards there are a rough first version of a thrid pre-constructed deck and are outdated. We focused on the Uneasy Alliance and the Gaia love for life deck. All other cards should be treated as very prelim.

I've tried to create a control deck 'Economics', but as usual blue is hard to balance and figure out.
Clemens wrote:I went through the HoN cards we currently have and found a few unclear/problematic cards.

Fair Trading port:
At the level 3 advantage what happens to exess resource cards of opponents? Are they destroyed or just temporary unavailable? Who chooses which resource cards can be used?
Also right now it's phrased "can only have", which could suggest that players having fewer resource cards get additional ones.
The idea behind the city is to balance out the resources and creatures. So yes the excess cards should be destroyed, the opponent player(s) choose which, same goes for creatures. Secondly, it should work as an upper limit, of course they don't get anything for free :-)
The card should definitely be rephrased. (We're kind of relying on Pistos to do the correct phrasing as he's a native english speaker), but, any help would be great.
Clemens wrote: Recession:
If I can only draw one card am I forced to play a resource card? If I have no cards in hand that would mean I have to draw one card and instantly play it as a resource.
This is an old almost obsolete card. First off all, we'd like to avoid global enchantments, and move their functionality to cities. The idea of the card is that it should give you a draw advantage, maybe it should be an event, that disables draw or resource-play for one round (for your opponents).
Clemens wrote: City Council:
As all parts of the name double as subtypes this creature is also a city. All effects that affect cities would also affect this creature.
Hum, I'm not sure I intend a name to double as subtype, without explicitly add it to the subtypes.
e.g. Zombie Master, wouldn't need to be a zombie, it could be a runaway dark elf.
Maybe snowdrop has some suggestions on that. I feel that every card-interaction should be done by the subtypes, not the card's name.
Clemens wrote: Debt Collector:
I would generally suggest that the rules should clarify, that unless stated otherwise produced power is generic/factionless.
Yep, but I also feel that produced power should always be of a certain kind.
Clemens wrote: Tomb of Nobles:
There is no indication how removing cards for advantage works.
Good point. It would work as follows. Remove a HoN card from the graveyard with two loyalty marks would count for two. If you reach 4, the city level is reached and the advantage is triggered.
Clemens wrote: Treachery:
Disciplines are not a part of the ARC (I personally do not know the ARCs history, I would suspect it's a remain of previous rules versions)
Both ORC (still does) and ARC had disciplines and each city was bound to one. However that distinction was cumbersome, and during play testing we removed it.

The idea of the card was to gain advantage by turning residents of an opponent city against the opponent. (Or using them to gain an advantage). In the current ARC rules, it would say something like: 'Each loyalty mark of each unmarked creature in target (opponent) city help you gain target city level'. Does that even make sense? Hehe.


In any case, the first playtests with this bluish deck were very hard, cards were overpowered, and the thing was unbalanced. But then again, we were still fine tuning the ARC rules around the cities.

Thanks for all the feedback.
If you feel that the economics deck is something you can start with, feel free to create your own.
Global idea/strategy of the 'economics' deck is of course more resources and more card draw, and a bit controlling of creatures.

Kind regards,
Nico
Clemens
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Re: A few unclear/problematic cards

Post by Clemens » Thu Oct 27, 2016 11:49

Hi Nico,

thank you for your clarifications.
ngoeminne wrote:I've tried to create a control deck 'Economics', but as usual blue is hard to balance and figure out.
Isn't being unbalanced just the fun of playing blue? ;)
ngoeminne wrote:Hum, I'm not sure I intend a name to double as subtype, without explicitly add it to the subtypes.
e.g. Zombie Master, wouldn't need to be a zombie, it could be a runaway dark elf.
Maybe snowdrop has some suggestions on that. I feel that every card-interaction should be done by the subtypes, not the card's name.
Well, right now the ARC states:
Card Name and Types: Every card has a unique name. Each part of the name also doubles as a subtype.
I found that confusing as well as interesting. Maybe just leave that out.
ngoeminne wrote:If you feel that the economics deck is something you can start with, feel free to create your own.
I will try to do that.
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Re: A few unclear/problematic cards

Post by snowdrop » Sun Oct 30, 2016 02:35

ngoeminne wrote:Hum, I'm not sure I intend a name to double as subtype, without explicitly add it to the subtypes.
e.g. Zombie Master, wouldn't need to be a zombie, it could be a runaway dark elf.
Maybe snowdrop has some suggestions on that. I feel that every card-interaction should be done by the subtypes, not the card's name.
Clemens wrote: Well, right now the ARC states:
Card Name and Types: Every card has a unique name. Each part of the name also doubles as a subtype.
I found that confusing as well as interesting. Maybe just leave that out.
The name doubling as subtypes in the arc is just a remain from the ORC: There I decided to solve the spatial and template issue of where to put subtypes of a creature by simply letting whatever word is found in the name also function like a subtype creature, given that the creature template differs from the others.

So, "Elf Piper" is a name. The card would have subtypes "Elf" and "Piper".

However, none of them matter until the second we create a card that references either one of them - until then, those "subtypes" are non-existent other than in theory.

What artwork the card shows isn't ever relevant in ORC for anything other than aesthetics and lore/thematic purposes.

One doesn't have to put the name/subtype "Elf" on every creature that happens to be an elf - doing that serves no purpose really unless one wants to systematically use creature subtypes all the time as an integral part of the core rules. That will probably never be the case for ORC. As for how it's done in MtG, in theory it's solid, in practice they seem to have at least 210 creature (sub)types, making at least 180of them aritificial most of the time and fragmenting the game by lowering card compatibility.
ngoeminne
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Re: A few unclear/problematic cards

Post by ngoeminne » Mon Oct 31, 2016 09:21

Hi,

Maybe we could come up with a diagram of allowed creature types (to limit them). I feel like each faction should have its own set, with a few of them overlapping.

Kind regards,
Nico
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